MongoDB 3.2: Now powered by Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mongodb-32-now-powered-postgresql-john-de-goes <comment><USER2> tl;dr: There's a new "BI Connector" which will allow you to connect your business intelligence tools to MongoDB using the Postgres wire protocol (which many speak). This is somehow bad because Postgres is also popular, and maybe people will use Postgres now. Also: the author (who has a competing connector) knows the names of a lot of people at MongoDB.

<comment><USER3> My reading of the article was not that it uses the protocol, but that it actually unpacks it into an actual Postgres database. This obviously looks bad for MongoDB if their analytics literally uses a competing database.

[https://github.com/asya999/yam_fdw](https://github.com/asya999/yam_fdw)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're interested in how much computation gets pushed down into the MongoDB database, versus how much gets pulled back into PostgreSQL, you can find some examples here:

[http://slamdata.com/blog/2015/12/08/nosql-analytics-for- mong...](http://slamdata.com/blog/2015/12/08/nosql-analytics-for-mongodb.html)

Warning: It's not pretty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr 2.0:

1) MongoDB Inc have made a "foreign data wrapper" for PostgreSQL which enables MongoDB databases to be accessed from within PostgreSQL.

2) This makes data in MongoDB databases accessible to existing analytics software for SQL databases, which is often made by companies with lots of money.

3) The CTO of SlamData Inc, which makes analytics software for NoSQL databases, thinks that MongoDB Inc shouldn't have done that.

tl;dr 3.0:

A company faces increased competition; isn't happy about it.

<comment><USER5> It enables MongoDB databases to be accessed from within PostgreSQL at a massive performance penalty compared to just storing your data in Postgres in the first place, because the particular kind of foreign data wrapper they're using has limited ability to make use of MongoDB's query functionality and has to literally load the entire contents of the database into Postgres for anything non-trivial. Which means you're better off just using Postgres. This is bad for MongoDB because their business model relies on people actually using MongoDB rather than the competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Frankly, if I were tasked with integrating existing BI tools with MongoDB, I'd immediately start looking at ways to "escape" the anemic Mongo ecosystem to something a bit richer. A Postgres FDW seems like an excellent design.

Of course, I'm a bit of a Postgres partisan, and a Mongo refugee, but it still seems like a solid engineering decision and most of this guys arguments seem to hinge on "BUT POSTGRES IS TEH ENEMY!".

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you might start off down that path, but eventually you'd find that if you try to execute analytics via PostgreSQL via FDW via Multicorn via MongoDB, you're only able to push conjunctions of simple relational operators on original (non-derived) fields in the source collection.

What that means is virtually any query will end up executing (via PostgreSQL via FDW via Multicorn via MongoDB) by first pulling out all (!) the data from all (!) source collections, relocating it to MongoDB, and then executing the query. Possibly, in fact, these full collection scans might be repeated multiple times, especially for nested data, crosses, and other types of operations.

And then you'd decide that "solid engineering decision" wasn't so solid after all. Then hopefully you'd quit MongoDB and go work on PostgreSQL full time. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's nothing new that PostgreSQL is a great tool for doing analytics, even coming from MongoDB. I'm very happy that MongoDB took this route, it speaks a lot about their capabilities in the non-OLTP world.

Having said that, I very biasedly say that there's a much better solution to this connector, which doesn't flatten out the MongoDB data: it's called ToroDB ([https://github.com/torodb/torodb](https://github.com/torodb/torodb)).

ToroDB, open source, speaks the MongoDB protocol, transforms documents to relational tables (without any kind of flattening, and without having to define any schema) and stores data in a RDBMS. More precisely, PostgreSQL.

Current development version (repl branch) speaks the replication protocol, and hence can replicate live from a MongoDB into PostgreSQL. No connector needed, no flattening, no FDWs, nothing else. Just add a new "slave" (ToroDB) to your replica set and you're good to go.

It goes even further: if you want pure data warehousing, ToroDB will soon support GreenPlum. Some initial benchmarks ([http://www.slideshare.net/8kdata/torodb-scaling- postgresql-l...](http://www.slideshare.net/8kdata/torodb-scaling-postgresql- like-mongodb), slide #42) show 25x-75x improvement between doing aggregate queries in MongoDB and their equivalent queries in GreenPlum's distributed SQL.

Now that MongoDB 3.2 ships with PostgreSQL "included", feel free to try ToroDB. It's always better the original :)

Note: I am a ToroDB developer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think ToroDB is super cool, and I wish your project the best of luck! You can't go wrong building something on PostgreSQL. :)

That said, PostgreSQL FDW is NOT a great option for MongoDB analytics. Not only is the data model so different that you lose the ability to answer many types of questions, but Multicorn supports only basic pushdown (conjunctions of simple relational operators on original columns).

What this means is that analytics via PostgreSQL via FDW via Multicorn via MongoDB suffers from (a) very poor expressive power, and (b) ridiculously slow performance, since nearly any type of query will require at least one full table scan on all the source tables (in some cases, especially with arrays, many more full table scans may be required for a single query!).

Better off just using ToroDB. Am I right? :)

<comment><USER7> Thank you, John De Goes. I definitely agree. While PostgreSQL FDWs are a great way of extending Postgres, I don't see they are a good fit for this use case. Not only there are a lot of pushdowns not supported (although that is in the process of being improved), but more importantly, as you mentioned, this connector is going to impose a lot of full table scans for even the simplest queries. I'm dying to benchmark this connector against ToroDB. But unfortunately, the MongoDB proprietary license agreement explicitly forbids any kind of benchmark. I guess they have reasons to do so ;)))))))

I cannot be objective saying that you should better of using ToroDB, but I definitely think so.

I also want to congratulate you. I think Quasar and SlamData have gone very far, and I'd encourage you to keep on pushing it. While this connector may or may not adversely affect SlamData, there's always room for differentiation and improvement. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Classic marketing pitch from a little company that wants to claim it's much more significant than it is:

1\. Claim a must-have set of requirements that ... 2\. ... happen to match its product's feature set ... 3\. ... but not its competitors.'

[http://slamdata.com/whitepapers/characteristics-of-nosql- ana...](http://slamdata.com/whitepapers/characteristics-of-nosql-analytics- systems/) is presumably the core of the argument.

I tend not to pay attention to such claims until the company rephrases them more honestly.

That said, a brief discussion of what is really happening is in [http://www.dbms2.com/2015/09/10/mongodb- update/](http://www.dbms2.com/2015/09/10/mongodb-update/) Would more be better? Sure.

</comment><comment> bro-stick The author tries to paint Mongo as an embarrassingly short-sighted, pseudo- enterprise company that can't share its toys with others.

Mongo could refuse this by demonstrating collaboration efforts and solutions with a solution marketplace similar Atlasssian and VMware. On the partner side, cross-selling, cross promotions and collaborative sales/product strategies can reduce conflict and wasted/duplicated/unaligned effort that can lead to sour partner experiences.

</comment><comment><USER9> Guru author should marry on Postgres)

</comment><comment><USER10> MongoDB: the snapchat of databases.

<comment><USER11> brilliant.

makes me wonder if snapchat uses mongo; i can't think of one more suited to snapchat's unique selling point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this posted anywhere besides LinkedIn? Would like to read but am not willing to give page views to LinkedIn.

<comment><USER13> That's really silly. LinkedIn produce some really interesting engineering content.

EDIT I'm not sure what Pulse is, but it looks like aggregated content. Anyways, here's an article from the LinkedIn engineering team that's well worth a read [https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log- wha...](https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every- software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying)

<comment> bro-stick Perhaps a "magazine" HR/engineering uses to promote inbound candidate flow and knowledge sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like it's time to switch databases. BLOAT. RIP Mongo.

<comment> bro-stick Or Mongo may need to refine collaboration with partners to sell more deployed customer solutions... that's the only takeaway from this I see.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Partialpress – user adapted news - <AUTHOR> http://www.partialpress.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> we've created a deconstructed social news site where users can create their own headlines and summaries, add their own images, and suggest their own sources, where the most voted for in each category determines how the story is presented on the site. Have many more ideas for the continued gamification of a news community, but wanted to share version 1 of the product to see what hacker news think. Really do appreciate any feedback at all

<comment><USER2> I hope you plan to have an API or release datasets, as this kind of data would be very appreciated by researchers working on news information retrieval and processing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey jclos, yeah, very interesting idea - definitely see the possibilities there and would be the kind of thing we'd look at once the community had grown to a certain point. Thanks for taking a look</comment></comment></comment>


macOS vs. Windows vs. Ubuntu Benchmarks - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=macos1015-win10-ubuntu <comment><USER2> The way that the author switches around the order of the axis labels is confusing..

<comment><USER3> Sometimes a lower value is better and sometimes a higher value is better depending on the benchmark, but the ordering is always the same.

The worst one is at the top and the best one at the bottom.</comment></comment>


Facebook raises $150 million more to cash out employees  - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/05/16/facebook-raises-150-million-more-to-cash-out-employees/ <comment><AUTHOR> The fact that employees are willing to cash out now might mean that they are less confident about the potential of cashing out big in the future. I'm sure no early Google employee would even think of cashing out pre-IPO.

<comment><USER2> _The fact that employees are willing to cash out now might mean that they are less confident about the potential of cashing out big in the future._

It might. Or it might just mean that some employees want to buy houses, new cars, etc.

People are very good at "doing without" when they're starting a new company, but there's a point where life catches up and they want to start living in a bit of comfort. This goes double (or more) for those people who have families -- I'm not sure quite how one would explain to a 3 year old that they're not getting the toys they want because daddy wants to hold on to his stock options so that he can become a millionaire when facebook IPOs a few years from now.

<comment><USER3> I don't believe that salaries at Facebook are hugely depressed based on burgeoning stock options. Glassdoor (self-) reports them in the >100k range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How many share holders total does Facebook have now? My gut reaction to hearing this was that perhaps they were nearing the limit where they would be forced to go public and that this might be a stop-gap so that they can time their IPO more conveniently.

<comment><USER5> No company if forced to "go public" by trading on a public exchange. But the Securities & Exchange Act of 1934 requires public disclosure of some financials after a company accumulates 500 shareholders and $10 million in assets.

The SEC granted Facebook an exception in November 2008 because many of the shareholders hold restricted stock. Read more below:

[http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/11/23/facebook-gets- sec-d...](http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/11/23/facebook-gets-sec- disclosure-exemption-as-number-of-stockholders-grows/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _But it's another sign that large private companies like Facebook are desperately seeking ways to find "liquidity" for their employees — especially now that the IPO market remains difficult, in particular for_ unprofitable _companies._

Well, this sounds fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is Facebook's motivation for doing this?

It doesn't seem like it'd improve employee retention -- the folks would take the money and run!</comment>


Biggest U.S. airlines spent bulk of free cash flow on stock repurchases - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-16/u-s-airlines-spent-96-of-free-cash-flow-on-buybacks-chart <comment><USER2> So it would be logical if shareholders re-capitalize airlines now. Or let them fall if shareholders see no point in keeping airlines alive.

<comment><USER3> That would involve selling shares at a low price after buying them at a high price. This would make management look stupid.

<comment><USER4> Hmmmm.. isn't the market about finding truth and moving accordingly?

<comment><USER5> To ideological purists. To most people it's about making money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FCF is _supposed_ to go to shareholders: it's what's left over after spending money running and growing the business. And this problem (and related solutions) will probably apply not just to airlines but also restaurants, retailers, etc.

In normal circumstances, chewz is right and they should either call up more capital from existing shareholders or go under. But these are not normal circumstances. 1) Everyone is capital constrained, and 2) airlines collectively are extremely important to the economy. This isn't a handful of one-off bankruptcies of a few laggards.

Investors are capital constrained and would need to sell off their other holdings at the very moment everybody else is trying to unload those same assets at depressed prices, risking a broader liquidity crunch that goes well beyond airlines, as other sectors are also in trouble.

So the next best solution is for governments to lend them cheap money to hold them over, or to recap with equity (diluting current shareholders, possibly by a lot) and gradually sell off that equity after conditions return to normal. That's what happened to the banks: in a sense, they went 90% bankrupt with existing shareholders getting massively diluted, but the companies were able to continue without the massive disruptions caused by them all going belly-up.

When it's a normal economic cycle, even most recessions, the right approach is to let the laggards die and let the shareholders get wiped out. When there's lots of volatility, it's better to let the shareholders get 60%, 80%, 90% wiped out but keep the companies alive.

<comment><USER7> If they go under the aircraft will still be there. Just new owners. Ban foreign buyouts then let them go bankrupt and be sold to the highest bidders.

We're about due for different owners of capital; the situation has been far too static. The bailouts in '08 kept a bunch of very poor managers in charge. 100% wipe-outs were appropriate in '08, and they will be appropriate again this time. Of all the people we need to feel sorry for, capitalists are the last. And I say that as an ardent capitalist. The social contract there is very clear and literally written down in many cases.

<comment><USER8> Just don't forget that a lot of "capitalists" are pensioners, college endowments, etc.

<comment><USER9> Pensioners and wage earners are not capitalists. They depend on wages to live. Calling yourself a capitalist doesn't make you have capital.

True capitalists are those who do not need wages (e.g. CEOs of airliners, billionaires, etc.).

<comment><USER10> In Australia we have Superannuation (compulsory contributions retirement fund) so actually pensioners are expected to live partly off capital gains/sale of shares. Of course their portfolios usually get more defensive (less stock more bonds) the older they get.

<comment><USER9> That is very similar to what we have in the US; we have 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457(b)s etc. that tie our retirement to the stock market. In many cases, employers force their employees to enroll in them.

Think about these retirement accounts this way: capitalists take our money _now_ under the presumption we will get it back when we're 60+. In the mean time, while we're working for a living wage, the capitalists get to profit off our labor _now_. They get to continue destroying the planet and exploiting other wage earners. They don't need a wage to live.

1) While employees have these retirement accounts, we are forced to contribute to them. We are forced into ensuring the well-being of capitalism.

2) Being forced to contribute to these accounts is diametrically opposed to the interests of our class. It makes us wish well for the stock market because our retirement is tied to it. But a more profitable stock market leads to more exploitation of the labor of my class. For these profits to exist, either you keep labor costs low, or increase prices.

I would prefer to extricate our retirement from the stock market and capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Btw most of these shareholders have been smart enough to sell immediately when the markets began falling so they will buy these stocks at the bottom and get bailed out all over again by the taxpayer and watch the capital multiply.

I'm all for getting rich but pump and dumps should be (are?) illegal.

<comment><USER12> > Btw most of these shareholders have been smart enough to sell immediately > when the markets began falling so they will buy these stocks at the bottom > and get bailed out all over again by the taxpayer and watch the capital > multiply.

If they sold, then they're no longer shareholders; there are new shareholders, and _they_ will be the ones to receive any potential bailout.

There's two sides to every transaction. If people were selling, someone was buying. If someone will be buying, someone will be selling. The sort of people who invest in distressed companies (and I think all airlines count as that right now) tend to be hedge funds and other sophisticated investors; they're hardly going to give any potential gains to previous shareholders asking for their stocks back because they changed their mind hearing about a bailout.

<comment><USER11> Ah if only that was the case. Turns out, when the government is involved then the taxpayer is buying but the government is deciding what to buy.

There is no hedge fund buying airlines right now. There will be a shitload of them lining up once the government commits to buying the debt because then they know there's only upside from there.

<comment><USER12> Gee, maybe you should buy the shared after the announcement then, and pick up some of that free money for yourself?

(Ignoring, for the moment, that bailouts generally zero out equity holders to ensure debt holders get paid.)

Your cynicism is healthy, but I'm not sure you understand how this process works.

<comment><USER11> No shit I will. But I happen to be loaded and the cast majority of people are not.

It's the people without money to deploy, the people who depend on fixed income (elderly, retired) and the people who had all their money in some index fund or mutual fund (your average Joe) that get screwed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Worth noting that this will be the 3rd industry which Warren Buffett has been both invested in and bailed out of during a crisis.

<comment><USER14> Buffet why he has avoide Airlines:

>"I think there have been almost 100 airline bankruptcies. I mean, that is a lot," he said. "It's been a disaster for capital."

Airline bailouts are still distaste for capital. Berkshire did not buy Airlines so that they will be bailed out. They are thinking that they got a bad century out of the way. Their thinking is that Airlines are becoming business that has no bankruptcies or bailouts over long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wiki says:

> free cash flow to firm (FCFF) is a way of looking at a business's cash flow > to see what is available for distribution among all the securities holders > of a corporate entity. [0]

What do people expect them to do with free cash flow? The point of free cash flow is to get the money back to shareholders. These aren't high-growth industries.

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

<comment><USER15> Pay employees more, increase benefits, better service for customers, put money away for a rainy day? There are lots of ways to spend money that are good for the long term rather than making the rich richer.

<comment><USER10> Public companies aim to maximise shareholder value, however in competitive markets that usually involves improving service, having a happy workforce (higher benefits) so it all works. And putting money away for a rainy day will never be as beneficial for companies as for individuals.

<comment><USER16> If saving money for a rainy day is never going to be a top priority, then going bankrupt should be an option.

I think what's frustrating for me is that under these circumstances, there will be a lot of individuals and small businesses that will go under because they didn't save enough for a rainy day, but if your big enough, we have to save you.

<comment><USER17> This is exactly the point.

There is never a reason to save if the government will always bail you out.

If you are forced to save because not saving could mean certain company death, you will save. And make sure you have a two year runway if zero business is happening.

But with the bailouts the companies are rightfully maximizing shareholder value.

The bailout should directly go to displaced workers and supporting them. It'll directly stimulate the economy and correctly punish the company got fucking itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel like even civilian airlines have some national defense / security aspect to them since they're so critical to our infrastructure (e.g. troop transports). I don't want to return to the days before deregulation, but I think there should be federally enforced rules around remaining operational even during times of severe economic crisis.

That being said, nobody expects a 100 year event, and it would be irresponsible to ask shareholders to offer $100 plane tickets that don't likely don't even cover the cost of a seat while also maintaining an emergency budget. I've heard airlines have razor thin margins for at least economy class seats, and I'd rather support a one time bailout than have to pay business fare going forward.

<comment><USER19> > nobody expects a 100 year event

It's not. SARS was only 18 years ago. Now we have SARS-CoV in 2020.

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

We, as a society, need to stop accepting dumb excuses.

<comment><USER20> SARS wasn't a massive global catastrophe, just like almost all flu epidemics aren't massive global catastrophes but for the opposite reason: it was too deadly, which limited its ability to spread and made it relatively easy to eradicate through contact tracing and testing. This kind of pandemic really does seem to be a 100-year event that requires a disease with a very special set of properties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I expect we'll soon find out an awful lot of businesses have done the same or close to the same that are about to ask for bailout money (casinos, hotels, etc.). I've long been worried about the strength of the market in the U.S. because prices have seemed to mainly be because of buybacks and financial maneuvering rather than because of strong fundamentals, increased productivity/innovation, etc. I hope the gov lets a few of these businesses fail or put absolutely draconian repayment terms on them if only to show that companies can't depend on the government to bail them out every time something bad happens they weren't prepared for.

</comment><comment><USER22> Can we just let the airlines go bankrupt? For environmental reasons, air travel should be much rarer and much more expensive than it has been.

Businesses are going to need to learn to deal with teleconferencing. Employees can be given more time off and travel more slowly by train or ferry. There has to be some happy medium between total lockdown frozen economy and maximum- velocity economy that is killing people and the planet.

</comment><comment><USER23> Of course they prioritized sending money to investors, the incentives align to promote that outcome. They know they're a thin margin industry and that if anything serious happens they go tits up. Looking stupid for not saving money in the bankruptcy hearing is free. Having assets that you saved for tough times spent in order to delay the bankruptcy cost you those assets.

</comment><comment><USER24> > What do people expect them to do with free cash flow?

Pay down debt and keep enough money in the bank to weather turbulence ahead.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, they returned cash to shareholders in good times. Guess it's time for them to sell new shares to get the cash to tide them over bad times. Buy high, sell low? Oops. Stuff happens.

But the current capital markets will impose no such discipline, sad to say.

</comment><comment><USER26> So then they won't mind trading stock to the government for cash, right? Hah... never met a corporate executive who didn't magically become a socialist when the chips were down.

<comment><USER27> The government picking well-connected winners for private profit is just "American capitalism".

As for socialism, I'll quote Harry Truman's 1952 speech,

       "Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

        Socialism is what they called public power.

        Socialism is what they called social security.

        Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

        Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

        Socialism is what they called the growth of free and
        independent labor organizations.

        Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps
        all the people."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The us economy is a house of cards

</comment><comment><USER29> This article looks a lot like outrage porn. It suggests that there is something wrong with spending 96% of FCF on buybacks without stating it explicitly. I doubt most people without some decent corporate finance training can form an informed opinion about this.

<comment><USER30> What could be more irresponsible than merely staying facts without also having the diligence to additionally write some apologetics for the facts themselves.

What the reporter should have done, clearly, is get the opinion of one of those benevolent airline executives to explain why cash flow was spent on buybacks instead of literally anything else. They can tell us what we all know - that it is standard procedure and could never comprehend the complexity of corporate finance! That it was for our good, after all, in a way, and that, well, that's how Things Are.

Personally, and this is just me, we should ban the plebeians , oh I mean the uniformed, from making dangerous observations of fact!

<comment><USER29> Both the journalist suggest that the airline execs should have done something different with the FCF without stating what (dividends? salaries? investments?) and why.

From your tone and reply it seems you agree, so maybe you can clarify this. What else should they have done with their FCF? Would everything be OK if they paid everything in dividends like utilities? Plow everything into investments like Amazon? Into what? Buying all their airplanes, rather than leasing airplanes? Stashing everything in a huge pot of treasuries like Apple? Giving their crew and support staff big raises?</comment></comment></comment>


Where Are Facebook's Teens Going? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gavindonovan.com/blog/where-are-facebooks-teens-going

<comment><USER2> They are going places where they can more easily control who sees what they share.

With Facebook, you must say something that is public or friends-only where your family can see it, or you must create a special list that shows the name of everyone in the list that can receive it, which is weird and complicated.

Given those choices, teens and adults alike are opting to share things on networks where they don't have to worry about the implications of what they say.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand that chart. What does "% change in millions" mean? Comparing the % change for a small user base (WeChat) to a much larger user base (Facebook) doesn't make much sense either. Facebook is huge, so a 60% growth in their mobile app is still impressive.

</comment><comment><USER4> To add more perspectives, here is a post I did on new networks my peers and I love (born in '92).

[https://medium.com/experiences-of-a-student- hacker/8956121ff...](https://medium.com/experiences-of-a-student- hacker/8956121ff8d8)

</comment><comment><USER5> LinkedIn comes above tumblr in this list. I'm yet to meet a teen interested about connecting to friends on LinkedIn. These are net market adoption rates, and not specific to teens, hence clearly flawed.

</comment><comment><USER6> They are going to the same place all of MySpace's users went: to the next fad. Teens are a fickle bunch; each crop wants to feel like they are different, avant-garde, trend-setting.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, there are countless things that used to be hot among teens that have gone by the wayside, so I think the rumors of Facebook's demise are greatly exaggerated. AOL Instant Messenger, LiveJournal, Xanga... These were all great ways to communicate as a teen that were adult-free, yet there was very little staying power and/or a lack of massive general-population growth for any of them.

And many of these services aren't exactly "competing" with FB any more than SMS is, or AIM was in 2004 when Facebook started (a lot of the discussion about group chat services sounds remarkably like teens (re)discovering a mobile form of AIM circa 2000). Acquisition attempts still make sense if FB sees them as complimentary products with their own potential for massive growth instead of purely defensive moves. Maybe one of the newcomers will have more luck in that space than AOL did.

On the other hand, it's hard to elucidate what exactly will give Facebook more staying power than past attempts. Possibly simply being the first to have such a large, cross-demographic user base? I know adults of all ages who use it to keep in touch with other adults, and I also know teens who use it to keep in touch with other teens. And of course there's also some cross talk between those bases. There aren't a lot of other products attempting to do exactly the same thing, and of those that have, even Google hasn't been able to unseat FB. The core use of FB seems to be a little different for everyone, but it also seems to be comparatively competitor-free.</comment></comment>


Facebook Employees Criticize Zuckerberg's Inaction over Trump - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/facebook-employees-criticize-zuckerberg-s-inaction-over-trump <comment><USER2> Whenever I see articles like this, my BS radar detector goes off. These articles make it seem like huge numbers of employees are up in arms and ready to quit, but really it is almost always a loud vocal minority looking to impose their personal worldview on the company.

The only conditions under which a company should react to activist input is if they have done a company wide anonymous poll (and probably of their customer base as well). Otherwise, they will just hear from those who are committed to the cause (radicals/zealots) or have psychological safety to voice their views. Given that big tech companies are mostly SF-based and secondarily Seattle-based, those internal cultures reflect only one perspective (the far- left progressive). Just remember, those far-left progressives make up just 8% of the population ([https://hiddentribes.us/profiles](https://hiddentribes.us/profiles)). There are almost certainly moderate and conservative employees that back Zuckerberg's position as well.

<comment><USER3> But when you sample only Silicon Valley companies including Facebook, the percentage is much higher than 8%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to be the guy in this thread who says that censorship is scary. Bots need to be stopped, and politically inflammatory fake news needs to be flagged and corrected... but we don't get to say what we want unless people we hate/fear also get to say what they want.

</comment><comment><USER5> Zuckerberg knows he has a large conservative older user base. Losing them I bet is his concern

<comment><USER6> I think his concern is the amount of money from political campaigns this coming season. If that stuff was fact-checked, they would not be making as much money.

The side effect of people internet hating on stuff on FB is lots of ad revenue for FB (aka page views). It doesn't matter what side is what, if things on FB are fact checked then there is likely going to be less sharing since there would be less content.

<comment><USER7> Political ads are a tiny portion of FB revenues, just around 0.5%. In fact, they may be losing money on this as it needs a lot of manual moderation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Zuckerberg isn't insane. People in silicon valley sometime forget how much of a bubble they live in. Twitter just effectively started a full-scale war with the federal government.

Zuckerberg knows the blowback is coming. I can't see how twitter doesn't become a life long target of the Trump administration to make an example of. If Facebook doesn't want to get caught in the splash zone they might want to back away from this one.

<comment><USER9> > Twitter just effectively started a full-scale war with the federal > government.

This is kind of true, but also points to just how insane this historical moment is. Can you imagine any prior administration acting this way? Can you imagine Bill Clinton raging out about AOL, or GW Bush trying to sic the FCC on Yahoo because it sent his email to spam?

<comment><USER10> >>>Can you imagine any prior administration acting this way?

I wasn't alive for them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Truman or Eisenhower would crush Twitter in the age of McCarthyism. Although they tended to focus on individuals rather than companies or organizations. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism)

<comment><USER11> Yep. Truman called the press "paid prostitutes of the mind".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As they should. All it takes for evil is for good people to do nothing. FB and Twitter have been weaponized. This reduces the value of their platforms.

What do you do when a bully is the most powerful person in the world? Well you stand up to them as a community.

Take away his microphone.

</comment><comment><USER13> At this point. If Trump can violet TOS and get away with it. Why can't I or a bot. Side need to chosen and battle needs to be fought. It's a lose lose for the likes of Twitter but at least Twitter is doing the right thing now.

<comment><USER14> The Twitter TOS are pretty ridiculous if you read through them. For example you cannot celebrate, praise, or condone murders or mass shootings committed by civilians. However you can celebrate, praise, and condone murders and mass shootings all you'd like if they were committed by governments.

<comment><USER15> From Twitter's Glorification of Violence Policy: "Exceptions may be made for violent acts by state actors, where violence was not primarily targeting protected groups."

"Exceptions may be made" doesn't sound like "you can [do it] all you'd like."

<comment><USER14> Right, but this is another problem which is at the crux of the issue. These exceptions throughout the TOS give Twitter the power to editorialize without requiring them to take on any liability for the content on their site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't even believe Trump was glorifying violence, but calling him out as if he did sure could rally the people who are actually starting the violence against innocent businesses and civilians. Too bad Twitter doesn't have to govern themselves.

Trump's tweet showed he was concerned, not glorifying. If he wanted to glorify it, he would probably say something more along the lines of "Get in line or we will use our GREAT guns and military and open fire on you thugs." He also wouldn't need riots as an excuse to tweet about such things.

Zuckerberg is supporting freedom of speech when his company didn't have to choose to. He is correct that censoring only worsens the problem and it removes opportunities to improve the situation. If Trump were censored, people would not know him or what he is doing as well as they do now. Amidst all the risk to MZ's company and the violence happening around us, his decision is highly courageous and respectable as he is serving the American people and their rights, even though he said himself that he doesn't like what Trump said.

<comment><USER16> Besides, even if he were censored, people would see it and repost screenshots anyway

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this news or opinion piece? Incendiary is clearly an opinion. "(...)not to take action on incendiary comments posted to the social network by U.S. President Donald Trump."

<comment><USER18> Last I checked there is flames everywhere now and he is certainly fanning them.

<comment><USER19> How is warning people not to loot 'fanning the flames'?

<comment><USER20> The exact wording was a reference to what a police chief in Miami said in 1967. It was meant to evoke that event, which could easily be called "fanning the flames."

<comment><USER19> > The exact wording was a reference to what a police chief in Miami said in > 1967 it was meant to evoke that event

Really? I'm pretty sure it was meant to /rhyme/.

<comment><USER21> This is the same attempt at plausible deniability of Republican institutional racism since the Nixon Southern Strategy as clearly, undeniably, articulated by its inventor. [https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee- atwa...](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters- infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/)

Trump peddled a racist lie and conspiracy theory for five years, before he was even in politics. Birtherism. And before that, the Central Park Five. And before that the federal lawsuit against him and his dad for discrimination in housing. It's not plausibly deniable. And this is the same thing.

<comment><USER19> Exactly re: birtherism and Central Park five. Trump's racism is overt. Not secret messages.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The environmental impact of technology devices is getting worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcodesign.com/90165365/smartphones-are-wrecking-the-planet-faster-than-anyone-expected <comment><USER2> Seems like the easiest fix would be to mandate the same charging cable for all phones (no dongles) and user replaceable batteries that require no tools to change.

With those two simple tweaks it would be much easier to keep a phone for 3 or more years. My google pixel seems like it could easily last for many years with it's quad core, 128GB storage, 4GB ram, and 2560x1440 display. Lets be honest, for most uses that's plenty for many years to come.

But already the battery is not as good as it was new and it's only going to get worse.

<comment><USER3> Also mandate upgradable software. I feel that outdated software becomes an issue way before dead batteries for most phones on the market. Most vendors don't seem to care much about software upgrades, especially on the lower end, and not all devices are supported by LineageOS / postmarketOS and co. I'm not even talking about (ok, technically, I am) how hard and scary it is to install alternative firmware on smartphones: unsupported rooting process that can brick your device, loss of your data while rooting, unsigned binaries distributed by unknown third-parties, broken warranty by using unsupported firmware… Vendors should be forced to sell either hardware that can be used with third-party software, or harware and software that is guaranteed to be updated for more than "up until the next shinny new device is out".

<comment><USER4> To be fair the android rooting community is usually transperent. It's perspective of "scary" shouldnt be compared to jail breaking an iphone to get free apps. Also, most tutorial for rooting or just flashing firmware it's alwqys adviced to backup data, so fear of loss should be manegable.... one more thing, if you've reached the point of needing to root/change device software, do you really believe the company cares about your warrenty. I've known people with apple care go get their 5 year old mac books for battery replacement, to then get their time wasted with a lazy response of "sorry we don't covery water damage". When for a fact that device never experienced it.

<comment><USER3> If you want to get software updates (and you /do/ want it, even if you don't know, because of critical security fixes), you reach the point of needing to change the device software in only a few years (see, even Google's own Nexus line has a laughable software support duration: [https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705#nexus_device...](https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705#nexus_devices)). In the lower end, it frequently happens before the end of the legal warranty in some countries (eg. 2 years in France), especially with discontinued devices sold during sales. Worse, there's a frightening number of phones sold on Amazon that run an /already/ unsupported version of Android with known security issues.

Then, when you have the chance to have a device supported by some third party, you discover that you can't do backups without having to appeal to some wizardry with ADB and your phone in "developer mode" (when you even have that option), because you can't otherwise do proper backups without having rooted your phone /before/ having data to back up in the first place (ie. thus voiding your warranty from day one).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The math is pretty poor in this article. Information and Communication Tech represents only 3% of global carbon emissions, and most of that is from giant server farms.

This other article states that the embodied CO2 in a cellphone is roughly equivalent to 1kg of beef. That's like three steaks.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living- blog/20...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living- blog/2010/jun/09/carbon-footprint-mobile-phone)

The bigger emissions problems around electricity generation and transportation are where we should be focusing our attention.

<comment><USER6> But manufacturing a smartphone involves a lot of transportation and electricity, doesn't it?

Our focus should also be on cutting energy spendings & reducing transportation, and stop buying new phones (and laptops and tvs etc..) every now and then sure will help, will it not?

<comment><USER7> The greatest myth in sustainable energy policy is "every little helps". We get caught up on visible but irrelevant things, while ignoring massive systemic problems.

Apple publish high-quality, audited environmental impact reports for all their products. A 64gb iPhone 8 produces the equivalent of 57kg of CO2 across the entire product lifespan, from manufacturing to recycling.

A return flight from LAX to JFK produces ~580kg of CO2; the climate impact is equivalent to ~1100kg of CO2, because emissions at altitude have a greater warming effect.

Driving 10,000 miles in a typical sedan or crossover SUV emits about 3000kg of CO2; in a large pickup like a Ford F150, that figure is closer to 4500kg.

The food consumption of the average US household results in equivalent CO2 emissions of 8100kg.

Our carbon emissions are dominated by heating and cooling, transport and food. Keeping your phone for another couple of years is a rounding error in the scheme of things - it's equivalent to a two-hour car journey or a good restaurant meal. If we are to stand any chance of limiting the impact of climate change, we need to make big, difficult choices about our lifestyle.

We need to massively reduce the amount we drive and fly. We need to redesign homes to require less active heating and cooling. We need far more sustainable electricity generation. We need to radically alter our diets and our approach to agriculture, with far less meat and dairy consumption. This will be difficult, expensive and politically unpopular, but it's the only way we'll make a meaningful impact.

[https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPh...](https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone_8_PER_sept2017.pdf)

[https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3](https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3)

[http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint- factsheet](http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet)

[https://www.withouthotair.com/](https://www.withouthotair.com/)

<comment><USER6> I understand what you say, and I agree for the most part, but it really seems impossible that a two-hour car journey emits more than manufacturing a smartphone...

I mean, building a smartphone involves digging for raw materials, extract them, transport them, assemble them, etc. And i'm not counting the emission during the design process.

I know that a two-hour car journey is really not optimized, and that manufacturing phones on a large scale is very optimized, but it seems impossible to me that manufacturing a phone in China from components from all over the world emits less that a good big steak in a restaurant... I that's true, that's incredible.

<comment><USER7> Imagine if you bought gasoline at the grocery store in two-liter bottles. You'd need to buy 31 bottles to fill the tank on a Ford Fusion. Think about what 31 bottles of soda would look like in a shopping cart. Think about the sheer effort of filling your cart with 31 bottles, pushing it to the parking lot and pouring the contents into your gas tank.

Someone had to build a giant platform in the ocean, drill a hole deep into the ground, pump the oil out of the ground and move it ashore, boil it in a giant distiller to extract the gasoline, pump it into a tanker and drive it to your gas station. All of that stuff is invisible, but you notice the gram of polythene wrapping on a cucumber.

A phone is an incredibly sophisticated device, but it's only a few ounces of stuff. It cost you $700, so it feels like it should involve a huge amount of natural resources to make. It required a lot of human skill and ingenuity, but we didn't need to burn a lot of stuff to make it. When you fill up your tank with $50 of unleaded, you don't think about the huge volume of pure hydrocarbons you're pouring into your car or the immensely energy-intensive processes needed to extract, refine and transport that fuel.

When you get on a plane, you don't think about the fact that almost the entire volume of the wings are filled with fuel that'll be burned in a single journey. When your heating thermostat clicks on, you don't think about the volume of gas rushing through a network of pipes to feed your boiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish I could use my phones longer than I already do. Unfortunately, the lack of software updates for older hardware turns that into a security risk as even critical issues are no longer getting fixed.

Likewise, the 'modern' web breaks things left and right. The heavy use of JavaScript for trackers etc makes it impossible to read even simple news web sites on an old iPad, even though the actual content is just static text. With Discourse and similar platforms gaining popularity, I'm getting locked out from more parts of the web unless I have up to date hardware. I don't understand why web forums became such complex beasts that a device capable of streaming video, realtime sound synthesis and 3D gaming is not sufficient to display what is essentially just text and some images.

HN is a positive exception, I sincerely hope it remains that way.

<comment><USER9> Where is the disconnect I wonder? Your old iPad I am sure runs software that is many more times more complex, more lines of code, and more intense than the ad tracking software on a browser. Will web assembly help here?

<comment><USER8> Unless Apple surprises us with an iOS 5 update that includes a browser with web assembly - no, it won't help.

Either way, simply going to spiegel.de crashes (!) Safari in a 1st gen iPad. The Washington Post web page also would constantly get reloaded in my iPhone 4S.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like it may be due to Safari purposefully limiting the memory and processing resources available to a browser tab, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Two things not mentioned:

1\. OS support (android at least) isn't that long. I suppose security patches are more important and might be worth fighting for somehow (extended security patch plans?).

2\. i sometimes hear how repair shops have a hard time sourcing oem parts (having to go to chinese frankenparts which may be confiscated at the border). this should not be an issue and should work just like the car industry.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would love to be able to just buy a new phone battery and keep mw phone going longer. But I do not want to have to go through a complex taking apart process that may result in destroying it.

<comment><USER12> Plenty of manufacturers offer battery upgrade programmes, the one form Apple is even reasonably affordable these days. Plus there are third party upgraders that will do it for you for popular models. You do need to bear this requirement in mind when buying though.

<comment><USER13> Phone manufacturers should be forced to provide free battery replacement on all their phones. Otherwise they should make it a simple process for consumers to swap the battery out.

I still have a Samsung S5 phone with removable battery, had it for years. I don't know if there's phones on the market with replaceable batteries, I have not bothered looking for a new phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder to what extent modern electronics, particularly display technologies as mentioned in the article, are dependent by necessity on rare earth metals, and couldn't be replaced with other chemicals.

A change I can imagine in the future is towards organic chemicals such as in OLED displays. Although I'm aware that many of those used today are organometalics, and I have no idea what the actual metal resource impact is.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe a refund for consumers plus a collection fee for institutions would be an incentive to recycle, for both individuals and businesses. Your phone breaks, you take it to the supermarket, they give you $10, they send in the IMEI or some other unique code and get $12 in return.

<comment><USER16> Recycling just isn't a substitute; it's far less effective. You're supposed to reduce, reuse, and _then_ , if neither is possible, recycle... in that order.

<comment><USER17> Recycling a phone can mean reusing many of its components for repairing other phones (as part of the fourth R: refurbishing).

<comment><USER18> In reality recycling a phone means shipping it to some poor country where it is burned in an open fire to recover some of the metals.

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning- truth-...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-behind- e-waste-dump-africa-180957597/)

<comment><USER17> From your link: _" 85 percent of the e-waste dumped in Ghana and other parts of West Africa is produced in Ghana and West Africa. (...) In other words, Agbogbloshie is not a global dumping ground. Like most places on Earth, it's struggling to deal with what it generates on its own."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> the planet != the environment.

the planet will survive, it will just suffocate us and some other life will take over.

<comment><USER20> Luckily everybody reading this article will still understand that the article is being alarming about the effect on us as a species and not about the actual existence of the planet on its own.

<comment><USER19> it's just a euphemism for our own existence.</comment></comment></comment>


Robot carpenter makes custom furniture - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43251669 <comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, I'm not that impressed with this instantiation of the idea, but in principal I could certainly see IKEA running a custom furniture line in the relatively near future.</comment>


90 Percent of growth in high-tech jobs happened in just 5 metro areas - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/9/21000162/high-tech-job-growth-concentration-brookings <comment><USER2> I wonder what the trend is over smaller time scales (e.g., just 2019) instead of over a 14 year period. The title really should be "Since 2005..."

</comment><comment><USER3> I was surprised to see Texas shrinking. The media often reports of people flocking to Austin from the SF Bay Area.

Or are mostly non-tech workers leaving?</comment>


Ask HN: Quarantine (dangerous) Internet traffic with VirtualBox? - <AUTHOR> In order to improve security on a developer machine, how much sense does it make to "quarantine" (potentially hazardous) Internet traffic by using a virtual OS (such as with VirtualBox) for it?
In other words, here's the scenario:
- Host OS: used for "sensitive" data/applications (code, login credentials, etc.)
- Client OS (virtual): used for all Internet traffic activity (Web browsing, email client, SSH client, etc.)
And what is the safest way to manage the data-transfer interface between the 2 operating systems? Would you use shared folders? Or the shared clipboard feature? Or the drag-and-drop feature? <comment><USER2> You might want to look at Qubes OS. It uses Xen as a hypervisor to manage your vms with an easily customizable networking flow (see the whonix implementation) and has techniques for secure data transfer between vms.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't use virtualbox in any situation where security is a concern nor Qubes OS unless you know what you're doing. Your best option for minimal effort is to use VMware workstation or Fusion, avoid shared folders and transfer data using SSH over a host-only interface that you disconnect when not in use.

Bonus: If you don't need two-way transfers, you can even setup a one-way transfer system that only allows the client to write drop files to specific directory.

</comment><comment><USER4> It wouldn't stop an attack - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine_escape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine_escape)

<comment><AUTHOR> > It wouldn't stop an attack

But it would make it less likely, right? Since an unpatched "virtual machine escape" bug would still have to be present.</comment></comment>


Efficient WebGL stroking - <AUTHOR> http://labs.hyperandroid.com/efficient-webgl-stroking

<comment><USER2> Nice writeup and quite elegant code!

Curiously, the line drawing functions in Ejecta[1] (which reproduces the Canvas2D API) is one of the most complicated parts of the whole project and certainly has the ugliest code of it[2]. It's fast and works reliably, but maintaining it is a nightmare.

[1] [http://impactjs.com/ejecta](http://impactjs.com/ejecta)

[2] [https://github.com/phoboslab/Ejecta/blob/master/Source/Eject...](https://github.com/phoboslab/Ejecta/blob/master/Source/Ejecta/EJCanvas/2D/EJPath.mm#L520)

</comment><comment><USER3> For another perspective on this, we published a pretty efficient way to draw lines without completely tessellating them: [https://www.mapbox.com/blog/drawing-antialiased- lines/](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/drawing-antialiased-lines/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Just for reference, "Drawing lines is hard"

> [http://mattdesl.svbtle.com/drawing-lines-is- > hard](http://mattdesl.svbtle.com/drawing-lines-is-hard)

> > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179336)

<comment><USER5> Further reference, here's an NSLondon talk on drawing lines quickly in OpenGL ES on iOS:

[http://vimeopro.com/user20904333/nslondon/video/98274186](http://vimeopro.com/user20904333/nslondon/video/98274186)

Nigel's written a GL based vector lib:

[https://twitter.com/Vector_GL](https://twitter.com/Vector_GL)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please take this test ( this must be the result: [http://www.amanithvg.com/screenshots/stroke_hot_case.png](http://www.amanithvg.com/screenshots/stroke_hot_case.png) )

STROKE_LINE_WIDTH = 200 STROKE_CAP_STYLE = CAP_BUTT; STROKE_JOIN_STYLE = JOIN_ROUND; <identity transform matrix>

float xy[8]; int j = 0;

for (int i = 0; i < 4; ++i) { // x coordinate xy[j++] = 20.0f * (float)cos((i / 4.0f) * 1.7) + 128.0f; // y coordinate xy[j++] = 20.0f * (float)sin((i / 4.0f) * 1.7) + 128.0f; }

<draw stroked polygon whose points are the xy coordinates>

<comment><USER6> Other Stroke test (OpenVG API, but it's equivalent to Canvas2D) available here: [http://www.mazatech.com/amanithvg/testsuite/amanithvg_sre/ht...](http://www.mazatech.com/amanithvg/testsuite/amanithvg_sre/html/45_test_draw_stroke.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not really efficient. The junctions have way too many vertices and that should be way slower than the simple textured pattern approach. Also, for AA you would need subsampling that is times slower than the methods that allow to draw AA lines without it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Any idea on the performance compared to HTML5 canvas? We've an application drawing about 10000 lines per frame for zooming / panning and depending on the device and browser is gets a little bit laggy.

<comment><USER9> Dropping down to WebGL should almost always give you more flexibility over how the lines are batched and rendered by the GPU, so performance should improve if you implement it mindfully.</comment></comment>


Show HN: QPage – Tesla of Recruitment - <AUTHOR> https://www.qpage.one/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi community, Qpage is an AI-powered all in one solution for automating your Recruitment & selection process. We help the hiring team; from recruiters and hiring managers, to line managers or even applicants and external interviewer to stay connected while collaborating upon their roles and permissions using a sophisticated access control panel. Enable hiring at scale to get rid of manual actions with a wide range of capabilities such as automated assessments, automated mock interviews, auto-scheduling, Video Interview sessions, evaluations, and scoring.

<comment><USER2> There is lots of assessment provider out there, how do you use it in your platform?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have embedded the most common assessments Job knowledge tests, personality tests, etc. for our free plan. but for our premium plan we have partnered up with Bryq which is one the leading bias-free pre-hire assessment platforms that measures cognitive skills, numerical, verbal, problem solving skills and personality traits.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:How to protect myself? - <AUTHOR>

I have all my sensitive informations on Gmail, Facebook and Dropbox. What if someone steals everything? How should I prevent that?<p>I feel like this is becoming more and more a sensible issue <comment><USER2> The simplest solution would be to run your own email server, quit facebook, and encrypt your files locally before uploading them to any remote storage provider.</comment>


GPU vs CPU Supercomputing Security Shootout - <AUTHOR> http://securitytube.net/GPU-vs-CPU-Supercomputing-Security-Shootout-(Shmoocon-2010)-video.aspx <comment><USER2> Very cool presentation and demo! I was at the conference and the audience was in awe!

great watch. Gets my thumbs up!</comment>


Light Table - <AUTHOR> http://www.lighttable.com/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have any experience with debugging iterative or recursive code with Light Table? It seems lovely for the examples that are shown in the video, but I couldn't imagine how the data flow stuff would work with either since many different values flow through the same code.</comment>


A Twist To Y Combinator's 'Demo Day': Pitching To Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/05/25/a-twist-to-y-combinators-demo-day-pitching-to-programmers/

<comment><USER2> I love how YCombinator is such a big brand now that the WSJ can put its name in a headline without any further explanation.

A year ago, the title would have been "Incubator has startups pitch to programmers, not investors".

<comment><USER3> It's the WSJ's "Venture Capital Dispatch" blog. I doubt YC would (yet) appear in the title of a regular WSJ article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Why is it so hard to find programmers? Are people afraid of joining a start- up?_

Let's not overlook the big differences between working at most start-ups and working at most companies:

1\. Every programmer, no matter how good, is at least a little insecure. Every one of us doesn't know _something_. Is the something you don't know going to make or break the next project? In a start-up, there's rarely a safety net to catch you, but in a larger company, there's probably a better chance that someone else can help you along.

2\. It takes a special mentality to work in a less certain environment. This is more a matter of personality than skill. My mentor was fearless. He used to say, "I didn't know I couldn't do it, so I did it." This attitude, as much as skill, determines how well one would thrive in a start-up.

3\. What happens when things go wrong? (And they will go wrong.) The ability to recover from problems in a larger company is a great asset. In a startup, it's a necessity. I've met many enterprise programmers who could crank out great code between 8 and 5, but melted under the pressure of an all night emergency. They would never survive in a startup.

4\. What happens if you don't feel well or if your mind is "someplace else"? In a larger company, you could coast for a day or two (maybe more). That's rarely an option in a start-up; time lost is time lost forever.

5\. In a larger company, you can do quite well whether you have deep domain knowledge or you're a jack of all trades. In an early start-up, you better be both.

6\. Ever wonder why waterfall development refuses to die, even though it's not as effective? Because so many of us have to have a road map in order to function. "Road map" personalities don't fare nearly as well in roadmapless environments (many start-ups).

7\. A start-up programmer must have at least a little maverick blood. If you believe everything you hear and do everything everyone else is doing, how can you differentiate yourself? In a larger company, you may not have to. In a start-up, you probably do.

8\. Is there something you simply have to do? Then you probably belong in a start-up environment. It's tough (although not impossible) to get the same opportunity in a large company.

9\. Do you think the work is really cool? I know lots of good enterprise programmers, but have trouble thinking of very many who think their work is cool. They like their jobs, but work is "just a paycheck". Not the type of people who would thrive in a start-up.

10\. Do you do a happy dance whenever something works for the first time? Then you may be more comfortable in a start-up than in a big company.

<comment><USER5> There seems to be a work-life balance difference also. Depending on the large company, it's at least possible to get a job that, most weeks, takes about 40 hours, mostly during the day, and leaves time for friends/family/hiking/reading/whatever outside of that time. Many startups seem to want someone for whom their job will _be_ their life--- some of the job postings come close to saying so pretty explicitly! That can be unappealing if you want to maintain a non-work-related life. I'd personally only be willing to make my job my life if it were _my_ company.

<comment><USER6> That is not the case at all startups. We make a huge effort to foster a solid work-life balance at Weebly.

Yes, the founders do usually work quite a bit. But most everyone else works as much or as little as they want during the week, as long as they are being productive and get everything done they set out to at the beginning of the week.

Ditto for vacation time. Take as much or as little as you need as long as we're not in an emergency-mode (which rarely happens).

More than larger companies, I'd guess that startups have a much larger variance in culture -- there are those that require you to commit your life, and there are those that are able to foster a great work-life balance, it's just a matter of choosing the right one.

<comment><USER5> Interesting! Sounds like a nice culture. The key to it is maybe (?) this part: "as long as we're not in an emergency-mode (which rarely happens)". My impression is that the "which rarely happens" part varies quite a lot; some places are in emergency mode every other week. Though to be fair, that's true of some large companies too (EA has a reputation for being crunch time all the time).

<comment><USER6> About once every 6 months for us. To be fair, a major release might require a tad more work than usual once every 2 months (think 1-2 extra hours per day that week).

I think the key to making it work is keeping it small. If there were too many people, nobody would feel individual responsibility and it would devolve into a nobody comes into work culture.

As it is, some people come in to work at 9 and leave at 4:30, some 9-6, some 11-8, some 2-2 (whoops, that's just me :) -- depends on when you like to work.

Also, everybody has easy weeks and hard weeks, and there's no point sticking around work if you've got nothing to do. Much better to work hard for 4 hours a day on the easy weeks than stick around for an extra 4 hours depressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see a bigger 'twist' than this. I would love to see the investors pitching to the start-ups.

I would love to see investors put more effort into demonstrating the value that they bring to young companies - over-and-above capital. Quite often it's hard to get anything more than some pretty intangible statements on the topic.

I spent 9 months of my precious life schlopping round VCs in London (well, it was 2001...). Sitting behind expensive oak tables in ostentatious board rooms pitching for investment. Listening to what was in too many cases downright arrogance on the part of the investors whose understanding of the market was at best surfacial.

I think much of this world is gone (thankfully) but wouldn't it be nice to hear the investors' elevator pitch for a change ?

</comment><comment><USER8> _but it's still tough for young start-ups to find talented computer programmers in Silicon Valley_

Seems to me that the obvious solution is to recruit outside Silicon Valley. You'll probably find candidates willing to relocate if it gets them back to work (though a good proportion of them may be recent grads).

<comment><USER9> > Seems to me that the obvious solution is to recruit outside Silicon Valley.

What makes you think that it's easier elsewhere? Yes, there may be less demand elsewhere, but there's also less supply.

Plus, SV folk are somewhat more likely to understand the game. That's a positive and a negative.

<comment><USER10> It's not easier elsewhere, but the more places you're willing to recruit from the better. Which do you think has more good programmers: SV or the world?

<comment><USER9> The world, even excluding SV, has more good programmers, but existence isn't enough.

> but the more places you're willing to recruit from the better

You're ignoring cost.

If local matters, then moving cost and "number available" matters.

There are many places with "enough" programmers to do {reasonable size project}, but there aren't thousands, even if great programers can be found almost anywhere.

There are fairly few places where there are "enough" programmers to do almost anything. SV is one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Why is it so hard to find programmers?"

In my experience recently, employers are demanding a hire who has _every single_ bullet point, no exceptions.

I believe one of the more entertaining job listings I saw last year required someone who had written embedded firmware, as well as Adobe Flash animation.

<comment><USER12> I think the problem is supply and demand. There just aren't enough really good programmers. Google alone seems willing and able to absorb all available really good programmers, for some value of really good.

<comment><USER13> I think this is partially because there are very few short programs that attempt to teach people how to be good programmers. It's not like I can take a college course on EC2 administration or on learning TurboGears.</comment></comment></comment>


Life expectancy in the U.S. is declining for middle-aged people of all groups - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/health/life-expectancy-rate-usa.html <comment><USER2> > "The whole country is at a health disadvantage compared to other wealthy > nations," the study's lead author, Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth > University, said. "We are losing people in the most productive period of > their lives. Children are losing parents. Employers have a sicker work > force."

For profit healthcare in America is devouring its people and economy, full stop. We can either have a society where half a million people go bankrupt from medical debt each year, thousands die from treatable illnesses and lack of access to medicines, while hospital CEOS and insurance execs walk away with millions. Or, we can have one that excises their parasitism like the rest of the developed world figured out was necessary decades ago.

<comment><USER3> > For profit healthcare in America is devouring its people and economy, full > stop. We can either have a society where half a million people go bankrupt > from medical debt each year, thousands die from treatable illnesses or lack > of access to medicines, while hospital CEOS and insurance execs walk away > with millions, or we can have one that excises their parasitism like the > rest of the developed world figured out was necessary decades ago.

The majority of the world still has, to my knowledge, for-profit health care: Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland , Sweden and Italy all have at least some form of private health care.

The United States _definitely_ have a problem with health care prices. It doesn't appear from where I sit to be an issue with individual bad actors (although of course they do exist) but rather structural. In part, the well- intended federal and state attempts to improve things have backfired — as they tend to do — and made things even more expensive (which reminds me of federal student loans, another instance of well-meaning attempts to help the lesser- off which somehow seem to benefit the upper middle classes most of all; cf. also federally-subsidised mortgages).

<comment><USER4> > The majority of the world still has, to my knowledge, for-profit health > care: Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland , Sweden and Italy all have at > least some form of private health care.

While private health care exists in all of those countries, and in some of them it's a significant part of the system, a lot of what exists isn't actually _for-profit_.

For instance, in Ireland we have a dual public and private system (primary care is private unless you're old, very young, or low income, private hospitals exist as an option), but most of the private system is either outright non-profit (most private hospitals, the statutory VHI health insurer) or is heavily constrained by the existence of the non-profit portion and regulation (private insurers have to compete with the VHI, and are not allowed charge risk-based rates for most customers).

<comment><USER5> in Germany, the actual doctors office that treats you may be a for-profit, but they get the cash from your (mandatory) insurance, and the law regulates what kind of treatment is essential and therefore included in the mandatory healthcare plan. You can have a private healthcare plan that gets you extra treatment, or pay yourself for it. But it's really Stuff you can live without.

another example, in Russia, you have _theoretically_ the same system, but the level of treatment covered by the mandatory insurance is totally insufficient by any reasonable modern standards, so you have to pay all the way. And it's not about debt, it's often about not getting live-saving treatment before you cash out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > And while suicides, drug overdoses and alcoholism were the main causes

It looks like there is increasing mental health issues that aren't being addressed. This seems to get blown past too quickly.

We tend to look at the medical side of things and the way the healthcare system works. But, somethings have changed that caused the mental heath of many to go down. Will changing the US to single payer or medicare for all change the mental health problems? Given the research I've read it's highly unlikely.

Can we please put more time into understanding and addressing the increasing mental health problems? This is important for forums like this because studies have repeatedly found we have a hand in it.

<comment><USER7> Don't you think these things are directly related?

A friend of mine had some minor mental health issues going into their 20s. Lack of meaningful opportunity paired with obscenely expensive and inaccessible healthcare helped drive those to become major health issues, including drug addiction, due to intoxicating themselves to "help" distract from their grim reality.

Absolutely I think it would have been different had they had access to general preventative healthcare from the start so they could get routine dental, physical, etc. Would they be cured of their mental health problems? Probably not. Would the effects have been less destructive? Yeah, I would bet on it.

<comment><USER6> > Don't you think these things are directly related?

From what I've read there isn't a strong relation between them. Some of it is obvious. The system has been roughly the same for many years but the change happened to mental health anyway.

As I start to read studies on it I learn there are other factors affecting mental health.

The people who study these things are predominantly saying it's related. Why should we think it is?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The lack of empathy and solidarity is only growing in the U.S. so this problem won't be solved any time soon.

<comment><USER9> I have a more optimistic view. Bernie Sanders' campaign explicitly asks people if they are willing to fight for people they don't know, and his campaign has the largest donor base and the biggest rallies.

<comment><USER10> I love Bernie and I voted for him in the 2016 primary... that said, I won't be voting for him in 2020. He's not indicative of some great revolution, of some kumbaya moment...Sanders is going to get less than 20% of the vote in the primary and, as a socialist, he is hated and a non-starter for 30% of the populace who rabidly support Trump.

Bernie, Biden, Trump: We do not need elderly presidents. 80 year olds are scientifically proven to be cognitively declined relative to younger individuals. They are much more likely to die in office, more likely to have memory issues, slower to comprehend new things, and are just much more out of touch with the average citizen.

So, while I laud Bernie's character, I don't think a 77 year old man being preferred by less than 20% of one half of the electorate is cause for optimism.

<comment><USER11> Who do you recommend, since you like the policies but not the candidate it appears?

<comment><USER10> For the primary: I don't know, to be honest. I really don't want to vote for anyone so elderly, you can see with Trump and Biden that their cognitive capability to form words and give good speeches is pretty lack luster.

For the general: Whoever is not Trump, they are all superior in myriad ways...the only Dem who isn't superior to Trump is Marianne Williamson, because she's just as qualified and sensible as Trump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Key quotes for me:

> Dr. Woolf said one of the findings showed that the excess deaths were highly > concentrated geographically, with fully a third of them in just four states: > Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Indiana.

> "What's not lost on us is what is going on in those states," he said. "The > history of when this health trend started happens to coincide with when > these economic shifts began — the loss of manufacturing jobs and closure of > steel mills and auto plants."

> The increased deaths from drug overdoses reflected increased rates of > addiction to opioids. But they have also risen because of changes in the > drug supply in the East and Midwest. Over the last decade, the synthetic > drug known as fentanyl has been mixed into heroin — or in some places has > replaced it. That has made the drug supply more deadly, since it is > difficult for users to know the dose they are taking.

> Life expectancy in the coastal metro areas — both east and west — has > improved at roughly the same rate as in Canada.

These together point to me to local crises: people in hard times due to economic shifts turning to drugs, etc, as an outlet.

There are many ways to improve the lot of these people, but being blind to the cause does not help them. Also let's be clear about the scale of the problem:

> While the total number of excess deaths — meaning the number of deaths that > would not have happened if the mortality rate had continued to improve — is > small, at 33,000

For context, total overdose deaths are ~70,000/year. [https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone who has followed presidential candidate Andrew Yang knows this. This is why he wants the "American Scorecard" which consists with indicators including life expectancy, suicide rate, drug overdose rate...rather than things like GDP, unemployment.

The country is not healthy. Until we put these numbers in the forefront, we will keep trying to just increase GDP at the cost of people's lives.

</comment><comment><USER14> How happy are you? Truly, ask yourself. Think back and think of how things have drastically changed in society.

This is telling of a world that cares more and more about the "economy" then they do people. With little to no focus on living and so much emphasis on "success," "Business," and "economy."

Work with little pay, a buy in club for access to healthcare and no work/life balance in many jobs. It does not surprise me even the smallest amount. Health insurance (at least in the states) is more like a Costco membership. It just gives you access to healthcare.

Healthcare profits have been in decline so I don't think it is about the "for profit" system as much as it is other things in our environment (work/natural.) I think this is more telling of how our culture chooses to live and has structured the work environment.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-hospital-profits-fall-as- la...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-hospital-profits-fall-as-labor-costs- grow-and-patient-mix-shifts-1524495601)

</comment><comment><USER15> The CDC report gives a much better view of these findings [0]. I would really suggest reading the report. It is not jargony and takes maybe 15 minutes to zip through. They really put a lot of time into making it accessible and it shows.

In reading that report some things that I noticed are [1]:

Pg. 8: Alzheimer's Disease caused deaths for both males and females increased a fair bit! And for males, Unintentional Deaths also increased recently. Note that the Y-axis is in a LOG scale; any movement upwards is a lot.

Pg. 10: Yeah, Juul and the like really are hurting children. Grades 2 & 3 Obesity are increasing too. Both are not good.

Pg. 11: Asthma in black children has gone up a fair amount.

Pg. 14: West Coast and Virginian essential vaccination is under 2/3 babies (3 years or younger). That is WELL below herd immunity. New England, Deep South, and Plains states are above 3/4.

Pg. 21: Ages 15-44 have seen an uptick in mortality. Note: The y-axis is in LOG scale, so it's been a fair bit of an uptick.

Pg. 22: A big uptick in infant mortality due to unintentional injuries.

Pg. 23: ... Jesus ... a huge increase in child suicide rates and an increase in teen homicide and suicide rates. Note: The y-axis is in LOG scale.

Pg. 24: HIV deaths are WAY down (!), unintentional injuries and liver cirrhosis are up.

Pg. 25: Alzheimer's deaths in the elderly are up a fair amount.

pg. 26: Holy shit ... overdose rates are just ... wow ...

pg. 27: Appalachia and New England ... good Lord ... I mean, you hear things about it all, but wow.

pg. 29: Cirrhosis deaths in middle aged men are really climbing. The booze, it ain't good.

BTW here's the scihub link for the JAMA article that the NYT is talking about: [https://scihub.bban.top/https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...](https://scihub.bban.top/https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article- abstract/2756187)

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/index.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/index.htm)

[1] this is mostly a summary that I posted here 38 days ago when the report first dropped. Seriously, just read the CDC report!

<comment><USER16> When you say: >Note: The y-axis is in LOG scale What does this mean?

<comment><USER17> It runs by orders of magnitude, e.g. 1, 10, 100, 1000...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The way things are going in the US are unsustainable and I'm not even talking about the impending climate problems. What is going to give out first and how long will it take?

<comment><USER19> If we don't fix healthcare costs it'll be that in 5-15 years, just looking at the increases in costs year over year. It's strangling the economy.

After that we very likely have a (lack of) retirement crisis coming in, I reckon, 15-30 years. I'd guess there'll be a concurrent falling off of generational passing-on of wealth (inheritance) that'll compound the issue and ensure it lasts much of the rest of the century. This'll be _way_ worse if all we've managed to do with health care costs is hold them at their already-too- high levels, rather than lower them.

The worst risk is that crises aren't always blamed on the right people/issues, and sometimes end up causing scary shifts in the politics of a state (watch as I carefully avoid Godwinning the thread)—I suspect the mobility of wealth and how much money is in the hands of effectively stateless corporations will make any such occurrence rather more _interesting_ than it has been in the past in the US, e.g. the Great Depression, as incentives for various actors may not be aligned the same ways they have been. One hopes the phrase "feeding frenzy" won't apply, but it seems possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "In the northeast and midwest" should be appended to the title.

California experienced negative growth. Texas, Georgia, Florida, Oregon, Washington "0-5% growth".

 _Dr. Woolf said one of the findings showed that the excess deaths were highly concentrated geographically, with fully a third of them in just four states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Indiana._

—

 _"I'm not sure the dramatic, 'there's something desperately wrong with the entire country' narrative is entirely accurate," Dr. Harper said. "Certain groups, such as Hispanics and Asians, are doing O.K. It's not like the entire country is being subsumed by a single social phenomenon that can explain all of this. There are a lot of moving parts."_

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think people realize the increased mortality of being on the upper end of the (literal) scale.

Here's a journal article:

[https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...](https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo..).

but to summarize BMI vs years lost:

      BMI    40-45   45-50   50-55   55-60
      men    -6.5    -10.8   -10.6   -17.0
      women  -6.9     -9.1   -10.3   -13.1

</comment><comment><USER22> It's unregulated capitalism. Jobs are dead end unless you have advanced degrees which eliminates a huge portion of the country. Most jobs require you to be sedentary in office and work long hours. 70% of the country is living paycheck to paycheck. The healthcare industry is profiting massively at the expense of the population. Politicians have been purchased by big biz so this will not change. It's just going to get worse.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there something us devs with money to throw around can do to, well, not fix, but alleviate the insurance gap? Perhaps there could be a large pool we could pay into, that people could spend solely on necessary medical care.

<comment><USER23> Are you proposing a secondary level of insurance for a failing primary insurance system? Won't that just make it worse?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Everyone's got their own opinion about what is to blame for this, I'll toss mine in.

I see a lot of people with stress and despair related problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, alcoholism, drug use. Diet can be an issue as well but diet problems on these come from stress management tactics, it's not the diet that's the root cause here.

Currently a major source of stress is the general political atmosphere of endemic bullshit, violence, fake news, lies, shout downs, cancel culture, cover ups, self dealing, and all this on both sides. And if you say both sides both sides jump down your throat trying to bullying you into agreeing with them their side whatever it is is perfect and the other side are literal demons who need to exterminated. By not agreeing only one side is at fault, then you as well are labeled a demon worthy of extirpation as well. Choose sides or be cast into hell. But choosing either side is to buy into a delusion.

Another cause of poor health has been mentioned: the health care system really is shit for most people. My insurance runs over $20,000 a year for a really crappy policy that doesn't cover anything since everyone is out of network or there's a copay that is _more_ than the cash price, meaning I just pretend I don't have insurance to save money. Any hospital emergency I can be assured that either the plan doesn't cover the hospital at all or doesn't cover the people working there. In network coverage for anything involving more than one person doesn't exist. And although many doctors are good people and competent a lot more are money grubbing and incompetent, having practices managed or advised by MBAs with maximum profit as the sole motive. Specialists are particularly hard to get ahold of and charge absurd amounts compared to literally every other country in the world.

How to fix any of these? None of it is ever going to get fixed. The deep state is not just a government thing, it also extends to medicine, teaching, police, and other professions which have invisible networks that will thwart any attempt at reform or improvement to protect their own positions and lifestyles. Trying to fix it is a waste of time that only leads to being made a target of attacks, and introducing massive stress into your life. One might as well try to fix communism from inside Stalin's Soviet Union. You'll only be disappeared or end up dead. Best instead to figure out ways to have as little to do with the system as possible, and undermine it whenever you have the opportunity, hoping it will eventually collapse. The only way out is collapse at this point. Some cars are so far gone they can't be fixed. Likewise with houses. I've seen people try to restore an old farmhouse or victorian with a rotted foundation and floors and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars ending up with a crappy house with poor energy efficiency and little resale value. They are broke and stressed out and just spent a decade exposing themselves to black mold and sometimes things like asbestos. They could instead have demolished it and built a full size replica using modern efficient methods for a tiny fraction of what they spent "fixing" it. Why did they pursue restoration instead? Because they bought the rotted house for what they thought was a bargain and ignored its long term costs, and also they "fell in love" with it through simple familiarity and comfort of knowing it was theirs. Tearing something down or throwing it out and starting over again is the only way out of things that are far too rotted and broken to be worth fixing. Political and economic systems, houses, cars, and relationships all fall under this rule.

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure it's politics as much as a deeper underlying cause. A lot of today's salaries are just not sustainable to live and retire off of anymore. You read stories about how several decades ago, a man working at a gas station was able to afford a house, car, and support his wife and children. Today, you have people in their 30s who are still in debt, and whose salaries are barely able to sustain them. They end up having to work 2 or even 3 jobs if they have a family to support.

Combine this with a consumer heavy society, where people seem unable to control their impulses, and this is not a good result.

<comment><USER26> " A lot of today's salaries are just not sustainable to live and retire off of anymore. You read stories about how several decades ago, a man working at a gas station was able to afford a house, car, and support his wife and children."

I just moved into a new place and had a painter do the walls. He started working at Safeway with 17, retired at 52 with a pension, has 2 houses and raised 2 kids. that sounds almost impossible these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe it's fracking?

</comment><comment><USER28> I think US healthcare is poisoning people. Every office-dweller is on proton- pump inhibitors, SSRIs, or both. In most cases, the PPIs are there to treat people who have wrecked their GI tracts by popping ibuprofen once or twice a day. Every older person is also on statins. Then there's the oxycontin dominance in the red states.

People constantly going to the doctor over side-effects and dosage level adjustments. Doctors just see them as walking wallets, and prescribe a new pill to cover the old side-effects with new ones.

Your liver and your kidneys can only take so much--see the dialysis centers popping up all over the place...

<comment><USER29> No, people are poisoning themselves.

~40% of the US population is obese and in total, ~72% of the US population is overweight (including those classified as obese).

Every doctor I know would prefer you to eat and move/exercise appropriately rather than prescribing you drugs. That's the preferred treatment and would prevent many of those issues.(especially when you also include other basics of a healthy lifestyle, like sleeping enough and not abusing substances).

However, as is obvious, most people are unwilling to actually do what's required for that. So doctors are left with trying to mitigate symptoms or reduce harm without being able to tackle the cause.

\</comment></comment><comment>----

It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming decades elsewhere in the world, as most of the rest of the world is rapidly catching up to the unfortunate "norms" of US weight problems.

I suspect you will see the prevalence of many of those ailments rising elsewhere in tandem.

<comment><USER28> No, medicine is. If "healthcare" didn't offer alternatives to getting your shit together, people would either get their shit together, or die.

From past life expectancy stats, the former happened more than the latter.

Also, recent US life expectancy decline can be accounted for, _entirely_ , by prescription opioid epidemic.

iatrogenics

<comment><USER30> People do die. Most complications due to unhealthy lifestyles are causing people to die earlier and more often, or live frustrating lives.

The alternatives really aren't that great. Yea, prick your finger every day and regulate your sugar so you don't die or get sick. Fun.

The reality is, food is designed to be addicting to sell more food, just like everything else in our capitalist society.</comment></comment></comment>


RosettaGit – Solutions to tasks in more than 700 programming languages - <AUTHOR> https://adriansieber.com/announcing-rosettagit/ <comment><USER2> One thing that complicates projects like Rosetta Code, and RosettaGit by extension, is that things get easily muddled when taking into account the many ways a single language and platform can do the same thing. Rosetta Code suffers from it a lot, which is why I'm mentioning it here. Given the purpose of Rosetta* I'm surprised that there hasn't been a visible effort in containing and organizing these different methods in the same way some of the code examples show recursive vs iterative methods, etc.

By way of example (which you may like to add to the project, since you do have a section for it already), here are 6 Hello World samples I created in ARM assembler on Raspberry Pi.

[https://github.com/ksaj/helloworld](https://github.com/ksaj/helloworld)

I purposely kept them all as similar as possible, but each one uses a completely different method for printing Hello World. Basically, writes() vs puts() vs fwrite() vs putchar() vs printf() vs bare metal (no use of standard library or otherwise). It's pretty easy to see the pros and cons of each method, and the different requirements of each method, by reading the code. Of course C programmers have heard of each of these methods, but these samples show what's actually happening under the hood.</comment>


Show HN: Automate Investor Updates with SQL - <AUTHOR> https://seekwell.io/#stories <comment><AUTHOR> SeekWell[1] just launched a "Stories"[2][3] feature that helps you write narratives about your data using SQL. It's like an always up-to-date Wall Street Journal article about your company that is automatically refreshed and delivered to your inbox daily. We're using it internally for investor updates, daily recaps, and alerts (e.g. a customer that was inactive visiting our pricing page).

[1] [https://seekwell.io/](https://seekwell.io/) [2] [https://www.notion.so/seekwell/Stories-d4dcb303d28b400492741...](https://www.notion.so/seekwell/Stories-d4dcb303d28b400492741b5741fc2f86) [3] [https://youtu.be/lTkv8o0j7Pw](https://youtu.be/lTkv8o0j7Pw)</comment>