Y Combinator Left Boston--and A Wave of Startup Camps & Programs Filled the Void - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/09/10/dog-patch-labs-is-just-the-latest-in-a-rash-of-new-initiatives-to-help-boston-entrepreneurs-and-it-all-seemed-to-start-when-y-combinator-left-town/

<comment><USER2> There has been a wave of new incubator-like things everywhere this year.

<comment><USER3> Any guesses on whether that's a sign of a market that's in the early stages of overvaluation?

<comment><USER4> I would say "overproduction", on the expectation of high valuation (i.e valuation compared to the accumulated paycheck sacrificed). I do believe there is such a thing as "too many start-ups", a problem that will self-correct.

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's a limit on the number of startups. If the economy can absorb the output of arbitrary numbers of people working in cubicles for big companies, why can't it absorb the output of arbitrary numbers of people working in little companies they've started?

<comment><USER5> That's an interesting thought. However, you would expect startups to be prone to more evere cycles and bubbles. People in office cubicles have more of a direct feedback from the ultimate value creation. You don't hire someone unless you need them to do a job.

Startups get started when a founder and investor are both willing to make it happen. That willingness is dependant on more speculation (in the individual case) then in the case of a cubicle worker.

Also, when you say 'startup' I expect you are talking about a specific type of starting company that fits into the YC model. While the jobs market seems to absorb an arbitrary number of people, some specific part of it such as the manufacturing sector cannot.

<comment><USER2> Surely startup founders have more direct feedback. They're talking to the actual customers.

You don't pay someone unless they've made something you want.

<comment><USER5> Sure. Success ultimately is subject to feedback. They can't succeed without creating value. But they can start without it. They may get funded without it. You may not know if you've been doing anything useful for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't wait for the Venture Cafe to get started - it seems like a fantastic idea.</comment>


A Confession of Liberal Intolerance - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html <comment><USER3> You can't choose your skin color or where you were born, but you can choose your political beliefs. For that reason alone, I think statements like

"My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination."

miss the mark. Excluding people based on their beliefs is completely a judgement call about whether you think their beliefs are so far from your own that nothing productive can come from sharing a department with them. The feelings of the author (and me, and a lot of others besides) is that staunch liberals in academia might be flawed in excluding conservatives. But not because it's akin to racism, it's a different (and less objectionable) type of discrimination.

<comment><USER4> > You can't choose your skin color or where you were born, but you can choose > your political beliefs.

Can one? My political beliefs aren't my tastes: they are things that I _believe_. I can't choose what I believe to be true. Can you?

<comment><USER5> I certainly can't. I'm a victim of my own interpretation of the evidence. If I could choose what I believed, I'd choose a lot differently.

edit: I'm honestly jealous (and intolerant) of people who can. My deeply religious grandmother told me once during a long discussion about her Christianity that "faith" to her meant making a choice to believe. I told her that I have never had faith, and will never have faith. I have faith in that:)

<comment><USER6> Good point. I really want to believe that I'll win the lottery, but I just can't bring myself to accepting it.

<comment><USER7> > I really want to believe that I'll win the lottery, but I just can't bring > myself to accepting it.

Probably for the best. Your belief that you will win the lottery doesn't mean that you _actually will_ win the lottery, but it might lead to you losing a lot of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author repeatedly conflates conservatism with Christianity. While there's probably a higher percentage of Christians who identify as conservative, it's not their conservatism that would trouble me in a University setting. I wouldn't want a University science professor to be a creationist for example, but I couldn't care less if they're fiscal conservative who believes in small government.

<comment><USER9> That's a great point. There are tons of liberal Christians but in the media they tend to be overshadowed by conservative Christians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The decline of conservatives in academia in the humanities and social sciences (other than economics) post-dates the conservative movement's dismissal of the value of those fields and is a natural consequence of it: if you are part of a political movement which rejects the value of a field of work, you are less likely to seek to work in that field (and, conversely, if you value work in a particular field, you are more likely to split from a political movement that does not.)

If conservatives started painting those fields as valuable fields for scholarship which needed more conservative scholars, the gap would, I suspect, substantially disappear within a generation.

</comment><comment><USER11> Some false equivalency in this article: "Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian and famed geneticist who has led the Human Genome Project and the National Institutes of Health. And if you're saying that conservatives may be tolerable, but evangelical Christians aren't — well, are you really saying you would have discriminated against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.? " MLK Jr ≠ Francis Collins. Collins argues that DNA is the language of god which there's no empirical evidence to which. Plus, he's respected despite this, in his field. That seems like acceptance.

Also the article lists: "But that doesn't explain why there are conservative math professors but not many right-wing anthropologists." I imagine that say, in the extreme cases of say: evangelical young earth creationists or a evangelical mormon believing that humans are 5000 years old or that Native Americans are the lost tribe of Israel is counterproductive.

<comment><USER12> Religious thinking may be compatible with science to the extent that religion is only used as some kind of motivating factor and doesn't affect the outcome or logic of the resulting science. However religion used instead to push an agenda, influencing the outcome of research, would seem counter-productive, and I can understand the wariness of social social scientists towards those with rigid beliefs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Before you dismiss this as truth-challenged partisans who want recognition of their unjustifiable views, read this. There is a pretty compelling case to be made that a lot of important questions facing us today are being studied by a relatively politically homogenous group of people, and beliefs not rigorously supported by evidence nonetheless become orthodoxy. A monoculture of thought on questions that are far from settled: [http://heterodoxacademy.org/problems/](http://heterodoxacademy.org/problems/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think there's more to it than "academics are hostile to conservatives".

The conservative movement in this country is vehemently anti-intellectual. People love to point to Trump but even George W Bush played dumb to appeal to his base.

Add in a strongly capitalistic attitude among the american right, that smart ambitious people should work in industry and not in "ivory towers". Why would a fan of Ayn Rand take a government job for meager pay?

Academics are probably biased against conservatives. But a conservative is biased against becoming an academic as well.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you think college faculty are liberal, it's only because American politics has twisted your perspective: [https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/05/09/if-you- th...](https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/05/09/if-you-think- college-faculty-are-liberal-its-only-because-american-politics-has-twisted- your-perspective/)

<comment><USER16> > If you are one of those things, you are much more likely to believe in > creationism, or conspiracy theories, or so-called 'scientific racism', or > any of a number of other destructive and thoroughly debunked ideas

I notice no citation, nor what "much more likely" means.

<comment><USER15> > I notice no citation, nor what "much more likely" means.

The blog post still makes the very important point that no one cares about beliefs when hiring. If one so chooses to be a bad teacher and teach things that are flat out wrong, well, that just makes firing them justified based on incompetence.

I think the NYTimes article is begging the question; if you ask _why_ there are fewer conservatives/evangelicals/fundamentalists in the universities, one possible answer is that they are self-selecting, _not_ that they're being discriminated against.

<comment><USER16> How do you know that? Very little evidence is offered. The other side is quoting studies about bias in hiring, and the reply is basically "we would never do that, trust us".

Edit: re self-selection, two points:

1\. If the self selection occurs at the student levels (i.e. professors are hostile to conservatives which causes them to drop out of academia before they get to the teaching level) this is still bad.

2\. Even if it's entirely self selected, it's still a diversity problem.

<comment><USER15> > 1\. If the self selection occurs at the student levels (i.e. professors are > hostile to conservatives which causes them to drop out of academia before > they get to the teaching level) this is still bad.

Not necessarily; if someone realizes that their basic beliefs are incompatible with the basic tenets of an institution, that saves everyone time in the long run.

And I'd like to see some evidence, _any_ evidence of professors being hostile to conservatives. And no, "God's not Dead" doesn't count. That's such a persecution complex strawman.

> 2\. Even if it's entirely self selected, it's still a diversity problem.

There's diversity and there is pandering to vox populi and anti- intellectualism. The first is good, the second is not, and quite frankly, the face of modern conservatism in America has been anti-intellectual for quite some time.

And hey, Kristoff seems to have misrepresented the data!

[https://medium.com/@ginasue/the-lie-of-liberal- intolerance-o...](https://medium.com/@ginasue/the-lie-of-liberal-intolerance- on-campus-6ba4c67ea8e0#.de9ylal06)

Surprised, I am not.

<comment><USER17> I don't see anything in that essay that supports any but a _very_ broad interpretation of the phrase "misrepresented the data". I see a bunch of innuendo and odd stats like this one:

> Of professors who say that they are religious, fully 19% of them can be > classified as "traditionalists," which would include evangelical Christians > (which in Kristof's NYT op-ed were presented as a maligned minority, not > part of the solid 1-in-5 religious professors who are traditionalists found > by the survey).

One in five _religious_ professors are traditionalists. So what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> (The actual problem is nicely highlighted in this article's most popular Reader Picks comments)

There is a popular narrative about what it means to be conservative, liberal, progressive, etc. This narrative is a small simple band in a vastly complex spectrum of views. Unfortunately, we have come to the point where the narrative is being echoed so much that it's impossible to have a conversation framed outside the popular narrative.

We have all been trained and self-trained to pigeonhole each other based on these meaningless labels to either a) dismiss each other or b) rally together to dismiss the "other".

The one thing that we can't do is suspend our emotional biases and sincerely listen to alternate narratives.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't live in the USA, could someone briefly explain why an evangelical Christian would fit in less well at a university than a religious person of other faiths?

Is it related to their religion, their conservatism, or something else?

<comment><USER20> Currently it is because a large part of the Republican party consists of what we call the "religious right", a group that seeks to make political change based on what they believe to be religious truth, or morality. Ted Cruz was the arbiter of this ideology in the Republican primaries, until he dropped out last week. While this group does not represent the entire party, they are definitely the most vocal, and many liberals conflate that group with the rest of the party as a whole. This belief is not helped by the fact that many "core" republican platforms come from religious conservatives, like outlawing gay marriage and abortion.

Many people who belong to the academic community consider these people to be a bunch of uneducated backwater hicks who do not belong in intellectual conversations based on logical thought. So when an intellectual states that they are an evangelical christian, many consider them to be flawed in some capacity, and thus have nothing of substance to contribute.

EDIT: to add to that, evangelical christians tend to embrace a literal translation of the bible; in that the world was created in literally seven days, and that every human is descended from Adam and Eve, a story which in its literal translation is of course not supported by science. So when a person who professes to follow science also professes to be a member of this faith, it can seem paradoxical to many.

<comment><USER21> To the person that asked the question, headcanon's first paragraph is pretty much right on and answers the question. The downvotes likely came from the tribalism expressed in the second paragraph ("uneducated backwater hicks"). American politics are way too polarized. IMO that polarization comes from two sources: (1) demagogues like Cruz and Trump who lure people in by convincing them that they are the "true" Americans, and making them believe that everything would be so much better were it not for the pernicious influence of some other group (Democrats/scientists/LGBT folks/academics/Muslims/Mexicans/etc.). The very best fuel for this fire is (2), being denigrated by people who self-identify as one of those groups that the demagogues are trying to make them scared of.

Like, imagine some perfectly decent person who has lived all his life in some small town in Nebraska, who isn't very educated but also isn't a terrible person who goes around looking for excuses to hate people. Rural voters are statistically more religious and more conservative, so he probably has extra peer pressure to be like that himself, but at the same time is a little creeped out by people like Cruz who seem to be trying to convince him that atheist non-white city dwellers think that him and his family and friends are subhuman, and are trying to take away his rights and his livelihood. So he's on the fence, until one day he stumbles across someone complaining about "uneducated backwater hicks", at which point he decides that Cruz might be right after all, because clearly these college-educated urban strangers really do hate him and his friends and relatives.

It's a vicious circle that's only broken when people just suck it up and take the high road, but it feels like there's just never quite enough people willing to do that to make a difference. It's easy to judge less educated or less successful people, and I'm sure it feels really cathartic to do so. Especially when many of those people are being used as pawns by demagogues who are actively trying to roll back civilization. It's much harder to turn the other cheek and try to find common ground with them. Sadly that's the only way the trend towards cultural polarization is ever going to reverse, because neither side is going anyplace.

<comment><USER20> I probably should have tossed "uneducated backwater hicks" in quotes - I was attempting to speak from what I perceive to be the left-wing point of view. But you are right, the social tribalism is driving a lot of this. I live in a very liberal university town, and many people seem to see republicans this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "I am the equivalent of someone who was gay in Mississippi in 1950,"

Oh give me a F*ing break. You CHOOSE to be a conservative. You aren't born a conservative and face true harassment, discrimination, and death threats because of it. Oh, right thats what YOU would do to someone who is gay probably now if you could get away with it.

You are being passed for jobs in academia partly because academia deals in truths and evangelical Christians usually have a world view lacking in many truths. Personally, yeah I would pass you for an academic job if I found out you were an evangelical christian. How can I trust you to know truths in your profession when you believe in complete nonsense like the earth began 2,000 years ago and that evolution doesn't exist. How can I trust you NOT to evangelize in the classroom? Isn't that the whole point of being an evangelical Christian?

Get over it. Religious extremism in ALL FORMS is a cancer and needs to be eliminated from society. Join the rest of the modern world or be further relegated to the edge as you so rightfully deserve to be.

<comment><USER23> Why does choice matter? I could choose to indulge my fabulous side and cross dress, but the social rejection wouldn't be any less painful.

Yes, choices do have consequences, but social exclusion based on those choices can still be critiqued.

<comment><USER22> >I could choose to indulge my fabulous side and cross dress

Well, personally, I would say you are born with a fabulous side so you are just being true to yourself. Congrats and have fun!

> Yes, choices do have consequences, but social exclusion based on those > choices can still be critiqued.

The problem is you are making a choice not only to believe in something completely void of fact (you can be ignorant if you want to be I guess) but you are also making a choice that HARMS society as a whole. When a person's choice guides them to discriminate a whole group of people based on some stories written a few thousands of years ago thats a choice that deserves to be critiqued. If your choice guides the people you vote for to be anti-science yeah, that choice deserves to be ridiculed.

<comment><USER24> Just consider, for a moment, what you're doing in that last paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If we didn't discriminate against the type of conservative religious people who believe in using the power of institutions to advance their religious goals, women, homosexuals, and religious minorities would have a tougher time than they already do. Christianity in this article is a red herring, because I'm sure that conservative fundamentalist Muslims face the same discrimination, and so would conservative evangelical astrologers, if you could find any.

What religious people seem to be angry about is the lack of symmetry - <USER2> they are judged for discriminating against reasonable people. The lack of symmetry is due to the fact that the universities being discussed are intended to be institutions of reason. There are other universities for people who believe in every sort of invisible world, which do not hesitate to discriminate openly, and fight for their right to do so.

<comment><USER24> As a thought experiment, what happens if your liberal non-religious individuals start advancing goals that result in discrimination, because they do not value intellectual diversity?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> No. I would not hire anyone in a science department who professed a belief of a 6000 year old earth or that didn't "believe in" evolution. I wouldn't vote for anyone who thought that the U.S. should be run based on the bible.

No I'm not an atheist but I am against anti-intellectualism.

<comment><USER24> And yet, Colleges have no problem hiring individuals that believe some pretty scientifically unfounded things, as long as what they believe falls in line with the orthodoxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the article is on point, but what makes it a little hard is simply the nomenclature "conservative" vs "progressive" or "liberal" is this just shorthand for republican or democrat, or about actual political belief systems

</comment><comment><USER27> Given that evangelical is synonymous with believing something that is demonstrably false, I don't see why we should be clamoring to include such people among those that will shape the way future generations think. Just because US Republicans are underrepresented or discriminated against does not mean that universities are not doing a good job of maintaining a diverse faculty. It could be argued (and has, many times over) that the spectrum between the Marxist and American Democratic parties is much more representative of the rest of the world's liberal-to-conservative spectrum than would be the US definition of liberal and conservative. Additionally, I would expect libertarians to be much better represented among faculty since their ideology is, at least, logically consistent and doesn't contain the hate/discrimination endemic to the Republican platform.

I think Republicans need to face the fact that they just nominated someone who's entire platform lacks even basic critical thought. Even if you put aside how odious and xenophobic what Trump has proposed, it's basically impossible to implement any of it anyways and anyone with an ounce of critical reasoning skills would easily realize that. And the one area where colleges cannot compromise on the faculty is in the area of critical reasoning skills. More than anything else, the purpose of a college education is to learn critical reasoning skills.

<comment><USER28> Trump is not an evangelical. His popularity is more about frustration with career politicians than policy.

<comment><USER10> > Trump is not an evangelical.

GP didn't say (or imply) that Trump is an evangelical; there was an implication in that post that lack of critical reasoning, which is a trait GP also ascribes to evangelicals, among the Republican electorate was a factor in Trump's success, though.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Iceland has the happiest people on earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/18/iceland

<comment><USER2> I visited Iceland last month on business for about a week.

Iceland seems great statistically because there is no national underclass. Most Icelanders would be considered "middle class" today in the United States: some college, literate, aspiring to home ownership, and employed in services.

In every other country, the national statistics are skewed by some underemployed, undereducated, and often foreign "labor class" (or worse, welfare class). There is no "ghetto" in Iceland (though strangely, graffiti is everywhere). Why?

Because every modern nation was at one time "industrial," and industrial countries must import/create/preserve a labor class to work factories and plantations. But Iceland went from "frozen rock" to "modern service economy" in about 70 years.

I assure you that it's not a magical fairyland where everyone is happy. It's more like an American suburb of 250,000 (maybe in WA) where everyone is white and employed in an office... and a glacier/volcano/wind storm has trimmed away the unpleasant urban and rural elements and plunged them into the Arctic ocean.

Icelanders have the same hopes and strifes one would expect in such a suburb.

<comment><USER3> Also, I think they are rich because of the cheap energy sources?

<comment><USER4> There's more to it than that, and the same goes for Norway. Sweden (ranking 6 on the 2007 index) has much of the same social structure as Iceland and Norway, but does not have the same availability of cheap energy. Sweden _does_ have a fair amount of hydropower available, but you'll also find other countries in the top of the Human Development Index that do not have access to such luxuries.

Also, notice that the Middle East is nowhere near the top of the index. Having abundant natural resources certainly helps things along if a country has good leadership, but it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition.

<comment><USER3> So which countries without natural resources are dong well? Japan, perhaps?

<comment><USER5> Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Denmark (some oil/gas), Netherlands (some oil/gas), parts of the Caribbean?

Seems to be a Europe/East Asia bias going on here. In addition some of the richest states in the US doesn't have a lot of natural resources.

<comment><USER6> I wonder how the individual US states would fare if measured separately in such surveys. There really is a massive cultural and economic variance between them. McDonald's is everywhere, sure, but if you scratch the surface the differences can be vast. It's often misleading to try to generalize across the entire nation. Many of the tourists and exchanges students I've met here have mentioned how they didn't really appreciate the size and diversity of the nation until they experienced it for themselves.

<comment><USER7> Considering only GDP:

[http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/131-us-states- re...](http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/131-us-states-renamed-for- countries-with-similar-gdps/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is cool, though I worry that people will conclude (as the Icelandic president has) that Iceland has "blended the best of Europe and the United States here, the Nordic welfare system with the American entrepreneurial spirit".

There are a lot of policies that work well with an ethnically homogeneous society of 313,000 people but completely fail on a larger scale. This scaling problem is the perennial defect of socialism. (Well, one of them, anyway.) In contrast, free markets appear to scale indefinitely, naturally finding the right business unit sizes along the way. (For example, for gourmet restaurants, it's ~1 restaurant; for fast food restaurants, it's a national or global branded chain.)

I suspect that the natural business unit size for much of Iceland's 'Nordic welfare system' is approximately 313,000 ethnically homogeneous people.

<comment><USER9> Over the last several decades I've been reading articles in the US/UK press of the "it's so glorious to live in Scandanavian welfare state X". The young whippersnappers that read HN won't remember these, of course. In the past, X was almost always Sweden. In Sweden and other Scandanavian countries there was always plenty of criticism of the US and its racial problems and how they didn't suffer any of those. Then they began to import non-Scandanavians and things changed. Malmo, Sweden now has the highest rape rate in the developed world.

Author Bruce Bawer, a political liberal, published a book critical of evangelical Christians years ago and then moved to Norway to marry his partner (they're gay). Here's what he werote a few weeks ago: (<http://memo.brucebawer.com/>) "During the nine years and two weeks that I've lived in Oslo, I've seen the city change significantly -- for the worse. I don't remember exactly when it started reminding me of New York in the 1970s and 80s, but by now the resemblance is undeniable. Burglary, rape, gay- bashing, mugging, graffiti, vandalism: you name it, we've got it in spades, and it's still on the rise. Public stabbings and gang fights have become routine...The statistics are dire. Last month came news that the rate of reported crimes in Oslo is now four times that of New York; last week it emerged that Oslo's rape figures reached an all-time high in 2007; today it was reported that over 99 percent of street robberies in the city go unsolved. To any unblinkered individual who lives here, these statistics are no surprise. Yet civic authorities, faced with the steady erosion of law and order, exude indifference and ineffectuality."

As for Iceland, it elected a government in the late 1980's that enacted a number of free-market reforms and, by an amazing coincidence, the economy took off. "Much of the nation's prosperity is the result of free-market policies, including a 36 percent flat tax on labor income, a 10 percent flat tax on capital income, and a corporate tax rate of just 18 percent (down from 50 percent at the end of the 1980s)." [http://www.cato-at- liberty.org/2008/02/21/iceland-and-taiwan...](http://www.cato-at- liberty.org/2008/02/21/iceland-and-taiwan-to-slash-corporate-tax-rates/) Amazingly, The Guardian couldn't find space to mention any of that.

<comment><USER10> Regarding your final point, the article does mention it, though not in detail.

"I believe we have blended the best of Europe and the United States here, the Nordic welfare system with the American entrepreneurial spirit,' he said, pointing out that Iceland, unlike the other Nordic countries, had exceptionally low personal and corporate tax rates. 'This has meant not only that Icelandic companies stay and foreign ones come, but that we have increased by 20 per cent our tax revenue owing to increased turnover.'"

The article presents a pretty narrative, not a substantive account of different economic theories and their effects, but it does mention both the welfare state policies and the free-market ones, suggesting that choosing the best of both is what has improved Iceland. On the surface this seems sensible to me. The Nordic countries generally have better 'quality of life' than the US does, the US generally is stronger economically.

<comment><USER9> Good catch on my final point. Thanks.

>> "The Nordic countries generally have better 'quality of life' than the US does, the US generally is stronger economically."

Iceland certainly sounds nice, if you could tolerate the weather. "Nordic countries" is too general to be useful, I think. I'm a bit sceptical about making the quality of life comparisons, in any case. While traveling in Turkey about 7 years ago, a Swedish woman told me that a software developer there takes home about $1,300/month on average (i.e., after taxes). Restaurants in Sweden are so expensive that hardly anyone eats out. Six years ago (while the dollar was still strong) a large pizza in downtown Oslo went for $60. Even business executives pack a lunch.

Norway is doing fine economically, since it has a tiny population and is the world's third largest exporter of oil (though that's running out). Given the explosion in crime that Bawer mentions (at much greater length in his book _While Europe Slept_, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Cirlce Award), I think I'll find someplace else to hang. I've lived in Europe twice (Germany and Greece) and, while it had its points, it always felt sleepy to me.

<comment><USER6> _Iceland certainly sounds nice, if you could tolerate the weather._

How does it compare to say, Wisconsin?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Iceland also has the most discos per capita out of any country in Europe.

I've been to Iceland many years ago. The people I met during my brief stay there seemed as happy as anywhere else. Then again, I didn't meet many people because it was too cold to go out most of the time.

BTW, don't be fooled by this whole "iceland is warm and greenland is cold" thing. Iceland is very, very cold. There's nothing to break the wind on the volcanic lava...it was the coldest I've ever been.

</comment><comment><USER12> And here I was thinking the Icelanders were so happy because they know they can take over the world with relative ease ala the Iceland strategem in Risk.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Paternity leave is the thing that made the difference for women's equality in this country."

That's surprising, and intriguing. I've never thought of that, but it's quite plausible. I wonder if it's right...

<comment><USER3> I wonder how to make it happen. I think in germany we now have laws that allow paternity leave for fathers and mothers alike. But if the father earns much more money than the mother, it still doesn't make sense economically for the father to stay at home.

EDIT: here on paternity leave, you get some money, but not your full salary.

<comment><USER14> Which is not the case in Iceland:

 _"All parents, who do not enjoy full contractual salary rights from their employers are paid by the Maternity/Paternity Leave Fund after they have been active in the domestic labour market for six consecutive months prior to the first day of the maternity/paternity leave."_

[http://www.invest.is/Doing-Business-in-Iceland/Labour- Force-...](http://www.invest.is/Doing-Business-in-Iceland/Labour-Force- Employee-Benefits/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I kinda want to move to iceland after reading that. I've always seen pictures and wanted to visit, but It'd be fun to go and do research there or something.

<comment><USER16> I thought about the same thing. The University of Iceland apparently teaches its classes in Icelandic, but (from the website) the textbooks are mostly in English. Perhaps learning Icelandic and then doing a PhD might be a way to achieve that.

<comment><USER17> The Icelandic language is quite possibly one of, if not THE, most unique language I've ever heard spoken. I took a trip with my fiance out there a year or two ago and, while most people were glad to speak english to us, I was quite rapt whenever I could eavesdrop in on anyone speaking their native Icelandic. It's almost ... elvish?

Having said that, because of that fact I can't imagine the process of learning said language to be too too easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good social development statistics doesn't mean the people are happy with their lives. As I see, the article takes the results for granted without any doubt and then speculates and searches for the reasons. I'd at least search for the polls that ask if the people are optimistic/pessimistic, consider themselves happy/unhappy.

Though, I believe, standing far from the noisy Europe, maybe far from the consumption rush, they may feel calm, happy and optimistic. That's great.

> "The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were > the most unhappy."

Yes, if you assume the myth that life in Russia very unpleasant, the study gets credibility. On the other hand, in the year the study was made, other studies showed Russian population to be the most optimistic in the history, thanks to fast economic growth and, I think, to breaking the pessimistic soviet mentality.

<comment><USER6> My personal hope is that optimism for the future and recognition of current conditions are orthogonal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 'Paternity leave is the thing that made the difference for women's equality in this country.'

this makes such a huge difference, this is a not socialist vs. capitalist comparison - it is simply a matter of putting peoples needs before corporations.

</comment><comment><USER20> _"The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were the most unhappy."_

...and the Guardian's credibility was ripped to shreds when turns out that Russia did NOT score lowest on the UN Human Development Index report (as seen at <http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/>)

Russia is number 67 out of 70 in the "highest development" section, and number 67 out of 177 total. Sorry, Guardian.

<comment><USER21> They weren't referring to the UN report when they said that the Russians are the most unhappy. They were instead referring to a separate "seemingly serious academic study", which supposedly attempts to gauge the "happiness" of each of the nationalities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were the most unhappy"

I've always thought most unhappy people live in China, India, Pakistan and such...

The statement above shows that happiness is mostly depending on culture. I personally found Russian culture and way of perceiving the world too depressive.

You wont be happy if you just move to Iceland. Learning Icelander's style of world perceiving is necessary. Could you?

<comment><USER18> > I personally found Russian culture and way of perceiving the world too > depressive.

Examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone who wants to learn a little more about Icelandic roots you should look for any books by Halldor Laxnes (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halld%C3%B3r_Laxness>), specifically Independent People (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_People>).

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm so glad this was posted on YC. Thank you! I'm glad this place is featuring the exact same links as reddit, digg, slashdot, etc. Woohoo copycats!

</comment><comment><USER24> Icelandic is one of the world's most difficult languages to learn

<comment><USER25> No. Islandic is closest to old norse, proto-north-germanic. Anyone from Scandinavia can pick it up relatively easily. Other Germanic languages such as English are not so far removed either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't know about you, but I strongly suspect Iceland needs a good stiff dose of diversity:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland#Demographics>

It's all just a bunch of what Barack Obama would call "typical white people". There are 743 Filipinos! Can you imagine that being the largest "diverse" subset of a population in any other country? I sure can't. Perhaps the United Nations should send a commission on human rights to see what kind of discriminatory migration policies Iceland has enacted.

<comment><USER27> Needs? What benefit would Iceland get from more diversity?

Iceland's success proves that diversity is not necessary for their level of success. If you want to argue that they'd do better with more diversity, you get to provide relevant examples.

Or, are you suggesting that Iceland is obligated to do worse to have diversity?

<comment><USER28> He was trolling by being sarcastic, move along

<comment><USER26> You win! I'll say this in my defense though: The causes of happiness are so foggy that, really, anything goes when coming up with wherefores. No surprise that a socialist rag determined that socialism is the answer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


California Nuclear Power Plant Decides to Close - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/business/san-onofre-nuclear-plant-in-california-to-close.html

<comment><USER2> To give everyone some perspective, the two reactors in the San Onofre power plant generated a total of 2250 MW. O'Shaughnessy Dam (in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir) generates a measly 230 MW and in total, there are FOURTEEN natural gas plants that generate more than 200 MW in the entirety of the United States operating today.

California consumed about 272 billion kWh in 2011 [1], which is 272 million MWh so that $4.11 increase is SIGNIFICANT. Replacing 2.25 GW of generating capability + building infrastructure for growing needs is not simple, cheap, or fast and if we keep going this way (removing high generating nuclear reactors and trying to replace it with renewables) then we will soon be in a situation like Germany. Hint: California can't afford an HVDC build out!

Also, the NRC approved the building of two new reactors after Fukushima in Georgia [2], so I'm curious why uncertainty about the license renewal? The Georgia reactors are also pressurized-type, although they aren't going on 60 years.

[1] [http://www.ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbyutil.aspx](http://www.ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbyutil.aspx)

[2] [http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nucle...](http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2012/02/09/nrc- approves-vogtle-reactor-construction-_2d00_-first-new-nuclear-plant-approval- in-34-years-_2800_with-new-plant-photos_2900_-020902.aspx) \- Thankfully only one person voted no for reasons of Black Swan/Fukushima.

<comment><USER3> what is the situation in germany?

<comment><USER4> They're shutting down nuclear power, building an incoherent mixture of coal, solar, and wind, causing both skyrocketing electricity prices and increasing CO2.

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european- commissi...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-commission- set-to-fight-german-energy-subsidies-a-902269.html)

[http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21569039-europes- ener...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21569039-europes-energy- policy-delivers-worst-all-possible-worlds-unwelcome-renaissance)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Earthquakes aside there are so many different types of nuclear reactor both in the way they operate and the fuel used people seem to lump them all together in one hysterical pile.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan used plutonium from what I have read is unique compared to other plants. Canadian CANDU plants use natural uranium and the way they're constructed is far safer than other types of reactors. Two extremes of fuel used and plant design yet it seems some people see no difference. Of course in any discussion about reactors these days LFTR (thorium) reactors are mentioned too, even safer than uranium/plutonium reactors.

People are entitled to their opinion but it seems the vocal anti-science crowd wins. I'm all for closing bad nuclear power plants but all nuclear plants "just because" they use nuclear fuel?

It would be great if we all lived in sunny countries where solar panels and giant battery packs could supply our power but that's not the situation. I like solar but it's not suitable yet in my opinion due to the storage issues and efficiency of the panels, maybe graphene will solve that soon.

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

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

<comment><USER6> As I understand it, Edward Teller made sure the current CANDUs and any other designs with a positive void coefficient were illegal to build in the US (this is part of what killed the Chernobyl reactor), see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_coefficient](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_coefficient) for more details, especially:

" _CANDU reactors have positive void coefficients that are small enough that the control systems can easily respond to boiling coolant before the reactor reaches dangerous temperatures (see References).

RBMK reactors, such as the reactors at Chernobyl, have a dangerously high positive void coefficient. This was necessary for the reactor to run on unenriched uranium and to require no heavy water. Before the Chernobyl accident these reactors had a positive void coefficient of 4.7 beta and after the accident that was lowered to 0.7 beta. This was done so all RBMK reactors could resume safe operating and produce much needed power for the then USSR and its satellites._"

The next generation CANDU addresses this, although one of the costs is requiring 1 to 2% enrichment.

The fuel isn't what caused the problems in Japan, rather, an appalling nuclear safety culture, so bad I don't think I can disagree with their decision to turn them all off, to their using boiling water reactors which don't contain everything inside the classic dome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why aren't people charging ahead with Thorium power? Seems like Thorium should be a no-brainer - low radioactivity, safe operations.

But there must be some problem with Thorium, because it isn't getting built- out. Does anyone know why?

<comment><USER2> Convincing an already scared-of-nuclear population to allow the building of an experimental (big, scary word) reactor after a disaster like Fukushima is a maddening prospect for an entrepreneur or even an established company. It more than 25 years between the Three Mile Island "disaster" and the start of construction of new nuclear reactors. It's a miracle they were approved so shortly after Fukushima, but by the time you're ready to issue construction permits hundreds of millions if not billions have already been invested.

A full blown reactor (with immediate infrastructure) costs at least $2-3 billion in markets with cheap labor and upwards of $5-10 billion in the developed world. The other issue is that most of the cost of mining, processing, and storing fuel and waste is externalized, which much of the government is no longer as willing to do after Yucca Mountain was canceled.

If it costs that much to build a reactor, how much does it cost to test a new design?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The rabid far-left elements of Northern Europe and America are not content limiting nuclear power proliferation just in the developed world.

Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant

Operating capacity: 6800 MW

Maximum capacity: 9200 MW

      In March 2012, police said they had arrested nearly
      200 anti-nuclear protesters objecting resumption
      of work of building one of two 1 GW reactors, a day
      after the local government restarted work on the
      project.

      There have also been rallies and protests in favour
      of commissioning this nuclear power plant.

      *On, 24 February 2012, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
      blamed American and Scandivanian NGOs for
      fueling protests at the power plant. Three of the
      NGOs were later found to have used foreign funds
      received for social and religious purposes to fuel
      the protests, violating foreign exchange regulatory
      rules. The PM also blamed these NGOs for opposing
      genetically modified foods and the use of
      biotechnology to increase food production in the
      country.*

Source(s):

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

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Opposition)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Movement_Against_Nuc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Movement_Against_Nuclear_Energy)

</comment><comment><USER8> Not one of the nuclear power stations currently planned or under construction are in the Western world (unless you count Slovakia).

Not even the traditionally very nuclear-friendly France.

Is this just a coincidence or is it the handiwork of some hyper-sensitive faction of the environmental lobby with bottomless coffers to buy political clout across whole continents?

      This table lists stations under construction or operational stations with under-construction reactors and current net
      capacity under 1,000 MW. Planned connection column indicate connection of first reactor, not thus whole capacity.

      Power station	                 Cap(MW)Start   Conn	Country	Location
      Braka Nuclear Power Plant	  1,340	2012	2017	 UAE	23°59′6″N 52°17′1″E
      Belyarsk-4 (BN-800)	          1,364	2006	2014	 Russia	56°50′30″N 61°19′21″E
      Changjiang Nuclear Power Plant  1,220	2010	2014	 China	19°25′23″N 108°48′45″E
      Fangchenggang Nuclear Power 	  2,000	2010	2015	 China	21°40′36″N 108°33′38″E
      Fangjiashan Nuclear Power Plant 2,000	2008	2013	 China	30°26′29″N 120°56′30″E
      Fuqing Nuclear Power Plant	  3,000	2008	2013	 China	25°26′39″N 119°26′46″E
      Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant	  2,000	2009	2014	 China	36°42′33″N 121°22′54″E
      Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Plant	  4,000	2007	2013	 China	39°47′52″N 121°28′19″E
      Kakrapar-3	                  1,664	2010	2015	 India	21°14′19″N 73°21′00″E
      Kaliningrad Nuclear Power Plant 1,082	2012	2017	 Russia	54°56′20″N 22°09′40″E
      Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant 1,834	2002	2013	 India	8°10′06″N 77°42′45″E
      Leningrad Nuclear Power II	  2,170	2008	2013	 Russia	59°49′50″N 29°3′26″E
      Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant	  2,600	1999	2013	 Taiwan	25°02′19″N 121°55′27″E
      Mochovce Nuclear Power Plant	  1,654	1987	2015	 Slovak	48°15′50″N 18°27′25″E
      Novovoronezh Nuclear II  	  2,228	2008	2013	 Russia	59°49′50″N 29°3′26″E
      Ōma Nuclear Power Plant	  1,325	2010	2014	 Japan	41°30′35″N 140°54′37″E
      Sanmen Nuclear Power Station	  2,000	2009	2013	 China	29°06′04″N 121°38′23″E
      Shin Ulchin Nuclear Power Plant 1,340	2012	2017	 SKorea	37°05′34″N 129°23′01″E
      Shin Wolseong Nuclear Plant	  1,920	2007	2013	 SKorea	35°43′20″N 129°28′44″E
      Taishan Nuclear Power Plant	  3,400	2009	2013	 China	21°54′34″N 112°58′45″E
      Yangjiang Nuclear Power Plant	  3,000	2008	2013	 China	21°42′35″N 112°15′38″E

Source:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations#Power_stations_under_construction)

Edit: Formatting

<comment><USER2> Power stations != reactors. We have 2-3 reactors under construction in the United States. Each reactor is 1GW+

This should clear up the disparity: [http://www.world- nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries...](http://www.world- nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-T-Z/USA--Nuclear- Power/#.UbOolPnD6z4)

Edit: Also China's per capita consumption of electricity is a fraction of the per capita consumption of the developed world and is growing incredibly rapidly. I wouldn't be surprised if China is outbuilding the US in everything from renewables to natural gas to coal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good news for California. They should dismantle the radioactive material asap as it could always be a Japan rerun...

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree. It's bad news for California, and bad news for the environment long-term. It's not an ideal nuke plant, but the current alternative is to kill ourselves burning oil and coal.

Here's a former Greenpeace bigwig's account of switching to pro-nuclear: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/04...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html)

<comment><USER10> America has a power grid. California uses power from all over and supplies power all over.

Trivia: the discharge water from the plant raised sea temperature enough that surfers could feel it.

<comment><USER11> There aren't a lot of idled hydro, wind, or solar plants. Most of the idle plants are coal, with a small number of natural gas (higher construction cost per kw of capacity, previously more expensive fuel, but now natural gas is cheaper than the mitigated costs of coal, so they run gas and idle coal).

So, you'd be adding coal to the operating mix. The dirtiest plants are the ones which were idled, too.

In the 5 year timeframe, you could argue for building more natural gas, solar, wind, etc. to replace the nuclear, but as far as I can tell, wind and solar and being done as fast as they can, and the coal to gas transition is also happening.

There also isn't "one grid"; it's basically 3, and it's not like it has infinite capacity everywhere. Putting a bunch of wind in the Midwest or Texas doesn't really help California.

<comment><USER6> Also, an intuitive model of a single grid would be a bunch of ponds with small streams between them. You can't arbitrarily "wheel" power from one "pond" to another, you have to have in place sufficient transmission line capacity, which is not cheap.

<comment><USER11> What is the hydraulic analogy of reactance? inertial mass of pulsing water? (also, wtf does chrome on windows not include the word reactance in the dictionary?)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why editorial illustrations look so similar these days (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial-illustrations-look-so-similar-these-days/ <comment><USER2> This is something that's been bugging me for a while that I could never put a label on. It appears "Corporate Memphis" [1] is a popular catchall term for this style. I think the comparison is apt because not only do they both share an affinity for the hypercolorful and simple geometric forms - they also both strike me as something that you can immediately place as the product of a certain time, which is really just a nice way for saying this stuff is going to look super dated just like the works of the original Memphis Design Movement [2].

[1] [https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate- memphis](https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate-memphis)

[2] [https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/23/15864234/furniture- memphis-...](https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/23/15864234/furniture-memphis- design-ettore-sottsass)

<comment><USER3> You say is hyper colorized but elsewhere even in the article it's claimed the style is a bit dull...

" The vector-based style, characterized by flat colors, simple shapes and a pared-down color palette..."

The Industry Standard, Red Herring and Business 2.0 probably had some effect on its taking root.

<comment><USER2> I think "simple shapes and a pared-down color palette" is actually a better descriptor than I used. Even though the palette drawn from in both styles is limited I think there's still a heavy emphasis on color, if that makes any sense.

I wouldn't describe either style as dull or muted, I think in this sense the "pared-down" palette refers to the lack of shading or gradients in many of these designs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This style isn't just vector art trash using canned tools. A lot of artists are painting this way in gouache and murals. It _looks_ simple, but that's the effect of good composition and design. I can guarantee that this art is not simple to create. Take procreate for a spin and let me know how it goes. If you see this and say, gosh there's a lot of this out there, it must be mass market garbage, then you'd be right at home with people complaining about art nouveau 150 years ago. I don't paint in this style, but I appreciate it as part of the zeitgeist. If you don't like it, paint something else and put it out there for people to write articles about.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I'm rather stunned that the sentence "Virtually anyone can produce professional-looking artwork using illustration software and digital tools." would be written by a professional design critic. It seems like a shockingly naive assertion for a professional to actually commit to print.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most comments are quite negative, but I think an important reason is that the "flat" style looks pretty good on a screen and feels "native" to the digital media in a way watercolors or pencil or oil paint just doesn't. It is basically the natural evolution from simple icons. Sure most of it is generic and derivative, but this is true for any style.

It is typical that a new media try to emulate older, more prestigious media. Digital lack the physicality, so there was a long infatuation with trying to make it look more "physical" \- shadows, texture and so on. Now it seems the tide have turned and print magazines try to look more digital.

<comment><USER7> other mediums can look good on screen too.

the biggest reasons is skills and cost.

Very few people can actually do digital watercolor, pencil, oil, collage, etc. well. Those take years and years of training.

Flat illustrations are no picnic, but they're much more forgiving to novice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The answer boils down to three T's: technology, taste, and terrible pay.

I don't think technology has much to do with it. Digital illustration has been around for decades now, and technological improvements have made it easier to make complex, sophisticated art and reproduce all traditional techniques. So, neither the timeline nor the trend match.

The pay, sure, everyone always wants to make more money. I believe it's a factor. But it's been half a century since the 1970s. The style transition seems to have been too abrupt to be driven by long-term salary trends. Besides, it's hard to believe that the people making Corporate Memphis for, say, Facebook are so severely underpaid that no other style is feasible. In fact, if you have the money to pay your designers more, wouldn't you want to have them do something different, to stand out?

So it's taste, then. But I don't think it's a pure accident of fashion. This style aligns very well with the cultural moment: the infantilization of academic/corporate/consumer culture, the triumph of safety and risk-aversion, an antipathy towards the (conventionally attractive) human form, and an ever more homogenized culture facing an ever more heterogeneous public. If you were a designer trying to capture the zeitgeist, could you do better?

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a real yearning to see some early 1990s corporate illustration now. It seemed like back then the motif of large framed doll people made of simple pencil shaded 3D effect geometry was very common.

I can even picture in my mind's eye a Netgear hub being packaged in a box showing two generic figures skipping over some hillscape, achieving corporate goals together. Maybe even Windows 3.11 used the style?

I have no idea how to find an example though. Any help would be appreciated.

<comment><USER10> I know precisely the kind of style you mean. I just googled <random technology> and 1997 and found this here cover pretty immediately: [https://www.amazon.com/Cisco-IOS-Configuration- Fundamentals-...](https://www.amazon.com/Cisco-IOS-Configuration-Fundamentals- Systems/dp/1578700442)

Probably not what you had a hazy memory of but probably very close. I love this style too.

Edit: It's one of my favourite non-digital aesthetics in computing history, together with some of the stuff DEC did.

Edit 2: Another minor reason I'm somewhat familiar with that style is because MUMPS vendor InterSystems kept some variants of it around for longer than reasonable: [https://www.slideserve.com/broderick/introduction-to- intersy...](https://www.slideserve.com/broderick/introduction-to-intersystems- ensemble-and-the-tie) which I just adore.

And just for another search, Microsoft 1996 yields this here thumbnail: [https://i.imgur.com/wlr0U6j.png](https://i.imgur.com/wlr0U6j.png) for this video here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gMC_uFdcWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gMC_uFdcWE)

<comment><USER9> Brilliant!

<comment><USER10> And a quick search for an old Netgear manual: [https://www.manualslib.com/manual/298986/Netgear- Nd508.html#...](https://www.manualslib.com/manual/298986/Netgear- Nd508.html#product-ND520)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you look through the last few centuries of illustration, it has always been subject to fashionable trends that are informed by the processes used to create and publish illustrations in their respective eras. There have always been distinctive and original illustrators, but the other 90% are usually playing to style trends. Ultimately concept is king and the style is malleable.

These days illustrations are much more commonly produced with fast turnaround time and smaller budgets. The print industry ain't what it used to be. Illustrations are now viewed on multiple platforms and have to be readable and graphic when only a couple inches wide while (in some cases) still looking good on a magazine rack.

I would say illustration went through it's most diverse and creative phase in the late 90s up to the iphone. Before Steve Jobs killed the print industry there was just such a rich tapestry of career illustrators making a comfortable living producing polished and distinctive work.

<comment><USER6> Surely the golden age of illustration was the 1950's. After that photography largely took over in magazines, advertisements, posters etc.

<comment><USER12> For me the golden era is the 1930s and its art deco styling, something like this [1] or this [2]

[1] [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ce/62/b9/ce62b9cf9c349ea81018...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ce/62/b9/ce62b9cf9c349ea8101827f1535e4001.jpg)

[2] [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3c/67/d5/3c67d54d2fe785c773d2...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3c/67/d5/3c67d54d2fe785c773d29c6058517e23.jpg)

<comment><USER13> Let's not forget the "almost '30s" (1927) Metropolis movie poster [0]. One of the most iconic illustrations and my personal favorite.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)#/media/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_\(1927_film\)#/media/File:Metropolis_\(German_three- sheet_poster\).jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Art always changes, and art critics always complain when it does, and complain when it doesn't. Illustration is simply art on a shoestring. No one is able to afford a Normal Rockwell or hire David Hockney given publishing makes so little revenue today, so finding a way to make a graphical point quickly is no less an artistic achievement. Technology allows today things that no artist from the past could do, and there is no reason to not take advantage of it. At one point painting with oils was new, painting in many colors was new, printing in color was new, even thinking of art in the abstract was new; so art changes to take advantage.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think that Le Monde illustration looks quite like the other pictures. That is to say I can imagine someone making some crudely drawn approximation of the other pictures and then getting them to snap into place as required but the Le Monde has details I think would need more than snapping.

At any rate I'm not sure if the sameness of style is all down to lack of talent, there has been sameness of style in past generations as well.

</comment><comment><USER16> > A US-based editorial illustrator earns an average of $47,000 a year… Dismal > pay isn't just an American phenomenon.

Median income for the United States is under $35,000. I understand (through personal experience!) how much cost of living differs in major cities, but illustrators are not limited to living in those expensive locations.

In some ways, the shift in pay seems to reflect the change in location as much as anything else – at one point, illustrators for NY media basically needed to live in NYC, but that is no longer the case and pay seems to be adjusting.

<comment><USER17> > but illustrators are not limited to living in those expensive locations.

Like tech, illustration is as much about networking as anything else, especially with art directors at the outlets that pay well. Most of those are in NYC, although SF is emerging as a new hub because of how much art tech companies now use.

If you get really big or a highly-paid teaching job, maybe you can move out to Connecticut or Rhode Island. Otherwise, you need to put in face time with your peers and at industry social gatherings if you want to get work. There's even a dues-paying club for this glad-handing:

[https://www.societyillustrators.org/](https://www.societyillustrators.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What do people think of services like www.undraw.co, or www.humaaans.com? I like them, even if they are overused.

I think we're beginning to see an evolution of this style to start using more gradients, as we did about 10 years ago:

\- community - [https://dribbble.com/shots/11051166-community](https://dribbble.com/shots/11051166-community)

\- Miracle - [https://dribbble.com/shots/10836129-Miracle](https://dribbble.com/shots/10836129-Miracle)

\- Together - [https://dribbble.com/shots/10804716-Together](https://dribbble.com/shots/10804716-Together)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd also count the old (2013) Google Now headers into this: [https://forum.xda- developers.com/showpost.php?p=37322378&pos...](https://forum.xda- developers.com/showpost.php?p=37322378&postcount=98)

They're the same kind of illustrations, and a relatively early example, being from 2013.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's good to finally know what name to call this style -- Corporate Memphis!

But besides the flat aesthetic having started on phones over the past decade- plus, I think there are two key factors the article hints at but doesn't really address directly.

1) If you're illustrating on your computer, there's something more inherently (although subjectively) "honest" about flat design -- it looks like computer vector shapes. Using brushes in Photoshop/Procreate is a throwback, "fake", simulated. If digital is the medium, then basically either pixel art or vector art are the two "most authentic" expressions of that medium.

2) Economically, shapes in Illustrator/etc. are infinitely easier to tweak. If the editor wants you to adjust your image, you might be able to spend just 10 minutes making the changes, rather than 6 hours drawing/painting up a totally new version. (Yes I know painting programs can support layers and other fancy things to help, but it's still going to be harder.)

Also, because flat art requires a good eye but very little learned "technical" technique (as opposed to, say, watercolor or oil painting), a lot more people can do it (just keep tweaking the shapes until it looks right), and it's very easy to achieve consistency across images, even if made by totally different people.

<comment><USER18> Regarding 1, skeumorphism looks fake, because it is, since we're not using physical controls on a digital device anymore, so the metaphors are not as useful. Vector art, as you say, is less physical but conforms to digital devices better. Now neumorphism is up and coming, but I think it still looks bad, for the same reasons as skeumorphism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The pay thing is pretty interesting. Whilst it's really obvious here (and often taken advantage of), I think you find it everywhere people _love_ something.

I think most people start drawing because something in them won't let them stop. They genuinely love it. Same with making music, etc etc. That moment you realise someone will _pay_ you to do something you love (and will do for free) is completely mind blowing. Unfortunately you also end up wrestling with the "I'd do this for free, so how little will I accept," knowing full well that there's a kid down the street who draws really well and lives with their parents and to whom £75 is the equivalent to 2 days stacking shelves in a supermarket...

I found this with web stuff, especially early in my career (and before templates were everywhere). I really needed the money, but "the son of my friend's dentist will do it for £XYZ" and you end up working for less than minimum wage because you're not old enough to know better - plus you tell yourself you "love doing it enough" to do it free anyway, and it's "all experience".

</comment><comment><USER17> As someone who has done commercial illustration for some of the big outlets, it's strictly a numbers game. You can't get enough work if your style is too distinct, or at least, not enough work consistently to make ends meet.

Outlets like the NYTimes still do employ talented illustrators with distinct, innovative styles. Just look at this drawing of Bill Gates by Connor Willumsen:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/technology/bill-gates- vir...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/technology/bill-gates-virus- conspiracy-theories.html)

But it's not the kind of work that's centered by these publications.

Anecdotally, and from what I've read about the history of the profession, this stems from art direction not having as much independence from editors as they once had. Editors used to hire art directors with the intent of respecting and deferring to their taste and expertise. Now, they override and meddle, thinking themselves capable of directing an overall "vision" without domain knowledge or really even taste.

</comment><comment><USER22> >it's highly possible to make a living as an illustrator without learning how to draw in the classical sense.

I've been feeling for a while that this is the case for most democratized media - the bar has been lowered across the board, and now average Joe potentially has access to an audience with little to no vetting.

And I think this has drastic consequences for society. When our most popular media are chosen by majority they are effectively a "lowest common denominator", and when such media begins to dominate our attention (say, everyone's watching vloggers on YouTube), we as a society are less able to recognize merit, not just in arts, but in corporate and political contexts, too. Instead all judgements become determined by charisma and we spiral into idiocracy.

This isn't about snobbery. It's about refinement of technique, of work _as_ art, which is the clear and apparent difference between these bland magazine covers and classical art. Talent is not a replacement for knowledge and practice.

<comment><USER23> people have been saying this for thousands of years.

<comment><USER22> Compare publishing a book 100 years ago to publishing a book now. I can write literally whatever I want and self publish.

Before there was more implicit vetting to all of the media we consumed. That people were talking about it being easier a thousand years ago only suggests that it has been true for a long time.

You cannot deny that it is easier than ever in history to publish information or art. And if you track the progression of technology you'll see that those people a thousand years ago weren't necessarily wrong. Starting with the invention of writing, then ink, then the printing press.....and now the internet.

<comment><USER23> "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."

― Cicero

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> When photography made realism trivial to achieve over a century ago, painters responded with alternatives, like impressionism.

Illustration overlaps with art, though isn't the same, but people who want to express themselves will create new ways that separate them from people who just use new technology that makes making eye-catching things easier.

</comment><comment><USER25> This has been bugging me for months. You see this style everywhere and I wondered if the illustration world was down to just one artist or if it just lost originality. At least for use in marketing and branding I think it's embarrassing to just do what everyone else is doing. How do you ever stand out?

<comment><USER26> You can't stand out when 100 online articles are published by each SEO driven online magazine. You can't spend time to be original. Content goes away so rapidly and these illustrations are lost in the SEO oblivion. Blame the SEO tactics and consumers. No time to be original, no time to create once a very long article with hyper quality illustrations.

<comment><USER27> For me personally, Quanta magazine and Nautilus stand out with their unique style. Wired is also pretty distinct

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You have to admire the chutzpah of the author, who bemoans the dwindling pay for illustrators, yet illustrates their own article with a picture from a $10 subscription service. Well played!

<comment><USER29> They are literally using the image to illustrate their point.

<comment><USER28> No, they are just being hypocritical. Was their story unbelievable without their own use of low-budget artwork? If not, why then did they feel the need to also underpay artists themselves?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting, that's a thing I've never consciously noticed but now I am wondering how I didn't...

</comment><comment><USER31> This is similar to the thin-line animation / thick-line animation art style in cartoons. The push for efficiency and a quick turn-around has turned towards more simplistic art styles, for better or worse.

</comment><comment><USER32> If you want an easier time tracking whatever latest fad is out there, you can look at the home page of Dribbble.

Everyone doing the same art style is some peak creative work right there.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think this is related to:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490089)

</comment><comment><USER34> It's just that, a trend. It comes and will go eventually, and new trend arise, like it always did in the past.

</comment><comment><USER35> The very matter-of-fact education channel, Kurzgezagt, uses this style. I imagine partly because of the speed and ease of creation of the videos, but also for the unambiguous and direct capability in conveying information. [https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt](https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt)

<comment> GuB-42 A good side effect of that style is that their videos look great even at very low quality settings.

<comment><USER36> Which I'd assume is part of the reason people are choosing that art style for articles - when you don't know what people are going to be viewing your image on, a limited bold colour palette with bold shapes is probably a fair bet for "yep, still works" on most devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps an alternative style, roughly painted watercolours as seen here in Columbia Journalism Review [https://www.cjr.org/special_report/what_were_reading.php](https://www.cjr.org/special_report/what_were_reading.php)

</comment><comment><USER38> Perhaps it's a fast turn-around time thing? You want to hijack capitalize on news cycle with an article that gets clicks ... you need an eye grabbing graphic within hours. This style is the path of lease resistance.

</comment><comment><USER39> Design trends don't seem to coexist for long. One becomes dominant, quickly everyone grows tired of it, a new, quirky one comes along that gets traction, cycle repeats.

<comment><USER39> Examples include de Stijl, Art Deco, the photorealistic 40s, googy, the bicolor 60s, the glamorous 70s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I really enjoy the vector-based style. Shape-based illustrations are really pleasing to me for some reason.

<comment><USER26> It is more resistant to image compression, maybe that's why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I tire of this style but what I mean to say is I'm tired of almost all new art. Of photography, of music, of visual, architectural, of design in general. The over-abundance of art and design has dulled my tastes and I can't help but see the same things everywhere, over and over. Where I see quality, I can't help but see pretension, commercial intent, and fakery.

</comment><comment><USER42> My friends and I refer to this as FDP, Flat Disproportionate People, and it is _everywhere_!

</comment><comment><USER43> Huh. Cartoons went that way, decades ago :(

<comment><USER44> The aesthetics of Dexter's Laboratory or Samurai Jack are superb. The latter in particular is a work of art, even experimental at times (as well as fun!). So I welcome this in cartoons.

<comment><USER45> Taste is subjective. I could never get used to them. Some people say things like "bad" or "ugly" when what they really mean is "not for me." It's okay to have different tastes in art. The world would be a dull place if everyone liked the same things.

<comment><USER43> I was referring to ones with simply shaped body parts that don't articulate, but merely shift. They just scream "cheaply made".

<comment><USER46> You are referring to the infamous: "CalArts Style" [https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/22/17381380/thundercats- roar-...](https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/22/17381380/thundercats-roar-cartoon- network-style-steven-universe)

<comment><USER44> I'm afraid I disagree with internet outrage in this case. I see nothing wrong with CalArts style. It's a fashion. In time it will give way to other fashions. Old cartoons tended to look in a similar visual style too.

I don't get "outrage" over cartoons.

I like the style of those new Thundercats. I like the old ones too. I like the style of the new She-Ra. I liked old He-Man and She-Ra too.

I just... I just can't make myself say I like My Little Pony. Sorry, my open- mindedness has limits :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Humans of flat[1] have been documenting this for some time

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

<comment><USER48> It's a shame his tweets are protected - is this some form of Twitter ban?

This account was doing a good job tracking the way humans are depicted in tech illustrations. It breaks my heart that absolutely no company is safe from deformed vector humans anymore:

[https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2020/04/08/keep-learning- and...](https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2020/04/08/keep-learning-and-teaching- with-jetbrains/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Vector art can be nice. Late Picasso is universally admired, and posterism, Bauhaus, and other minimalist art movements are often praised for utilitarianism, efficiency and succinctness. However, viewing the _New Yorker_ cover mentioned in the comments, a commenter noted the founder of the magazine might roll over in his grave to see such visual simplicity afront what was conceived as a sophisticated metropolitan publication. I was then amused to learn that neither the founder (born in a prospector's cabin in Aspen, Colorado) nor his first wife (who funded the thing, and was born in Missouri) were either born or bred New Yorkers. Apparently, New Yorkers are so convinced of their cultural affinities and the superiority thereof, that they neglect to notice they've been had.</comment>


The CADR Microprocessor - <AUTHOR> https://lm-3.github.io/cadr.html <comment><USER2> Well, I'm impressed. I can't speak to efficiency, but reading through the spec immediately let's me see how one might implement an allocator atop the basic system, and gives me an idea of how one might wrangle predictive jumps if one were optimising aggressively, and so on.

This is one of the most _predictable_ instruction sets I've seen - and that I like. It takes time to learn nuances, but with this it seems that the documentation is right up there with the best, making that learning curve considerably less.

</comment><comment><USER3> Important bit of historical context is that "micro" in "microprocessor" in this case refers to fact, that it is microcoded, not that it is implemented as single VLSI chip.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. The first single VLSI chip implementation of a Lisp machine, the MegaChip, was done by Texas Instruments in 1987 for its Explorer II workstations. This chip contained 553000 transistors and was afaik very similar to the CADR architecture-wise. Symbolics, one of TI's competitors, released their own VLSI Lisp machine chip next year called the Ivory, which had a more advanced architecture (labeled the I-Machine in the documentation) that used less transistors for its implementation than the MegaChip, only around ~300k.

<comment><USER3> The somewhat large transistor counts are understandable taking into account that the CADR CPU is mostly an insane (for the time) amount of SRAM (as in hundreds of 1k and 4k chips) coupled to comparatively small logic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading these historic documents always gives me an itch to "OK. What would a CADR look today?" myself into designing a contemporary version with wider addresses, registers and so on. Of course, I never finish.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks interesting, but I'm too ignorant to understand it...

What is the practical significance of this? Is this the design for the processor that was used in the actual Lisp Machines, or a design for a hypothetical processor?

<comment><USER7> it's the architecture of the original lisp machine from which all other lisp machines (arguably) derive, mit's CADR. there's not many of them built, since it was made by hand wiring, but there's still one or two around in a working state.

for reference here's the ai memo write up of the project [http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5718](http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5718) dated 1979, which should place it in a historic context for you

<comment><USER8> They were wire-wrapped but by robot.

<comment><USER7> ty

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Note: the corresponding emulator is there : [https://github.com/LM-3/usim](https://github.com/LM-3/usim)

<comment><USER10> A bit confuse between the two. Any easy way to up it and run some lisp code, not necessarily Common Lisp?

<comment><USER7> i wouldn't call it "easy", but it's a way to run a historic MIT lisp system, that predates common lisp. the language it uses is "lisp machine lisp", which was later used as one of the basis for common lisp standardization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://lm-3.github.io/](https://lm-3.github.io/)

Seems to be a better link, points to other materials etc.</comment>


What Sinofsky's Departure Suggests about Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/507746/what-sinofskys-departure-suggests-about-the-current-state-and-likely-future-of-microsoft/

<comment><AUTHOR> It is very interesting that Sinofsky was unable to get Office "Metroified" before release of Win8rt. That indicates a failure of the Office code base or a failure of the Office division's ability to adapt. This is doubly interesting in that Office is where Sinofsky "made his mark."

<comment><USER2> Yes, this is what really blows my mind. Microsoft has spent 10+ years shipping desktop software on tablets. Everyone seems to think that Surface and Windows 8 is the new beginning, where Microsoft realizes that it has to _change_ something for software to work nicely with touch-based interfaces.

Except that they _still_ don't get it, or if they get it they are completely unable to deliver. They are marketing the Surface RT and showing that it runs Office - the old-style-1990's-desktop-PC-UI Office. That's not impressive. Nobody wants that.

So the question is: Does Microsoft truly still not _get it_? Or do they get it, and are choosing not to / unable to deliver the proper experience?

<comment><USER3> They should focus on getting OneNote and Outlook working with Metro, and get them running on the Surface and Samsung Note style phablets.

Both have killer Use Cases whilst mobile; you can be productive with both tools with a touch interface and without a keyboard.

I'm surprised that they've not noticed that.

<comment><USER4> OneNote actually has a touch centric app in the Windows store @ [http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en- us/app/onenote/f022389f-...](http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en- us/app/onenote/f022389f-f3a6-417e-ad23-704fbdf57117)

<comment><USER5> MS actually has OneNote in the iOS App store as well, though it's surely severely gimped: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft- onenote/id41039524...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft- onenote/id410395246?mt=8&uo=4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Although Sinofsky's accomplishments are clear, he also has managed to do a great job of alienating everyone else. If Sinofsky were a little wiser, he could've done the exact same thing while trying to be nice to the rest of Microsoft. Instead, he really embraced his little dictator role and enjoyed making people both inside and outside his organization squirm.

This whole Sinofsky drama is a really good lesson for everyone. Nobody is indispensible. Microsoft will be fine without Sinofsky.

<comment><USER7> Time will tell.

Either what you say is right – Microsoft is fine – or what you say is wrong and Microsoft has a bleak future. We don't knkow why Sinofsky left, but to play devil's advocate:

What if Sinofsky did do a good job of working with other executives but Ballmer felt threatened by a potential successor?

Or what if Sinofsky was just set up to take the fall, since high-level executives at Microsoft must be aware of the difficulties the world is going to face with Windows 8?

<comment><USER8> The real "what if" to me: what if getting things done in Microsoft simply _requires_ an assertive asshole? Perhaps the main reason Sinofsky has succeeded where so many others stubmled inside Microsoft is because he _is_ like that? Worse, maybe the cause and effect goes the other way, perhaps he was like that because it was necessary, and Microsoft is in denial?

So they fire the assertive asshole and fix none of the other problems that required him to be that way in the first place.... what happens next?

<comment><USER9> This comment can be slightly rephrased to fit Apple as well.

<comment><USER7> Although I understand your point, there's a fundamental difference between what Microsoft did to Sinofsky and what Apple "did" to Jobs. Sinofsky: fired, Jobs: openly idolized to the point of being reality-distorting.

Apple without Jobs may have to wade through the same wilderness of disillusionment, but Microsoft without Sinofsky (assuming you're correct that Sinofsky was Microsoft's "visionary") not only gets the disillusionment, Microsoft starts by tearing itself apart without any sort of pressure to reform or repair the damage.

On the other hand, even assuming Microsoft is fine without Sinofsky, Windows 8 can't be considered nearly as successful as, say, the introduction of the iPhone, simply by the nature of the release: release a new product that requires a lot of change – and _fire_ the leader at the same time? I don't believe even the "best case" can be considered a success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems to me like a solid article -- it kind of explains a good deal, including microsoft's blindness to the idea of treating office as its platform (if Microsoft has been aggressive about porting office to iOS and android it probably wouldn't care who won the platform wars -- instead it has simply made it abundantly clear to many people who considered office indispensable that they can dispense with it).

In essence, sinofsky was tasked with sorting out office development and then with doing the same with windows. In the end he seems to have been a classic empire builder, and windows was the larger empire (within Microsoft).

</comment><comment><USER11> As far as I understand, the article misrepresents most of what happened with Windows. Writing about what happened after XP, the cause of problems is apparently:

"The Windows product at this point had ballooned to about 50 million lines of "spaghetti code,""

and then in gives credit to Sinofsky for everything good in Windows that follows whereas Wikipedia has completely another story:

"In December 2003, Allchin enlisted the help of two other senior executives, Brian Valentine and Amitabh Srivastava, the former being experienced with shipping software at Microsoft, most notably Windows Server 2003,[13] and the latter having spent his career at Microsoft researching and developing methods of producing high-quality testing systems.[14] Srivastava employed a team of core architects to visually map out the entirety of the Windows operating system, and to proactively work towards a development process that would enforce high levels of code quality"

What's the truth?

<comment><AUTHOR> The quote comes from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista>. Allchin was responsible for the move from Win95/98/ME to XP (moving to the NT core technology), and then subsequently to Vista. Vista was widely panned. Sinofsky took over to move from Vista to Win7, and now Win8... so I believe both are correct in that they were sequential.

Interestingly, Allchin had resounding success with WinXP, not so much with Vista, and retired on the day that Microsoft officially released the Windows Vista operating system to consumers. Deja vu.

Ref:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Allchin>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Windows></comment></comment>


Lack of carrier availability hurts Microsoft Windows phone in Canada - <AUTHOR> http://subvert.ca/Blog/windows-canada

<comment><USER2> Microsoft is poison to carriers because Microsoft owns Skype which takes away revenue and profits that carriers would otherwise gain. Plus Microsoft treats carriers the same way it treats computer manufacturers - it dictates. Carriers have other phones to offer so dictation does not work.</comment>


Datasaab, Swedish computer company 1954-1981 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datasaab <comment><USER2> I worked at Datasaab, in New York, in 1977. We were building a system for tellers to use in interacting with customers. I don't remember the computer model names, but I do remember the language -- DIL 16. It was a weird language that looked like assembler, but was actually higher level, with lots of string operations. I remember that my coworker built a B-tree in DIL 16. That was a fairly new data structure at the time, and it was the first time I had encountered it. (I thought it was incredibly elegant, and perhaps that is why I went on to study databases in grad school.)

We deployed versions of software by loading up a 5(?) MB hard disk with our code, and walking it over from our development office downtown, to the bank branch that was testing it out.

I was working at Datasaab during the day, and going to grad school (NYU) in the evenings. After a year, I left Datasaab to concentrate on my studies (at a different school).</comment>


The Telegraph's 100 most influential tech investors in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/8357154/The-100-most-influential-technology-investors-in-Europe.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this into an easy-to-follow Twitter list: <http://twitter.com/DHS/telegraph-top-investors></comment>