Seek and Ye Shall Find (Maybe) (1996) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/1996/05/indexweb/ <comment><USER2> This is a cool article. It helps explain what how people approached the web abs search before Google, which I know little about, and in a way explains Google's rise (without ever mentioning it).

Seen today, it's remarkable how human these early search engines were. For example, Yahoo:

> Yahoo! works like this: First, the URLs of new Web sites are collected. Most > of these come by email from people who want their sites listed, and some > come from Yahoo!'s spider – a simple program that scans the Web, crawling > from link to link in search of new sites. Then, one of twenty human > classifiers at Yahoo! looks the Web site over and determines how to > categorize it.

Or Oracle:

> Already, more than 100 person-years have been spent building ConText's > database of knowledge. To do so, Oracle has employed dozens of > "lexicographers," a lofty title for what are often college interns who do > the necessary legwork. "We've sent people to grocery stores, to scientific > conferences, even sex shops," said Wical, with a touch of amazement at the > resources Oracle can marshal. There, the lexicographers identify the > subfields of metallurgy, for example, or the types of pornography, and then > incorporate the results into ConText's ontology.

Reading through these and other search engine ideas helps illustrate what set PageRank apart -- nothing listed here hits on the core idea of organizing pages by their relations/links to other pages. Instead, everything is about looking at the content of the page itself and figuring out where it fits. Viewing the internet as a basically relational object seems to have been a big step to take, and perhaps required looking at the internet as its own new thing instead of a souped up library or set of TV channels.</comment>


Real-time Super Simple Polls - <AUTHOR> https://oneclickbattle.com/ <comment><USER2> Great tool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Give us feedback when you use it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love it!

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome!

<comment><AUTHOR> Merci! Still working hard to make it better ;)</comment></comment>


How to Trick People into Saving Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-to-trick-people-into-saving-money/521421/ <comment><USER2> Middle Class is not what it used to be. Living paycheck to paycheck is not middle class.</comment>


...all programming, will, in one sense, be maintenance programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2011-02.html#e2011-02-22T16_06_38.htm <comment><USER2> There will always be a place for innovation, regardless of how software is architected. Gluing libraries together may seem like an ignorant approach to how a system truly operates, but these are powerful tools and allow the development of massively powerful (if inefficient) systems quickly and cheaply. I don't know why people fear abstraction so much, the same arguments have been made regarding assembly and memory management, but these become less pertinent (or more accurately, niched concerns) every day.</comment>


Please Review my Christmas Present App: Receiving.It - <AUTHOR> http://receiving.it/

<comment><USER2> Is there a way to save the lists?

It wasn't immediately apparent to me that I could _name_ the list up near the top. I would change this to be a more obviously an input field.

As far as being a Christmas Present app...do you mean a way of listing presents that you received? Or presents that you want? If the latter, you should include a way to list the price and a link to the item.

(I made a very similar app to this)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm running Chrome and the entry table is overlapping the testimonials on the left when my window is not maximized.

Also, you could probably streamline list creating by having the confirmation be the same page as the entry page. Hitting the confirmation page without any link back or redirect could diminish subsequent use.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't think it's working in Chrome :-(</comment>


Acorns – Automatically Invest Your Spare Change - <AUTHOR> http://www.acorns.com <comment><USER2> Their fees aren't actually that low. In fact with their fee structure and inflation, you're likely to lose money in the long run, or at least underperform against the stock market. It seems like a great idea on the surface though.

</comment><comment><USER3> The fees are too high. I get that they're much lower compared to what a hedge fund might charge, or even the run of the mill mutual fund, but consider this:

The average investor over the previous 10 years earned a 2.6% net annualized return ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2014/04/24/why-the- avera...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2014/04/24/why-the-average- investors-investment-return-is-so-low/)). The performance actually gets worse over longer timeframes.

That means that at the high end of Acorn's fee structure, the average investor is paying almost 20% of his investment earnings on Acorn management fees. That's high!

Considering the platform is all automated (according to Acorn), I'm not sure what part of Acorn's system demands such fees, as really all it's doing is shifting funds around through a set of simple rules (unless I'm not understanding completely?)

What I'd really like to see is an open source passive investing platform which you can hook up to your bank and your broker's API (if both of those even exist), with a config file where you state your preferred portfolio breakdown (i.e. s&p 10%, bonds 10%, stock XYZ 5%, gold 10%, euro 20%) along with specifying frequency and amount of transfers from bank -> brokerage account, which would handle all buying and selling and periodic rebalancing. I wouldn't be surprised if some brokers already offer something similar and with no extra fees on top of normal trade fees.

<comment><USER4> You should check out Wealthfront. They automate your passive investing for you. No trading fees and only 0.25% fee after the first $10k free.

<comment><USER5> check out levered returns if you want to do it yourself

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of my friends who aren't experienced investors are really excited by this. The fact that they will automagically invest a small amount of money without having to think about moving money or choose what to invest in seems great to them. I personally would rather decide how much to invest and what in myself so I am not particularly interested in paying someone else fees to take this control away from me.

But definitely a cool product for the average person who doesn't want to put any time/effort into investing.

<comment><USER7> For the person who wants to put time/effort into investing, where you suggest they start?

<comment><USER8> With your companies 401k or equivalent. Just put whatever percentage you want into a low cost, broad index fund. The most important part is to make this allocation before your paycheck gets cut (i.e. you never see the money).

<comment><USER9> Also make sure to change jobs every few years so you can move money from the 401k to an IRA without a tax hit. 401k's tend to suck - high fees, low returns, little competition. Most of the funds in your 401k are there because a fund salesman took an HR person out to a steak dinner.

When you change jobs, always move the 401k into an IRA and put the money into low cost ETFs.

<comment><USER10> Unless you have enough income to be over the Roth IRA contribution limits and want to make yearly backdoor Roth IRA contributions (non-deductible traditional contribution followed by a rollover to a Roth IRA). If you have a traditional IRA there can be some tax complications due to the pro-rata rule. If any traditional contributions are instead in a 401k the conversion is a lot simpler, and tax-free.

The other way around it is to open an individual 401k if you have any self- employment income, but that involves a bit more paperwork than an IRA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I created an account a month or so ago, but never completed the signup. Why would a service snoop into my bank accounts instead of, let's say, withdraw $10/month via ACH?! I really don't get this "spare change" idea (like BofA's). $10/month sounds much easier to grasp, implement, and it's safer at the end.

<comment><USER12> They connect to your account using a service like Yodlee, Intuit Aggcat, or Plaid.io. So all they really have access to are your transactions. (I worked with these API's for over 1 year, and can spot that sign up flow a mile away)

They then pull in the transactions for you to round up manually (through a simple select process), and if you choose to round up, they ACH that amount of money over.

Makes sense for people who are not used to saving money or budgeting for financial services.

<comment><USER11> I understand how they do it and I doubt they will reinvent the wheel (at least I know about Yodlee that's been around for over a decade), but it's still not worthy of exposing my financials for some questionable benefit. If they add a feature to allow automatic investment of predefined small (or big) amounts, they will have my business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried this for a little while but I really did not like how variable the monthly amount was depending on how many transactions I had. It's much easier to budget $X per month.

Their fees seemed higher and fund selection lower than my other banks. Probably I'm just not the target market for this because it's a really cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow does this signup ask for a lot of personal info without making me feel secure about handing it over.

</comment><comment><USER15> This looked really awesome, until I noticed the fees, which seem really high.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand how their app knows what I spend elsewhere.

<comment><USER17> It connects to your bank account and rounds up the transactions</comment></comment>


The hottest new thing in sustainable building is, uh, wood - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/15/21058051/climate-change-building-materials-mass-timber-cross-laminated-clt <comment><AUTHOR> For those not familiar with these techniques, an American builder visiting DE and CH and learning about them:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j_UjIshzMc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j_UjIshzMc)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlplalGNfFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlplalGNfFM)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC1axnHV9aA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC1axnHV9aA)</comment>


The story of our HackerNews submission - <AUTHOR> https://en.avion.io/blog/#!/post/the-story-of-our-hackernews-submission

<comment><USER2> If it helps, someone submitted your site to ProductHunt - who knows - may get some more traction from there...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much, I hadn't heard of it, I'll take a look.

<comment><USER2> Cheers!</comment></comment></comment>


America's Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals. - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/opinion/california-housing-nimby.html <comment><USER2> > Reading opposition to SB 50 and other efforts at increasing density, I'm > struck by an unsettling thought: What Republicans want to do with I.C.E. and > border walls, wealthy progressive Democrats are doing with zoning and > Nimbyism. Preserving "local character," maintaining "local control," keeping > housing scarce and inaccessible — the goals of both sides are really the > same: to keep people out.

100% spot on. NIMBYism is the left's version of xenophobia. The mantra is very much "Welcome to my country, now get the hell out of my city".

<comment><USER3> The more you build the more people will come. When can you consider a city to be full? When there is no land to build? Or maybe when it's impossible to provide an infrastructure to support its population? Are you ok with raising a family in a 400 sq. feet condo like people do in Asia? Because if you increase density that's going to be a new standard for American cities.

The problem is the high concentration of IT businesses in a small region of space. And the solution is to spread it to other cities across US. It's already happening as companies struggle to find workers in SF bay area opening offices in other west coast cities.

<comment><USER4> They won't come unless there are jobs.

But if there are _already_ jobs fro them, it's absolutely 100% the responsibility of cities to make sure that they allow enough housing to be built.

Right now California cities are encouraging growth in jobs while simultaneously actively preventing any sort of balance with housing. This has great effects for the pocket books of landowners in cities, and tremendously negative effects for the environment and all the workers that come later.

It's a completely false strawman to assert that families in 400sqft condos are the inevitable result of density. But we know what happens when nothing is built, that families savings are drained until they are forced to move to other areas, displacing them. That's by far the worst consequence, and it is the active choice of wealthy people in California.

<comment><USER2> Yup, and then they move where they can accord: to a sprawling suburb in Texas that's energy-inefficient and cuts more into nature. A real progressive win, that!

It's like these people have infant-style lack of object permanence: if we just make these people leave my city, they disappear! Look how great it is for the environment that they vanished into the aether, never to be seen again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> San Francisco's budget for homeless is over $300 million per year. If you add the additional $300 million they got from their tax on companies, that's over $600 million per year.

Even at $300 million, we have no idea how that money is being spent. There are 7500 homeless people in San Francisco, and yet Market Street looks like something out of a 3rd world country.

San Francisco is mishandling the budget, plain and simple. They have more than enough money, and yet they are completely opaque and they have zero accountability.

This is the government that we want to give MORE money to, because somehow more money is the solution to this problem? Hell no. Hold the politicians accountable. Get a proper budget that will focus money on where it will most help and make people accountable. Fire those in charge and put people who are willing to help without wanting to suckle from the teat of public funding and taxation.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any sources about those numbers or other information about where this money is going? That works out to $40,000 per homeless person, or almost double the pre-tax annual income working full time at California's minimum wage.

<comment><USER4> It's an extremely dishonest look at the numbers. I'm having trouble finding the article from sfchronicle.com now, but the idea that each person is getting an average of $40,000 is comically wrong. The homeless population is always in flux: new people become homeless, some people get housed, and some people migrate. Treating a year time span as having a static population of X is just an unrealistic way to look at it.

There are something like 20,000 different homeless individuals in the city throughout the course of the year. Something like 15,000 end up getting some sort of services.

However, that's not really much of the story, because the bulk of that $300M budget from prior years goes directly to the easiest and cheapest intervention to stop homelessness: paying people's rent. For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, a single unexpected expense can get them kicked out.

Without that $300M, the problem would be immensely worse, on a huge scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The headline about all American cities seems like it doesn't match the rest of the article, which is really just about San Francisco.

<comment><USER2> The bay area is the most obvious example, but the problems of exclusionary zoning in America are extremely widespread. In practice, this means the booming, high-income metros (which are largely liberal, like SF, NYC, Boston, and Seattle) are suffering the worst of high housing prices.

More conservative metros will at least build outward to deal with housing supply problems. Yeah, that's not really good for the environment, but it does help with prices. But not liberal cities: they don't want to build out OR up.

Instead, you get a plethora of excuses as to how they really shouldn't be expected to host any more human beings: why can't another city in the metro build more? Why can't _those people_ move to another state? Why can't those companies hire more in another state? What about my god-given right to free, abundant car parking? Shouldn't we build more infrastructure before more housing (also let's not build that infrastructure please)? Why can't we freeze my neighborhood in amber? Etc.

<comment><USER8> > More conservative metros will at least build outward to deal with housing > supply problems. Yeah, that's not really good for the environment, but it > does help with prices. But not liberal cities: they don't want to build out > OR up.

SF, NYC, Seattle, and Boston don't have more land to open up for development by virtue of their geography. Of course places like Dallas, Oklahoma city, etc. are able to build outward -- they aren't surrounded on multiple sides by large bodies of water. To build outward in SF, NYC, Seattle, and Boston they would have to recreate Waterworld.

<comment><USER9> They could still build upwards, and that has been suggested many times by residents. They (or rather, certain powerful factions within them) just don't want to.

<comment><USER10> Can the land actually handle building up? Wouldn't building down be the better way to go? I mean most of those cities are already threatened by rising sea levels. Boston and New York are pretty dense areas who's home do you want to tear down to build new more expensive high rises that the working poor can't afford.

<comment><USER9> Skyscrapers go straight down into bedrock - the Prudential and Hancock in Boston are built on landfill in the Back Bay, but it doesn't matter, because their foundations go way past the mud. There are a few architectural/area combinations you want to avoid (you probably don't want 4-story rowhouses in the Marina in SF, for example), but most of the land area in these cities is solid. Western SF, for example, is actually at a high elevation immune to most reasonable sea level rise projections:

[https://ss2.climatecentral.org/#12/37.7341/-122.4540?show=sa...](https://ss2.climatecentral.org/#12/37.7341/-122.4540?show=satellite&projections=0-K14_RCP85-SLR&level=10&unit=meters&pois=hide)

(The East Bay and Palo Alo are screwed, but that's not the subject here.)

Also, expensive high rises benefit the working poor by giving rich yuppies a place to live where they _don 't_ bid up the same housing that working-class people have been living in for decades. If you put up luxury condo highrises in SOMA where tech workers could walk to their offices, for example, then maybe they wouldn't be bidding up the price of 1BRs in the Mission to $4k/month. Landlords are generally unwilling to let housing go vacant, because even a 2-month vacancy can destroy much of their profit for the year. So one way or another, if you build enough housing the price will adjust itself to the point where everybody gets housing.

<comment><USER10> Back Bay of Boston is really a marvel. I have literally no idea about California so I'll have to take your word for it. My concern is that the only people who seen willing to build are those who stand to make the most money. It would seem that the effective way to do this would be to require as part of codes for building different cost zoning to be taken into account. When I was in Tokyo they had elevators sectioned off by floor access, which would provide the ability to have luxury, shopping, and lower/mid income mixed into the same building. When I've traveled to Europe I've been interested in how businesses have been lower levels with hosting above, something I've not seen much of in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The part about North Dakota having senators way above population share in the country: why is this bad?

Maybe they represent a different kind of life. Maybe the zones that encourage overpopulation shouldn't have monopoly on representation. Because on some issues they clearly did bad.

And I think we can stretch this logic to the entire article. The author is as guilty as "not in my back yard" as the rich people. Move you yard! Vote with you wallet. Go live, work and pay taxes where they respect your way of thinking.

Now you want to have your cake and eat it too. You talk against corporations and rich people but you consume their products and dream about making it big yourself. What other reason could you have for staying in mega cities?

<comment><USER2> > The part about North Dakota having senators way above population share in > the country: why is this bad?

Because it's anti-democratic?

> Maybe they represent a different kind of life

Maybe Hindus have a different way of life than Christians in the US. Should they get bonus representation too, since they're a much smaller population?

> And I think we can stretch this logic to the entire article. The author is > as guilty as "not in my back yard" as the rich people. Move you yard! Vote > with you wallet. Go live, work and pay taxes where they respect your way of > thinking.

Absurd. Land is fixed, you can't just go generate more of it. And by not allowing more people to live where a booming economy is, they're hurting people, they're hurting economic opportunity, and they're hurting the environment. That is not okay.

The winners here are selfish people, largely landowners who benefit from the housing prices being so high. The losers are the rest of us.

<comment><USER12> > Because it's anti-democratic?

Good thing the US is a federal republic

<comment><USER2> It's also a representative democracy.

<comment><USER12> A federal republic is a type of representative democracy, so you're correct.

<comment><USER2> So what was the point of your comment, then? The US is still democratic.

If you're specifically objecting to the use of "democratic", I could also say that it's blatantly unfair and nonsensical. Why should North Dakotans have more voting power than Californians or Texans?

<comment><USER13> North Dakotans have the same amount of voting power as Californians and Texans. It's just that they have to share with more people.

If you have a gallon of pistachio ice cream and a gallon of vanilla ice cream, the pistachio eaters have the same amount of ice cream as the vanilla eaters even if more people like vanilla than pistachio.

<comment><USER2> They have more voting power/representation per capita. Which is ridiculous, and blatantly unfair. People vote, not land.

<comment><USER14> Can you explain how what you're advocating / arguing for does not distill down to tyranny of the majority? That's how I have always viewed this argument but I'm open to hearing how I am wrong.

<comment><USER2> > tyranny of the majority

Man, I hate this phrase so damn much. What does it even mean, and why do people bring it up? The original use was basically, "the majority using democracy to be real assholes to the minority". It's the reason we have certain rights enshrined in the Constitution, to protect against that.

But the way people bring it in response to anti-democratic efforts makes ZERO sense. Letting 55% of people vote to be jerks is bad, but letting 45% of people vote to be jerks is...somehow good, or something? Obviously not, it's basically the same problem except with less popular support, so it's a flatly worse situation.

It's super disingenuous too. If tyranny of the majority -- aka democracy -- is such a problem, what even is the alternative? Go back to kings, or an aristocracy? Should we remove the vote from Christians -- they're the majority in the US, after all -- and let, I dunno, Hindus make all the decisions?

Plus, the people who mention it curiously only ever want minority-equalizing powers that would benefit their side in particular. You don't see conservatives advocating for giving extra votes for Muslims and Hindus, or Asians and black people, despite those groups being obvious demographic minorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Zoning is half the battle, but municipal boundaries are equally absurd. Many town boundaries are still where they were 50 years ago, but the economic reality has moved past them. For example, a meaningless line between the nonexistent "places" of "San Francisco" and "Brisbane" constrains the development of Hunter's Point.

As it is, if one municipality upzones alone, they see an increase in demand and the neighboring municipalities see a decrease in demand. As a result, whoever blinks first loses. So Palo Alto wants San Francisco to upzone and San Francisco wants Palo Alto to upzone.

This problem is systemic: it particularly affects suburbs that were originally created by segregation, most famously contributing to Detroit's budget crisis.

In ancient times, cities were autonomous units, defended by local armies. The idea of a "suburb" financially independent of the main city was unthinkable; the city _was_ the state. The modern US has created a system of social organization with entities called "cities" and "towns" which are really nothing of the sort; they are more like electoral fiefdoms, chartered by whit of the state government usually back in the time when we were still killing Indians and promoting racial hierarchies. And these "towns" have given rise to their own mythology, with a call to defend "our community" (usually from annexation) which is neither ours nor a community, but a haphazardly sown legal artifice whose primary effect in reality is moving tax money around and putting up signs.

This whole charade has got to end sometime. But what would _that_ look like? And how can it be squared with our love of bottom-up governance, which, via English common law, has always been a part of America?

<comment><USER16> This is why you need state level bills with teeth to end the stalemate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problem goes deeper than that. I've have discussion with highly educated people in San Fransisco and it becomes obvious they really don't understand this is basic supply and demand problem. The first step in fixing this is somehow teaching econ 101 as a PSA.

<comment><USER18> That hasn't been my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just curious why has this been flagged for removal?

<comment><USER9> Politics, presumably. From HN guidelines:

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic."

<comment><USER19> That's unfortunate. The article offered an interesting new perspective to me and I don't think it's one that would generally be found on tv or elsewhere.

<comment><USER12> Because it's a bullshit article claiming all American cities are shit when really it's just San Francisco and the liberal elite that are fucking up their own cities. New York as well. The rest of us are doing just fine actually.

<comment><USER2> > all American cities are shit

This is true. American urban design is hot garbage that fell off a truck, went threw a sewer, was dried out, set on fire, and then shot into the sun.

But affordability wise, yeah it's mostly the super-successful liberal cities that are really feeling the pain. Though all the other cities still have serious problems with economic segregation by neighborhood, generally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The best part is when they have so polluted one area that they start to flee to greener pastures, and they turn right around and start instituting the same policies in the new place.

</comment><comment><USER21> If San Franciscans don't want their city to be 'verticalized' that's perfectly fine.

There's actually quite a lot of space in Cali, and cost of living is not quite insane in many areas just outside the bay.

So if there were some thoughtful progress even on just transportation (i.e. imagine something faster than Bart/Caltrain that looped quickly around) and some quick commuter trains ... combined with less of the various needs to be _in_ the Valley/City ...

Then maybe places like Stockton, Merced, Morgan Hill etc. could flourish smartly.

Consider if there were a fairly quick way to get from Gilroy to the Valley+City without fuss? Maybe someone would open a big office there? The entire North Bay seems to be 'cut off' (many residents probably like that...), but maybe 'a tunnel' where the Golden Gate is, to connect that 'fast train' to Santa Rosa? (Yes, 'earthquakes' surely) but it's worth considering.

The Valley, and even many places in SF are not particularly aspirational places, frankly. My bet is people would be happy to live a ways away if they could get into the office quickly.

<comment><USER2> > If San Franciscans don't want their city to be 'verticalized' that's > perfectly fine.

No it's not. It's ridiculous. Cities are meant to change, to grow, to adapt to conditions over time.

By refusing to build enough housing to match its booming economy, the cities in the bay area are seriously hurting people. They're seriously hurting economic opportunity. _That is not okay._

<comment><USER21> No, the notion that every city should become 'Dubai' is ridiculous.

NYC has already 'verticalized' ... _and they are one of the example 'problem cities'_ \- and they still have extreme inequality and 'housing problems'.

So when SF crams in 5 million more folks, will they have 'solved the problem'? Or will they be just like NYC?

Why haven't Chicago, NY or Hong Kong, with all their 'amazing density' solved this ostensible problem?

By this 'build out' logic Stockholm, most of London, Zurich should be bulldozed and turned into NY or Hong Kong as well?

So first, is the notion, hinted above, that 'more density' in no way implies a solution to the problem - because there's nary any limit to how many people might want to come into the city.

Second, which underlies the above, is an issue called 'Supply and Demand'. People moving to the Bay have to make that rational decision as to housing costs vs. pay. Moving to the Bay is usually a choice, not some kind of coercion, so people are for whatever reasons, making that choice.

If the Bay wants to expand smartly they should consider wicked fast transportation to places around the bay, and those places could be built with a little more density than now as well.

There's quite a lot of space, there's no reason that even working class folk can't live a decent standard of living.

<comment><USER2> > No, the notion that every city should become 'Dubai' is ridiculous.

They don't have to become Dubai. Vienna would probably suffice.

> NYC has already 'verticalized' ... and they are one of the example 'problem > cities' \- and they still have extreme inequality and 'housing problems'.

Much of NYC's housing would be illegal to build today because of zoning regulations. It's absolutely a part of the problem.

> So when SF crams in 5 million more folks, will they have 'solved the > problem'?

SF proper doesn't really need to get 5 million more people, probably. The bay area as a whole does. SF could stand to receive some of that, sure.

> Or will they be just like NYC?

NYC is substantially cheaper as a metro than the bay area despite having a much larger population. Going from bay area affordability to NYC affordability would be a huge win, believe it or not.

> Why haven't Chicago, NY or Hong Kong, with all their 'amazing density' > solved this ostensible problem?

Don't know much about Chicago or HK, but NYC still has zoning problems, absolutely. They've gotten more conservative over time.

Now look at Tokyo, which is much more free form with zoning, and -- surprise surprise -- WAY cheaper than SF or NYC, despite being an even larger metro area than either.

> So first, is the notion, hinted above, that 'more density' in no way implies > a solution to the problem - because there's nary any limit to how many > people might want to come into the city.

And yet, even with 40 million people, Tokyo has done an alright job. I mean, it's still fairly expensive, but nowhere near as bad as the most comparable US cities.

> There's quite a lot of space, there's no reason that even working class folk > can't live a decent standard of living.

Who says you can't have density and standard of living? Vienna is one of the most livable cities in the world, and it's far denser than almost all of the bay area. It's probably denser than SF too, despite the stats saying otherwise (Vienna city limits include a lot of green space around the edge that's basically just forest/farms).

<comment><USER21> Vienna illustrates that there can be a decent standard of living or at least cost of housing, at medium density.

Nobody is arguing that.

The argument put forth is that SF _needs_ to increase density as a matter of pragmatism, economics, even humanity - which is rubbish.

Your Vienna example provides no evidence that that level of density is in and of itself somehow going to provide better housing costs, or anything else frankly.

There is zero evidence that building higher in SF will ease housing costs, especially in an aspiration city a zillion people would like to live in.

Moreover, people have every right to chose the conditions in which they live.

The residents of SF can chose whatever density they want, it's their city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> All this news looks like a good complex systems / agent based modeling problem. Is anyone aware of such research?

<comment><USER23> Not sure complex systems researchers have gone that far into the practical issues yet, but Luis Bettencourt and Geoffrey West are the current leaders in urban growth/sustainability as far as I can tell as an interested outsider. Strong Towns [1] takes an antifragility approach in line with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and touches on complex systems thinking (without taking a theory/purely scientific stance). NNT occasionally posts thoughts on localism, though again usually quite abstract relative to the practical modeling question you pose.

The most practical related work I've seen has been on growth of major international cities and large villages/slums in third world countries. I can't recall any authors in particular. Some of my commercial work approaches what you're asking about but I build products more than perform research and have never worked with zoning data.

If anyone has a better answer I would love to hear it; this is my jam.

[1] [https://www.strongtowns.org/](https://www.strongtowns.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> «with a fifth of the population struggling to get by» - isn't this just per definition of poverty: the lower quintile? That is in any place lower quintile is poor. Regardless of their absolute living standards.

</comment><comment><USER25> Opinion columnists are lazy unoriginal authoritarian dictator manques. Stop writing imperative mood headlines.

</comment><comment><USER12> Cleveland, Ohio is perfectly fine. We have amazing suburbs, nature, a beach, a beautiful lake, tons of unique places to go and see, and a bunch of jobs (tech especially, many startups as well).

<comment><USER26> That's because greater cleveland has lost population almost every decade since the 1970s, so there is plenty of supply to meet demand and keep housing costs low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Liberal policies create homelessness period. Show me a city or state rife with poverty and crime and I will show you a city or state run by Democrats for decades. 9 out of the 10 poorest most crime ridden cities in America have been under Democratic control for decades. Chicago, Detroit, Flint, I could go on and on. And then you have the model of conservative values. Texas which has one of the fastest growing economies in the country and was until recently a mostly red state. But with people fleeing California in droves because the liberal policies of over-taxation and over-regulation and other Nanny State policies. Truth is a big government makes the people small. Now the people that have fled California are made up of a lot of people with liberal ideology and they don't have enough sense to see that their belief system is what screwing everything up. So they are now trying to change Texas into the nightmare that California has become. That is the Democratic way Liberals forced to leave areas that are becoming unlivable because they voted for people to enact their liberal ideology when everything goes to hell in a they are too blind to reality to see what caused it so they criss cross the like Locust leaving Devastation in their wake.They are taking a perfectly good state like Texas and screwing it up. California's economy which was built on conservative values was rated the 4th or the 5th in the world has now 7th or 8th and falling fast. This is under liberal policy. Data shows that conservative values conservative fiscal policies conservative ideology leads to high employment and more people enjoying the American dream. Capitalism is not by any means perfect but Has Lifted more people out of poverty than any other system. Not once in the history of the world has socialism helped anybody but the Elite and those high up in the . You can bet your last dollar that when they start running out of everybody's money that the government will get theirs first and all their rich friends, and then if there's anything left the people get theirs last and that's how it's always worked Venezuela is a perfect model for that that's where we'll be if we take on the socialist agenda the Democrats have for us socialism always starts out sounding so good and turns out being so bad. I have yet to hear somebody point out the difference between socialism and Democratic socialism other than you vote for somebody to steal from you and your neighbors. Government has never produced anything. Everything the government has they take from somebody who worked to produce it the government paid for it they paid for it with money they took from somebody who worked for it.

</comment><comment><USER28> 55 years of republicans working to lower taxes and demonize public employees has had an effect, even in cities that don't vote republican. Our cities are starved of money for basic maintenance and to pay the best and the brightest to do public work.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is it really wealthy liberals or just Californians? Seattle is building like crazy to keep up with demand, as are many other Democrat run cities.

<comment><USER21> Texas is growing like crazy, and housing is super affordable.

<comment><USER26> No zoning and what do you know, supply appeareth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Lol, flagged post. Seems like some "wealthy liberals" here on HN don't like being called out.

</comment><comment><USER31> Isn't the problem not so much liberals but the perverse incentives created by a housing market in a globalized economy?

<comment><USER4> It's not a globalized economy that's made perverse incentives, it's local control that prevents enough housing to match the number of jobs in the area.

Also, it's only sort of "liberals" that are the problem, the real problem is those who claim progressive values, except for when those values may affect themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The problem is wealthy people, not just wealthy liberals.

</comment><comment><USER33> *Blame the wealthy.

Liberals at the levers of power are certainly part of the problem (or at least their neoliberalism is) the problem is the wealthy of all ideological stripes.

Blaming nimbyism is just a roundabout way of blaming government regulation, which I find nonsensical.

<comment><USER2> Why is it nonsensical? It's absolutely the problem.

The bay area in particular isn't even _that_ densely populated. It's just that most of the residential land is reserved for detached single-family homes still. When you constrain supply that much and demand shoots up, the result isn't exactly surprising.

<comment><USER33> It's nonsensical because it's too limited. Housing is like health care in that the market is sorely lacking in its ability to distribute those resources equitably--pinning the problems on nimbyism is admitting that market solutions are the best we've got, which I think is wrong. I'm advocating for socialized housing, not tweaking the knobs of the market until it comes out fair. Moreover, nimbyism is a lot like the solutions for environmental problems that stop at consumer boycotts and individual choices to recycle or reduce water usage. Good things, but predicated on individual virtue over systemic changes.

Finally, nimbyism is resentment about gentrification in reverse. I find objections to gentrification pretty convincing--why shouldn't people have a say in what happens to their neighborhood?

TLDR a lot of the description of the problem (IE nimbyism) depend on the market continuing to do what it's doing, and I think the market is the problem to begin with.

<comment><USER2> > pinning the problems on nimbyism is admitting that market solutions are the > best we've got, which I think is wrong.

I'm all for public housing too (more competently executed than last time, please), but Tokyo is a good example of prices being fairly reasonable relative to the size/prosperity of a metro area, and that's been done with the market.

Besides, you'd need to upzone for public housing complexes anyway. There's no conflict here between the socialized solution and the market one, really. The government can make what public housing it can do, and the market can handle the rest.

> why shouldn't people have a say in what happens to their neighborhood?

Because it turns them into reactionary assholes? Because land is in fixed quantity and quality, so letting people with a monopoly on it command even their neighbors to not let people in is a terrible idea? Because mandatory single-family home zoning is classist bullshit that is designed to keep out the poor and working class? It's economic segregation, pure and simple, and you can't be economically progressive while supporting it.

One of the starkest changes going from the US to live in Munich was that suddenly, I didn't notice neighborhoods being obviously rich or poor or middle-class most of the time. Nearly all of them are sort of middling, and have people with an obvious variety of incomes. Even if I focus on it, it's hard to slot neighborhoods into a particular income bucket. And the most obvious cause of this is that SFH-only zoning does not exist here, not in Munich and not anywhere in Germany. Thus, would-be rich neighborhoods cannot keep out the working class by making sure that nobody can build fourplexes or apartments that might be more affordable.

edit: to be clear, I'm not categorically opposed to community input on neighborhood design. But letting specific neighborhoods and cities decide on zoning density has been an unmitigated disaster. So yeah, let's maybe not do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> We need to be careful about where this line of comparison will take us. X is a problem, blame group Y.

This sounds a lot like something Hitler would say: he used the Jewish community as a scapegoat for many problems the country was facing, so some citizens were all too happy when they were quietly being taken away.

</comment><comment><USER35> The headline feels so disingenuous just to garner clicks.

First of all, this article is about San Francisco. SF is parodied within many groups for being exactly the way that it is.

However, put that aside. Are the problems of SF cause by liberals or are they cause by people who happen to be liberal. This is an important distinction. If it's the latter, then the problems are caused by the inhabitants, and you could substitute any politically identifying individual in to get similar results:

> _Then there is the refusal on the part of wealthy progressives to live by > the values they profess to support at the national level. Creating dense, > economically and socially diverse urban environments ought to be a paramount > goal of progressivism._

That's what I mean. Is that due to liberals only paying lip service, or is that due to wealthy people not wanting to co-mingle with commoners? I agree with some of the base reasoning in the article: NIMBYers make it hard for a major city to be inhabitable by others. However, how much of this politics compared to people?

</comment><comment><USER36> Blame Wealthy Liberals? What does the liberal part have to do with it. Blame wealthy corporations. The formation of ultra large corporations who pay people in highly unequal ways is the root cause of all of the country's problems; offshoring of labor, layoffs, huge executive compensation, real wages being stagnant, corruption that led to the 2008 housing crisis, government corruption, etc..

<comment><USER37> And what causes them? There is no such thing, really, as a "root" cause, just causes we can effectively intervene on.

<comment><USER38> Capitalism.

<comment><USER37> This is not an insightful answer.

<comment><USER38> Capitalism has certain systemic features, one of them is concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small few. Look at how wealth is concentrated in the U.S., especially over the last 40 years. Unions have eroded, markets have been deregulated, our social safety net has been dismantled, etc. and as a result, the power of capitalists has expanded. Capitalism is by its nature struggle between workers and capital. Capital is winning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> OK. Correlation does not imply causation, or something...

So, San Francisco still votes 8% Republican. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_San_Francisco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_San_Francisco)

Is it possible that there are a majority of people in SF that support changing their city and are Democrats? And, that a small minority of people (who could be Rs or Ds) can effectively block legislation to change housing laws? I'm not sure this article proves it is all "liberals" doing it, just that a) lots of liberals live in SF and b) SF has been ineffective at tackling the housing crisis ("...a place where lots of liberals live! QED!!!").

Having said this, my mom considers herself very liberal, and still has signs up on her lawn saying "Preserve Historic Houses" (which means "I don't support tearing down houses in my neighborhoods to build higher density places").

BUT: I do think she would be open to changing her mind. I'm not sure someone that lives in SF and that agrees with Trump's approach to immigration would be open to changing their mind. Is that biased of me?

<comment><USER40> Nope. There is no vast right wing conspiracy to prevent affordable housing. I don't want to jump to conclusions but I'm guessing you don't live in SF or California?

<comment><USER39> I never said there was a "vast right wing conspiracy" nor did I imply that. You are the only person saying that and thinking that in this thread.

You don't want to jump to conclusions, but you already did, didn't you?

I wrote: "... that a small minority of people (who could be Rs or Ds) can effectively block legislation to change housing laws."

How did you turn that into a vast right wing conspiracy UNLESS you already felt that "someone out there" already thinks that (well before my post)?

<comment><USER39> None of my statements ever said that I think Republicans have a right wing conspiracy to prevent affordable housing.

I am refuting the assertion made by the article that says Liberals are to blame. I think it is more complicated.

I point out that there are voters in SF who vote Republican. DOWNVOTES because I must be saying Republicans are to blame. Hint: I never said that, nor do I believe that.

I point out that people that align with Trump's immigration policy that live in SF might not be open minded about changing their mind. DOWNVOTES because I must be saying Republicans are not open minded. Hint: I never said that, nor do I believe that.

Hint: downvoters, you aren't reading carefully. And, if there is a hint of people making assumptions about who you are, and you are angry, and it is translating into downvotes, then you have some introspection work to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clickbait title and hyperbole aside, this is the same guy who published a piece declaring that he was unplugging from social media and continued to use Twitter. [https://www.cjr.org/analysis/farhad-manjoo-nyt- unplug.php](https://www.cjr.org/analysis/farhad-manjoo-nyt-unplug.php)</comment>


PayPal Mafia - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia <comment><USER2> Elon Musk is missing from the famous photo ([http://victorstuff.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/paypal.jpg](http://victorstuff.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/paypal.jpg)) because he received an innovator of the year award in Chicago at the same time as when the picture was taken.

The YouTube founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, were not allowed to participate in the photo because the corporate handlers at Google didn't want them to be linked to the mafia ;)

<comment><USER3> Wow I had no idea you need your employer's permission to be in a photo..

<comment><USER4> You do when you work for Google and the picture is going to be in a magazine. :)

<comment><USER5> Or what, they'll get fired? Could a company do so without risk of a lawsuit?

<comment><USER6> And these guys are YouTube founders - pretty sure exceptions can be made for them. Also, they deserve to be in the photograph considering the relevance.

<comment><USER4> > And these guys are YouTube founders

And once they were acquired, no different than any other Google employee. That is the cost of "selling out" as they say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be a great entrepreneur you have to build a Mafia around you. Every successful one I know (including my mother) has had to do that. If you can't do that you fail as an entrepreneur.

You build a Mafia, by being so motivated you out-execute everyone who bets against you and earn the respect of the smart people around you. The trick here is to surround yourself with smart people you can learn from in the first place.

A good startup Mafia picks its people veeery carefully and pulls in those it wants. (a people hire a people, b people hire c people). It forms through action, not job postings - you have to burn through the same fire everyone else in your group is made of. Which is why a great startup Mafia sticks together, and keeps leveraging the network to amplify its people in their second, third and fourth attempts, while drawing a clout of deal flow towards itself. Execution gets better and better, and deal-flow means they also see the best opportunities coming their way to the point where the usual odds don't apply anymore.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm reminded of the Traitorous Eight too.

Many times the restrictions placed on creative technologists can act as the fuse that triggers immense amounts of creativity when it is unleashed.

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

<comment><USER9> From what I heard growing up, Noyce was pretty much just like Elon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like Yelp took the "Mafia" part a little too seriously...

</comment><comment><USER11> These guys were able to cash out and start their own companies relatively soon after. I'm surprised we don't see this on a smaller scale amongst engineers in the valley. They get paid such high salaries they could easily fund little side ventures using designers and engineers from other parts of the country to build the products. They'd act as managers, overseeing the construction of their own app ideas while maintaining a full-time position at some company.

<comment><USER12> They wouldn't be employed long if they were consumed by running a side business. And who are these employees making enough to fund multiple other employers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Such positive and negative... SpaceX and fucking Palantir...

<comment><USER14> I'm curious what you have against Palantir in particular. As far as government contractors go, they don't seem especially problematic.

<comment><USER15> muaha. read about HBGary. Palantir is scum of the earth. they participated in targeting Glenn Greenwald. only thing they haven't done is flying drones themselves to kill people. they are probably #1 in help NSA with their programs.

<comment><USER16> Palantir cut ties with HBGary.

If government/banks/etc are going to use tools to pursue their objectives, they could do _much_ worse than use Palantir tools. One important feature of Palantir's tools is the "need-to-know" capabilities built-in to restrain dissemination.

<comment><USER15> well, I have about as much respect for them as people in the arms trade, oil or mercenary business. fact of the matter is they designed a program to target journalists. so they are actively building a distopian future. can you imagine where this goes in 10-20 years? the Western world is pretty much galloping to non democracy. how about building tools which improve democracy instead of destroying it? Peter Thiel, the libertarian. honestly all of these trends are really very troubling. I've worked in AI research, and is the top researcher in the field building? killer robots. brilliant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The author of this Wikipedia entry will probably sleep with the phishes very soon.

<comment><USER18> Every time a fish is sold on eBay it'll be delivered to the author, and eBay will say "Delivered to customer".

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Arctic Startup" published an article recently about the #estonianmafia hashtag that was coined by none other than Dave McClure of the PayPal Mafia: [http://arcticstartup.com/2014/01/28/tyler-crowley-dave- mcclu...](http://arcticstartup.com/2014/01/28/tyler-crowley-dave-mcclure-and- the-story-behind-sthlmtech-cphftw-estonianmafia)

</comment><comment><USER20> I expected a mafia which extorts businesses get the "protection money" via PayPal. But this is more impressive of course.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's an impressive list of overachievers.

</comment><comment><USER22> [http://www.foundersfund.com/](http://www.foundersfund.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> It's not what you know but who you know. But what you know about who you know helps too. ;)

</comment><comment><USER24> Talk about hiring the best people.

</comment><comment><USER25> But I thought Silicon Valley was a meritocracy where connections didn't matter!! [/troll]

<comment><USER26> Look back 4 or 5 years prior to the founding of X.com/Confinity/PayPal: Elon Musk was a South African-born undergrad at Pennsylvania, Peter Thiel was a German-born lawyer trading derivatives at Credit Suisse, and Max Levchin was a Ukrainian-born undergrad at Illinois. Now, which comes first in Silicon Valley: merit or connections?

<comment><USER27> > Elon Musk was a South African-born undergrad at Pennsylvania

Who first emigrated to Canada, where he attended Canada's most prestigious business school for two years before transferring to the United States' most prestigious business school.

> Peter Thiel was a German-born lawyer trading derivatives at Credit Suisse

After which he ran his own hedge fund for two years, then co-founded PayPal.

These guys certainly had more merit than many people, but to hold them up as people who succeeded with merit over connections is silly.

<comment><USER26> Musk first arrived in Canada alone at 17 with very little money and worked manual labor jobs to make ends meet. When he first got to Silicon Valley he basically spent his first six months there locked away in his room coding the initial version of Zip2 which he co-founded with his little brother. What more do you want to decide someone succeeded by their own intelligence and drive as opposed to connections?

<comment><USER28> Can we agree that, to a certain extent, both are necessary?

<comment><USER26> How about, can we agree that when you spend years achieving great successes, you tend to form relationships of trust with high-performing colleagues who learn to value your drive and intelligence and to look forward to helping you or working with you again?

That still seems like a boundary value at one end of the personal merit vs. connections continuum of drivers of success, as contrasted with the other end of the continuum, which we might define as being a VP at JP Morgan because your dad is on the politburo standing committee of the PRC.

<comment><USER24> Cannot agree more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So, did PayPal actually kick-off the Silicon Valley?

<comment><USER30> You've gotta watch Steve Blank's "The Secret History of Silicon Valley". Goes back to its post-war roots in 40's and 50's. A real gem and quite surprising.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo)

<comment><USER24> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


We are in an age of "refactoring." - <AUTHOR>

Just a rant, but frankly, I'm tired of all this BS over frameworks, OOP, TDD, design patterns, factory classes, singletons, inheritance, structured data, and generally anything related to "clean code done the right way."
People are getting cult-like over this "clean code" mentality, it's like a fanaticism.  The funny thing is, almost all the code I've seen is still spaghetti code, often interconnected within a larger system of more spaghetti-systems, with spaghetti-documentation scattered across the internet and various peoples in an organization.
We're sort of in an age of refactoring, aren't we?  We've seen the demise of "messy" languages like PHP or Perl.  Swift is a refactor of Objective C.  Ruby and Coffeescript are more refactored languages.  Plain old javascript just doesn't seem to cut it anymore either - we need framework upon framework, hierarchical trees, patterns, and everything's gotta be object-oriented for some reason.
But you know what...?  Real life isn't organized, and just maybe, code doesn't always need to be either.  My apartment's not hierarchy-based into neat little tree structures, but it's ok.  I know where stuff is, and it's even convenient.  My car's got a bunch of junk in it too, and I'm just fine with that.
When I code, especially for myself, sometimes I prefer no structure.  Yep, I'll avoid OOP just because it takes me 10 minutes longer to type it all out and I think it makes things more complicated.  I don't particularly care about private/public variables, I just make everything public - it saves me time typing the getters and setters.  My variable names may be obscure, because I don't want to spend the extra time typing more descriptive names.  Code might be messy and not the most efficient solution, but as long as it works, that's just fine with me.
Perhaps 20 years into the future, people will look back on this age of software and think "Why were we so obsessed over making everything OOP and so structured like that?"
Anyway, I think the true soul of programming lies in building stuff and launching.   Users don't care how beautiful or elegant code is, that's something that employees/bosses/academics care about. <comment><USER2> First of all: I'm not much of a ruby programmer, but how is it a refactored language? It goes pretty far from standard Algol syntax. I have read the syntax was heavily influenced by the differing SOV/SVO structure in english and japanese, but this may be hyperbole.

As for your main point, I would say have fun working with other human beings on a project, or working on a project that impacts more than just you. You apartment only impacts you and those directly associated with you. A successful programming project will affect far more.

Employees/bosses/academics comprise the majority of the adult populace who can take care of themselves, and maybe you should take a page from their book. And if you think users are the ones who "elegant" code is written for, you don't understand the point of writing good code.

Perhaps try working in a context where your application matters and uses the hardware it is working on to the fullest extent. Things like concurrency and performance are difficult with spaghetti code.

Maybe you've only worked on web projects, sites that don't run dynamically on a server, or are only accessed by a small number of people, so performance doesn't matter because you just pay a flat $5 for a single digital ocean droplet. But I'm being presumptuous. I don't know these things about you. So maybe share your own experience and how you think you have earned the right to call judgement on best practices developed over many years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Computers generally don't really mind how you have defined your variable names, structured your data, and named your functions in your program, it all gets translated into a memory adres and machine code.

Ofcourse code needs to work, and getting things done is important, speed of development is part of running a business.

But a program should also be readable & understandable, and maybe re-usable by a an other human being.

I don't think this implies you need to use OOP, but one of the nice characteristics is, that is has defined data and operations for a particular object.

Achieving a high development speed right now, without to much structuring and human readable & understandable logic in your code, won't do much harm right now.

Till someone asks you to change something in a working program.

Than re-reading and understanding to much unstructured code, at that time, kills development speed, which can block a much needed functionality.

And I personally think it is this building & launching of functionality that your users will care deeply about.

But, still I think there is a sweet spot, somewhere (between spaghetti and fully structured systems)

[http://cdn-media-2.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2013/05/THE...](http://cdn- media-2.lifehack.org/wp-content/files/2013/05/THE-WORLD-DOES-NOT-REWARD- PERFECTIONISTS.-IT-REWARDS-THOSE-WHO-GET-THINGS-DONE.-2-1024x682.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you tell this to people in an interview? [sarcasm] I bet they'd hire you on the spot if they heard/read this [/sarcasm]

Do tell, please. Not sure if a troll or just really ignorant with the uses of OOP and "clean code". Original Poster probably also doesn't leave documentation in his code.

</comment><comment><USER5> > _Anyway, I think the true soul of programming lies in building stuff and > launching. Users don 't care how beautiful or elegant code is, that's > something that employees/bosses/academics care about._

Oh, you'll care about the quality of code a whole lot more when developing new features comes to a grinding halt.

</comment><comment><USER6> Try to review your code in a year. Have fun.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it's time for you to get out of Javaland and try a functional language. Maybe give Clojure a shot if you want to stick with a JVM language. I think you'll find that the frameworks and patterns aren't even necessary.

<comment><USER5> This. I wouldn't even just call it Javaland though, the Ruby world is like this now too. My favorite part about my journey into functional programming so far has been that I don't need to stay up to date on whatever the talking heads of OOP are preaching these days.

Seriously, give functional programming a shot. It isn't as scary or esoteric as you might think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> ok, but if you share your apartment, you'd want it to be clean for the sake of your roommates right? if you use your car to pick up a date, you'd want it to be clean and presentable so she'd have a place to sit... it's the same idea with code.</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my "Twitter-like" site named publiclog.com - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
Please review my "Twitter-like" site named publiclog.com.
The idea is a useful website to keep track of all of the activities in your life.
The activities have a start date and end date.
All of the activities are public.
(It's for tracking your daily activities that you don't typically put in Twitter)
You can also display a history of all of your activities.
You can browse and search the public activities too.
(The site was first reviewed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891808. I've been continuing to work on the concept.
(I know the UIX is totally hideous!).
Thank you for your reviews, comments and feedback!
Best Always, Mike <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Link: <http://publiclog.com></comment>


Decomposing a function into its even and odd parts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/math/even-odd.html <comment><USER4> It's a bit odd (pardon the pun) that the words _Taylor series_ [0] appear neither in the blog post nor so far in the comments, since that's the origin of the terms _odd_ and _even_ in this context [1]: the power series of odd functions have non-zero coefficients only on the odd powers of the variable, and those of even functions only on the even powers.

And thus the Taylor-series representation of a function makes it immediately obvious that the function can be decomposed into odd and even sub-functions. But Taylor-series representations exist only for smooth functions, and generally converge only in parts of their domains, while the even-odd decomposition applies to all real-valued functions defined on all real inputs. It's this algebraic generality of the even-odd decomposition that's most remarkable.

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

1\. The Wikipedia article on odd and even functions points out the decomposition described in the submitted post: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_and_odd_functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_and_odd_functions)

<comment><USER5> I got curious about the etymology of this, and it's not clear to me that wikipedia is right on this one. According to [1], the earliest use of "even" and "odd" for functions goes back to Euler [2]. It's been a long time since high school Latin, but it doesn't look like he has the Taylor series in mind here. He certainly calls out the functions f(x) = x^n for some n as even or odd, and notes that the sums work in the ways you'd expect, but he also talks about ratios of those functions, which he wouldn't need to do if he were assuming smoothness and could just expand out the Taylor series of the ratio. It's unclear, but it looks to me like he's using "even" and "odd" to draw an algebraic analogy.

[1] [http://jeff560.tripod.com/e.html](http://jeff560.tripod.com/e.html) [2] [http://eulerarchive.maa.org/docs/originals/E005.pdf](http://eulerarchive.maa.org/docs/originals/E005.pdf) , section XVII.

<comment><USER4> I did not mean to imply that Wikipedia was my source for the etymology of _even_ and _odd_ as classifications of functions. (I hadn't really meant to make an etymological point at all, and I added the link only so that readers unfamiliar with the concept of Taylor series might be enticed to click through and learn something.)

I don't have any references for you right now, but I would be surprised if the usage of the terms doesn't pre-date your citation of Euler by at least several decades. The basic technique for deriving Taylor series is known to date to at least 1671, to the correspondence between James Gregory and John Collins; it also shows up in letters from de Moivre to Johann Bernoulli in 1694 and from Leibniz to Bernoulli in 1708. Newton had a geometric means of deriving the coefficients of power series when he was writing the _Principa_ (published in 1687), as demonstrated by the proof of his tenth proposition, and he included a description of the algebraic technique in an early draft of his _Quadrature of Curves_ (but removed it before publication in 1706). So Taylor series were broadly known to Europe's prominent corresponding mathematicians in the first decades of the eighteenth century, and to some of them decades earlier.

And the basic concept of power series, as well as the power-series representations of many common functions, were already widely known in the latter decades of the seventeenth century. Like I said, I don't have a reference for you at the moment, but I have always heard that the terms _odd_ and _even_ derive from the power-series representations of functions, and it's difficult to imagine that no one before Euler had noted that the power series of some functions involve only odd or only even powers—although one may more readily imagine that someone noted it while neglecting to name it.

Anyway, Taylor series and the more basic concept of power series certainly were known to Euler when he wrote the paper you cited. Since the power series of polynomial functions are the polynomials themselves, you're right that Euler would not have had power series in mind in the context of this paper. (But, no, Euler would not have been thinking in terms of smoothness—mathematicians up until the analytic enlightenment of nineteenth century played fairly fast and loose with derivatives. The point you made about ratios of functions is off-base, I think: the paper is about reciprocal solutions to polynominal equations.)

The question is simply whether your citation is evidence that Euler first coined the terms for the concept in the context of this paper (i.e., at that time and referring specifically to polynomials), or whether the concept and terminology already existed. If not, when was it generalized to refer to functions other than polynomials of finite order? I don't know. Perhaps nobody bothered to give the concept a name until Euler in 1727, and perhaps nobody even considered the concept with regard to a more general class of functions until even later. (I have a source book around here somewhere that might say something about the matter. ...)

In any event, if you asked a sample of mathematicians today why functions are called odd or even, I'd bet that many of them would point to power-series representations. That's what I meant to point out in my earlier comment.

<comment><USER6> > I would be surprised if the usage of the terms doesn't pre-date your > citation of Euler by at least several decades

The citation is pretty suggestive, in that the text goes "functions, which I call even, which have this property...". That doesn't mean the terminology is original to Euler, but it does mean it can't have been established at the time he wrote.

> if you asked a sample of mathematicians today why functions are called odd > or even, I'd bet that many of them would point to power-series > representations

Eh. The terms apply just as much to nondifferentiable functions. I would have just said that it comes from the properties of polynomials with terms of all even or all odd degree. I've never thought of _infinite_ polynomials as having any special place in the categorization of functions as even or odd; the concept is generally introduced with finite ones like f(x) = x^2 . Years later, when you learn about Taylor series, it gets pointed out that sine and cosine form polynomials with terms of only odd or only even degree, and -- look at that -- they conform to the definition of odd and even functions. (I'm not making a claim about the origin of the concept, but I am making a claim about how it's viewed today.)

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's more or less what I meant, though from what I understand of pre- modern mathematics, I still think it's likely that power-series representations were the inspiration for applying the terms _odd_ and _even_ to functions. ...

But is it even clear that Euler's usage of "functiones pares" etymologically corresponds with our "even functions"? In studying classical Latin for four years, I never encountered a usage of "par" that would be translated as "even" in the numerical sense, but admittedly I know next to nothing about mathematical Latin of the eighteenth century. Reading Euler's words, if I were not aware of the modern English usage of _even_ to describe the functions he named, I imagine I might translate his phrase as "equal functions". That translation seems to capture the idea that such functions have the property that f(x) equals f(-x), or that the functions' values are the same on both sides of the y-axis.

Particularly since Euler did not name what we now call _odd_ functions, it does not seem clear to me that his Latin usage is etymologically related to our modern terms at all. ... Do you know whether _par_ and _impar_ were the Latin terms used in Euler's era to refer to even and odd integers?

(To counter my own objection, yes, the English _even_ , of Germanic origin, does have several meanings that are close to the main meaning of Latin _par_ as _equal_ , e.g., in "even odds" or "an even split". Presumably that's the origin of the mathematical meaning of _even_ in English: an even number is one that can be split into two equal numbers whose sum is the original.)

<comment><USER6> > But is it even clear that Euler's usage of "functiones pares" etymologically > corresponds with our "even functions"?

Well, the etymology of "even" doesn't trace to the Latin word "par", or any cognate or ancestor of it. Is it clear that Euler's usage of "pares" is the same sense as our "even functions"? Pretty clear.

The "words" Latin dictionary ( [http://archives.nd.edu/whitaker/words.htm](http://archives.nd.edu/whitaker/words.htm) ) includes the following gloss of 'par': "s:even, divisible by two". Perseus ( [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=par&la=la#lexico...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=par&la=la#lexicon) ) seems to cite this sense back to Horace, glossing the phrase "ludere par impar" as "play 'even and odd'".

I'll also note that par and impar are the Spanish equivalents today of even and odd.

All that, together with the fact that it was translated into English as "even", seems like a pretty strong case that that's what Euler meant.

<comment><USER4> Yep, I looked it up too, and indeed _par_ and _impar_ seem to have been the standard Latin terms for _even_ and _odd_ in the mathematics of the era. See, e.g., Clavius's 1574 translation of Euclid's _Elements_ [0].

0\. [https://books.google.com/books?id=4Ks7AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA8&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.com/books?id=4Ks7AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=Par+numerus&source=bl&ots=JQZ7Q37ezp&sig=DP_HvkXUeNZ0E5454eGdS8Gfpss&hl=la&sa=X&ei=6QG3VLaLJIG_uATjpYLwCg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Par%20numerus&f=false)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can think of the even and odd parts of a function as decomposing the function into its +/-1 eigencomponents with respect to the operator f(x) -> f(-x).

You can think of the exponential Fourier series of a function as a way to decompose the function into its {..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ...} eigencomponents with respect to the operator f(x) -> f'(x).

<comment><USER8> I like this from a representation theory perspective. The cyclic group of order two, C_2, is the set {1,x} with x^2=1 (it's reasonable to just use {1,-1} with the group operation being real-number multiplication). Let V be the set of continuous function R->R, and then let's define a linear representation where phi_1 is the identity operator on V and phi_x is the operator you describe, phi_x(f)(c)=f(-c). (The only two symmetries of a line which fix the origin are the identity and flipping, which is what this representation is representing.)

The group C_2 is known to have exactly two irreducible representations (the positive and the negative representations), so V decomposes into (at most) two subrepresentations (that is, there are two subspaces of V which are closed under the group action). Using the characters of C_2, we get two projection operators: (\phi_1+\phi_x)/2 and (\phi_1-\phi_x)/2\. Examining what these do, they decompose a function into the even and odd parts, respectively!

This idea can be extended to the circle group for the Fourier transform.

Representations are able to capture a bit more than eigencomponent. Where an eigencomponent requires that the action be strictly scaling, components from representation can have more complicated actions. For instance, if you have a representaiton of the dihedral group of symmetries of a triangle, then there will be projections which will give you 1) the +1 eigencomponent, 2) the -1 eigencomponent associated with flipping the triangle over, and 3) the 2-dimensional component which faithfully represents the symmetries of the triangle (i.e., the one already mentioned when describing the dihedral group).

<comment><USER9> It's funny that you mention this; I was about to type a similar comment! Thinking of the Fourier transform in terms of group theory seems like it would make it more complicated, but it actually makes the fundamental underlying concept simpler to understand.

One can perform the Fourier transform over an arbitrary, compact, non- commutative group G via f(g) = ∑ dᵏ⋅tr(f̂ᵏ⋅ρᵏ(g)), where the sum is from k = 0 to k = ∞, and k indexes the unitary, irreducible representations ρᵏ of G. dᵏ is the dimension of the kth representation. f̂ᵏ is the (matrix) Fourier coefficient of the kth irreducible representation and is computed as f̂ᵏ = ∫ f(g)⋅ρᵏ(g⁻¹) dμ(g), where μ is a Haar measure on G such that ∫ dμ(g) = 1. Note that since the group representations are unitary, ρᵏ(g⁻¹) = ρᵏ(g)ᴴ.

For commutative groups, all of the ρᵏ are one-dimensional, and so the sums and integrals are over scalar values. As you mention, for the circle group the above expression reduces to the "conventional" equation for the Fourier transform.

One can think of the group Fourier transform as decomposing a nonlinear function over a group into a linear combination of orthonormal functions such that cutting off the sum at the kth term provides the best MSE approximation to the function, i.e., f̂ᵏ = argmin ∫ [tr(ĉᵏ⋅ρᵏ(g)) - f(g)]² dμ(g), where the minimization is over ĉᵏ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Neat :) I had almost the same idea when I was trying to figure out whether every matrix is the sum of a symmetric and an asymmetric matrix.

The decomposition being very similar: A = (A + A')/2 + (A - A')/2, with ' denoting the transpose.

<comment><USER11> *antisymmetric

The matrix problem is of course a special case of the same problem, where the domain is the matrix indices, labelled with (0,0) as the middle of the matrix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This can be rather difficult for general data where an explicit equation isn't obvious (even though it'll work quite often as pointed out by johncolanduoni below).

[I think it's neat that] for sufficiently smooth and periodic data, a Fourier transform will do exactly this (decompose a function into its even and odd parts)!

<comment><USER13> I'm confused. If you have a table of data where one of the columns varies from -A to A, what is the difficulty in calculating the odd and even parts by just adding (resp. subtracting) the values at x and -x and dividing by two? Even if you don't have a precisely symmetric span of x values you can use simple interpolation as long as your data points are reasonably dense.

Fourier analysis seems to be overkill in this case, unless I'm missing something.

<comment><USER12> Your algorithm had a bit of a typo--you want to subtract (resp. add) to calculate the odd and even parts of a function.

If you don't have a nearly symmetric span of x values, you may need to do extrapolation to obtain one, which may be difficult.

I brought up Fourier analysis not as a means to replace the decomposition described in the blog, but to connect it. I think it's neat that Fourier transformations can be viewed as a parity decomposition.

<comment><USER14> if your data are over [a,b], where a < 0 and b > 0, you can do the decomposition mentioned in the article over [-c,c], where c = min(|a|,|b|), so you don't need to extrapolate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The odd and even functions summing to 1/(x+1) given in the article have an asymptote at x = 1.

Is there a way to avoid this, and represent 1/(x+1) as the sum of an odd function and an even function which have no asymptote except for x = -1?

<comment><USER16> The odd/even parts of a function are unique, so no.

To see why they're unique, say you have two pairs of odd/even functions fo1/fe1 and fo2/fe2 that each sum to the same function. Subtract fo1 from both sides:

        fo1 + fe1 = fo2 + fe2
              fe1 = fo2 - fo1 + fe2

Since fe1 is even, fo2 - fo1 + fe2 must also be even. The function fo2 - <USER2> is the difference of two odd functions, so it is itself an odd function. And the only way the sum of an odd function (fo2 - fo1) and an even function (fe2) can be even is if the odd function is everywhere zero [1]. In other words, fo2 - fo1 = 0, which means fo2 = fo1. Substituting this into the overall equation, that means fe1 = fe2 as well.

[1] the sum is even when

        odd(x) + even(x) = odd(-x) + even(-x)
                         = -odd(x) + even(x)
                  odd(x) = -odd(x)

and the only number which is its own negative is zero.

<comment><USER17> I think it's a little simpler to observe that

        fo1 - fo2 = fe1 - <USER3>

The left side is an odd function and the right side is an even function, so the common value must be both odd and even. But only the zero function is both odd and even, QED.

<comment><USER11> Your don't even need to posit fe3 and fo2:

f(X) = e(X) + o(X)

f(-X) = e(X) - o(X)

From there you can explicitly solve the system of linear equations to get e(X) and o(X)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To visualize this, take the graph of f and mirror it across the y axis.

The even function is the average of the two traces f(x) and f(-x), and the odd function is the distance from the average to the actual values.</comment>


Show HN: Explore news through entity graphs - <AUTHOR> https://www.civicfeed.com/newsexplorer <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

Explore News is a side project I built that helps you visualizes how people and organizations are connected through a graph.

As part of the work we do at CivicFeed, we've built a pipeline of news/social/government datasets. From there, we run our own entity extraction and entity disambiguation algorithms.

Over the weekend, I was curious about how we could use this data to show how news stories connect people and organizations.

So to play with it, type in a query (or click one of the suggestions). It'll return the top entities most associated with that query. Then click another gray dot. When you do, it'll return the top entities associated with that query then connect any dots.

Keep exploring from there.</comment>


Coda 2 available for download - <AUTHOR> https://panic.com/coda/buy.html

<comment><USER2> I was downvoted (unjustly) when I mentioned App Sandboxing the other day (here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4004833>). Apple will force sandbox effective June 1st, so they can't provide updates through MAS version _if Coda 2 is not fully sandboxed_. They haven't said anywhere whether that's the case or not.

The support page says:

        Apple often changes the conditions for Mac App Store eligibility, and it's possible
        we may have to modify or remove features from the Mac App Store version in the future.
        It's our intent to keep them as close to identical as Apple will let us.

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

So, they might be forced to remove some features from the MAS version, in that case, it'd be better to get it directly from panic.com. On the other hand, MAS version sports iCloud support, so _if_ it's fully sandboxed, it's better to get it from MAS.

We can wait a few weeks to see which on is the case, but in that case, we'll lose the $50 discount.

I'm sure Panic is aware of all these issues and doubts, but I can't think of an honest reason why they don't address these issues.

I _love_ Panic and their softwares; that's why I hate to see that they're apparently playing with their customers.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you could just email them and ask?

<comment><USER4> Somebody asked them on twitter. The response isn't particularly reassuring. <https://twitter.com/stevenf/status/204675630363721728>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's no free trial? Coda 2 is not worth $99... $50 is where it should stay at. It's pretty much a step up from iWeb than Coda 1.

<comment><USER6> There is 7-day trial.

<comment><USER7> And the very first thing it prompts you to do (besides joining their mailing list) is crippled and reserved for paying users only (importing transmit favorites)... Seriously, a short eval period + in your face crippleware that only hurts your most-loyal users... the ones who have already bought transmit?

That's a stumble out of the gate, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As much as I like Coda, it's a little annoying (as a customer) that the only way to get support is via e-mail or Twitter. Just about every other software company out there hosts discussion boards that let their users at least get help from one another.

</comment><comment><USER9> This software is awesome, our whole team uses this software everyday.

The use case is simple: centralized dev, terminal and preview. It's insanely powerful.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice, the quick open now searches the whole file path. This was much needed!

Before when i looked for "__init__.py" I got them all, now I can do "api __ini" and I've got the right one.

Also loving the git support. After a first half hour, I am impressed. Everything I wanted in Coda2 seems to be here, and the polish is what we've come to expect from Panic.

</comment><comment><USER11> I just bought Diet Coda just for that one rare situation when I'll need to edit some html or change file permissions from bed. It's really nicely done, just like every Panic product but I don't see myself using it very often especially since my workflow involves LESS & CoffeScript and versioning vs. editing straight on the production server.

<comment><USER8> I use Coda with Less and Coffeescript (with the Rails asset pipeline) and it is fine. Sure the svn feature (in v1) was useless for Github, but Gitbox solves that problem quite easily.

<comment><USER11> I was talking about Diet Coda, the iPad version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What exactly is the use case for Coda? It doesn't seem like it offers any benefit for dynamic websites, but then it doesn't have wysiwyg editing either. I am curious why it is popular.

<comment><USER12> I've always wondered the same thing. It seems like Panic is getting a pass just for being Panic. When there's something like Sublime Text 2 out there for $60, I'm surprised people are so attracted to these all-in-one apps that aren't as extendible and typically load files slower.

<comment><USER8> >> It seems like Panic is getting a pass just for being Panic

I think this is very true, and it applies to their entire product line. It still boggles my mind how popular Transmit is.

Having said that, extensibility isn't for everyone. I have licenses for Coda, Textmate and Sublime, and I like them all.

Personally, I do like the one-window approach that Coda takes, but that's a ultimately a taste thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's 50% off through Friday ($49 USD).

Also, it sounds like they're offering free upgrades for recent Coda 1 buyers, which is nice.

<comment><USER14> Only if you bought Coda 1 between (2012-04-10 to 2012-05-24).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Using the demo now - I love it, but it's crashed twice in 20 minutes... Guess it's early days.

<comment><USER15> Make that thrice, seems to crash every time I drag an icon from the sidebar->home panel to the sidebar quick nav menu (edit: only when dragging to rightmost position).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Upgraded to 2, when I run, it crashes, have to force quit. Solid $49 dollars spent. Fail!

<comment><USER17> Yep, same deal. Endlessly blinks in the dock but never opens.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startup Interview Tips - <AUTHOR>

I have a technical interview with a really hot startup tomorrow.  I usually am cool as a cucumber going into interviews, but this is my dream job, so I'm getting a bit nervous.  I've already interviewed with the business development guy and now it's time to interview with an engineer.<p>I think this could be valuable information for a lot of people trying to get jobs at hot startups: What sort of questions should one expect and be prepared for in a technical interview?  What, if/any tips would you give?  What other advice would you give to someone trying to get a job at an exploding startup? <comment><USER2> If it really is your dream job, show it to them; do your research on the company and be prepared to talk about the high points and areas of improvement of the company

Regarding the technical questions, Google some common question to get your mind jogging again; my experience with startups is they don't really ask the standard "reverse a string" type questions, but may ask some trivial derivative usually related to their project

They will definitely ask you about your previous projects, so come prepared to give summaries of what you did in the past

Be enthusiastic, don't completely let yourself go (stay professional, but be yourself), and definitely email them a quick "Thank You" after the interview

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome thanks for the advice! I need to do some research tonight on technical aspects they deal with so I can relate my knowledge to their needs. I also thought about writing some js to run on the page to make a few improvements I've thought would be good ideas, then uploading to github. Either way, I can't wait!

<comment><USER3> Yes, do stuff like that. Show enthusiasm. Show willingness to dive in.

Research their tech, and ask questions about it during the interview.

Be proactive. Research. Write code that's relevant to them, if you can think of something. Use their product. Make sure you've signed up and used all their features extensively. Do usability testing (ask your friends) on their product. Etc.</comment></comment></comment>