Basic Income Means Basic Freedom - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtinfection.com/2013/12/15/basic-income-means-basic-freedom/ <comment><USER3> The money for basic income must come from somewhere, right? I can think of two choices:

      1. Creating money from air, thus driving price inflation.
      2. Redistributing income, where the top earners would have to pay for
         the ones which choose to just enjoy their basic income.

I haven't really dug into basic income proponents' argument and the article misses the point (which IMHO is the real important point, of course basic income would be awesome). How does it hold economically? Inflation or punishing top performers seem like a really bad idea.

And sociologically... how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? Where does wealth come from if nobody works?

<comment><USER4> Top earners have a strong vested interest in the lowest possible income not being _too_ low, because starving homeless masses have a negative impact on property values. The question is not whether to redistribute income, but how much and by which mechanism. Inflation is income redistribution also, remember.

The traditional income redistribution systems in the US are social security (from the young to the old), welfare (from the employed to the unemployed), and medicare (from the healthy to the unhealthy). The cost of these systems is $X + $Y + $Z. Costs are inflated by large bureaucracies put in place to enforce social mores as punitive measures against the poor ("piss in this cup or you don't get EBT this month"; "EBT is for buying cheez-puffs, not condoms").

If giving $X + $Y + $Z to everyone in the US would provide them with a better quality of life, then it makes sense to do that instead of managing separate programs.

Two significant additional benefits to a basic income are:

1\. It fixes the problem of going from unemployed to employed-at-minimum-wage resulting in a net decrease in household income. It's a simple observation that punishing people for getting a job will decrease the total number of employed adults.

2\. It enables the minimum wage to be much lower than the poverty line. The nation has collectively decided that an adult working full time should be entitled to to the basic necessities of life, and the cost of that decision is that jobs which are worth less than $7.25 simply aren't offered (or are only offered illegally). If everyone already makes enough to get by, then there's far fewer ethical problems with paying someone $3 an hour to sweep some floors or pick up garbage from a sidewalk.

<comment><USER5> Inflation is a redistribution scheme of the poor to the rich and from savings to spenders.

Life becomes a lot simpler when we just eliminate all these schemes and just let people solve problems for themselves. This expectation that you can disrupt the economy in a major way and have the rest of the society stay static around me is a very serious reasoning error.

<comment><USER6> Should we eliminate taxes, welfare, and universal access to health care too? Let people starve or suffer if they can't find work?

<comment><USER7> The first sentence, yes. The second sentence, no.

<comment><USER6> You might do well by reading [http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html](http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html)

<comment><USER7> It's a rather popular anti-libertarian piece, and I have read it (although it's been a while).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Basic income will serve to reinforce this fabric and enable the risky ventures that will power us forward in the 21st century._

Maybe. But for an alternative view, see "Four Reasons a Guaranteed Annual Income Won't Work" ([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-04/four-reasons-a- guar...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-04/four-reasons-a-guaranteed- income-won-t-work.html)) and, although not strictly an alternative view, "What are some of the biggest problems with a guaranteed annual income?" ([http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/what- are-some-of-the-biggest-problems-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income.html)).

As so often happens, the devil is in the implementation and incentive details.

Based on my reading I think a guaranteed annual income is a _good idea_ , but I'm agnostic on the question of whether a guaranteed annual income would work in practice.

</comment><comment><USER9> An economic analysis on a proposed minimum income model for New Zealand:[0]

      The [basis minimum income] scheme proposed by the Welfare
      Working Group is a significant policy change with large
      economic consequences. The scheme is fiscally very costly
      and would not necessarily achieve its main goal of
      reducing poverty. The high personal tax rates required to
      fund the scheme are highly distortionary to the labour
      market and to savings and investment decisions, and would
      be likely to induce a significant behavioural response.
      This has damaging effects on the tax system and economic
      growth.

Also of importance, from the same report:

      Although the Gini coefficient improves under all models,
      many beneficiaries (including the disabled, carers and
      sole parents) currently receive more than $300 per week
      and would be made financially worse off under a GMI
      scheme.

At a high level, it seems that the economic reality of providing a basic minimum income to everyone requires a significant increase in taxation revenue. That might be possible with significantly higher GDP per capita, but I'm not certain we're there yet.

[0] [http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor...](http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Working%20papers/Treasury- A-Guaranteed-Minimum-Income-for-New-Zealand%20.PDF)

Edit: formatting.

<comment><USER10> _That might be possible with significantly higher GDP per capita_

That's actually a really interesting point. The feasibility of BI is going to be tied to GDP per capita, as well as cost of living. In a country where GDP- per-capita is several times cost of living, BI would be relatively easy, whereas a country where GDP-per-capita is barely above cost of living, BI would be very difficult (because where do you come up with the money?)

US GDP per capita is about $50k. I'm not sure what cost of living is, but that definitely isn't a whole lot higher than what is usually accepted as the threshold to living somewhat comfortably (somewhere around $40k)

Norway, on the other hand, has a USD GDP per capita of ~$100k, so unless cost of living is much higher, BI may be much more feasible there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've long observed that the core problem with free open source software is that there is no incentive to do the small percentage of things which really do need doing and which nobody has any incentive to do (see the classic problem of crappy video & audio drivers, among other such issues) short of one thing: MONEY.

"Basic income" will suffer the same problem. There are things which must get done, and which nobody will do short of earning money doing it. Give people that money outright, and nobody will do those jobs for it. Oh, a few people might pitch in, but nowhere on the scale needed.

BI romanticized the notion that most people will be productive contributors to society given free coverage of necessities. This is never objectively quantified in favor of the notion ... which history records various attempts at, with a great many people suffering horribly in the process of forcing it to work. Oh, these are always excused as "did it wrong, we'll do it right" with no objective reason to believe the optimism. Sure, some people will do good with their free money - but who's gonna do those dirty jobs? not you, you don't have time for it as you pursue more productive occupations, paying others to do so you don't have to.

<comment><USER12> >"Basic income" will suffer the same problem. There are things which must get done, and which nobody will do short of earning money doing it.

Basic income does not mean everybody does their jobs for free.

<comment><USER11> Basic income means nobody is in a position where they will do menial work which nobody else will. Paying more for those jobs means competing with like- paying jobs of a far more desirable character. You ready for custodial labor to cost several times more? suddenly employers can't spend nearly as much for more advanced work because basic sanitation (and other menial but needed work) is suddenly far more costly.

<comment><USER13> Yes I am ready for that. Wage slavery is wrong if there is a viable alternative.

<comment><USER11> Then triple your custodian's pay already. Nothing's stopping you from doing the right thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the US (and I presume most 1st world countries), we're pretty thoroughly (and intentionally) infected with Consumerism.

People who are making $150,000 are not content, and are working 60-hour weeks to get that raise up to $160,000. And the same thing is happening with people making $500,000 or $50,000.

All of those salaries produce MORE than enough to live comfortably on. And many people with a good salary could -- if they so chose -- live on $40,000 and save like crazy, and retire very early (as preached by Mr. Money Mustache among others).

But ALMOST NO ONE DOES THAT. So what logical basis is there to assume that Basic Income would change this? Many people already have Basic Income plus a whole lot more, but they don't pursue a basic secure position. Rather, they spend all they make (and often more), and they work slavishly to get more income.

(Is Basic Income meant to help the poor and unemployed ... who don't have the "good salary" I mention above? If so, I'm all for it, but it seems to me that if the price of a slum apartment is $300/month before Basic Income, it will merely be $600/month -- or whatever scale factor it takes to soak up that extra income -- after it.)

<comment><USER15> That's much of the point. If people want to feel useful and most people want to be paid to feel useful, then only a few will opt out - hopefully in favor of something that means more to them - leaving space for those who can't and/or won't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe a more palatable way to spinfund basic income / progressive taxing is not to tax the wealthy but to tax robotics / AI. Increasingly productivity gains will come from robotics anyway. Taxes like this should have close to the same effects as progressive taxes but seem less leftist. It would look more like an evitable human progression to the voter base instead of sneaking socialism.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm in favor of free ponies and ice cream. Maybe I should blog about it.

<comment><USER18> Socialist reductionism always works for me, although never as I expect.

"Health is important. Doctors should be free, right?" \- Yes.

"But what about housing?! People can't just freeze to death. So housing should be universally free for everyone, right?" \- Yes.

"Clothing is just as important as housing. Clothing?" \- Yes.

"And food? You can't live without food. Universal free food?" \- Yes.

"And without access to technology, you can't get a job, so surely the government should provide computers and phones. Otherwise people have no chance of rising out of poverty. Universal technology?" \- Yes.

I'm pretty sure no one has ever gotten the point, and I've only turned half- hearted socialists into full-blown socialists. Oh well.

<comment><USER19> Yes, yes, no because clothing is affordable and not gone after a single use, yes, no but internet should be a utility and libraries should have computers available. Am I too socialist?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The primary issue with our economy is that each dollar one has makes it easier to obtain the next dollar. If you play that out to its only possible conclusion, you wind up with all of the money in very few hands. Somehow, that money has to go back into circulation, in the form of loans, grants, charity, salaries, etc. or our economy simply won't be an economy anymore.

It has never been the role of government in a capitalist society to hand out money, nor should it be. Government's role is to create a legislative structure that incentivizes behavior that leads to a healthy economy and society. If we have a problem with the stockpiling of wealth, then we need to craft new laws that disincentivize that behavior. Something needs to change, but it doesn't involve firing up the money presses.

<comment><USER21> Governments role is whatever its citizens decide it should be. There are no absolute rules. Every generation makes that decision for themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> First off I myself am on disability, not by choice but because I became mentally ill due to the stress I was under at my job. Startup burnout or whatever.

Secondly, I'd much rather be working a job than be on disability, but I wasn't given a choice because my doctors had ordered it. I wasn't given a choice because employers discriminated against me for my disability/mental illness and either called me 'overqualified' or refused to hire me or only hired me to fix things and then fire me when the things are fixed.

I've been trying to do my own startup since 2002 when I lost my last job. No money for me anywhere. I would have less stress with my own small business and small circle of clients than in a large greedy megacorpration that cares more about profits at any cost than people or anything else.

I think instead of basic income, we should give money to the small business administration to give people lessons in business management and programming or whatever to do their own startups. The SBA has a lot of volunteers who can mentor people into starting up a successful business. The real problem for people down on their luck like me is finding the money to do a startup while on disability or little or no income.

I read articles about giving some random homeless guy money and programming training, and then he has an app in the app store for iPhones. Why don't we just do that for all of the poor people out there? Everyone can write their own app, get training and support, and get some startup funding and see if it works out they can have their own small business. If not, well at least you tried.

This basic income is not freedom, it is slavery to force one out of the market and no longer be productive or do anything for society. I can just see people dropping out of high school in large numbers to stay at home with their parents, avoid taking a job, just apply for basic income and get that low income AT&T DSL Internet for $15/month and play video games on a cheap PC or used Playstation or used XBox for the rest of their lives and never contribute anything for the betterment their lives and help out others.

Altruism is great, but most of it is fake altruism for attention or good PR or to pay for past sins of getting rich at the expense of others and make a foundation that does charitable things that buys products from their businesses and provides a tax shelter and then gives them awards. True altruism is doing things to help out others, and mentor them, and teach them to become better and also help out others and keep passing it on, with no personal rewards and no good PR and no attention, just doing it for the empathy and compassion. But so few people do true altruism these days, only the fake altruism.

I think that it takes more than to just give someone money as a basic income, you need to give them an education, train them, mentor them, help them reach a level of success so they can become independent and then in turn help out others to do the same as people once helped them.

<comment><USER15> _" I read articles about giving some random homeless guy money and programming training, and then he has an app in the app store for iPhones. Why don't we just do that for all of the poor people out there? Everyone can write their own app, get training and support, and get some startup funding and see if it works out they can have their own small business. If not, well at least you tried."_

Because it makes the already super competitive field of app writing _artificially_ even more super competitive, and probably doesn't add as much good to the world as the same people could elsewhere, and probably doesn't actually make these people enough money to do much (plausibly not even survive, absent other supports).

<comment><USER22> Well how else can we help others to earn money in order to survive?

<comment><USER15> Well, we can train for something we know there is excess demand for, but that involves picking winners, and the people who are great at that don't usually work in government bureaucracy (and only occasionally work in charity).

Another approach is to ask people in less need of paid work to make room - <USER2> low Basic Income has that effect: as some people leave the workforce to focus on unpaid activities (child rearing, volunteering, art, educating themselves), this leaves more jobs available for those who need them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Obviously, 21 is a magic number, all the proposals in the article are simply based on "the 21st century".

Because it is the 21st century, so freedom is free. Done.

<comment><USER24> Because this will be the century when AI and robotics(automation) can be more cost-effective than a _" big enough"_ proportition of human labour. What this means, is that at some point it is simply better to invest in machinery(automation) than employment.

Eventually AI will surpass human capabilities in every domain where any sort of intelligence matters. It's inevitable, given exponential progress. Whether that "eventually" is next decade or next century is irrelevant(or whether it's a tailored weak AI or an universal true strong AI) -- what is relevant is that aforementioned _" big enough"_ proportition of people, and AI(and automation) will surpass them well enough to be competitive against humans _far_ sooner.

Somebody has to deal with this, somehow. Basic income guarante could be a solution -- automation can produce enough for people to live off well enough.

<comment><USER23> The author's argument is now, not "eventually".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> yc-kjh The author is an economic idiot.

Socialism and Communism fail every time they are tried. Every time.

[http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3095028/posts](http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3095028/posts)

Read Bradford's description (in the article linked above) about what socialism did to the Pilgrims: it created poverty, envy, and slothfulness. Many of them _died_ as a result. Prosperity only returned when they re-introduced private property.

I suspect the author is well meaning, but he is ignorant. His "solution" will create misery. I hope he educates himself, then changes his mind.

<comment><USER25> Basic Income is not Communism. Communism is state control of the means of production, and centralized planning of the entire economy.

Whether Basic Income is Socialism depends on your definition of Socialism. If you go by the definition found on wikipedia, which I think is pretty standard, BI is not Socialism either. [1]

Basic Income is redistributive, but so is the US tax system, as it has been for nearly 100 years. It is a more aggressive and explicit redistribution scheme, but it is not of an entirely dissimilar nature, nor is it incompatible with free-market capitalism.

So regardless of one's opinion of Socialism and Communism, whether or not socialism and communism typically fail has no bearing on whether a basic income would be successful, because they are different things.

However, when you say:

> Socialism and Communism fail every time they are tried. Every time.

You should consider that the vast majority of the world's large economies are described as "mixed economies" that combine elements of socialism and laissez faire capitalism. Many, if not most of these have been mixed--combining Socialist and Capitalist policies in one way or another--for decades, if not for more than a century. So, unless you are going to assert that the modern economic order is a "failure", I think you should rethink this sentiment.

> The author is an economic idiot.

Strong words probably not best used in this situation.

If "redistribution" of economic surplus (i.e. profit/income) is a feature of Communism and Socialism, it is not the most important feature of these ideologies, which concern themselves with limiting or eliminating private property.

In fact, I would assert that redistribution is a specifically _Capitalist_ response to the Socialist critique of private property and markets: it is a way to reduce economic injustice by focusing entirely on the distribution of surplus, while leaving private property at the core of the economic system, and while also relying on markets to determine prices and the appropriate allocation of investment.

[1] "Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism)

<comment><USER26> "You should consider that the vast majority of the world's large economies are described as "mixed economies" that combine elements of socialism and laissez faire capitalism."

This explains nicely why the world economy is collapsing in a heap of failed Keynesian (aka Socialist) policies and endless mountains of debt that can't be repaid under any circumstances. From Japan's rapidly collapsing economy (so bankrupt all they have left is to print their currency to oblivion), to America's bankruptcy (doesn't even need explanation), to China's bankruptcy (endless rounds of stimulus, requiring ever more stimulus to get the same fake GDP growth, corporate debt larger than GDP, and several times their sovereign fund, and 40% of their GDP going to just paying against debt), to the implosion of countries such as Greece / Spain / Portugal / France / Italy, all of which are being propped up temporarily by a central banking printing bonanza that is destroying standards of living.

I'm not aware of major mixed economies that possess any meaningful amounts of laissez-faire Capitalism. Japan, US, China, Britain, India, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Australia, South Korea, Russia (aka the largest economies in the world) possess approximately zero laissez-faire Capitalism in their respective economies. I'd challenge someone to produce a major industry in any one of those countries that is actually completely unregulated by the state and untaxed (both of which are requirements of hands-off Capitalism); or even examples of zero regulation with very little taxation, as the US had in the 19th century.

Internet, steel, building, manufacturing, energy in general, oil, nuclear, automobiles, railroads, telecom, commodities, housing, banking / finance --- where's the laissez-faire, aka completely unregulated, again? Doesn't exist.

<comment><USER25> Your response is largely a red herring. The primary point of my post was to say that Basic Income has nothing to do with Socialism.

I was not asserting that the way that mixed economies work today is ideal or even desirable. However, I was asserting that these economies have been largely successful, which it seems you disagree with. However, that's really beside the point.

I used the term "laissez-faire Capitalism" to describe Capitalism in its pure form, not to say that it is found in mixed economies per se. Maybe I should have just said "Capitalism." Again, I don't think it makes a difference.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Superhighway to cycling heaven – or just a hell of a mess? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/07/london-cycle-superhighways-heaven-or-hell <comment><USER2> More this. The cars dominance of our roads needs to end. We need to take back our streets, and the safety of those who use them.

I know there are car drivers who get annoyed by this, but I ask you to try and gain some perspective and objectivity by riding a bike in a city some time. You will understand why cyclists need protection, and why anything less than this is just putting lipstick on a pig.

Look at the number of recent deaths of cyclists in San Francisco, CA. It's horrendous, and needs to change. Cars have for too long been given too much.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately there's an unworkable middle phase where cars are suppressed but not a lot of folks are cycling yet. Result: many complaints. Have to get over that hump to reach utopian bicycle state. Probably not going to happen.

<comment><USER2> I think the middle road is the painted lanes. This gives a little more security to get more cyclists out. As those cyclists grow, then there is enough usage to promote those to dedicated lanes.

While I'm arguing for the need of the desired endstate, I do realize that we have to go through some iteration on the path to get there. (Starting to sound like software development)</comment></comment></comment>


Sessions from Google I/O 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/events/io/sessions.html#

<comment><USER2> On the AppEngine track, both of Brett's talks ("Building Scalable Complex Apps" and "Offline Processing") are worth watching [when the videos are posted.]

I attended the V8 internals talk out of curiosity; it was quite good, too.

And for no apparent reason, I just watched the Android real-time games talk. He has lots of insightful things to say about both the industry and the use of Java for games.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why the video quality of these isn't higher. Who records in SD nowadays?

<comment><USER4> Some videos may have higher quality. Look for the HQ button on the video player.</comment></comment>


Findatapy: Python API for Market Data via Bloomberg, Quandl, Yahoo Etc. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cuemacro/findatapy <comment><AUTHOR> Basically it's API which has common interface for downloading many market data sources (both free/paid sources). Can also download free FX tick data through it (has example to show how to do this).</comment>


Google details highly anticipated 'Android' mobile platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/11/05/Google-details-Android-mobile-platform_1.html

<comment><USER2> i work in wireless, (J2ME) and I am tired of the current state of fragmentation. It is a true hell. %90 of development time ends up being spend on fixing device specific issues, or workarounds for the wildely different and crappy implementation.

Now, you don't have only J2ME, but also Winmo, Palm, Brew, Symbian.... Blackberry flash mobile, all require differnt set of expertice.... it is hell people.

I envy server side guys. When you hear people b!tching about IE/Firefox javascript problems, i can't help but roll my eyes. Mobile dev. is 10 times worse.

I have sweared long time ago, that my next job wont be in Mobile dev. Maybe, if Google Android is good, and picks up steam, I might change idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> heheh thats interesting, I have never had the experience myself... but I think if Google is able to get enough partners for this, the support will also be much better ...</comment></comment>


Autonomous Vehicles Will Clog City Centres Unless Lawmakers Step Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/press/2018/06/autonomous-vehicles-will-clog-city-centres-unless-lawmakers-step-up-says-boston-study <comment> dan-0 > For trips shorter than four miles, it is likely that travellers would opt > for low-capacity autonomous taxis or shuttles rather than taking high- > capacity mass transit options like buses or trains.

This is the crux if the problem. Mass transit is very inefficient for short point to point trips in many cities.

Say I want to get from the Southwest portion of a city to the Northeast, 3 miles away. A bus is probably the most viable mass transit option for this in most places. But in order to take the bus, I have to get on one and make at least one transfer. If the bus runs every 10 minutes (which is generous for the city I live), that means I'll have to walk to the bus station (possibly in a different direction) spend up to 20 minutes waiting on buses given the transfer, then walk from the destination station to my end point. All this while trying to figure out what is the actual best route. Or, as the article suggests, I can just take an AV. What is more appealing for someone working in a downtown area?

Personally, as is right now, it's a toss up between bike, walk, or ride share. But ride share is expensive, walking and biking are physical actions, and regardless of what anyone says, biking in any major downtown area of the US can be dangerous. AVs are anticipated to solve the cost problems associated with ride shares, which is good, but as the article puts it, at the cost of 5.5% increase in traffic in downtown (other areas decrease) IF policies such as repurposing street side parking aren't inacted. To me, even at a 5.5% increase in traffic, the benefits of AVs seem to outweigh the cost. The benefits being less people owning cars (freeing personal finance of that burden), fewer parking spaces needed, and the ability to work and commute at the same time (or do whatever you couldn't do while driving) just to name a few things.</comment>


How the Trump Campaign Used Facebook Ads to Win the Election - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MedicalReport/how-the-trump-campaign-built-an-identity-database-and-used-facebook-ads-to-win-the-election-4ff7d24269ac#.ec73iqaok <comment><USER2> Nice article but parts of it can be misleading. The article mentions the "fake news" polemic but the example presented are targeted ads with no fake information.</comment>


Hitchhiker trees: functional, persistent, off-heap sorted maps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/datacrypt-project/hitchhiker-tree/blob/master/doc/hitchhiker.adoc <comment><USER2> Those are very cool, and functional too!

> As it turns out, after I implemented the fractal tree, I spoke with a former > employee of Tokutek, a company that commercialized fractal tree indices. > That person told me that we'd actually implemented fractal reads > identically!

That's not necessarily a good thing. Last I heard Tokutek patented that. Not a laywer, from what I understand patents specifically pertain to "implementation".

Not sure what happened after they were acquired by Percona, but, as I am in US I would personally stay away from it. Even if current owner doesn't want to enforce the patent, the next one might.

<comment><USER3> Creator here. I would absolutely agree with this, but let me shed a bit more light to clarify: the underlying idea of B+ trees with inline caches is not patented (or maybe it was, but a long time ago?). Tokutek's patents are all focused on the methods they use to achieve concurrent operations on a single tree--they have a very interesting & novel locking protocol.

The Hitchhiker tree completely avoids their patents, since it makes very different decisions in order to become purely functional.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for explaining. That makes sense.

Great work by the way! Really like the description of the code structure on the README page.

If patent is indeed not an issue, I might play with translating that to Erlang. You already did the hard work and also made it functional. I'd have to learn to read Clojure.

Speaking of functional, I was surprised to find the other day, Erlang's queue module implements an Okasaki API, complete with funny function names like deah, liat, and snoc.

[http://erlang.org/doc/man/queue.html](http://erlang.org/doc/man/queue.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny: I implemented the exact same thing, with a focus on AWS and pagination (albeit less well-documented):

[https://github.com/rix0rrr/libbruce/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/rix0rrr/libbruce/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><USER3> That is very cool! When you end up doing reads, do you compute all the pending writes along the path from root to leaf, and then run queries on the projection?

<comment><USER4> For index-seeks, yes.

For key-seeks, it's a normal tree walk to the leaf (unless an INSERT is found at a higher level, iirc)

In practice, the blocks are so huge that any tree is going to have at most depth 3, and the root page is likely in cache, so 1 or 2 s3 fetches (= roughly 200ms, let's say)

I've been toying with the idea of putting the root page (or maybe the top 2 levels of pages) in DynamoDB, which would make them fast even if they weren't in cache.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand this. The claim is that "we dramatically improve the performance of insertions without hurting the IO cost of queries" by writing to the root's event log. However, it seems to me that this is only delaying the eventual write to the leaf node, not avoiding it. As more items are written, eventually the log will overflow and write to its children, and so on, until it is written to the leaf. This is what would happen in a regular B+ tree anyway, so what has been gained?

What am I missing?

<comment><USER3> It's not just the root's event log--it's all the event logs. The deferrals allow us to batch writes in an optimized way, and do so with a fully incremental algorithm. In the IO cost model, each "block" read or costs 1 IOP to perform, so we can reduce the IOP cost of writes by a factor of 100-1000x, but reads will still have the same # of nodes to fetch. The event logs augmenting the tree are an effective IO optimization on a B+ tree.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How many bytes is a node, in practice? If you stuff hundreds or thousands of pointers in a node, plus a bunch of log, isn't that a lot of data to clone when you do a path-copy? It seems like there's a major trade-off there, unless you always write in large batches. I suppose you could have fast "cons-ing" of events onto the root log without any copying. It would be interesting to know what choices lead to good performance in a sample use case.

<comment><USER3> The code actually includes a benchmarking tool that's meant to help in figuring out this decision. Once you've selected your key size (or distribution), value size (or distribution), and backend, you can play with these factors. Intuitively, targeting "block" size should improve perf. So, 4k-1MB if you're in memory or local, 1.5k-9k if you're over the network (and depending on configuration).

I did some work to split nodes based on size rather than number of children, but that requires accurate & fast size estimation of the decompressed objects, which isn't possible in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > the best-performing data structure for looking up sorted keys cannot do > those queries faster than O(log(n))

Feels like a digression off the actual tree structure, but isn't this incorrect, since a hash map can do key lookups in O(1)? With caveats, of course.

It's a great idea over all, but I'd also be curious how well overlaying an event log on a cuckoo hash would work in comparison.

<comment><USER8> It's a common misconception that hashmaps have constant time lookups. In order for the lookup to be constant time, the hash function must output enough bits to avoid causing too many collisions. For example, 16 bits is too little for a hash map with a million keys. In fact, the hash function output size should be O(log(n)) where n is the number of entries. Processing log(n) bits takes at least O(log(n)) time. QED

<comment><USER9> > Processing log(n) bits takes at least O(log(n)) time.

No, because log(n) might be smaller than the word size of the machine, which is the common case for hash table implementations.

<comment><USER8> If you limit log(n) and thus n to a constant, like the word size of the machine, then _every algorithm is constant time_.

<comment><USER9> No, I am not forcing all n of any size to a constant, I'm saying that we can bottom out inductively for small n.

This is a very old discussion. Read Knuth's rationale. Then read the similar sections in Segwick et all or whatever other basic competence textbook on algorithms you like. Compare them, think about which contexts each approach is most useful in.

In other words, no, you have not somehow cleverly invalidated all of complexity analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does someone know of an existing visualization of this algorithm, for better understanding?

<comment><USER3> Creator here. There's no visualizations of this yet, but I'll be speaking about it this year at Strange Loop. For that talk, I'll be creating visualizations, so stay tuned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it possible to use this from Java directly, or does the Clojure API make this difficult?

<comment><USER3> Creator here. You could use this from Java using the Clojure API for Java; however, many of the extension hooks use Clojure protocols. I would recommend writing a shim to Java for your particular application, so that your data types are represented in the way you want.

<comment><USER12> That'd required the person doing the using to know Clojure, right?

<comment><USER3> Indeed that would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> very cool!

any idea how this would compare to clojure-wrapping

[https://github.com/OpenHFT/Chronicle- Map](https://github.com/OpenHFT/Chronicle-Map) ?

Seems like there are some similar design goals between the two.</comment>


Xonotic 0.7 released - New maps, animation blending and much much more - <AUTHOR> http://www.xonotic.org/2013/06/xonotic-0-7-release

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been playing Xonotic for two years or so now, I'm also an active member of their forums, so if anyone got any question regarding anything please just ask.

Xonotic is an old-school shooter game, mostly inspired by Quake (q3cpma, QW) and Unreal Tournament (UT2k3, UT2k4). It got an active casual community which plays a lot of Overkill/Minsta/Vehicle mods on pub servers. There is also some action on vanilla pub servers. The competitive side of Xonotic is actually quite strong. We got cups every month and there's always pickup matches (private matches organized via IRC, #xonotic.pickup @ QuakeNet) every evening. The best thing about Xonotic is its friendly community of awesome people.

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool. For those unaware, Xonotic is a FOSS FPS, forked from Nexuiz after the Nexuiz IP was sold (bit of drama on that one—the creators of Nexuiz did so without asking the Nexuiz community[1]).

Although I've only played Nexuiz, it's a serious blast—very akin to Quake 3 Arena.

[1] [http://www.xonotic.org/the- game/faq/#What_prompted_the_split...](http://www.xonotic.org/the- game/faq/#What_prompted_the_split_from_Nexuiz)

<comment><USER3> To be fair, its more like Quakeworld than Quake 3.

<comment><USER4> With all the silly movement and weapon modes it is more like Unreal Tournament than any Quake really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree, Xonotic is a great game and a lot of fun. Also it is highly competitive. It is also a blast at most lan parties where it's been played.

Only thing Xonotic really lacks are active players - typical chicken and egg problem. Although it already got better. And servers are online en masse. Maybe Xonotic's lack of active players is a result of somewhat overcomplicated accessibility for less computer savy gamers, as the set-up (ingame) and the heaps of options are a little bit too much and confusing.

Actually, I think it would be nice if the game starts into a "beginner" mode, which promts for basic things intuitively. The game does it already for Playername and such but important settings such as Field of View are hard to find. Well, it's open source so maybe I should be looking into that :)

<comment><USER6> the problem with xonotic and other arena fps is that they lack the killerfeature that would not only lure in a new generation of players, but also shake on the throne of quake3/quakelive, which is arguably the perfect arena fps to date (and yet humps along at under 300k players itself)

what i see is that new players will get crushed for months before they reach their first milestones and become somewhat formidable players in these games.

compare that to the new and popular fps games where you can just jump in, spray some bullets and get some nice looking plates pop up on the screen.

i don't know if there's still room for the unforgiving nature of arena fps aside from hypercompetitive people

<comment><USER2> "Modern" FPSs (COD, Battlefield, etc) have one killer feature, at least on consoles, RE skill-balancing—intelligent matchmaking.

With a large enough volume of players, players get matched by skill—meaning fewere "noobs" getting owned and an overall more balanced match.

I noticed Xonotic has player stats on the homepage—I wonder if those could be used for this.</comment></comment></comment>


Arctic Is Warming At 'Astonishing' Rates, Researchers Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/13/505434080/scientists-report-the-arctic-is-melting-even-more-rapidly <comment><USER2> Is there a reason NPR didn't actually report the facts from the report? Here they are:

\- The September monthly average sea ice trend for the entire Arctic Ocean is now -13.3% per decade relative to the 1981-2010 average. Trends are smaller during March (-2.7% per decade), but are still decreasing at a statistically significant rate.

\- I couldn't find a trend line for the average sea surface temperature. They did have a map with the changes plotted visually -- [http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Portals/7/EasyDNNNews/thumbs/285/...](http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Portals/7/EasyDNNNews/thumbs/285/197fig5.1-timmermans.png)

\- The mean annual surface air temperature anomaly (+2.0° C relative to the 1981-2010 mean value) for October 2015-September 2016 for land stations north of 60° N is the highest value in the record starting in 1900 (Fig. 1.1). This is an increase of 3.5° C since the beginning of the 20th Century, and the largest annual increase since 1995. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes. [http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Portals/7/EasyDNNNews/thumbs/271/...](http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Portals/7/EasyDNNNews/thumbs/271/201fig1.1-overland.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am really shocked at the Americans here on HN. I have to say it straight out. In the rest of the western world, there is no debate about what's happening. But even here on HN, with the high quality of debate, this thread has descended into discussion of whether global warming is real or not or a maybe even good thing. It's real, it's only americans who are sceptics. Please wake up, you've been brainwashed by your corrupt media (yes, I mean Fox News amongst others).

<comment><USER4> I am much more shocked about the negative sentiment here at HN about any post that could be seen as criticism on the global warming theory.

Personally I believe that it is a good thing to be critical about everything thats written in the mainstream media. A lot of nonsense is being written and copied by everybody without any critical thinking. It's also happening when it comes to climate change. I'm not denying it, but I do think that there is a lot about its implications that we don't understand very well yet.

<comment><USER5> > Personally I believe that it is a good thing to be critical about everything > thats written in the mainstream media.

Are you critical about how to conduct effective medical trials in your everyday life? Are you critical about the best catalogue hierarchy for books in a public library? Are you critical of the driving techniques of truckers under snow conditions?

You can critique _anything_ in life and there's a hell of a lot of things that are important for which we recognize that we have little knowledge in the domain and that our criticism is mere curiousity but has no relevance whatsoever.

For some reason only a narrow band of Americans think that their knowledge or their credentials on the subject allows them to challenge the topic critically or consider that the the scientific consensus on the matter is wrong.

It's a bullshit argument from bullshit skeptics. Critical thinking comes from having a minimum baseline knowledge of the subject. I have yet to meet a skeptic who does.

The _actual_ , real skeptics are the peers of climate scientists who have domain knowledge and can ask about the modeling techniques in papers, what equations were utilized, what assumptions are taken and so on. Without that it's the same level of intellectual drudgery as anti-vaxxers.

<comment><USER4> Let me start with the disclaimer that I am not denying climate change, judging by some reactions that apparently wasn't clear enough.

Now to what you are saying. First of all, being critical of what the media writes about some scientific subject, is not the same as being critical of the scientist that did the research. Many times research is wrongly quoted or taken out of context.

Secondly, sometimes some research seems to contradict with other. For instance, as I mentioned already in another reply (and got already downvoted to -4 by now), while research clearly shows that the Arctic ice is melting, the Antarctic ice is growing. I find those seemingly contradicting facts interesting, they show that we apparently do not understand everything about the subjec t yet.

Science makes progress from new facts and experiments that can't be explained by the current theory. If people would refuse to see those facts, progress would never be made.

<comment><USER5> > Secondly, sometimes some research seems to contradict with other. For > instance, as I mentioned already in another reply (and got already downvoted > to -4 by now), while research clearly shows that the Arctic ice is melting, > the Antarctic ice is growing. I find those seemingly contradicting facts > interesting, they show that we apparently do not understand everything about > the subjec t yet.

No, it shows that you haven't been reading the minimum baseline material.

Antartic ice surface is spreading but the volume is decreasing dramatically. The surface spread is due to lower atmospheric temperatures given the transfer of energy from the atmosphere to the ice, leading to the melt in ice shelves that used to be stable.

There is no point of contention there and if you had actually done the research this should have come up easily.

<comment><USER4> Well, it seems you haven't read the Nasa report that I was referring to. The increase that was measured was not in surface but in mass. Unless the density of the Antrarctic ice is increasing dramatically as well, that means volume is increasing, not decreasing.

<comment><USER6> The press release you reference, and the paper it grew from, has been echo-ing around HN (and the cryosphere research community) for a while. Last time was two months ago; see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12796646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12796646)

Short summary: the study partly conflicts other results, and the mass loss seen in that study may be more due to the limitations of their measurement technique (radar altimetry) versus other techniques (gravity).

There's more at the link referenced above. (See also: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/2015/11/05/a-controversial-nasa-study-says-antarctica-is- gaining-ice-heres-why-you-should-stay-skeptical/?utm_term=.86898c732394))

Claimer: while not involved in ice mass quantification, I talk regularly with people who do it full time, publish regularly, are leads on space instruments to measure it, etc.

And, like other commenters nearby, I want to caution you on your approach to "skepticism" and "keeping an open mind".

You seem to be selecting one press release from the hundreds released every year, and using its partial conflict with other information to call the whole hypothesis (significant ice melting caused by global warming) into question. That's not a valid mode of inquiry - especially when you don't have the training and time to keep up with current work.

It's like walking into an IC fab and asking why they are not using EUV lithography (it was in this article in _Wired_!) when you didn't even take a semiconductor physics class in college.

The right place to start, if you really want to get informed, is the IPCC AR5 report ([https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/)). Reading press releases only makes sense if you can put it into context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The chance that we are going to have an unexpected climate change acceleration is growing uncomfortably large.

Given recent political trends, the space of possible solutions is getting narrower and narrower. I would say that only a major technological advance will save us now.

<comment><USER8> Unexpected? Climate scientists been harping on that risk for the last 25 years. The chance that we are going to have a broadly discussed climate change acceleration is certainly growing - but I doubt even climate change skeptics would suggest that it was unexpected.

<comment><USER9> More like 100+ years. We've known about this for a really long time.

[http://www.snopes.com/1912-article-global- warming/](http://www.snopes.com/1912-article-global-warming/)

<comment><USER10> Up until the 1950s though it was thought that water vapor saturation of the IR absorption lines would nullify any effect of increasing CO2 concentrations.

It wasn't until the USAF started doing careful analysis of the upper atmosphere that it was discovered that the upper atmosphere is dry enough that increasing concentrations of CO2 there will act like throwing a warm blanket around the planet and that the sea-level saturation of H2O wouldn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Climate change has been the "asteroid" heading to earth for a 100 years, directed here by our own doing. We're all at varying points of the grief spectrum. Personally I'm in the acceptance stage. It's going to happen, it will likely lead to societal and economic collapse to some degree, and that is the only thing that will _maybe_ change the way we do business.

</comment><comment><USER12> The quicker the Arctic ice melts, the sooner Russia can dominate it.

I wonder how long it will be until the US starts caring.

<comment><USER13> Putine and Trump have an agreement:

\- russia will extract the oil of the (now ice-free) arctic ocean

\- consumerism will convert that oil into CO2

\- temperature will continue to rise

\- antarctica will eventually become ice-free

\- the US will extract the oil of antarctica

\- consumerism will convert that oil into CO2

\- russia will eventually become ice-free

\- russia will extract the oil of the (now ice-free) russia

\- consumerism will convert that oil into CO2

\- temperature will continue to rise

\- shareholders of air conditionning companies are now rich enough to leave the earth and live in suborbital stations

\- the other humans live like mad max

\- ...?

<comment><USER14> I don't underestimate the class based sabotage. Don't think the human primate won't sell out is own kind, just because they're warned in advance.

The incuriousity of U.S. media really is remarkably repellant. None of the presidential debates brought up climate change at all. No one asks whether the politician believes the ozone hole problem was real, and whether it was set on a course of self repair by global political agreement, and local legal enforcement. Whether there was a free market fix for this in any sane time frame. No questions. That's holding people too accountable somehow.

Asking if people understand the ozone hole is maybe like asking whether 2+2=4 or some other value. Sure they'd say 4 (ozone problem was real) but somehow global warming is some 6+6!=12 but no one is ever held accountable for such absurdity. And why? The general population doesn't count that high. So the answer is in fact debatable. There's no common frame of reference with a huge percent of the American population.

Meanwhile in California, it is pretty much widely accepted. But they have "socialist" education and infrastructure investment; not this free market starve the beast strategy being used in bum fuck Kansas and Texas where people are getting dumber than rocks by the day, and like it, because their taxes are lower and Jesus isn't questioned. But they wonder why business won't move there.

Anyway this can't be treated as a problem only majoritatian democracy can solve. Leave it up to the majority and it's hopeless. This is a consensual problem, work the system just like this is a minority right, even though in the end the majority benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In addition to scrambling to try to slow or halt antropogenic climate change, or doubting that it's caused by humans and pretending the entire topic is taboo, why isn't there a concerted effort (yet) to try to get our societies to adapt, mitigate, or thrive in this new reality?

Is this simply the status quo and isn't talked about?

Or we're not that desperate yet, only some places of the world like the Maldives, Tuvalu, and Solomon Islands?

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe if the CO2 quotas wasn't in reality a ponzy scheme it would have made it easier to sell this doomsday scenario to the avarage joe. Its quite obvious that climate change has grown into an industry of lobbyists and worthless quotas swapping hands for billions of dollars. An absolutely worthless industry that has no progress to show even after decades.

The only real solution to global warming caused by man is depopulating the planet (Think Georgia guidestones) is that really something you want to do?

<comment><USER17> Yes, "cap and trade" plans are completely inadequate to address the problem, but "the only real solution is man depopulating the planet" seems questionable given that burning fossil fuels is not a sine qua non of continued human existence.

<comment><USER16> Since the human race is no way near a decline in growth, reducing fossil fuel use is like pissing your pants to keep yourself warm.

<comment><USER18> _" reducing fossil fuel use is like pissing your pants to keep yourself warm."_

Bullshit, there are already many countries(0) that generate >90% of their electricity using renewable sources. Given the fast growing electric motor industry, we could get rid of fossil fuels pretty fast. It's only a political question, not technological.

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources)

<comment><USER16> Yes, and so what? 90% less fossil fuel spend in electricity does not equal a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for a person (Humans emit greenhouse gasses directly and indirectly for alot of other purposes than electricity).

So maybe you can fit 90% more people into the equation if you reduce their emissions sufficiently, but that will be voided by the exponential growth of the human population within generations.

<comment><USER17> It's less than clear that the human population is going to continue growing at breakneck speed when industrialization is generally associated with much lower birth rates, and even staving off the problem for "generations" would be a success.

<comment><USER16> correlation does not mean causation... China had a birthrate boom during their industrilaization, so did Syria.

It is a culture thing, not a socioeconomic thing imo.

<comment><USER17> > Findings from a 2015 government census show that the average Chinese woman > has 1.05 children — a legacy of the one-child policy that changed on Jan. 1 > to a two-child policy. It is the lowest fertility rate in the world, > according to People's Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist > Party.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/world/asia/china- fertility...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/world/asia/china-fertility- birth.html)

It's logical that people would stop having so many kids once a society has industrialized because the cost of raising and educating them is relatively more expensive while the benefit to having them labor with you is essentially gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Surely this must be a "hoax" perpetrated by Mother Nature on Humankind...

...just like the "Little Ice Age" that led to harsh weather, droughts, famines, wars, and various epidemics in Europe from the 14th to the 19th century.[1]

[1] [http://www.history.com/news/little-ice-age-big- consequences](http://www.history.com/news/little-ice-age-big-consequences)

<comment><USER20> How does nature play a "hoax"? The Little Ice Age was not caused by humans, whereas the science tells us that global warming _is_ caused by human activity.

<comment><USER19> My comment was meant to be funny -- a reference to individuals who, unlike me, actually think climate change is a hoax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article referenced is an example of propaganda by selecting the facts that fit the narrative. The authors conveniently fail to mention that there some areas on Earth that are actually cooling (Antarctica being the prime example [1], but there are others).

Articles like the above are the reason why I don't trust research/finding being published anymore - at least not without full disclosure who paid for that research. The ugly truth is that scientists need money, and some have no problem manipulating data, per their sponsors' interests.

This applies to both sides of the climate debate equally.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-20/antarctic...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-20/antarctic- peninsula-cooled-in-past-two-decades-as-world-warmed)

</comment><comment><USER22> Show me some data from over hundred thousands of years, it has been warmer and it has been colder. Nature will have its way.

<comment><USER23> Ok. Do you mind if we as a human race try to protect ourselves from nature having its way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> But in the mean while, the ice mass of the Antarctic is growing: [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass- gains-o...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of- antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses)

<comment><USER24> But it's not really balancing out if you look at the global totals. [https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea- ice-...](https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent- area/grf/nsidc_global_area_byyear_b.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It has been warmer before, only a few thousand years ago and the proof is there that it may have had many previous ice free periods. there is also proof that just a thousand years ago we were warmed and that is based on Chinese studies of clams.

the key take away is that climate is more cyclical than many are willing to give credit too, studies of the Greenland Blocking Index when taken back more than a hundred years show the occurrences of similar warming periods.

So what to do about, study it and try to understand all the causes without focusing on simplistic the sky is falling scares which rarely do more than tire an already tired public of what many perceive as merely scare tactics

<comment><USER26> It's not the absolute temperature that is alarming. It is the change in temperature. Previous changes have been over millennia. These changes have been over 100 years. The graphic that puts it in the best perspective I have seen is an xkcd cartoon (be sure to scroll all the way to the end):

[https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

<comment><USER27> You know, my takeaway from that graphic is that higher temperatures appear to be pretty well-correlated with improved human quality of life.

And of course the graphic _doesn 't_ show a cost-benefit analysis for any of its three future scenarios. Would it be worth a nickel to preserve the current environment exactly as it is? Maybe (although maybe some change would be good; I don't know). Would it be worth $1 quadrillion a day to prevent a single town of 1,000 people from being submerged by rising oceans? Almost certainly not.

What are the costs of each scenario, and what are the benefits? Is it worth losing a few houses in Miami if it means that Oslo produces more food?

That the world has always been changing has _always_ been true, whether respecting climate or any number of other factors. That we're affected by change has also always been true. That we _can_ have an effect on it is relatively new, and that we _ought_ to is unproven. Frankly, the 20th century makes me very suspicious of any technocratic solution which claims to be able to predict every possibility and make the best choice (remember the Aswan Dam!). That doesn't mean we should do nothing, either (doing nothing is itself a choice which needs to be justified too!), but it means we should be very suspicious of easy answers which claim to be all benefit and no cost.

<comment><USER3> You really don't understand anything about dynamical systems do you? It's incredibly naive to assume we will land in some nice stable equilibrium where it's a couple of degrees warmer globally. The truth is we don't know where the climate will end up, but we know that we are in the process of exiting our current 'stable equilibrium'. The worst case scenario (and that is the only one we should be concerned with!) is a global mass extinction event. We've already had 5 of them - one of which was due to runaway greenhouse warming - [https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five- extinction...](https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions)

<comment><USER28> If 5 global mass extinction events have already happened without any human intervention (positive or negative), why do we think we can stop the 6?

I'd assume from that data, that its going to happen regardless of what we do.

<comment><USER29> Your response to possible global mass extinction is to shrug and say whattyagonnado?

<comment><USER28> Yeah, sort of, like we can try to escape earth, or build something underground, or whatever sci-fi fantasy you like.

But if its our species time to go, than that is what will be.

I'm more of a determinist than a defeatist, I don't really think things could be any different than they already are.

"Nothing occurs at random, but everything for a reason and by necessity." Leucippus

<comment><USER30> So basically we have no free will so why should we change things? what.

"if it's our species time to go"

but it's NOT. we can make a change. this is like seeing a bulldozer slowly approaching your house - and instead of picking up and moving, despite the difficult, resigning yourself to death. It's illogical, it makes no sense.

<comment><USER28> This isn't a philosophical debate, but consider something like physicalism rather than free will.... No point in getting into a debate about that, but if you believe in science then you kind of have to believe in determinism.

We aren't really special, we ONLY think we are, we are restricted to the same laws as all other animals over all of time. We THINK we are different and ACT differently, but the 'effects' will still come to our 'causes.'

Take a stoic perspective rather than a defeatist one on the deterministic nature of things and it stops being something to get angry about.

<comment><USER30> You're telling me that this isn't a philosophical debate and then telling me a philosophical opinion.

Pragmatically, we make decisions. If a car is flying at you at high speed, stopping to think about determinism means you die instead of just jumping to the side and living.

your contribution here is literally null, que sera sera. Yes, the future is not ours to see, but guess what: that means it isn't set in stone.

case in point: heizenberg. measuring something by bouncing photons off it changes it's path. you can't know the future without changing it. thus we can change the future.

<comment><USER28> Not sure you understand determinism.

Both your examples are examples of deterministic responses.

Also, not knowing what the future will bring, doesn't mean that its not determined to a certain way.

<comment><USER30> to apply my point - yes, it is determined that the climate will change, temperature will drop and rise. claiming that current changes are a part of this natural change is to say that it was pre-determined, and we didn't do anything to change this.

your mistake is elucidated when you consider this analogy:

'the earth is going to be consumed by the sun eventually. so we shouldn't do anything to save our environment.'

The kind of future you're talking about is going to happen whether we like it or not. but it's SO FAR away. the changes in climate that you say are pre- determined are on a geological time-scale.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open-plan offices are making workers sick - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,24906913-5017672,00.html <comment><USER2> Yes! ... I actually work from home, but I went into the office for two weeks this past August to get to know the guys I work for. Their office is an open plan (one big room with a long E[ish]-shaped desk and people sitting at various points along the E).

Two main things I noticed:

1\. Office distractions were MUCH harder for me to deal with than home distractions. Distractions at home are generally things I self impose and can control with will power (i.e., not playing with the cat, not turning on the TV, not getting a snack, etc.)... but in the office there was stuff going on all around me and no way to shut it out.

2\. The guy sitting next to me was sick -- when I got back to my home office two weeks later, so was I. (Granted, travel could have been a factor here -- I live in the US and their offices are a 20 hour plane ride away in Australia.)

Oh, I hear the bug went around the entire office after I left, too.

<comment><USER3> The transmission of illnesses would be greatly reduced if companies gave decent sick time benefits. At my company, my sick time is rolled into my vacation time. If I am take off work for an illness, it counts against my vacation time.

I once was sick with mono for 4 weeks and went to work miserable everyday. I did almost nothing but sit and stare at my monitor all day.

<comment><USER4> That's atrocious. I think it's probably illegal in the UK - and we have 20-30 days of paid vacation!

I'm surprised you managed to stay awake with mono... I remember I stayed in bed for about 20 hours out of every 24, for about 6 weeks.

<comment><USER5> This is something that's becoming more common in the US - "personal time" replaces sick and vacation time. Ostensibly, it's to encourage people scheduling time off than feeling like they need to "burn through" their sick time every year. However, I think it may have to do with paying out accrued vacation time for employees. I'm not well enough versed in HR stuff to speak to that though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whilst we all love to hate overcrowded offices, I really don't think that there's any problems with open plan offices. I worked in those for 4 years and never had an issue with them. Sure, there is a slight decrease in your personal productivity due to the likelihood of distractions and interruptions, but that is balanced by an increase in team productivity thanks to an increase in communication.

Work is not all about your own personal work. In fact, in the large organisations where I worked, I'd say at least 50% of the work that people ended up doing was a result of miscommunication, and so there are clearly huge benefits in finding ways to decrease that miscommunication.

Even programming work was largely dependent on communication. The projects where I worked didn't do any rocket science that required weeks of solitary work to chew through, but it did require a good understanding of arcane, bizarre business (finance) rules and interface requirements, and the bottleneck there was definitely communication rather than concentration.

<comment><USER6> That's funny because the moment you put programmers in warehouse everyone of them puts on headphones - as such no communication is increased.

<comment><USER4> Even with headphones you're more likely to have a chat with someone who's a couple of desks away in an open plan office than someone who's in a separate office.

<comment><USER7> not necessarily true. it's much harder to "bother" someone who is visually and audibly giving cues he doesn't want to be bothered, than with someone whom you simply skype in with once a day. maybe you can "communicate" more frequently with the former, but the interactions may in fact be less productive than an open atmosphere.

open plan offices may actually make people more defensive about distractions and hurt team interactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "and using open-plan designs can save 20 per cent on construction"

That's all? Doesn't sound right, if you put people in offices each person gets a lot more space, so you'd need a bigger building, etc. I think it's a lot more than 20 percent.

<comment><USER9> It depends. A startup can move into a big open loft, buy $50 folding tables from Staples which are 2" too high and cause intense pain when you type, and spend nothing.

On the other hand, if you compare the cost of a typical, Class-A cubicle installation to a typical Class-A private office instalation, they're about the same. In both cases you give workers about 100 square feet of personal space; the main difference is whether you build drywall partitions, which is relatively cheap, or buy fancy cubicle systems, which is actually more expensive. The cubicle systems are supposed to be a bargain "in the long run" because you can move or reconfigure them, something which literally never happens in the real world.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but you can depreciate cubicle systems, which is something you can't do with drywall.

Curiously, cubes count as office furniture (and hence business machines), which means that you can depreciate it much more efficiently than you can if it was a capital improvement cost, which makes it cheaper on paper. Even better, if you've got some crafty people, you can have someone else own the things and lease the cubes - which is even better from a tax point of view.

While this probably doesn't apply in a startup context, it has a significant impact if you're moving into a larger space and will be paying for the improvements yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You could read this research, or just have read Peopleware from, what, 15 years ago? DeMarco and Lister nail everything you've ever thought about working in an office.

If you haven't read this you should have! [http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware- Productive-Projects-Teams-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive- Projects-Teams-Second/dp/0932633439) I think Joel just cribs articles directly from it some days ;)

<comment><USER12> Well, he has definitely read it.

[http://www.amazon.com/review/RYVTUPDAUANZW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_per...](http://www.amazon.com/review/RYVTUPDAUANZW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

Thanks for the link.

<comment><USER11> I know Joel has read it, Joel is one of the biggest blogging proponents of a lot of their philosophy. I only meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek. I don't think Joel is trying to rip those guys off at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would like a hybrid office inspired by libraries... one center room with an open layout, one side room with general use study carrels which is quiet/soundproofed... and maybe one or two small rooms for private group meetings. The open layout in the middle will encourage interaction, but for people who have to disconnect and focus they can go claim a study carrel in the quiet room. What do you think?

<comment><USER14> The collaborative-space-plus-private-retreat model has been discussed many times, and I favor it too. But I've never heard the library analogy before. That's very intriguing. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has anyone studied the environments that great products were produced in (eg, Xerox Parc, Apple)?

<comment><USER13> Steve Jobs guided the design of the Pixar building. Here's a quote from Brad Bird (director of The Incredibles, Ratatouille):

"Then there's our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center--which initially drove us crazy--so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company."

Edit: here's the source article, although you'd have to register to read the whole thing: [http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/innovation_lessons_from_pix...](http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/innovation_lessons_from_pixar_an_interview_with_oscar- winning_director_brad_bird_2127)

<comment><USER15> Thanks, that's an interesting data point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd be surprised if cubicles fared any better.

The real problem is packing large numbers of people in a big warehouse, regardless of walls. I think the best solution is having a small number of people working on the same project share an office. There should be numerous small conference rooms for when maximum concentration is required.

<comment><USER16> "The research found that the traditional design was better - small, private closed offices."

They're not suggesting the use of cubicles - I know I wouldn't really consider cubicles to be much different than open plan offices.

<comment><USER17> Traditional design may be better for health, but it destroys collaboration. IMHO the best office design I've ever been in were simple team rooms - everyone on a team (or sub-team) would work in a large office that they can tailor the way they like (lighting, decor, etc). This really helped build team cohesion, and since everyone is just a shout away it broke down the walls preventing collaboration.

And I suppose it has the added benefit of only getting one team sick at a time :)

<comment><USER16> It really depends on the type of work you're doing. For jobs that require a lot of collaboration, open areas holding around 10 people can be good. Some jobs would benefit more from having offices that hold 2-3 people each, and for jobs that require you to be on the phone a lot (sales, marketing, support, etc.) private offices really are a better option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I worked in a Web agency a few months ago and it was an open-plan office, with many 4-places tables. There was a table for the designers, another for the devs, etc. There is a high staff turnover in this company. I did not realize it until i came accross this article, but the open-plan architecture of the office may be a big reason why i left this company. I was not comfortable with all the noises. Now i work in my apartment and i'm happy with that.

</comment><comment><USER19> I lived in a cube for a good long while but have had an office for the past ten years. An office is nice but I really miss the camaraderie of being the 14th cube in the 8th row after the water cooler. Maybe it was a unique situation but I was surrounded by interesting people with cool hobbies that told great stories. There was always a group that was heading our for lunch and plenty of people to informally work on problems with. As for illness, I don't need co-workers to get me sick... I've outsourced that responsibility to my kids.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think it has a lot to do with corporate climate, more than the studies are capturing. I have worked in small offices, cubeland, and open office plans. I have been in open office plans where communication was non-existent, and in small offices where we communicated well.

My current place is a very open floorplan, but it just works. We all know that one of the problems we have is that we spread around disease more than we would like. But the thing is we are all extremely happy with the format, and with the benefits we get out of it. There have been offers made in the past to change it, and the team decided to turn it down.

I think breaking it down to floorplan alone doesn't address the issue fully.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've worked in an open-plan office for the last 6 1/2 years, and I'd never go back to cubes, or even to private offices. The level of collaboration and knowledge-sharing is much, much higher, and while the level of distraction and ambient noise is higher, I find that the increased communication is so valuable that the increased distraction level is more than worth the tradeoff.

From the responses here, I'm guessing not a lot of people on this board have tried XP or any other programming methodology that thrives on high-bandwidth communication. There are plenty of other development methodologies that work for people, of course, but XP and anything close to it really requires a constant level of communication betweeen developers, product managers (and customers), and testers that's just impossible to achieve if you're not physically sitting right next to everyone. In the worst case, maybe the distractions mean I only get 6 hours of work done in an 8 hour day, but it's the right 6 hours of stuff, which isn't always the case when I can't constantly talk with everyone else.

It's certainly possible that people have tried XP with pair programming, story cards, etc. and just hate it, but my experience with new hires is that there's often a lot of initial hostility to the open seating plan, but after a few months most people figure out how to deal with the distractions (generally via headphones or even earplugs if necessary) while coming to appreciate the benefits of a high level of cross-team communication.

<comment><USER22> I worked for a company that has an open-plan office and the work environment did not do anything to improve in-person communication between developers. I'm sure that it is possible for an open-plan office to be a positive thing, but by itself there is no added benefit. The reason that having an open-plan office made no difference was because everyone communicated via IRC. I would spend more time typing questions into IRC than I would spend talking to co- workers who were sitting right next to me with their headphones on. The fact that the company had an open-plan office did nothing to prevent IRC from being the main communication vehicle.

There were definitely positive things about IRC being the main communication tool, but it killed off any potential benefit that having an open-plan office would provide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> We offer unlimited sick time, I think that makes a big difference. I don't know if I buy this though, isn't isolation a problem too? I like a mixed space, private areas for people, but with many open collaboration areas. Give people laptops and they can run around.

Tiny cubes are the worst of both worlds. Can't have a private phone call. Can't pair program or work with others.

</comment><comment><USER24> Once again, correlation != cause

There are pros and cons both ways. Sometimes you just gotta be alone and other times you gotta be together. Depends on what you're doing and who you're working with.

And the talk about viruses was hilarious. Perhaps they should turn off the AC and open a few windows on nice days. That probably has much more influence than where you place your internal walls.

<comment><USER25> In most offices, the AC is centrally controlled by the building management. Many office buildings also have windows that don't open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This Programmer's Stone has a lot to say about the whole subject, here's an entry point:

[http://the-programmers-stone.com/about/implications-for-soft...](http://the- programmers-stone.com/about/implications-for-software-engineers)

</comment><comment><USER27> The real questions are: 1) how much do open-plan offices save and 2) what is the increased rate of illness (ie, how much productivity is lost?). Anyone have any data?

</comment><comment><USER28> This article is all over the news but I can't get a copy of the original paper.

</comment><comment><USER29> How do coworking sites like Betahouse manage this issue?

</comment><comment><USER30> Open-plan sucks, as anyone who's had issues with panic attacks can attest. Although there are situations that require it, there's no question that the bad outweighs the good for programmers.

I don't think that open-plan office layouts aid collaboration. It creates a lot of hostility and stress that don't need to exist.

Open-plan is the modern analogue of the assembly-line/factory work environment. I'd guess that the productivity loss for a programmer in that environment is 70-80 percent.

<comment><USER21> As per my other comment, I've worked in an open plan for 6 1/2 years and I'd say our development team is pretty highly productive. I haven't seen any resulting hostility or stress, it certainly doesn't feel like an assembly line, and we get a lot of communication benefits from it.

Have you experienced/heard of such horror stories yourself? I'm guessing there are good ways to do an open-plan office and bad ways to do it, but I personally haven't seen any of the bad ways.

<comment><USER26> You've done it that long? How many people in the room? I've done it twice, with maybe 30 and then again with 20 people and hated it both times. Sometimes as a programmer you need to think.

I confess I liked one aspect, the feeling of being in contact with people, but it wasn't productive, I could almost always hear 3 conversations going at once. The worst was, packing people at long tables with laptops. Not even any place to put books. Teh shite, a triumph of cost-cutting and having Indians willing to put up with anything.

Probably for me, high-walled cubicles with not too many people in the same room is a good compromise.

<comment><USER21> We don't really pack people in or use laptops, we have clusters of 4 or 6 desks that form larger rectangles and which are then stacked back-to-back, so you can easily talk with the people next to/across from you in the desk cluster or you can easily turn around and talk with the people at the next cluster. We generally organize each sub-team as 2 or 3 clusters of desks, with 4-6 developers sitting back-to-back and QA and PM on the opposite sides of the cluster. It makes pair-programming much easier, since all the developer's chairs are in the same open area, so you can easily pair with someone to the side or that sits behind you.

My current part of the floor has maybe 35 people in it, and there's kind of four sides of a rectangle to the building, so overall there are about 140 people or so on the floor. Generally, the clusters are spread out enough that you can't hear conversations that are happening more than about 20 feet away anyway, so the primary conversations you'll overhear are from other people on your sub-team, which are exactly the conversations you really want to be overhearing anyway. It really helps to keep everyone on the team in the loop about what's going on.

We have offices around the perimeter of the building that are unused so that people can grab them to have impromptu whiteboard discussions or make phone calls, which also keeps the general noise level down.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Internships - Opportunities and Questions - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN, I am a British student studying in the UK and following experiences with both an IT Corporate and a startup, I am exploring potential opportunities for the summer ahead. As such I was hoping HN members could both answer a few key questions and also advise on and suggest internships and technology schemes around the world.
1) Can non-US Students undertake internships (join startups on a temporary basis) without a complicated visa application process? if no, do any firms offer experience to non-US Citizens helping with visa approval.
2) Outside the US, are there any other regions (excluding europe) with a number of startups which offer experience to Citizens of the UK/Europeans.
3) Apart from the Beckman Center for Internet & Society (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/7315), are there any other technology related academic programs for non-US Citizens around the world?
4) For UK and European-based firms who offer internships/experience - are they all pure-coding jobs? - (I am aware of job sites such as Enternships & WorkinStartups, but am interested just in case some firms are not aware of these sites but have opportunities available)
I appreciate this is quite an extensive collection of questions and whilst I am clearly interested in a personal capacity, I am also hoping to start a discussion for the many other HN members who happen to be studying around the world and equally are investigating options for the summer ahead. Ultimately any information about internships and technology experience opportunities for undergraduates is welcomed here.
Thanks <comment><USER2> 1) No. You'll need a J-1 visa and that usually takes a bit of time.

2) You might want to look into Chile or Brazil, a lot of companies seem to be sprawling there. Be warned that you won't make the seem money you can make in the UK or most of western Europe.

4) I had friends interning in Hungary and Berlin. One of them got to write a F# -> JS compiler. The other one got more involved with SEO and marketing. You can find all sort of jobs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment, where would you recommend looking?

<comment><USER2> Without knowing what you're good at I can't really give you specific answers, but here are some tips:

* Most early stage startups don't have the money to hire and relocate an intern.

* Most early stage startups are not interested in interns.

* Big companies (Google, Microsoft) have a really good hiring process for interns. You might not be super interested in what they offer you but if you get an internship there it will look good on your resume and you will learn stuff.

* I know you wanted to exclude Europe in the list, but I know that several companies in Berlin are hiring interns (MoviePilot and Wooga come to mind).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would also really appreciate any ideas or suggestions?</comment>


Median Family Income Is Lower Today Than in 1989 - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/09/18/median_family_income_since_1989_is_the_stagnation_real.html

<comment><USER2> Elizabeth Warren has answers:

The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class with Elizabeth Warren [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A)

Everyone should watch the video. She answers for the question of having more cars etc.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite talks/videos? - <AUTHOR>

..related to technology, of course. <comment><USER2> I love DHH's talk from Startup School "The Secret to Making Money Online". Seems like his "charge people to use your service" become a lot more relevant since the recession hit.

[http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/97862/DHH_Talk__Startup_School...](http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/97862/DHH_Talk__Startup_School_2008)

Frankly I often mentally reference PG's startup school talk: solving a problem for people whose hair is on fire. People who have a big problem that need any solution urgently.

[http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/98110/Paul_Graham_Partner_Y_Co...](http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/98110/Paul_Graham_Partner_Y_Combinator_Founde)

And of course, both of Hans Rosling's talks on global poverty trends from TED. The technology behind his presentations is fascinating, but the historical context he adds as a speaker pushes these two videos over the top for me.

<http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/hans_rosling.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> We've been working to assemble lots of great talks and videos both from entrepreneurs and investors on StartupTweet. We're working on a prettier interface as well...

<http://startuptweet.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> Luis von Ahn - Human Computation

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143></comment>


Real-time updates without JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://harmless.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> TLDR: It's a basic chat app. It's using a streaming http connection and css "::before" to reverse the order of new output, so it doesn't need javascript. Interesting hack, but...

<comment><USER3> But what?

<comment><USER4> It breaks when you press `esc`. Either that, or the DOM just keeps growing and hogging memory until the tab eventually becomes unresponsive or crashes

<comment><AUTHOR> Presumably you'll eventually write something rather than lurking for hours and then it'll refresh.

<comment><USER4> I mean, sure, it works just fine if people refrain from doing certain arbitrary things (such as the scripted spamming that's happening as I write this), but that's why the grandparent comment said it was a hack and not a trick that one might want to attempt in production.

<comment><AUTHOR> The spam had nothing to do with not using Javascript. I could easily have added a CAPTCHA or required accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you liked that, you might also enjoy this little hack. How about real-time updates without JavaScript _or_ CSS tricks?

[http://zesty.ca/chat](http://zesty.ca/chat)

(1999)

<comment><USER6> At the bottom it says that it uses JS to not require refreshing after each message. This is not necessary as the form can submit to a frame using the target attribute without refreshing the parent frame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a funny trick, and known for ages, except the CSS-based re-ordering of the incoming info.

It's probably not practical for a chat app (DOM just grows infinitely), but it's a great way to show progress of a longish-running process with a bare minimum of means.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a really cool hack. Is the source code available somewhere? I understand how the updates are showing up in my browser (using CSS ::before and never closing the connection), but can't figure out how the post works without refreshing the page. Can't view source because the page never actually finishes returning. I'm probably forgetting something basic.

<comment><AUTHOR> The POST requests do refresh the page for the poster. But not for the viewers. For everyone else it just streams the HTML to them using chunked encoding.

It's written in Golang and hosted on a free Heroku instance. I'll probably upload the code somewhere after a bit.

<comment><USER8> Oh wow, I couldn't really notice the page refreshing at all... Nice job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. There's a subtle trick where new comments (from streamed updates) have a CSS animation but comments from the page reload don't. It seems to make it feel more seamless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the demonstration. I didn't know this chunked encoding technique before.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's being flooded with spam now. This is why we can't have nice things.

Anyway, it was just a proof of concept. The spam could be blocking using some captcha or registration if necessary.

</comment><comment><USER9> Compared to using a socket server, how many connections can this server maintain?

<comment><USER10> Presumably the exact same number. A TCP connection is a TCP connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess this works by keeping the connexion alive and streaming packets of data, taking advantage of the browsers capacity to render HTML before the whole source is actually loaded.

OP?

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. It's a small Golang server that keeps the connection alive with chunked transfer encoding. From the browser's perspective it's like a really slowly loading page.

The connection count is updated by sending some inline CSS ::before content changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> And someone wrote a script to overload it. ~Nice Try~ :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Overloading it was failing. But the spam was too much (it was posting so fast you couldn't read anything). I meant for this to just be a fun example of noscript updates so I'm probably not going to add captcha/IP filtering or anything.

People...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also no filtering, you can just chuck raw HTML in there

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not true. I allowed b, u, i for a while but people kept not closing them so even those are disabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> interesting that neither chrome or firefox network dev tools can/will show a response for the 'GET' request

</comment><comment><USER15> Never can have nice things......

</comment><comment><USER16> What's with the shitty people? "Europeans are useless", "fuck white people", "fuck black people" etc. Ludicrous.

<comment><USER17> Keep in mind these are the same people whose comments you're reading on HN and the same people upvoting/downvoting whether or not your contributions are seen. Pure anonymity sucks.

Also see John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad theory: [https://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)

<comment><USER16> > Keep in mind these are the same people whose comments you're reading on HN > and the same people upvoting/downvoting whether or not your contributions > are seen.

Yeah I'm just starting to realise this. Big disappointment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Meta refresh has been used with WebCams for ages.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not using meta refresh. The content is streaming.</comment></comment>


"PSD is not my favorite file format" - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/xee/source/browse/XeePhotoshopLoader.m?r=f16763d221dfca6253983824b470adf553a19e06#108 <comment><USER2> It's amazing that a format with a formal specification can be so poorly thought out.</comment>


Show HN: Hide downvotes on HN - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/sillysaurus/4d917e925548e4c7ec6f6bb96c94ef5c <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this Tampermonkey script to modify HN in two ways:

\- Hide your comment scores

\- Scramble your karma counters

This prevents you from knowing immediately when your comments have been upvoted or downvoted. Your submissions are left alone.

Here's what that looks like: [http://i.imgur.com/vPjC0uk.png](http://i.imgur.com/vPjC0uk.png)

To install:

1\. Install Tampermonkey.

\- Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo?hl=en)

\- Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/tampermonkey/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/tampermonkey/)

2\. Click "Create new script": [http://i.imgur.com/OycraO1.png](http://i.imgur.com/OycraO1.png)

3\. Copy the contents of [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/sillysaurus/4d917e925548e...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/sillysaurus/4d917e925548e4c7ec6f6bb96c94ef5c/raw) and paste it into the new script.

4\. Click the save icon in the upper-left.

Why?

HN downvotes sometimes feel like a slap in the face. This was ok when HN was small, since downvotes were used judiciously. Now that HN is very large, I find it's much more pleasant to browse HN with this script enabled.

<comment><USER2> That is really cool.

FWIW, one could think of downvotes as kudos for thinking differently.

<comment><USER3> And kudos for superb trolling

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You aren't the only person to have drawn this conclusion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14406678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14406678)

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, cool. Note that my variant doesn't un-grey comments, so you'll be able to apply corrective upvotes to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's the most valuable text I've ever copy and pasted on HN.

It seems to work if you just paste it into console.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can install it persistently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456203)

(Sorry that wasn't very clear.)</comment></comment>