Cornell Study Favors Open Plan Offices - <AUTHOR> http://iwsp.human.cornell.edu/file_uploads/office_ex2_1238259706.pdf

<comment><USER2> The premise of this remarkable study is:

"The officeʹs primary (not only) value, we believe, is as a place for face‐to‐face interaction: a place to meet co‐workers and managers, to inspire, coach, be motivated, share information, debate goals and objectives, socialize, make friends, and so on. It is as much or more a social setting as it is a refuge or technical or information center."

The above doesn't sound to me anything like going to work for... you know, working. True so: work didn't even make it to the values list. Now I don't know about you folks but I certainly don't get any pay for socializing, as much as I'd love to. Cornell somehow confuses the office space with cafeteria. That, or it makes the case for an open-floor cafeteria, which I fully approve.

<comment><USER3> "... the more open the ʺopenʺ plan office environment, the more conducive it is to overall work effectiveness, when communication and interaction are critical elements of the work process. Few jobs or professions donʹt qualify."

If those are the criteria, then I would agree that a shared office space's primary value is certainly to facilitate easy communication. There's very little point in going in to a shared office building if you are not going to be physically communicating with anyone there.

Put another way, and to address your point: you can do (office) work anywhere. A quiet space at home is just as good as one in a shared space for blocking out distraction and doing "heads-down" work. But the differentiating factor in the cases concerning this study (and many tech companies) is effective communication between team members. The study makes the case that open plans are better suited for that.

<comment><USER2> I see your point. In my environment communication makes only so much of a day's time and depending on how high this share is, an open office can boost or kill productive work. There's this concept of time slots which is completely failing in an open office environment - you can't honestly dedicate say 4 hours time at once for doing a certain task. Point is, an open office gives on one side (communication) while taking on another side (productivity time) and a certain company's mileage will vary way too wildly between these extremes. One compares always these schemes in terms of individual productivity vs. team productivity, but honestly said, all arguments seem to me completely random. There are no "standard" humans and when one will suffer from too much disturbance, its team will suffer too. And when one project will suffer from too little communication, the team will suffer too. What's the middle ground then? I strongly believe the "team room" is the sole setup which can be justified realistically.

<comment><USER4> I see my more "communication" inclined coworkers talking all the time in our open floor office. They talk about work for sure, but also jokes, women, soccer, etc. This is very good for socialization and building relationships but it's terrible when I'm trying to find out the root cause for a difficult issue.

It seems the has been too much emphasys on the socializing aspects of open floor offices and not the equivalent attention to concentration and flow required for the type of tasks we're assigned to.

<comment><USER2> I'm working on the same open floor with people from another company with completely unrelated duties. I fail to see how this socialization is helping my own team's work (incidentally my team is NOT colocated). Nevertheless, officially we're happy open office users.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley Cozies Up to Washington, Outspending Wall Street 2-1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-18/outspending-wall-street-2-to-1-silicon-valley-takes-washington <comment><USER2> Back in 2005-2006 I was working on Wall St., studying for my CFA exam, working to get a place in our equities group, all while half-diverting my attention to the other coast, watching in awe as a whole bunch of upstarts were following in the footsteps of Robert Noyce and crew, building a new future. This new future didn't seem to look like the old way of doing business, like on Wall St., where it was where you went to school, who your neighbors were, who's ass you kissed at work. It was like the wild west, where the fit survived and prospered, where anyone could go and make a new life, and build something that would improve everyone's life.

Fast forward 5 years or so and my delusions of "this time it will be different" were all but shattered. Watching Facebook put up walls around the commons, watching Apple fence off their garden, watching Google get into bed with the government and our military. Watching payroll head-counts become more and more dominated by sales teams. Watching founders head for the exit that is Wall St., which is _exactly_ where Noyce and Crew had fled from back in the day.

My guess is that it's all about the systemic qualities of our economic system. How could Silicon Valley had become anything else. I mean, if we're honest about it, Silicon Valley's first big customer was the military. And where there is money to be made Wall St. and the Ivy League will soon follow, stamping out cookie cutter companies implementinng their tried and true methodology for extracting the maximum value for shareholders.

So sad.

<comment><USER3> I am pretty sure stanford is an IVY school and its been at the heart of SV.

<comment><USER2> The Ivy League is an anthletic conferrence, similiar to the Big Ten. The Ivy League schools excel at producing financial and business professionals, who then, as the other commentor states, are funneled to the most lucrative careers.

They are the most lucrative careers because of the way our financial system is the progenitor and final repository of money and value in our economy up until very recently, up till the age of Big Data and Big Computation. However, what's just as fungible as money? Data. A "New Ivy League" is emerging. One that does not produce business and financial professionals, but instead produces IT professionals. This new group of school similarly funnels their grads to the most lucrative careers in this new medium of wealth creation.

Ivy League: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. Considering this, and the fact that tech will undoubtedly get blamed for designing many jobs out of existence, how long before we see an Occupy Sand Hill Road?

Asked with some humor, but... not really.

<comment><USER5> > _how long before we see an Occupy Sand Hill Road?_

I say it in every "Rage against the system!" thread on these boards: there are many people here who _are_ "the system" as far as the proletariat are concerned. As SV rises in power and its players become engrossed in politics, that becomes more evident. So be careful when you wish for revolution. You might find yourself on the wrong side.

<comment><USER6> You make a great point about how the _system_ already exists and in many ways the SV crowd is it. Looking forward, what is there to be done to prevent SV, Seattle, Austin and Denver from becoming the Detroit/Rust Belt of the next economic industrial shift?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unsurprising at all. All businesses/sectors are at the mercy of policymakers, and it's natural to invest some of the newfound wealth into influencing public policies. The size of lobbying budget is more or less a proxy for the size and the growth of the sector.

The irony, of course, is Silicon Valley's holier-than-thou self-righteousness in relation to Wall Street and/or lobbying.

</comment><comment><USER8> Keep in mind this is venture capitalists or founders spending, employees don't most of what SV elitists are lobbying for.

<comment><USER9> The same is true on Wall St. A run of the mill analyst/associate/vp isn't going to burn their money by donating it to a political candidate.

<comment><USER10> That's a good point. It's funny how 'Silicon Valley' and 'Wall Street' have connotations such that the poor schmuck at the bottom of the totem pole gets caught in the net.

It should be thought of more like 'White House' or 'Brussels', i.e. powercenters, which I think is what the labels may have originally tried to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Silicon valley is doing better at politics, and yes spending is up, but is influence?

The big companies are very new to this game and the people who think they are big players, aren't. Apple seems to be the only one that has some teeth as they were able to resist being compelled for the signing keys, however the powers that be just went to the Israelis for a crack.

If you want to see what effective lobbying looks like look at Lockheed, Northrop, CACI, Honeywell etc... These guys get massive legislation passed, sponsor candidates, control voting on the floor of Congress. Musk has arguably come the closest to being a real player in the game but has a very mixed records and is not rely seen as as much of a threat to ULA and the auto industry.

Silicon valley is realizing it needs this, but it has been lucky so far that it hasn't had to fight many entrenched players. This will change as ambitions rise.

<comment><USER12> Google is working directly with the Clinton campaign. I think they have it figured out.

<comment><USER11> No, that isn't proof of anything. If you aren't working both sides you don't have a long term position.

<comment><USER12> They aren't working both sides. That is the point.

<comment><USER11> I'm not following you or perhaps you are not familiar with political cycles or the horsetrading that goes on.

See there aren't really any "winners" in politics, just temporary inhabitants of certain roles - roles which have vacillating levers for control, and ideologies.

So if Clinton wins, there is still the pesky problem of a possibly republican controlled congress (House more than likely) at some cycle - and then 4 years later doing it all again. This whole checks and balances thing isn't really efficient for getting things done (Madison made sure that was possible) for corporate interests, so if you need, say bi-partisan support for a bill that has a nice clause in in that supports (or doesn't) lets say H1B visa allocations for FY 2018 - then you need more than just the support of the executive branch. If the representative/senator that the tea party, or whatever the trump people are calling themselves, supports feel like [Insert Corporation] isn't on their side, then they can't compel the representative/senator to vote on their side and thus their power is reduced.

You need to work both sides, otherwise you aren't in the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tech enjoyed a long period of minimal regulation as it was changing/moving fast and government didn't understand it. No longer. Just like auto, finance and other big industries tech will be heavily regulated. These regulations will be used to ensure those with money and power are able to keep it. Like it or not that's how our country works.

<comment><USER14> You don't have to bring in a nefarious motive for SV starting to lobby harder to make sense. When they weren't being heavily regulated congressional ignorance about tech didn't really matter. Then Washington starts coming out with some really misguided information and privacy laws like sopa so the big tech companies had to get involved or wind up dealing with bad regulations.

<comment><USER15> If you believe that Google and Facebook are lobbying to protect your privacy rights, I'd encourage you to check-out their records in Europe, where their interests tend to get tested a little more[0][1].

If you do care about your privacy, data regulation, and abusive copyright legislation, I'd urge you check out the EFF[2], and consider becoming a member.

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

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Goo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Google#European_Union)

[2]: [https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes, must keep the trustbusters at bay.

</comment><comment><USER17> does anyone have details on what these lobbying efforts are directed towards?

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure you know what Occupy Wall Street was about.

<comment><USER19> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736324) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER18> You have nothing better to do bud?</comment></comment></comment>


DMVs Are Making Millions Selling Drivers' Personal Data to Third Parties - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/news/29715/dmvs-are-making-millions-of-dollars-selling-drivers-personal-data-to-third-parties-report <comment><USER2> It should need court approval to get this info</comment>


How not to be alone - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/how-not-to-be-alone.html <comment><USER2> As somebody who seldom carries a mobile phone, figures out local directions with an address and paper map, etc., this editorial resonates strongly with me, and the author illustrates his point beautifully. His expression, "diminished substitutes," captures a feeling I've had for a while about the 4G lifestyle, or even one that just takes place too much on the internet.

In the past 3-4 years, when smartphones completely hit the mainstream, I have noticed a very significant change in those around me, even in some people I am close with. They seem more ... robotic! I am certain if I moved in different circles, I would've noticed a similar pattern years before among BlackBerry users, who were the butt of the "CrackBerry" joke ca. 2004.

I'm not sure how else to describe somebody completely fixated on a small device, resorting to it almost like some security blanket when an everyday problem needs solving. Portable video games like Game Boy, and traditional mobile phones, which no doubt have been similarly derided in the past, offer a poor comparison for their limited scope. The small screen provides some strange tunnel vision I don't care to encounter.

<comment><USER3> I don't quite get that "security blanket" comment. If the phone is a useful tool for solving a problem, why not use it? Are we supposed to use old techniques just because the new ones aren't strictly necessary?

My experience in that regard has been pretty much the opposite. People are still stuck in a pre-smartphone mindset where you have to give people directions instead of an address, where you have to remember the locations of businesses you haven't visited in a long time instead of looking them up, where you have to guess about traffic conditions instead of just checking, etc.

It amuses me to no end when a crowd of techies get into a discussion about driving directions these days. No longer necessary!

<comment><USER2> Sure, there's no problem with you and I agreeing to disagree. I'm of the opinion that the mind operates like a sort of muscle, and that you can be in or out of shape for a particular thing, mentally. As the mapping example goes, any convenience I might gain from turn-by-turn directions, delivered on demand, does not outweigh the tremendous benefit I receive by _thinking_ about where I am going, figuring out cardinal directions by the sun, and other things like that. The latter will seriously save you when you lose reception, phone is out of battery, you're in a place where online maps are out of date, etc. It's a real, applied skill.

So, what you see as a simple task I see as more of a practice, a way of living. This is just how I am about most things, being something of a perfectionist. And that's fine!

<comment><USER3> OK, I can buy that. However, I have to ask, why use a map? Wouldn't it be better practice to ditch that as well?

<comment><USER2> Yea, definitely! That's why, like I said in another comment, for local routes I don't really use a map unless it's some place I haven't been before. If I know how to get to the road the place is on, and can figure out where it is reasonably based on the address, there's no point in using a map.

But I'd find a traveler foolhardy to not at least consult a map ahead of time when visiting some very new, distant place. The good thing is that it's normal in the US for gas stations to all carry local maps. So I'm usually not more than a few minutes from being able to stop off and get my bearings if needed -- last I had to do that was in a tricky part of NC (damned business/non- business routes) in 2007.

<comment><USER4> Or, rather than stop at a gas station to buy an out of date paper map, you could get with the program and pull out your smartphone and have the worlds most advanced cartographic system at your finger tips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is fairly complex rather than a simple uniform transition, and interacts with culture in a way that varies a lot by region.

What the author seems to describe with dismay as being caused by smartphones has been pretty much normal in Scandinavia since long before smartphones. It's considered polite to pretend not to notice things like someone crying on a park bench, if they aren't someone you know. It's also (with some exceptions) considered weird and intrusive to strike up conversations with strangers, and instead you're supposed to be absorbed in your own thoughts, or book, or newspaper—or yes, nowadays, smartphone—unless you're out with friends or family you already know [1]. An exception is if you are at a bar and drunk. Of course, the norms are different in, say, Greece, and different again in Japan.

[1] One blogger refers to this as the Privacy In Public Act [http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/how-to-piss-off-a- dane](http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/how-to-piss-off-a-dane)

<comment><USER6> Even Scandinavian Americans act like this.

It's not politeness it's a culturally ingrained pathological aversion to interacting with strangers.

<comment><USER7> Even non-Scandinavian Minnesotans act like this ;-)

<comment><USER6> Good point. Although my friends from St. Paul with Irish backgrounds are significantly more outgoing and have much larger social circles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _I was faced with a choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the boundaries between us. Intervening might make her feel worse, or be inappropriate. But then, it might ease her pain, or be helpful in some straightforward logistical way._

Ease the author's discomfort, more like. If you need to think about whether to approach a distressed person, chances are that your subconscious is telling you to leave them the hell alone.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. It depends a lot on your type of personality. But if you are an introvert you think a lot about weather to approach a (distressed) person or not. And ultimately are almost are never going to do that.

If you just listen to your "subconscious" and not making an intentional effort of being more open to people this will negatively impact social interactions.

<comment><USER8> I am an introvert, which is one reason I'm acutely conscious of when people would rather be left alone.

<comment><USER10> But are your assumptions correct? Just because you recognise situations where you would want to be left alone, is it not possible that extroverts wouldn't want to be left alone in those same situations?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe the OP is right and today's smartphones make it vastly harder to choose to approach nearby people than to retreat into the scrolling names of one's contact list. But how was it five or ten years ago? There was always something which made it harder to choose to approach nearby people: dumbphones, MP3 players, newspapers, etc.

Maybe the OP just uses his smartphone and today's tech as an excuse for his timidity to approach people.

</comment><comment><USER9> Completely unrelated to the message of the story but: Did he end up talking to the girl after all or not?

<comment><USER12> He didn't.

 _The phone didn't make me avoid the human connection, but it did make ignoring her easier in that moment, and more likely, by comfortably encouraging me to forget my choice to do so._

<comment><USER9> He hid the answer quite well. Thanks for pointing it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> More generally speaking, I think the problem has to do with how we tend to view "things", how we get attached to them and how we forget why we have those things in the first place. Assuming that nearly everything man-made is a tool (be it a hammer, religion, politics, the economy or even art), most of the things we make have a purpose. I think the problem is that not everybody gets the purpose of those tools as clearly as others, sometimes to the point where the purpose no longer matters and the tool becomes an end in itself.

What I'm trying to say is that we tend to glorify the tools themselves, despite their potential flaws or inadequacies. We forget that we made those tools to make certain tasks simpler, or more enjoyable, with (hopefully) the ultimate goal of being generally happier. In my opinion, a good example of this is the monetary system, where some people hellbent on making as much money as possible end up living miserable lives.

By shifting the emotional attachment from being happy (by yourself and socially) to the thing that helps bring happiness ("diminished substitutes"), we start valuing the tool for its apparent value rather than its intrinsic one. It becomes the "chasing the dragon" philosophy of life ; we create a dependency, or even an addiction, where there doesn't need to be one in the first place. We focus so narrowly on the means that we forget the end.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs."

I must be a misanthrope, but I disagree wholeheartedly with the latter. Limiting the annoying exposure to other people's problems is a feature, not a bug. People cry every day over ridiculous small-minded problems.

</comment><comment><USER15> Technology neither brings us together nor drives us apart. It rather gives us tools for specifying social activity in greater detail. It used to be that I had to wait until I saw one of my friends at the coffee shop in order to share something with her, now I can just do so via Facebook.

We tend to think of "before Facebook" as some pre-2000 state that's never returning, but that's not really the case. I have friends where we might know each other for a month before we take the step to friend each other on Facebook. Some people I won't interact with on Facebook. Lots of my relatives I block. If they want to talk to me, I'm readily available via chat or message on FB, it's just the daily flow of stuff they're publically sharing I'm opting out of.

I think a lot of older people who lived significant parts of their lives without social tools tend to make the effects of having them out to be more than what they are to those of us who grew up with them. Most people I know use them perfectly naturally, they don't waste hours and hours on Facebook or bury themselves in their phones to escape social interaction.

They just move flexibly from social arena to social arena. When I'm at the bar, I'll pick up my phone if there's nothing interesting going on and play a game or text or whatever, then just put it down when I get bored of it or someone interesting comes around. We use technology as a way of filling in parts of your life that would otherwise go wasted with something that could be more meaningful.

To worry about software replacing the real is just missing the point.

</comment><comment><USER16> I found this article angsty, obnoxious and full of belabored, melodramatic prose, just like the rest of Foer's writing.

The instinct not to interfere in complete stranger's emotional turmoil -- especially when she is a 15 year old girl and you are a man in his 30s -- has little to do with technology. There are other ways to distract oneself in uncomfortable situations.

I also can't relate to his "diminished subsitute" hypothesis. When I look at my text/call/email/skype logs I'm hard pressed to find any instances where I used a "diminished" medium -- sending a text when I should have called, calling when I should have visited, etc... Some people may do that, but that's not a symptom of technology, that's just a way of being rude that technology has enabled.

That's really the crux of the problem with modern communication technology. It gives people more outlets to be impolite by using it an innapropriate times or innapropriately. But in many ways, it allows us to connect and stay in touch with people that were never possible before.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sometimes I wonder if we're in a transitionary phase of mobile technology where we are still at the point of directing our attention at the actual technology rather than using it as a compliment to our "real-world" experience. Glass seems like a step forward in theory, but in practicality I believe it's just moving the screen from your pocket to the side of your head.

<comment><USER18> You're right, we are definitely in a transitory phase. But it goes beyond just "mobile technology", in my opinion.

I see this as going all the way back to the first stone tablet. Humans reading / watching a framed format. With the advent of cinema in the 20th Century, this form evolves into a screen. Presently, we are witnessing the interface change from a screen to a lens. This will be a crucial pivot in the human trajectory, as the technology becomes more sophisticated and comes to color the seeing aparatus. The politics and dialogue around how this technology "compliments our real world experience" will be a very interesting space to watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you have 25mins to spare I would suggest watching the whole Middlebury Commencement speech from which this was adapted.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgGzz3fKINA&feature=share](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgGzz3fKINA&feature=share)

</comment><comment><USER20> I am not disagreeing with the author of the article, but I will say something positive about the "smartphone life style": my wife and I live in a small town in the mountains. Although we have a lot of local friends, our family is distributed in San Diego, San Francisco, and Rhode Island. I really enjoy keeping in touch with my family by emailing pictures while I am hiking, etc. in real time as I am experiencing life. I probably send at least two pictures a day. Later, on the phone, the previously sent pictures are something to talk about. Using video Skype or iChat video also helps keep in touch.

If I lived in a small town with almost all of my family and friends nearby, then I might agree more with a limited technology lifestyle, but that is not the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER21> On the topic of technology ruining human interaction: I recently read an idea worth trying. When you go out with friends for drinks, take everyones phone and stack them face down with yours on top. The rule is the first person to grab their phone pays the tab. I used to make fun of friends that were engrossed with their phones by acting like I was texting on an invisible phone. But, this works much better.

<comment><USER22> Sorry if it sounds rude, but I have a much better idea: find a way to bring them into the conversation you're having, try being more interesting, change the subject to something they might want to participate or just leave them alone for a bit. Some people need to "recharge" by being alone.

As vinceguidry put it on another post, "We use technology as a way of filling in parts of your life that would otherwise go wasted with something that could be more meaningful."</comment></comment>


Porting a java hashing method to clojure - <AUTHOR> http://samesake.com/log/2012/08/10/Porting-java-to-clojure/

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe the clojure equivalent in the example provides increased readability by distilling the method into its discrete parts, as well as demonstrating how java's static type constraints (and any incidental complexity therein) were made completely unnecessary after some simple collection generalization.</comment>


Online Learning: A Bachelor's Level Computer Science Program Curriculum - <AUTHOR> http://blog.agupieware.com/2014/05/online-learning-bachelors-level.html <comment><USER2> A reasonably well-rounded alternative would be the Ars Digita "University" program. It was meant to be a 1-year intensive course.

[http://aduni.org/courses/](http://aduni.org/courses/)

I might also note that it'd be nice if we pinched some stuff from our neighbour professions. In chemistry you take lab class, in some engineering disciplines there's metalworking or assembly.

It would probably handy to have at least one "shop class", being a mix of tools (here's an editor, here's version control, here's testing) and craft (here's your copy of _Code Complete_ ).

Also ... where are the databases? A lot of damage is done in this industry by not understanding the concept of structured storage and querying. If you're going to take discrete maths (including graphs, sets and predicate logic), you'd be missing out if you don't get to apply it.

<comment><USER3> Some of the links in the article are to course videos from Ars Digita.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's woefully missing the mathematics curriculum that all the reference institutions [and any accredited US program] require. Four semesters includ8ng threeof calculus appears typical. CS programs in the US also require the two semester physics sequence where calculus must be applied.

Like any technical degree, understanding the maths is one area where the educated differentiate themselves from mere graduates. All those hours spent thinking mathematically and procedurally are useful. Comfort with ciphering is essential.

<comment><USER5> That's because 1) calculus is taught in high schools and is generally taught in college regardless of whether you major in CS (so for example someone wanting to self-teach CS after college will have taken calculus). And, calculus is not particularly useful for _most_ CS grads, except for specific areas (theoretical aspects of probability, machine learning, graphics).

Many great CS programs also don't require physics. From my observations, physics requirements in curriculum tend to tacked on solely due to CS being in the engineering school. To be honest, physics beyond a general overview is not really useful for most CS grads, even those doing complex CS-heavy work.

Discrete math, logic, proofs, and probability are all immensely useful in CS. However, they tend to be of a completely different flavor of teaching compared to calculus courses.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying calculus is something that every computer science graduate uses in their daily professional life. But you're not going to meet a [US] computer science graduate who does not have it or a computer scientist who cannot perform it. And anything that says "here's what a computer science degree is" does a disservice by not mentioning it.

My criticism is based on the same assumption that underpins your argument, that the people looking at this list already have a sufficient background in mathematics, or more generally that people looking at the article have general STEM training.

Yet, just looking around HN, you'll see that many of those asking "Should I get a CS degree?" are people who just fell into programming, and in the larger world you have people moving into the field as a career change Think about all those bootcamps that market to liberal arts and business majors. These are people with degrees that correlate with a weakness in mathematics and science. A weakness which often shows up earlier in education and results in such people avoiding Calculus in high school and college.

As I take online courses, the limiting factor [after time] is the amount of mathematics I have at my finger tips. It is perhaps a common problem as even Einstein is said to have wished he had studied more mathematics.

In the end, if computer science education is basically vocational, then perhaps it makes sense to replace Calculus I and II with Rails I and II. But that's not really what 'Computer Science education' usually means. That's IT and CIS.

<comment><USER6> You are definitely correct that the traditional Computer Science education includes Calculus, but that does not mean that it _should_ include Calculus. I would appreciate if there was empirical reasoning for why Calculus should be taught in Computer Science rather than the argument be "we need Calc because we're supposed to and every one else has it".

It is easy to argue that Calculus helps, but it would also be easy to argue that various other fields of study would _help_ (physical education, journalism, English to name a few).

Full disclosure: I am a professional Full Stack Developer with Grad Level CS Education

<comment><USER7> That seems to be setting up an barrier for Calculus that nothing else has to face. Is there empirical evidence correlating an operating systems course to success in the field?

More generally,a lot of the value to the student in a degree is signalling -- not only the bare fact of the degree itself, but also culturally. Even if an online education can't provide the first part yet, it can provide the second one. Dropping a reference to the Church–Turing thesis into the conversation at an interview might get you the job. Such "success" is independent of whether or not knowing the lambda calculus is actually helpful day to day once you're there.

<comment><USER5> An OS course is directly under CS. Getting asked OS questions during a systems interview is normal. Getting asked calculus questions in most CS interviews (except the specific areas of machine learning and graphics, and even then pretty much never) is unheard of. When's the last time you were asked to differentiate something, integrate something, use Taylor series, double integrals, etc? Having to maximize/minimize some function might come up, but probably in an abstract sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are going to educate yourself broadly over the subject of software engineering it might be helpful to take a look at what a committee of professionals think the software engineering body of knowledge comprises:

[http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok](http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok)

<comment><USER9> The goal of the post seems to be a curriculum for Computer Science, the chapters 13 and 14 in the list seem to cover most of this. Though I would approach the matter quite differently depending on if I wanted to learn all the CS in a certain degree or all the CS needed/useful for practical Software Engineering.

<comment><USER10> What's included in the 'needed/useful for practical software engineering' list?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an excellent list. I've been coming at it a slightly different way and trying to figure out what the three semeseters of "computer science" would look like in at the high school level. The thought being that some amount of understanding of computers has become essential to everyday life.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wrote up a CS bachelor's curriculum in 2012 using only Coursera courses, and had the same problem with the lack of fundamental math courses ([http://www.thesimplelogic.com/2012/09/24/you-say-you-want- an...](http://www.thesimplelogic.com/2012/09/24/you-say-you-want-an- education/)).

I do think there will be a full CS curriculum from one of the MOOC providers soon, but I don't think such a curriculum will produce many "graduates" unless it is paired with in-person instruction of some kind.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really like this list here: [http://matt.might.net/articles/what-cs-majors- should-know/](http://matt.might.net/articles/what-cs-majors-should-know/)

</comment><comment><USER14> My own opinion regarding on-line academic programs: Accreditation or GTFO.

<comment><USER15> What do you think of Georgia Tech's "$7,000 Master's Degree"? [http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/](http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/)

<comment><USER16> I'm in it and it's awesome. They're doing some really cool things pushing forward the tech for online delivery and course management. And I'm happy to say that it is every bit as rigorous as you would expect from a Top 10 program.

<comment><USER17> I'm looking into applying to this in the next year or so. How much time do you feel you have to set aside each week to keep up? How many courses at a time are you taking?

<comment><USER16> I took CS6300 - Software Development Processes and CS7641 - Machine Learning. I would not recommend two classes at once in your first semester, and never two classes with ML. (I've heard that Networking is comparable to SDP, and advanced operating systems is comparable to ML.)

SDP required 9-12 hours a week on average (many more some weeks) spent on group projects. It would have been less if I'd been working alone. The hardest part is working in a distributed team with no leader - especially because lots of people take this as an "easy" intro course; of the 6 people I worked with, 4 of them were not comfortable being asked to do any programming. O_o

ML required ~25 hours a week on average; I spent close to 100 hours on it during weeks with projects due - fortunately there are only 3 projects. The lectures are longer than SDP, the projects are __hard __, and there are exams that you 'll have no idea how to prepare for. You will love it anyway.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the input. If I do this (trying to talk some colleagues and friends into it, study buddies and drinking buddies if it gets too bad) I'll probably have to stick to one course a semester then. I figured that'd be the case.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Switzerland: First country to have national referendum about Sovereign Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.vollgeld-initiative.ch/english/ <comment><USER2> Does "Banks won't be able to create money for themselves any more" mean the same as ending fractional reserve banking, or am I misunderstanding things?

<comment><USER3> There is no such thing as "fractional reserve banking", the textbook models on banking taught in schools across the globe are _dead wrong_.

See:

Richard A. Werner, A lost century in economics: Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105752191...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477)

Richard A. Werner, Can banks individually create money out of nothing? — The theories and the empirical evidence [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105752191...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477)

Zoltan Jakab and Michael Kumhof, Banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds - and why this matters [https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working- paper/2015/banks-are...](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working- paper/2015/banks-are-not-intermediaries-of-loanable-funds-and-why-this- matters#)

German Bundesbank, Die Rolle von Banken, Nichtbanken und Zentralbank im Geldschöpfungsprozess [https://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/Veroeffentl...](https://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/Veroeffentlichungen/Monatsberichtsaufsaetze/2017/2017_04_geldschoepfungsprozess.pdf)

Piti Disyatat, The bank lending channel revisited [https://www.bis.org/publ/work297.pdf](https://www.bis.org/publ/work297.pdf)

Beardsley Ruml, Taxes For Revenue Are Obsolete [https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/542134](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/542134)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the references. I'll read them when I get time.

On a side note, it seems bizarre to me (as a layman) that economists still debate the the nature of banks and the creation of money, given they are the foundation of the _economy_. Kind of like physicists not understanding thermodynamics, or something.

<comment><USER3> Economists generally follow the idea that all trade is barter trade and that money is just an indirection layered on top the "real" economy, which alleviates some of the issues with bartering goods.

That's all fine, but historians and anthropologists have found zero edvidence that the monetary system developed out of barter.

Rather, banking seems to have co-evolved alongside interpersonal informal credit systems (contract based, not spot-trade) and religious practices in early agricultural city states. The first written records are bookkeeping documents of grain supplies and outstanding debts between citizens. In time, people started trading these documents against each other.

E.g. If you need to pay Garry for fixing your plumbing, but Sally still needs to pay you for the 8 eggs she borrowed, you can just tell her to pay it to Garry instead and you'l be even.

What coins are in this model are abstract tokens representing the ledgers inside the third party's accounting table which denote the debts and credits people hold against eachother. In other words, it's all about accounting. Economics courses do not include accounting, generally.

The real issue economists fail to "get" it is that it invalidates many of the axioms on which they construct their theory. Economics is still very much a deductive science. Because there is such a large hivemind around these fundamental founding myths the field has been able to get by with simply ignoring outside criticisms, this includes a number of "own goals".

If you have some econ 101 knowledge you might want to look up the "anything goes" theorem. Many nobel prizes can be thrown out of the window.

I found Steve Keen's "Debunking Economics" and Phillip Mirowski's "More Heat Than Light" to be very revealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a good explanation of what the sovereign money initiative is (and why it is probably a bad idea) from the chairman of the Swiss central bank: [https://snb.ch/en/mmr/speeches/id/ref_20180116_tjn](https://snb.ch/en/mmr/speeches/id/ref_20180116_tjn)

<comment><USER5> And an FAQ/rebuttal: [https://www.vollgeld- initiative.ch/fa/img/English/Clarificat...](https://www.vollgeld- initiative.ch/fa/img/English/Clarifications_to_SNBs_FAQ_on_Sovereign_Money.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a website that proclaims the importance of getting the word out, I didn't see any description of what this "sovereign money" proposal actually is. What is being proposed and why?

<comment><USER7> There's a link on that site [0]. Essentially they want just the central bank to be the source of money supply.

[0] [https://www.vollgeld- initiative.ch/fa/img/English/2015_10_22...](https://www.vollgeld- initiative.ch/fa/img/English/2015_10_22_Swiss_Sovereign_Money_Initiative_- _five_questions_with_answers.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As somebody from Switzerland I think this is insane. I will vote against it.

Honestly, most people who want this dont have a clue about monetary policy.

<comment> another-one-off I'd liken it to Repblicanism vs Monarchism. The differences between the positions are pretty extreme; to the point where it is hard for normal people to educate themselves.

It looks like something I'd be in favour of. Not because I don't understand monetary policy but because I disagree with its goals, methods and outcomes.

<comment><USER9> Repblicanism vs Monarchism seems a terrible comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't see what this will actually change. If the SNB is the sole provider of money, whether electronic or currency, they will inevitably become the sole provider of loans, with the banks serving as brokers for those loans. Net zero game.

<comment><USER11> Personally I am peeved that I can't individually make fractional reserve loans in genuine fungible currency (costs ~$30m to be a bank), so I'd like to choose a zero-sum point where the rich don't get richer by default

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have to admit to not understanding this, though I think I know somewhat well about money. Isn't this "sovereign money" the way it is in other countries, where banks either have money deposited by some customers and/or borrowings from a central (government controlled) bank or reserve that controls the total amount of the currency/money?

If banks create money on their own for lending, wouldn't that cause an uncontrollable chain reaction on the valuation of the currency, on the ability to control inflation (to some extent) by policy measures like interest rates and other things?

Any explanations, or better, links to articles would be helpful.

<comment><USER13> (please don't hesitate to correct me if I'm wrong) Say there are 3 customers at a single bank.

Customer 1 = Investor, has 100 cash and deposits it into a bank account

Customer 2 = Borrower, borrows 100 from the bank

Customer 3 = Restaurant, provides a service for Borrower. Borrower pays a 100, and Restaurant deposits it to it's bank account.

This is how the "sovereign money" travels: Investor -> Borrower -> Restaurant

But the customers see the following account balances

Investor : 100

Borrower : -100 (owes the bank 100)

Restaurant : 100

If now Investor and Restaurant both want to withdraw their money the Bank would be in trouble. The bank only has 100 "sovereign money" on their books. Investor and Restaurant won't care who owes the bank, they want their money.

But the solution for this would be easy, Investor must be given the choice if he wants to allow/disallow the bank to loan out his deposit. Similarly how it works with long positions at a brokerage firm.

<comment><USER14> You left out the reserve requirements, wiki has a nice chart on how reserves affect expansion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fractional- reserve_bankin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fractional- reserve_banking_with_varying_reserve_requirements.gif)

I've heard people say that the fractional reserve system causes the boom and bust cycle, because when banks lend money, the create the principal not the interest which leads to a shortfall at some point. Not sure if this is right tho.

<comment><USER15> Money has a very long history and discussions about money are deeply entangled in bitter and fanatical battles between political/ religious/ philosophical viewpoints. Many of those viewpoints ignore the counterintuitive ways that money and banking actually work. For the most part, bankers and economists have a vested interest in keeping as many outsiders as possible from understanding how it really works.

For all its flaws and strange history, the first Money as Debt video [1] still makes the most sense to me and I have yet to find an economist at a dinner party who refutes the disturbing conclusion that modern monetary policy is inherently unstable and depends on continuous economic growth. I welcome any links to any counterarguments that are not a confusing morass of obfuscating terminology. Show me a crystal clear model, or a common sense presentation like this video, that argues that the current monetary system is not a Ponzi scheme.

1 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AC6RSau7r8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AC6RSau7r8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, I really hope they have success. Private money creation through fractional reserve is a real con, and completely unnecessary with modern communications.</comment>


Archive.org: Scanning a Braille Playboy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.archive.org/2011/08/17/scanning-a-braille-playboy/ <comment><USER2> Amazing. Who knew archive.org is so many things doing?! Digitizing books with scanning centers that together add a new book every 90 seconds to the archive.

Also, I had no idea archive.org has such a beautiful book reading interface! (eg. <http://www.archive.org/stream/keartonsnaturepi01kearrich>)

<comment><USER3> A more relevant link to see the book reading interface: <http://www.archive.org/stream/playboybraile00nlsu>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, their book reading interface is incredible! It's actually a real joy to read even the most uninteresting scribbles with that interface. Wow. Now THAT is a design ebook-readers (... or the file format) need to adopt.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Our BookReader is open-source, if you would like to use it:

<https://github.com/openlibrary/bookreader>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just curious: are there any visually impaired hackers hanging out on HN? I'd be interested to hear what software setup you use.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious if there are any methods they could use to scan and translate the typed Braille into written English, or language in which it is written.

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, I looked it up, and there are braille versions of many alphabets:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille#Braille_for_other_scrip...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille#Braille_for_other_scripts)

I wonder how many blind multilinguists exist (that can read braille in multiple languages) . I imagine there's a lot of character collisions between different braille alphabets, but I suppose it wouldn't be any more difficult than (visually) reading, say, English and Spanish, which have virtually identical alphabets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where are their scanning centers? The link (<http://www.archive.org/scanning>) said they have lots of them, but doesn't describe where. I assume I can't just show up and expect to get my books scanned, so I'd be interested to understand the process better. Can an individual participate or are they only working with their partners?</comment>


Groupon to Choose Goldman, Morgan Stanley to Lead IPO - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703983104576263520004699858.html <comment><USER3> I can see it now:

$10 Billion in common stock for $1 Billion! 90% savings! Click here to buy now.

</comment><comment><USER4> 20billion divided by 60million is $333per user. That seems high.

</comment><comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, when a hot tech startup is going to IPO - what difference does it make which investment bankster does it?

For example, if there were 1 million people who wanted in on the deal - <USER2> there be less if the deal were led by some random bankster?

Further - what does Goldman get for leading this -- it would seem that they simply get to pick who gets in on the opening price, including their own staff/cronies.

So, it would seem that, at least for Goldman, the game really is fixed in the favor. The effectively get guaranteed returns on every single dollar they put out.

Pretty farking disheartening.

<comment><USER4> For IPO's the leader of the syndicate gets the best deal and a larger cut of the fees. It's basically a no lose proposition.</comment></comment>


Watch SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Land on Barge in New 360-Degree Video - <AUTHOR> http://ir.net/news/vr-games-apps/124444/spacex-falcon-9-360-degrees/ <comment><USER2> Can we get this link updated to point directly to the Youtube video, this is blogspam

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDK5TF2BOhQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDK5TF2BOhQ)

<comment><USER3> I'm amazed at how well my phone handles this.

<comment><USER4> I had no idea how good accelerometers got until I saw this on the iPhone YouTubeApp. This is cool. Now I wanna shoot more 360 videos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do they secure the rocket remotely after landing?

<comment><USER6> I believe it rests under its own weight and friction. In an interview, Musk said the acceptable wave height was 2-3 times higher than the ones seen during that landing.

<comment><USER7> I'm a little skeptical about that. You can clearly see the rocket slide as it lands.

<comment><USER8> It still has surplus horizontal velocity when it hits the deck, hence the sliding. [1] Musk confirmed on Twitter that the rocket in fact doesn't need securing and the metal shoe plan turned out to be unnecessary.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/726218218109444096](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/726218218109444096)

<comment><USER9> I wonder how they determined that it's unnecessary. Did they try to topple it over?

<comment><USER10> Really heavy objects with a low center of mass don't just topple over. It's 42 meters tall and weighs around 20.000 kg without fuel.

[http://spaceflight101.com/spacerockets/falcon-9-v1-1-f9r/](http://spaceflight101.com/spacerockets/falcon-9-v1-1-f9r/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This made my Google Cardboard purchase so worth the $20!

I liked hearing the audio too: the hum of the barge, the double-crack of the sonic boom followed by the roar of the engines. Epic!

Hopefully in the near future there will be landings shot in higher resolution, and with better audio.

<comment><USER12> I have Google cardboard too - but usually that has two views right? How did you get this to work? Still impressive just looking 'up' with the bare phone!

<comment><USER13> The Google Cardboard feature only works on Android devices right now.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What niche, lesser known blog you keep reading frequently? - <AUTHOR> It can be about man's life or motorcycles or programming projects, whatever that you read on a regular basis. <comment><USER2> Of Dollars and Data, Nick Maggiulli, and the.blog of Morgan Housel. Both are finance blogs Both are quite mainstream though.

.</comment>


Apple's shift to ARM Mac from Intel at WWDC will define a decade of computing - <AUTHOR> https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/13/apples-shift-to-arm-mac-from-intel-at-wwdc-will-define-a-decade-of-computing <comment><USER2> Microsoft will be spending money reimplementing office and I wonder if they'll stop at the minimal electron wrap around o365?

Adobe Photoshop, Ableton, AutoCAD

<comment><USER3> I imagine Photoshop will be relatively quickly made available, and maybe even Ableton, but based on how most engineering software progresses and develops and how much slower engineers themselves are to use modern tools, I can't imagine any cad software will be ported for ARM within the decade.

<comment><USER4> And bugs, bugs everywhere

<comment><USER2> I'm hoping apples investment in llvm pays back here.

I wonder if the sw Devs are hoping for funds to cleanly reimplement in.. (name newer language but probably rust here)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apple being able to migrate across CPU types is notable.

They've done it how many times now?

Just musing on that fact, and the impact it has on their thinking.

<comment><USER6> Three times (MC680x0 to PowerPC to x86), so far, or more if you also count the 24-bit to 32-bit and 32-bit to 64-bit transitions.

<comment><USER5> I didn't realize there was a 24 bit to 32 bit. Was that the 68K to PPC transition?

<comment><USER7> [https://lowendmac.com/2015/32-bit-addressing-on-older- macs/](https://lowendmac.com/2015/32-bit-addressing-on-older-macs/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Yeah, I passed this part of Mac history right by.

<comment><USER8> Bad memories there. Programmers would stuff crap in the high 8 bits of the pointers. Not so good once running on 32 bits!

<comment><USER5> Ouch!

That seems both tempting, because the buts are right there, unused.

...and a bad idea, because at that time people had to know the address space was going to expand.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Google changing its ads to blend more into search results? - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/ZzlEO.png

<comment><USER2> it's another color, it's been like that for a long time if I remember correctly. just like the side ads.</comment>


Explanation of Macintosh II's memory limit - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_II#Memory_limit <comment><AUTHOR> The original Apple "Macintosh Memory Configurations" technote is misleading on this topic.</comment>


New cable cut compounds net woes - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7222536.stm

<comment><USER2> Three in three days? [http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/in...](http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/index.html)

What are the odds on THAT? Looks less like an accident all the time.</comment>


Russian Wikipedia blackout - <AUTHOR> http://wikimedia.ru/blog/2012/07/10/zabastovka-vikipedii-na-russkom-yazyke/

<comment><USER2> "The Russian language version of Wikipedia will be closed on July 10th in protest of the proposed changes to the information law, debate on which will be happening on that day in the Russian Duma."</comment>


Improved Hubble data provide fresh evidence for new physics - <AUTHOR> https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/03/02/adam-riess-cosmic-ladder-universe-expansion/ <comment><USER2> There's also a recent theory, that suggests, that the space expanding is accelerating due to a very distant merger of gigantic (on the scale of mass of the entire visible universe) black holes, caused by long gravitational wave pressure (as I understood it), emitted by that merger. The theory is interesting for it drops the need for cosmological constant.

[https://don-beaver.livejournal.com/196412.html](https://don- beaver.livejournal.com/196412.html)

Mix of Russian explanation + paper in English published in MNRAS (closer to the end of post).

The theory's main premise is that "gravitational waves don't have gravitational mass", and spewed quite a lot of debate.

I wish I'd know physics better to check their math.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Here's the possibly unsettling news: The new numbers remain at odds with > independent measurements of the early universe's expansion, which could mean > that there is something unknown about the makeup of the universe.

Unsettling?! This is the stuff that makes science exciting.

<comment><USER4> "Unsettling?! This is the stuff that makes science exciting. "

There are a ton of researchers who are only waiting to see data that's not consistent with the current models. From what I have read it's disappointing for many how well the standard model and relativity are holding up.

<comment><USER5> If the Hubble observations end up fitting old boring theories, I fear those scientists might release a new Universe.js framework on their own. A modern, beautiful and almost as performant universe than the native one,

<comment><USER6> Given the flexibility of it, I've seen some people claim that this is essentially String Theory, and that's why it's not a suitable model. While the math works out, it also has so many tune-ables that you can make any kind of universe you want, and take any observations and make any number of universes that fit those observations.

And since these tune-ables aren't inherit properties of any kind, just numbers (or other kinds of values) you can plug in, there's very little predictive power in the theory. You can just always re-tune the whole thing to any observation, and make a nearly infinite number of predictions from it still. There's no way to try to select for anything that looks like a fundamental property of the universe.

<comment><USER7> That's because string theory is not a model, it is a framework for model- building; just like the Standard Model is only one possible quantum field theory. String theory is fully compatible with quantum field theory, so the current state of theoretical research is seeing them come to live side by side as two tools within a single discipline.

The problem really is that string theory provides a language for discussing phenomena we can't probe directly (due to the extreme energies involved), and so theoreticians are stuck conducting thought experiments until new experimental options are developed/discovered for testing particular models making use of string theory. Until then, there's no real path forward for applying that framework to expand or amend the Standard Model, because of how successful quantum field theories have been at explaining the phenomena we have access to currently.

Because we will never be able to build a galactic-scale particle accelerator required for doing scattering experiments at planckian energies, astronomical observations offer one of the best hopes for getting access to contradictory data. The study of holographic duality offers another possibility, if we can devise lower energy systems within our experimental grasp that are dual to high energy systems that aren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since the universe is 13.8 billion years old, we are able to see objects which are 13.8 billion light years away. How are the physicists able to say that the diameter is 93 billion light years? Shouldn't it be closer to 27.6 billion light years in diameter?

<comment><USER6> So as you've set things up, the radius of the sphere we can see is 13.8 billion light years. That means that the diameter of that sphere is 27.6 billion light years. But here's the rub, the visible parts are all moving away from us, so while we see them as being 13.8 billion light years away, they've been traveling for 13.8 billion years away from us. Along with that, the rate that they're traveling has been increasing the further away (in time and space) they are.

Now since we've found ways to correlate the distance and velocity that things are traveling on large scales in the universe, we can actually figure out about how far away the objects we can see should be from us, after traveling 13.8 billion years. This is where the 93 billion light year figure comes from, how far away those "edges" have traveled since they emitted the light we see today.

<comment><USER9> How could they travel that far? Isn't that faster than speed of light?

<comment><USER10> Stuff can't move faster than light, but space is bound by no such law!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hubble, that outdated expired project that keeps on giving. Most of the global good news I read came from Hubble these days. <3

<comment><USER12> That's a good point. I keep hearing from it since I was a kid. And it doged retirement many times already. The builders can be proud.

<comment><AUTHOR> Congress should tell NASA to prepare a servicing mission. It can be competed out to Boeing and SpaceX, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not quite sure, but I think this is the main paper in question:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.02711](https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.02711)

Just reading the titles of Riess' other papers on arXiv gives an interesting peek at the clever work that went into getting this H0 measurement.

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER14> I think it's this one:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.01120](https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.01120)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is copied from another site. The original is at: [https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/03/02/adam-riess-cosmic-ladder- univ...](https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/03/02/adam-riess-cosmic-ladder-universe- expansion/)

<comment><USER16> Thanks! Changed to that from [https://www.astromart.com/news/show/an-improved- hubble-yards...](https://www.astromart.com/news/show/an-improved-hubble- yardstick-gives-fresh-evidence-for-new-physics-in-the-universe).</comment></comment>


Coldplay- Champion of the World - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/kayI9QB1-IA <comment><AUTHOR> An uplifting song for "underdogs" of the world. I also thought about Elon musk's life experiences.</comment>


How Not to Hummer Your Business - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/06/hummer.html

<comment><USER2> Uh... time to look up 'hummer' in the Urban Dictionary.</comment>


Is Butter a Healthy Fat? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-butter-a-healthy-fat/ <comment><USER2> If you are going to eat butter make sure it's grass-fed. So many varieties are not (they are sometimes soy-fed and not as nutritious)</comment>


Giteabot account was compromised - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/4167 <comment><USER2> Funny to see this news posted _on github_ , after people having suggested gitea as a viable platform to migrate your github projects to ever since the MS buyout.

Good thing on them being open about it though, despite it probably costing them some potential traction.

<comment><USER3> Gitea isn't meant to replace Github... it's meant to be a self-hosted alternative to it. That's subtly different.

I use it for as my local git server on Debian 9. Binary is in the /home/me/gitea directory. Run the usual gitea setup, then copy this to /home/me/.config/systemd/user/gitea.service:

      [Unit]
      Description=Gitea (Git with a cup of tea)
      After=syslog.target
      After=network.target

      [Service]
      RestartSec=2s
      Type=simple
      WorkingDirectory=/home/me/gitea
      ExecStart=/home/me/gitea/gitea web
      Restart=always

      [Install]
      WantedBy=default.target

Then just systemctl --user daemon-reload && systemctl --user enable gitea. Then visit localhost:3000 and add it to your remotes (git remote add local ...) and you can push your changes to your own gitea instance.

<comment><USER4> > Then visit localhost:3000 and add it to your remotes (git remote add local > ...) and you can push your changes to your own gitea instance.

Why would you want to run a git server on your personal computer?

<comment><USER5> If you have ssh enabled with an accessible git repo; you already do!

<comment><USER6> Just don't forget to create `--bare` repositories on the server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't actually done cryptographically signed continuously released applications before. I was just thinking about how it should work, and it seems a little complicated. I'm not sure how to safely sign the build.

1) You have to sign your code, obviously. If the code isn't signed, none of the resulting build artifacts can be trusted, because where did the code come from?

2) Once your code is signed, you can run a build on verified-only code artifacts, which can produce a build artifact. But if the server doing the build is compromised, you can just put anything at all in the built artifact before it's signed. Sure, you had signed code, but if I can inject my own code into the compiler (or whatever) or just take over the build process and give it my own code, then I can make any kind of build artifact I want.

The only way I can think to "confirm" this build artifact is genuine is to get multiple hosts to independently build the artifact identically and compare them. So you have to have reproducible builds. Which I don't think many people have.

So, what part of the pipeline am I missing?

<comment><USER8> > The only way I can think to "confirm" this build artifact is genuine is to > get multiple hosts to independently build the artifact identically and > compare them. So you have to have reproducible builds. Which I don't think > many people have.

This is an excellent idea, and has been done for Bitcoin and other projects: [https://github.com/devrandom/gitian- builder](https://github.com/devrandom/gitian-builder) It's probably troublesome to setup for a new project of significant size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> GitHub's permission system is quite brittle here: Anyone with write access to a repository can silently swap out binaries on the releases page, which are then still listed as "Verified" if the commit is signed. It's a complex problem, but the current approach feels subpar.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like a good opportunity for integration with GPG, keybase, and other signing tools.

<comment><USER10> I was surprised that there was no gitlab integration with keybase when I signed up last night to check it out. Not just to save me manually copying my key but for the cross-platform identity verification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has anyone taken a look at the binaries themselves to see what they do and how they differ from the official releases?

<comment><USER12> The creator of the GitHub issue said the binary contains a cryptocurrency miner.

<comment><USER11> Where does he say that?

<comment><USER12> It's in the issue body, first bullet point. [https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/4167#issue-33011407...](https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/4167#issue-330114075)

> Most of go-gitea organization repositories new release&tag was created with > name 0 and added install.exe binary (13KB in size) to that release that was > malicious (from our analysis contained crypto currency miner)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ouch, this is a case where things like red october by cloudflare could be a great idea. Having to have a minimum number of signers to agree to sign a package would be a good way to prevent this.

<comment><USER14> Even simpler, have the releases performed by a human account. It can still be compromised but you're not going to be storing your own GitHub credentials on a server or inside a CI flow so it can automatically write on your behalf. You probably shouldn't be releasing so often that it's a pain in the ass to perform it manually (in terms of tagging in git rather than doing a full on deploy to a server or something).

It also means that maintainers are accountable for each release and if something like this happens, you know exactly who you need to talk to to get the situation resolved, which might be something as simple as setting a stronger password or not committing a GitHub token into their public dotfiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yikes, no code signing certificate, no details filled out for details or even a copyright, at least on the exe I examined.

</comment><comment><USER16> Was thinking to install Gitea earlier and saw this on hackernews, is it safe to install using binary yet?

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it should be safe now. They re-released the binaries and set up 2FA.

<comment><USER10> Why is it possible to even create a group that doesn't mandate all users have 2FA?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone have the known bad .exe.exe? I'd like to take a shot at analysis on it.

<comment><USER19> dabbler's HN comment a few below yours has a link to them.

[https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/4167#issuecomment-3...](https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/4167#issuecomment-395579466)

<comment><USER20> Haha, I appreciate your typo in my username. When I created this account a little over two years ago I mistakenly dropped the "l" and didn't realize for a few months (having only copied it from a pw manager.) By that point what was done was done. Years later it makes me a bit happy to think people may actually be reading it as it was intended.

<comment><USER19> Heh Heh Heh

Didn't even realise I'd gotten it wrong until you mentioned it. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Fetch – A Chrome plugin to manage your history - <AUTHOR> https://getfetch.net <comment><USER2> Or how to have 1984 running in your web browser. :)

But some people don't care about their privacy any longer, because, well we probably have none at this point anyway.

So in for a penny, in for a pound.

Edit:

Consider putting something about privacy right at the top of the page, if such a feature exists. e.g all bookmarks are encrypted, and only the user has the key, or whatever.

<comment><USER3> Will do, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a neat concept, but your privacy policy is going to kill you. It's incredibly boilerplate and vague, with no information about how you actually use the data.

If you want security-conscious folks to use your service (that is, hackers from HN), please provide more information about how you actually plan to use the data and more robust language about security and transparency. There's no way in hell I'd let a third-party like yours access the entirety of my browser history without seeing some evidence of vigorous privacy protection first.

<comment><USER3> atrophying, we're working on a privacy page that lays out our privacy policy in user-friendly terms. Give us a couple of days to get this sorted. thanks for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stop trying to make "fetch" happen.

<comment><USER6> rekt

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've wanted something like this a long time, but cloud is a deal breaker for me.

Anyone know of a similar local effort? (I spent 98% of my time on my own two machines anyway...)

<comment><USER3> Its pretty heavy running all the software on a local machine. Would consume resources and tons of storage. Maybe if you bought a server, it could work out. Or maybe we could set you up with a private server...just thinking aloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Privacy concerns aside, it seems like a really useful service.

How do you handle page versioning? Do you take a new snapshot every time I visit - and do you keep the most recent version or can I look at/search through previous versions?

Ranking pages by how much time you spend on them seems great from a productivity standpoint. From a search standpoint, often the pages I want to go back and find ex post facto are the ones that I only looked at for a few seconds. So maybe it's still helpful? Yet to be seen!

A little feedback on the page copy. Any time someone claims they have "proprietary algorithms" it sets off alarms. It's empty jargon, and sounds scammy. Your headline "Say Goodbye to Bookmarking Webpages" is good because it speaks to people who already use bookmarking services and find them lacking. But "Imagine never having to re-google what you had googled before" reaches a broader audience and also speaks to the actual problem they have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kudos cooperadymas.

We take a snapshot every time you visit the page. We don't version the page yet. Do you have a specific use case for a feature like that?

There's a very strong correlation between time spent and usefulness of the article. We index all articles, even the ones you spend less time on, so when you search, a few page scrolls get you to the link you need. That said, time spent is a heuristic, its useful in a lot of cases, but not all, we'll have to see.

"Proprietary algorithms", we have a patent pending on how we sort and filter data

We'll think of a catchphrase around ""Imagine never having to re-google what you had googled before"

Hope you enjoy using the extension. You can send us feedback from the plugin directly, or mail us at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER9> Something like "don't re-search when doing research" maybe?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> okay, why should I let a third party access my browsing history?

Big player already do that.Why should I trust a small party too?

Not being cynical, just wanted to see if the payoff is worth the compromise.

<comment><USER3> Hey Zuxfer,

I'm the developer of the extension.

Totally valid point, we thought a lot about privacy, and our approach to managing the issue is two fold

1\. Your browsing history isn't identifiable on our databases since we use a random hash from your credentials to track your history. 2\. We have absolutely no interest in using the data, even non-identifiable data for marketing purposes 3\. We leave the final control in your hands, if you feel your privacy is breached, you can clear all your data from our servers and uninstall the extension.

Here's our privacy policy for reference - [https://getfetch.net/privacy.html](https://getfetch.net/privacy.html)

<comment><USER11> Not to be overly critical, but it sounds like you are asking us to just trust you with no proof of your claims.

How do we know that you in fact have properly randomized the hashes, really aren't using the data, and most importantly, how do we know you really are clearing the data from your servers when we ask you to? Are you going to make the source code available?

If its running on your servers, you have to plan to monetize right? How do you plan on doing that?

Edit: I should note it looks quite cool, and I am probably going to try it, but was wondering about the above points.

One additional question. Is it possible to ban specific sites from showing up? Like work related intranet things?

<comment><USER12> Yes... indeed... "work related" things... yes that is the problem... no other things... no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been trying to design something along these lines now that Firefox aggressively prunes history with no user override ( it keeps barely five days worth on my laptop ).

However the main challenge is that much of the web is now SSL, so a light caching proxy isn't feasible unless it does MiTM which I don't want.

My current idea is to log DNS lookups but that doesn't, of course, provide page content data.

<comment><USER3> The Fetch backend works pretty much like a crawler, what Google sees, it sees...private content is not indexed, e.g. your gmail mails, but the titles are indexed so there is still some usefulness in the search. We may add functionality for the user to sign in to these services so we can index them. E.g. the user may add his google account ao we can index mails etc. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've wanted this feature for a long time. But you're giving away gives me zero confidence that you'll be around in a year.

Also something I've learned building a sass business: you need customer feedback. People who pay you money are properly motivated to give you the feedback you need.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will be launching paid plans soon. If you like it so much please take it for a spin and mail me your thoughts to meat firstname.lastname@example.com. We use it internally and find it useful and wont be shutting down fully even in the worst case scenario,we may trim some features that is as far as we would go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why does this even need to be in the cloud? Firefox can already do most of this offline.

<comment><AUTHOR> We see the amount of links amassed by a person over time is his knowledgebase of sorts and we want it make it available to the user where ever he wants. We will be launching a mobile app soon, where in you can sign in and find any link from your history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16>
        > Imagine never having to re-google what you had googled before :)

So.. instead of searching Google, I search Fetch? Meh, Google's already on my screen (address bar).

<comment><USER17> obviously you dont have the need for searching your history. searching on google is about finding something. searching your history is about finding something you already found once, spent time to do that, and is hard to find again by googling. my main need for searching history is when i look for apartments. i open 50-100, during a few days. then later im getting an answer from one of the owners, and i have to find the ad again. im not going to open all the ads avain, and of course the address is in the page content so i cannot search on tbe url bar. if i have a way to search my history with full text search on the page content too, that would be awesome.

and im still looking for that app/extension that will allow me to do that with firefox..

<comment><USER3> Firefox version, coming your way soon! Care to connect at firstname.lastname@example.com? We'll keep you posted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this a joke? You actually want people to upload their history to the cloud. People don't even want it on their own computers. That was the point of incognito mode!

</comment><comment><USER19> OT but .. I love the rubik loading[0] intro!!

[0]: [https://getfetch.net/img/status.gif](https://getfetch.net/img/status.gif)

</comment><comment><USER20> Undoubtedly the attention lavished on this Extension by HN has caused its server to stop? Seems to be nothing happening here, I will pass on.

<comment><USER3> Hi Nik, yes, we had some trouble with the load yesterday, you could try now if you like, its all sorted out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> what's the difference between this service and the one from Google (Chrome) described here? [https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068?p=swaa&hl=...](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068?p=swaa&hl=en&authuser=0&rd=1#chromeapp)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fetch is focused on turning your browsing history into a searchable knowledge base. Fetch doesn't just index links, it indexes content as well, and it ranks them by time spent, which is very handy to find the links you need quickly.Coming soon you will be able to sign in with the same acc into mozilla and safari as well, your history across browsers will be clubbed together making it all the more valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why would I switch to Fetch if I'm perfectly fine with using the default Google Chrome bookmark bar?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you like using the default google bookmarks then probably will love using fetch. There are so many instances during which we forget to bookmark something and managing bookmarks is a nightmare in itself. Fetch streamlines all and makes finding links a breeze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Being able see my history sorted by amount of time I spend on a page sounds like a good idea.

<comment><USER3> Worked very well for our test user base of 30 users, hopefully it'll be useful to others as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How will this work with the pages which have login?

<comment><USER3> In the case of pages with login, Fetch will only be able to store the title of the page, but not the content. We are working on integrations to connect services to Fetch search, we currently have Gmail, Dropbox and Google Drive on our list. Any particular service you want search to be available on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> thanks, but i'm already happy with my data & soul being sold by Google & Facebook. /sarcasm

</comment><comment><USER17> any plans for firefox addon?

<comment><USER3> Definito! Can you connect at email@example.com? We'll keep you posted!</comment></comment>


Nano device promises ultra-fast graphics on gaming consoles - <AUTHOR> http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/nano-device-promises-ultra-fast-graphics-on-gaming-consoles <comment><USER2> I would like to see practical example. My concernss are:

* The light source for the fiber optics must have time to fluoresce and de-fluoresce to send a bit of data.

* Then at the end of the optical pipe you need some sort of photovoltaic material to convert the light back to an electrical impulse. That process can be notoriously slow.

* You have to amplification on signal without causing interference. If you do it at the light source then then you take more time to fluoresce and de-fluoresce. If you do at the capture end then your need more equipment process the signal.

* Durability - If you use silicon its expensive and more subject to breaking. If you use plastic then there the heat issue.

Telecom gets await with higher speeds by using thousands, if not million, of strands at a time. You will not have that luxury is an Xbox 2 or PS5.</comment>


Hackers are stealing years of call records from hacked cell networks - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/24/hackers-cell-networks-call-records-theft/ <comment><USER2> There is truth that CDR data is valuable. The problem with this article is the hyperbole the researchers use to describe the data.

1\. Researcher says CDR contains all the raw data you send. False. It contains call detail records. Not your internet traffic. Not your Facebook calls. Not your icloud or WhatsApp messages.

2\. The researchers here fail to share who was targeted and share almost no verifiable data to confirm what they found. Anyone could claim to have found a hack like they claim and get credit without providing any details to draw a big headline.

Seems like marketing not research.

<comment><USER3> Does anyone remember the first year after the iPhone shipped on AT&T, and people (including myself) were getting detailed paper bills that included every single HTTP object we requested [1]? My guess is that the CDR data is much more granular than you think. This doesn't get exposed on customer bills anymore, but I'd bet it's available within the system.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300-page_iPhone_bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300-page_iPhone_bill)

<comment><USER4> Not anymore because of HTTPS

<comment><USER3> I think you're being overly optimistic. HTTPS still reveals domain names in many cases, traffic type, probably down-to-the-minute details of app usage. And this is leaving aside a bunch of (still potentially) unencrypted HTTP nonsense like advertising traffic, which -- ugh -- may contain all sorts of identifiers jammed into HTTP GET requests.

<comment><USER5> He is not being overly optimistic.

The carriers are not executing well on the concepts you describe, despite the feasibility of what you are proposing. Https everywhere is breaking things for the carriers. Tracking flows and reversing them for all customers is a non- trivial state management and storage problem.

<comment><USER3> But it's a problem they're clearly working on. And as long as these compromise threats are not perfectly dealt with, customers should very much be concerned.

<comment><USER5> Google is by far the bigger threat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> maze-le If the data hadn't been collected in the first place, it wouldn't be used against us. Data austerity is the best form of data protection. In this case the state mandates the data hoarding of telco providers, which makes it even worse.

<comment><USER6> They are legally required to if they fall under FCC jurisdiction.

For entities that fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission (the "FCC"), "[e]ach carrier that offers or bills toll telephone service shall retain for a period of 18 months such records as are necessary to provide . . . billing information . . .." (47 C.F.R. § 42.6).

[https://morningconsult.com/2017/04/25/tech-groups-push- fcc-u...](https://morningconsult.com/2017/04/25/tech-groups-push-fcc-undo- phone-call-record-retention-regulation/)

<comment><USER7> The possibility to steal _years_ of call records doesn't arise because of a legal requirement to retain such records for 18 months.

You can meet those legal requirements while (a) deleting all records after 18 months have passed and (b) storing all 'archive' records (e.g. between 30 days and 18 months) on a separate system that's only used for these specific requirements and has all access (which should be rare and narrowly specific, unlike daily business) logged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's easy to say that "oh, phone calls have no security at all, what do you expect?"

It's true that we can talk to friends and family with internet services.

But for businesses we use our phones. Personally I don't think I would affected if my call records were given to anyone or leaked.

But I can think of scenarios where it could be really damaging to someone.

Like imagine a celebrity was having cancer treatment they didn't want people to know. Their call.records get leaked to a tabloid who infer their calls to a clinic mean that they have cancer and run an article.

I can imagine that would be a painful experience.

<comment><USER9> I remember reading an article about a developer who started replacing Android on his phones because his office was located in the same building as a psychiatrist and the Google hivemind had identified him as a patient.

The fact that this is legal is really troubling.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't it be more likely they'd infer he was a doctor? I wouldn't expect patients to go every day for 8 hours. (Not saying either is "ok", but guessing patient from those facts is particularly poor I think)

<comment><USER11> There are likely more patients than doctors, so the inference is statistically correct.

<comment><USER10> That depends on what population selection data you choose to consider/admit.

As an example, suppose a cell phone appears at the local supermarket/grocery store every weekday from 9 AM to 5 PM. If you conclude that phone is owned by an extremely avid supermarket shopper rather than a store manager, you're ignoring the persistence over time dimension.

If you claim that it's more likely a cashier rather than a store manager (because there are more cashiers than managers), you're on much firmer ground than if you claim it's more likely a shopper than a store manager just because there are wildly more shoppers than managers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this why we receive spammer phone calls that come from numbers that we have a history of dialing? I assume this is still happening because I visited Nashville for the first time this year and must have called a restaurant or two for reservations there. Now, I get a ton of Nashville spammer calls among the usual area codes that they always hit me with. Pretty curious.

<comment><USER13> That's not my experience. I receive daily spammer calls from numbers similar to mine, the last 4 digits are different. It never occurred to me to get a spam call from a number I knew.

Did you receive spam from your contacts or recently dialed numbers? Maybe it's something new..

</comment></comment><comment> ga-vu Some IOCs would have been nice. At this point, all of this seems like a fairytale from a cybersecurity firm looking for press coverage.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why are they even keeping years of call records? This strikes me as something that should be deleted after the current billing cycle (plus a delay for complaints, say 12 months). This kind of just-in-case or I-don't-want-to-push- the-button retention of data should hopefully be given some disincentives by GDPR but there is still a hell of a lot too much of it going on. Storage is cheap doesn't mean keep everything forever, especially potentially sensitive personal data.

<comment><USER15> In Australia we have mandatory metadata retention for 2 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I bet at least someone is using this data for trading as it is likely an indicator of revenue/profit for quarterly earnings.

</comment><comment><USER16> Shenote: sms auth is not even remotely secure. Let's move on.

</comment><comment><USER17> so that's why I'm getting a crapton of robocalls now?!

</comment><comment><USER18> We all knew this was going to happen/is happening.

'I have nothing to hide from the government' yeah what about the mafia, criminals and such that could/will access the data?

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/nsa-att-intercept- surveill...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/nsa-att-intercept- surveillance/)

<comment><USER19> I usually just preassume I have zero privacy online these days

<comment><USER20> I usually just assume zero privacy anywhere these days. Your face is scanned, your image recorded, your license plate logged. Quite the world we have now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something seems off about this story and the way it's presented. And techcrunch is an odd choice, unless everyone else passed on it.

<comment><USER22> > And techcrunch is an odd choice, unless everyone else passed on it.

What do you mean passed on it? It's being covered broadly. TechCrunch is only one publisher carrying the story.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-telecom-carriers- attacke...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-telecom-carriers-attacked-by- suspected-chinese-hackers-11561428003)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/25/hackers-hit- telecommunicatio...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/25/hackers-hit- telecommunications-firms-cybereason.html)

[https://www.wired.com/story/chinese-hackers-carrier- metadata...](https://www.wired.com/story/chinese-hackers-carrier-metadata/)</comment></comment>


I'm not living the dream - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/i-m-not-living-the-dream-58e1426b8792 <comment><USER2> This hits home for me, I traveled the US and abroad, working on my startup and contracting, for over two years. At the time all I wanted was to drop everything and travel with no plans, but after a while all I wanted was my own place and my furniture and actually having friends I hang out with. I met a lot of people for short periods of time, but I lost contact with a lot of real friends back home. When I'd talk to friends or family we'd talk about my travels and they'd say how I was living the dream and they were envious, and I'd always have to soften it like the author by telling them I really just want to get my own place again. I was exhausted. I got back to LA a year ago and settled down and resumed life with my old friends. Thankful for the travels but very happy to be living a calmer more normal life now.

<comment><USER3> I guess there is a limit to how much you want to travel.

I think that people do want to travel. Years even. But not indefinitely. The amount of time before people get tired of traveling is different.

For the author, I think that time has come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This feeling is similar to what I feel after having moved to new cities often in search of the next big job opportunity. Makes you question if it was worth it or not. The lack of strong social connections is certainly a downside. I don't even bother to check social media because it's no substitute (and often have the opposite effect, getting you down)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm disappointed that the "shoot me an e-mail" links to a signup page for his newsletter. He wrote "let's chat about it", but his e-mail address cannot be easily found. Bummer -- I would've liked to speak with him.</comment>