The dying mall's new lease on life: apartments - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-30/a-case-for-turning-empty-malls-into-housing <comment><USER2> _" Today, people prefer to live in smaller spaces and want walkable developments rather than relying on vehicular transit. This project caters to these needs."_

Kind of interesting to watch the mall trend fold in on itself. They were trying to recreate "towns" all along. I mean that's what a walkable "development" with mixed residential & commercial activity is.

<comment><USER3> I've thought for awhile that Walmart/Target could build apartment complexes above their stores. Not sure who would want to live there, but I bet some people would.

<comment><USER4> Especially decades ago, how many people lived in an apartment over a grocery store or something in a small town?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is such a great idea. In Vietnam I stayed in a few AirBNB's that were 20 floor buildings: the bottom floor was grocery, gym, bank, restaurants, and the top floors were all residential, with pools on the very top floor of one swanky place. I'm seeing this in Seattle and Portland, too. Converting malls to residential has huge potential for all-in-one living.

<comment><USER6> The malls that are going bankrupt in the US tend to be those in at least somewhat downscale suburbs/exurbs. The mall that's relatively close to me had a Sears, Macy's, and JC Penney as anchor tenants. All are now closed. There is a close by busy grocery store and Home Depot.

But upscale shopping malls in elite cities were actually doing pretty well prior to the current situation.

<comment><USER5> > But upscale shopping malls in elte cities were actually doing pretty well > prior to the current situation.

I believe that is called "Retail Therapy" but it only works if you have money to burn.

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-why-behind- the-b...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-why-behind-the- buy/201305/why-retail-therapy-works)

As we've seen, most people don't have money to burn, as "most american's have no savings":

[https://www.axios.com/americans-emergency-savings- coronaviru...](https://www.axios.com/americans-emergency-savings- coronavirus-f11deffc-b8c1-48e0-a3db-0aeb3ce74fb9.html)

or...

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/41-percent-of-americans- woul...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/41-percent-of-americans-would-be- able-to-cover-1000-dollar-emergency-with-savings.html)

[https://www.fool.com/retirement/2020/03/27/nearly-50-of- amer...](https://www.fool.com/retirement/2020/03/27/nearly-50-of-americans- dont-have-enough-emergency.aspx)

<comment><USER7> True, though many Americans have access to credit. Though that can't be sustained, it can work for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not going to be common. I have a lot of large commercial real estate clients, and they all see malls becoming distribution centers.

In the US, most malls are not in high-density, expensive areas. It's much more expensive to build 100 condos out of a mall than to just build condos. Where do you even get windows for most of the stores? A lot of space in a mall is away from anywhere that natural light can enter.

As distribution centers though, you have giant spaces, large bays for trucks to enter, and last-mile access to suburban customers.

Retailers expect to want the space, they just expect they'll want it for distribution of online sales instead of in-person sales.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of a Canadian movie:

> The world of interconnected office buildings, apartment complexes and food > courts (shot in all its fluorescent glory on digital video) is the backdrop > for "Waydowntown," where young office workers Tom, Sandra, Randy and Curt, > have all staked a month's salary on a bet to see who can stay indoors the > longest. It's lunch hour on day 24 of the wager and everyone's pretty much > reached their breaking point.

[https://imdb.com/title/tt0219405/](https://imdb.com/title/tt0219405/)

<comment><USER10> Toronto's 30km PATH system [1] makes staying "indoors" less of a challenge if you can afford to live in one of the connected buildings. According to IMDB the movie takes place in Calgary.

The abandoned mall conversions feels more like the trend of converting old inner city factory buildings into lofts, except applied to suburbia.

[1] [https://www.torontopath.com/](https://www.torontopath.com/)

<comment><USER11> Also, Montreal has its "Underground City" (La Ville Souterraine) which is claimed to be the largest such network in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Today, people prefer to live in smaller spaces and want walkable developments rather than relying on vehicular transit. This project caters to these needs."

This is a broad statement, that clearly isn't true. If it was true, then the suburbs would not exist. Housing prices show that there is clearly a desire by people to not living in smaller spaces. After the pandemic, I tend to think a lot of people will be re-thinking their dense living conditions. This really smells like a put up job by a hopeful developer

</comment><comment><USER13> I find this sort of funny in an "everything old is new again" sort of way. There are some up—and-coming areas around downton LA that we're partially covered high streets (somewhat mall-like) that are having their second and third floors turned into apartments the thing is, that's what they used to be.

It strikes me that we should consider the mall as more of an aberration which is finally fading away.

<comment><USER14> The mall always struck me as a horrible place because unlike a town square, it's only a public space to those who are there to spend money.

<comment><USER15> Not really. I spent countless hours at a mall as a kid - it was just where my parents would drop us off to waste some time while they had to go run errands.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I think a critical part of their success was that they were fun.

Look at photos of malls from the 80s and 90s. People were there to hang out, even to see and be seen, and of course they shopped while they were there.

<comment><USER17> Malls were definitely only for peddling Shit You Don't Need by the time I was old enough to frequent them. Nothing interesting, just overpriced stores and people yelling at you from kiosks trying to get you to buy a watch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was thinking about these being good for freelancers and startups, then I realized they'll be expensive. There was a recent thread about housing for startup employees:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655398)

Liability kind of ruins any opportunity of making cheap living spaces.

Edit: did some more browsing, found this update on Zeus, a co-living startup [https://therealdeal.com/2020/05/11/airbnb-backed-zeus- living...](https://therealdeal.com/2020/05/11/airbnb-backed-zeus-living-sees- valuation-halved/)

<comment><USER19> Maybe buy an old cruise ship and put it in international waters lol. That'd probably help get rid of some of the liability and zoning issues.

<comment><USER20> If you have no liability / jurisdiction then contracts with you are unenforceable. And if a customer can't get a valid contract with you, that means no customers.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, not sure how the cruise lines deal with this... I know some of them have offices in the US, some major ones pick Miami but the ships are owned and registered to off-shore nations. One of the reasons they didn't get a bailout due to COVID, they pay little taxes and then also can avoid more stricter US labor laws.

<comment><USER20> As you said, they're registered to off-shore nations, so that gives them a jurisdiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Always wanted to live in a Cinnabon!

<comment><USER22> My middle school was adjacent to a donut factory. Can confirm, it never gets old.

(whereby "never" I mean "over the span of 3 years as a voracious teenager" ymmv)

<comment><USER23> It's all fun until the metabolism slows down :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In Germany we have a _slow_ dying of mall and similar, now accelerated because of corona.

I have considered this before when seeing some empty buildings (turned out they just moved...).

One thing I see as a problem is sunlight. Any apartment must have reasonable sources of natural sun light and many mall's are build in ways which have much less entries for sunlight. Outer walls can be changed but the "inner space" which has no contact to an outer wall is stuck.

<comment><USER25> I'd think large skylights in the public spaces could help a great deal with that issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In my ideal world, the mall housing would be aimed at old people and anyone with handicaps such that they're taking a greater-than-normal risk navigating icy sidewalks or bad weather in general. Imagine being able to walk to and from shopping, gyms, and third spaces without worrying about falling and breaking a hip. _That_ is the idea which ought to sell this.

<comment><USER27> "OK, on your form you said you're sixty, but you're forty".

Seriously, I hate unnecessary bureaucracy. Ideally, we'll build enough housing for _everyone_ , regardless if they have a handicap or not, or old for that matter.

Our society is very wealthy, we can do this. Done right, it won't be a burden for everyone, because we'll get lower cost of living and as a side effect, healthier humans.

<comment><USER20> That's quite a jump. The OP said "aimed at" which in my mind just means the picture on the front cover of the brochure has a pair of smiling seniors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Haha one of my uncles said cruise ships are like sleeping in the mall... but I like this idea... Have shops, restaurants, entertainment/activities office buildings and residential. I think I'd love to live somewhere where I could walk to grab a bite of eat, to the gym or some office space... A pool too. Co- working spaces be nice too if you work from home and want a separate spot to work. I kinda been interested in moving to downtown Austin since the most walkable city in Texas, but still not prefect from what I've read.

As someone who's always been in the suburbs, always kinda been jealous that most apartments seem to have pools haha. but idk if i'd like apartment life, I'd be worried about hearing other people or being too loud if I wanted to listen to music or watch tv... I guess depends on if the walls are paper thin.

</comment><comment><USER28> Considering the footprint+location of your typical American shopping mall, office space is a really good 2nd life for this type of facility. One other possibility could be to retrofit the structures to serve as data centers. Every small town in America could have a JCPenny's worth of servers racked up for ultra-low-latency application & content delivery to the local residents.

I think every American in the lower 48 is within 5 milliseconds of a Walmart at this point. I am surprised they (and other retailers) haven't attempted to leverage this geographic capability. 5ms is certainly fast enough to fool me into thinking that a remote workstation is sitting under my desk.

<comment><USER29> There aren't a ton of good pictures that I can find, but Rackspace famously moved their headquarters into a derelict San Antonio mall in 2012:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rac...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rackspace- revitalizes-a-defunct-mall-into-an-unorthodox-tech-campus.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Obviously, conversion can be somewhat tricky, but purpose built mixed use has sometimes proven quite popular, e.g. at Santana Row.

My experience of living there was limited to a few weeks in a hotel, but it certainly had its advantages.

<comment><USER6> I'd observe that living in any small area whether it's a "fake town" like Santana Row or a real town like gentrified areas of many old small New England cities can get old. I worked in downtown Nashua NH--not the strip mall, the old downtown--for quite a few years. It was nice. But you maybe had a dozen square blocks of nice restaurants and interesting shops and that was it. Fine to commute to a few days a week. Less interesting IMO to live in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Oh, so you mean like most of Europe and NYC? Ya, I guess that's a thing people are into.

(Disclaimer: I'm from NYC where this is just so bloody obvious.)

</comment><comment><USER32> Here's a detailed examination of one mall that converted to apartments - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmL2l-bcuUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmL2l-bcuUQ)

Interesting mostly for how they weighed the marketing and economic aspects of it: "commercial renters think in terms of $/sq foot and individuals think of monthly costs"

<comment><USER33> So, instead of ugly commercial monstrosities we're going to get rows of tiny, dark apartments in a weird building that doesn't really use space efficiently. And this is a best case conversion: historic building in an urban area. Imagine how awful a suburban mall would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> In Bangkok, a city pretty serious about its malls, some of them have apartment complexes attached. Here's one I happened to notice that seems to have pretty normal prices:

[https://www.hotels.com/go/thailand/platinum-fashion- mall](https://www.hotels.com/go/thailand/platinum-fashion-mall)

[https://www.ddproperty.com/en/property/ขายด่วน-the- platinum-...](https://www.ddproperty.com/en/property/ขายด่วน-the-platinum- fashion-mall-1-ห้องนอน-45-ตร-ม-ชั้นสูง-วิว-central-world-แต่งครบ-rw272-for- sale-7745355)

There are complexes attached to some of the high-end malls too like IconSiam, if you happen to be really rich and like malls:

[https://www.iconsiam.com/en/residences](https://www.iconsiam.com/en/residences)

So, maybe the death of malls is not a requirement for living in malls?

</comment><comment><USER35> Seems like a solid plan if they focus on opening restaurants, pharmacies, grocery stores, banks, registries, etc in the commercial lots.

Every neighborhood strip mall seems to succeed by proximity to the people.

If you put a good restaurant near a neighborhood with a school, it gets a steady traffic of regulars. Same goes for a little bank, pharmacy, gas station, etc.

<comment><USER36> In New Haven CT there's a downtown mall that was converted to an apartment building, but none of the commercial space was left unconverted

It felt like the most oddly gloomy place I've ever seen apartments: [https://i2.wp.com/box5497.temp.domains/~betwefc1/wp- content/...](https://i2.wp.com/box5497.temp.domains/~betwefc1/wp- content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_20170405_130955.jpg)

<comment><USER37> Yes, very gloomy indeed. I wonder who'll want to live there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sunshine City in Tokyo, Ikebukuro started out like this around 1978.

[https://sunshinecity.jp/en/information/about/](https://sunshinecity.jp/en/information/about/)

The Sunshine City building is about 60 stories. The lower floors are mall. I considered renting there around 1988, but the apartments in my price range were shabby. Nearby conventional apartments were much less expensive. It appears to be very successful, but I haven't been there for 18 years. Has anyone else seen it recently?

</comment><comment><USER39> I've seen news that some big companies have bought/leased up malls and converted them into office space.

Probably doesn't do much for suburban culture (although it's arguably better than having a failing mall in the neighborhood), but it's super good for employees since malls tend to be located very near to housing.

[https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173979/westside-pavilion- go...](https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173979/westside-pavilion-google- office-space)

<comment><USER40> Works great if there's a pressing need for office space. Many places with dying malls have plenty of abandoned retail real estate and not much in the way of new or growing office real estate needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I noticed the type of mall which is not enclosed is getting more popular in California. Basically a collect of stores with a shared parking lot so you can park right next to the store of interest. I think nobody wants to park and walk by dozens of stores nobody cares about.

</comment><comment><USER42> I was kicking around the idea of trying to turn empty retail spots into co- working locations.

This work be a good halfway spot between the burbs and the congested downtowns where co-working spots typically exist. Plus you have access to amenities and you can take a walk, hangout in the main area in winter.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER43> Check Bespoke in SF. Problem: no natural light, and depression sinks in after some time due to being forced through the zoo that is a busy mall every day (also somewhat of a food desert in that area). Not a bad idea though overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Malls are generally just one or two stories tall and therefore a massive waste of space compared to other possible uses of the same land. Building them higher and putting housing on top is a great way to add more housing without using more land.

<comment><USER45> Most empty malls are in places where economic demand, including demand for land, is very low. Investing money to make efficient use of something that cheap is unlikely to be a profitable move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Separation of land usage through zoning is a huge problem in my opinion. We'd all be better off if they just let people do whatever they wanted on their own land.

<comment><USER37> How about an outdoor 24/7 disco in your quiet neighborhood?

<comment><USER46> That's always the go-to argument (I literally had someone say "rock crushing business" when talking about this issue). The standard should be are they disturbing your quiet enjoyment of your property?

If not then mind your own damn business.

<comment><USER37> Im not for zoning laws, just gave an example of mixing zones. It's probably better for the business as well to be in commercial zone. But if the impact was zero i wouldnt mind a business operating in my residential neighborhood: quiet, no extra trafic, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> non-entity In the city I used to live, the state government bought up many such dead malls and turned them into office space for various agencies.

</comment><comment><USER47> [https://archive.is/jIk9w](https://archive.is/jIk9w)

</comment><comment><USER48> In most municipalities, zoning will restrict the ability of developers to make changes of use like this.

</comment><comment><USER49> Bulldoze and subdivide would be more sensible I'd think.

</comment><comment><USER50> Lack of sunlight might be a problem

</comment><comment><USER51> I know I'm commenting on the site and not the story -- maybe this is against the spirit of HN -- but hasn't Bloomberg lost credibility here ever since "The Big Hack"?

Are we still okay with them? Are we just okay with them as long as it's not a tech story? If so, is this an example of Gell-Mann Amnesia? [1]

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect)

<comment><USER4> Option 1 is people forgot, option 2 is they reserved judgment, finding it inconclusive, and option 3 is they don't regard Bloomberg as a monolith.

At least, those are the possibilities that I can think of, and I think they could plausibly cover most people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > _some developers are betting that empty malls can mix housing with stores > and community space._

it was developers and city councils who _caused this mess in the first place_.

no one wanted to separate home and work / business / industry.

no one except developers and auto manufacturers.

<comment><USER24> > > some developers are betting that empty malls can mix housing with stores > and community space.

> it was developers and city councils who caused this mess in the first place.

I never understood why the US and some other countries have such a strict separation between normal business/work areas and many EU cities do not have such a strict separation and it just works very well.

Sure some industry which causes a lot of noise or other pollution is not allowed interleaved with housing and industries which need a lot of space tend to be outside of the city because of land cost.

But everything else can nicely interleave.

For example Berlin it's not uncommon to have small shops on the ground floor, some offices or doctors on the first floor and apartments above that. While many new buildings sadly don't have this anymore they still interleave shopping males, doctor houses and offices with apartment blocks.

<comment><USER53> Americans learned that they can use zoning laws to put restrictions on their neighbors' properties, mainly to keep their own property values high.

Unfortunately, American city planners have a lot of bad ideas of what a city should look like. For some reason, stadiums are unreasonably popular ( [http://www.hatrack.com/cgi- bin/print_friendly.cgi?page=/osc/...](http://www.hatrack.com/cgi- bin/print_friendly.cgi?page=/osc/reviews/everything/2002-09-09.shtml) ).

<comment><USER53> Oops: wrong link. It should have been [http://www.ornery.org/cgi- bin/printer_friendly.cgi?page=/ess...](http://www.ornery.org/cgi- bin/printer_friendly.cgi?page=/essays/warwatch/2003-09-28-1.html) .</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Purely Functional Data Structures in Elm – course lecture notes (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.classes.cs.uchicago.edu/archive/2015/winter/22300-1/ <comment><USER2> Also checkout Elm for Beginners which is free. Not sure if free offer is temporary.

[http://courses.knowthen.com/courses/elm-for- beginners](http://courses.knowthen.com/courses/elm-for-beginners)

<comment><USER3> And also checkout Elm in Action MEAP [0], published just yesterday. There is a coupon for 50% valid today, "mlfeldmantw" [1]

I'm not affiliated in any way, just a fan of Elm.

[0] [https://www.manning.com/books/elm-in- action](https://www.manning.com/books/elm-in-action)

[1] [https://twitter.com/ManningBooks/status/756492787290214401](https://twitter.com/ManningBooks/status/756492787290214401)

<comment><USER4> I'm intrigued by Elm, but know too little javascript to even be dangerous. Can you enumerate why you're a fan?

(I'm also a fan of MEAP's, so buying this just because.)

<comment><USER5> Elm's type system rules out the possibility of _null_ or _undefined._ So you won't be seeing those errors at runtime (modulo some bug in Elm itself). It encourages you to program with a very clean separation between model, view, and update. And it has very helpful compiler error messages that guide you to correct code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Functional data structures are another beast altogether. Okasaki's book is the only one I have on the topic. Any other suggestions?

<comment><USER7> CMU uses this for their Parallel Algorithm Design course: [http://www.parallel-algorithms-book.com/](http://www.parallel-algorithms- book.com/) It's still a work-in-progress though.

<comment><USER8> It's a "work in progress" in the sense that the professors aren't quite completely satisfied with it. It's still very readable, which is even more impressive when you consider the complexity of the topics being covered.

If you're interested, I'd recommend at least glancing at the 15-210 schedule[1] so you can see the order that the chapters are covered in the class.

[1]: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15210-s16/www/sc...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15210-s16/www/schedule.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't seem to look at the notes (on mobile, or else clueless about where to find them) but there has been a significant change to how Elm does things in the past few months. Just to be aware that the latest version may act differently.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's at

[https://www.classes.cs.uchicago.edu/archive/2015/winter/2230...](https://www.classes.cs.uchicago.edu/archive/2015/winter/22300-1/Schedule.html)

You are right FRP is gone now, but still they talk about Functional Data Structures which are not going to change anytime soon.

<comment><USER10> Indeed immutable data structures are not going to change ever... Sorry.</comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Mail begins blocking users with ad block enabled - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3006981/data-center-cloud/yahoo-mail-begins-blocking-users-with-ad-block-enabled.html <comment><USER2> I can understand where Yahoo is coming from, but doing this will divert even more users away from its already struggling mail application.

<comment><USER3> Is that really true? Mail vendors have a lot of power to lock users into their services.

But even if it was, does Yahoo care? If they can't show these users ads, then what value do they hold to Yahoo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What shall they do with people who don't see ads because they connect through IMAP with a traditional email client? I rarely use the web client. Does that mean I'm stealing from them? If they offer the service for free through third- party clients, then what difference does it make I block ads in the web client?

</comment><comment><USER5> That's just what they need to get another bunch of users to switch to Gmail.

<comment><USER6> Why would yahoo miss them?

<comment><USER7> Arguably many users who signup for a free email service do so at the recommendation of one or more peers. Therefore even users who block ads may lead to other user signups of which some will not block ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This kind of situation is a good reason to decouple your email address from your email provider. If you use your own domain, you aren't dependent on any particular provider. It's unfortunate that the process of obtaining and using a custom domain for email is a bit too technically challenging for the average email user.

I think most would be willing to pay the perhaps $40/year for such an important service to avoid distracting ads and having their email scanned for saleable information.

<comment><USER6> I admire your optimism but most people are far too cheap to pay money for anything. Hence ads everywhere on every surface is always a winning strategy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How many use their web interface instead of an external client?

</comment><comment><USER10> This is just the beginning. People think adblockers can't be defeated. The reality is that they can easily be defeated.</comment>


Dual AMD EPYC 7742 Crushes Quad Intel Xeon 8180M's in Geekbench 4 - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dual-amd-epyc-7742-vs-quad-intel-xeon-platinum-8180m,40288.html <comment><USER2> "You're getting 24.83% more performance while costing 73.29% less."

This is a terrible performance summary. Let's try to normalize it in terms of Geekbench points / $:

      Intel = 155050 / $52044 =  2.97 / $
      AMD   = 193554 / $13011 = 14.88 / $

AMD has a 5x advantage on the price of the CPU alone, not factoring in the price of the motherboard and other components (this is a 4 socket Intel motherboard vs. a dual socket AMD).

5X. That's incredible.

<comment><USER3> Interesting pricing decision by AMD. Given their performance, and no other competition in x86 market besides Intel, surprised they chose to sell at such a steep discount.

Sometimes, such pricing decisions can perpetuate "you are a weaker substitute" perception.

<comment><USER4> You are correct that customers that already use both Intel and AMD would likely choose AMD over Intel even with a price difference of 10% if they were deciding on price/performance ratio. However, I think it's likely that AMD is trying to win market share from customers that are currently mostly using Intel. In my humble opinion that strategy is paying off now that more big shops such as Amazon AWS have AMD options.

<comment><USER2> Lisa Su is on record as talking about revenue / market share being a key focus:[1]

"We are always looking to increase our market share. That's why we put out great products. As it relates to our market share targets, for server what we've said is we can achieve double digit market share from 4-6 quarters from the end of 2018."

[1] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/14579/all-ryzen-qa-with- amd-c...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/14579/all-ryzen-qa-with-amd-ceo-dr- lisa-su)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The articles will keep flowing for months/years and it'll become conventional wisdom that Epyc always pummels Intel. Intel marketing must be on Defcon 1.

<comment><USER6> The only thing holding up Intel at the moment is their gaming IPC.

Should AMD crack that then it'll be brutal for them (if it isn't already).

<comment><USER7> Marketing aside: Is the gaming IPC that /practically/ relevant? I mean, I'm gaming on a early-2012 Sandy Bridge CPU (Xeon E3-1235 aka "cheap i7-2600"), and it feels like my late-2013 R9 290 is the limiting factor these days, not the CPU.

And I am actually considering to combine my NAS and workstation/gaming rig into one "big" Ryzen 3xxx or 3rd gen TR machine and banish it into the basement. Bonus: The NAS finally gets ECC, and if I put in my old GPU and a new GPU, I can have two VMs for game streaming (tried parsec this weekend, and it was really nice!). Only drawback I can see is that I'd have to carry the rig upstairs once every blue moon when I play VR games.

<comment><USER8> I was doubting this for a while but there are finally games now that will bottleneck a 2012 era CPU. I'm planning a Ryzen upgrade for this purpose.

<comment><USER7> Oh, which games? The part of me who's still a child is looking for a GOOD reason to justify the spending to the part of me who is now a responsible adult (and to my SO).

<comment><USER8> Not even super new games, but games like Deus Ex Mankind Divided and No Mans Sky have better frame rates on my buddy's Ryzen 2 machine with otherwise identical specs than my i5 3450.

The first game where I saw the difference was Battlefield 1.

<comment><USER9> I think a lot of cross platform games have been optimised to use lots of CPU cores, since the modern consoles currently have 8. If you're running an older CPU with less cores, even if they're more powerful, you're starting to see performance drags, that was especially the case for BF1.

<comment><USER10> I'm seeing people's upgrade paths and I feel kinda guilty for holding on to my i5-2400 for that long...

<comment><USER8> Don't feel that way at all, if anything I should feel guilty for thinking of upgrading!

I'm probably going to survey the market early next summer before Cyberpunk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not defending Intel or even particularly have a positive opinion of Intel overall but I don't know how accurate this test is considering the difference in Linux kernel versions used in this benchmark. According to the article the Intel system is running a 3.10 kernel (doesn't say which distro but I'm pretty sure it's RHEL 7 or CentOS 7) while the EPYC system is running Ubuntu 19.04 with the latest 5.0 kernel. Also I'm not sure if the 3.10 kernel they're running on the Xeon system has been patched for Meltdown and Spectre which would could also affect the performance. I doubt it would amount to a significant difference in performance but usually benchmarks tests like this use the same OS and software stack for the tests.

<comment><AUTHOR> The performance per dollar is about 5 times better with the AMD box. I'm _very_ sure no new kernel would be able to compensate for that.

<comment><USER11> Hence the reason I said I doubt it would make much of a difference but the 5.0 kernel generally outperforms 3.10. 3.10 has has already been deprecated and isn't updated anymore. The EPYC 7742's are still going to trounce the Xeon's but the Xeon's would probably have better real world performance on the latest 5.0 kernel and a recent distro versus kernel 3.10 and a dated distro like RHEL/CentOS 7. As I mentioned before, typically the same version of OS is used in these types of benchmarks.

<comment><USER12> RHEL backports the hell out of their kernels. They are monstrosities. The would not make any money if their OS performed significantly worse than the competition. Remember how much RHEL costs. And phoronix routinely does these performance tests across kernel versions. There is not that much difference. I think in one of his recent tests he even went back to ubuntu 12.04.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is big because to a lot of people at lower scale, price doesn't matter as much as compute density. AMD now excells in all 3 relevant criteria: density, initial cost and running cost (e.g. power)

</comment><comment><USER14> Amateur in this space. What are the barriers to AMD taking Intel's market share?

<comment><USER15> OEM and data centres are the big accounts. Power consumption is crucial to battery life in remote devices (in this case, laptops) and electricity is roughly 50% of the cost of a super computer over five years (a lot of it is for cooling, and it's presumably less for data centres used for cloud or storage).

If Dell sells more laptops with AMD and Amazon rents more AMD instances (m5ad, r5ad: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amd-epyc-powered- amazon...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amd-epyc-powered-amazon- ec2-m5ad-and-r5ad-instances/)) then AMD should be quite happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The 8180M is a "money is no object" processor so people who buy it won't really care about price/performance. It would be more interesting to compare Rome against something like a 6212U or 2x6252.

<comment><USER17> I wonder if there is any research into price elasticity of CPUs at the high end. How high could you price a marginally faster one before you stopped selling any?

<comment><USER16> Intel and the server OEMs definitely have this information but they're not going to share it. Considering the costs of terabytes of RAM and software like HANA or Oracle, there's room in the market for some pretty expensive CPUs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The Geekbench 4 benchmark holds little to no relevance in the enterprise world. Nevertheless, it gives us a small taste of how AMD's EPYC 7002-series can provide enterprises with more bang for their buck."

And then they go right ahead and make 'comparisons' based on irrelevant workloads. Not saying AMD isn't faster or better price/perf but please do the benchmarks properly. Same can be said of comparison of POWER 9 vs amd/intc.

<comment><USER19> People like to say "synthetic benchmarks have no relevance to the real world" to sound smart, but that isn't ever entirely true. They are all relevant to soem degree. Somewhere in the world is a real task that looks like any given synthetic benchmark. The danger is that the real world use cases that show some relevance with the synthetic benchmark may be more or less rare.

In this case, there are whole suites of benchmarks and real applications that have been compared between the new Epyc's and the Xeons and the only time Xeon has been on part with Epyc that I have seen so far is AVX-512 specific workloads. It is possible there may be some workloads where the worse ram latency of Epyc is a penalty that cannot be overcome by the larger L3 cache size. That used to be an issue on the previous gen Epyc, but the infinity fabric is faster now and the L3 caches are twice as big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> As configured it should be using 1/3rd less power than the intel, which is something volume players will be keen on.

It will be interesting to see what volume prices are like.

</comment><comment><USER21> Datacenter usage seems to be increasing in importance faster than PC, too. AMD's edge here bodes really well for their future.

</comment><comment><USER22> > 54 / 128 Cores / Threads

Should it be 64/128?

<comment><USER23> According to AMDs specs ( [https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd- epyc-7742](https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-epyc-7742) ), yes, it should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure how much it matters but it seems the two systems were running vastly different kernels.

<comment><USER25> Would it be better if they ran the same kernel optimized by Intel|AMD? Isn't that what use to happen when everything was compiled with Intel's compilers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As much as I hate edgy 'Gamer' names, it seems AMD's new CPU does live up to its name.

<comment><USER27> > As much as I hate edgy 'Gamer' names, it seems AMD's new CPU does live up to > its name.

EPYC is AMD's _server_ CPU series.

> > [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epyc&oldid=911736...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epyc&oldid=911736718)

<comment><USER26> It is however a 'gamer' type name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> TL:DR

"You're getting 24.83% more performance while costing 73.29% less."

<comment><USER20> 2/3rds the power budget.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you find your first freelance gig? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN'ers,
I am a full-time developer planning to switch into to freelancing. I am bit scared/worried about maintaining a constant flow of work to pay bills.
- How did you find your first freelance gig? - How do you maintain constant workflow? Manage stress with finding work? - Do you have any advice for the first-time freelancer?
Thank you so much for your time :) <comment><USER2> > I am bit scared/worried about maintaining a constant flow of work to pay > bills.

You should be! The key to paying bills is not to get a constant flow of work, which will take a while, it's to live off of a portion of your income and save the rest. IMO you should have at least 6 months of expenses in the bank before you start freelancing. This also ameliorates a lot of the stress related to finding work, and means you won't feel pressured to accept or pursue bad work.

I got my first freelance gig by posting on the HN whoishiring thread, which I do recommend doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> My biggest tips:

\- Become a "visible expert" in your space. By that I mean give talks at meetups, publish a blog about the technologies you want to work with, etc.

\- One of the best things I did was to write an ebook about React. Even a short ebook can give you instant credibility (even if no one ever reads it!) - the fact that you wrote it says a lot about your commitment level.

\- Be open minded about what kinds of contracts you will get. Generally, freelancers fall into a couple of different buckets: full time staff augmentation, 1/2 time or less ongoing help, one off project help.

I've written up more tips here: [https://www.breakintoconsulting.com/](https://www.breakintoconsulting.com/) \- and feel free to email me if you want more specific feedback or info! (email in profile)

</comment><comment><USER4> For me it's all about the networking.

Make sure you put time into staying in touch with people you know, especially people you have worked with before. Tell them you are looking for work. Talk to them about the interesting stuff you are doing.

I've noticed that the more excited I am about work I'm doing, or the work they are doing, the more opportunities I have.

The biggest contracts I have ever received started with a conversation over some beers, playing darts after hours, etc. A lot of listening to their problems, offering advice and saying "that sounds really interesting, I'd love to help with that!"

You have to do this even when you are really busy doing work you already have. Keep the pipeline full, it can take a long time for opportunities to show up, so stay in people's mind constantly.

</comment><comment><USER5> First was just a bit of a shot, then a rejection for employment that was turned into a freelance gig. That's actually how I get quite a few gigs. I guess I come across as a horrible employee?

"Constant flow" is just semantics. If seeing your contracts end the day before Thanksgiving removes your festive mood for the next 60 days, freelancing probably isn't for you.

</comment><comment><USER6> I applied to someone looking for a webmaster for their website on Craigslist and that led me to a bunch of clients. I've since gone down to just one or two nowadays. Hope to get more someday again, but for now, I took a long break.

</comment><comment><USER7> I started with a service. See:

[https://digitalmicroenterprise.blogspot.com/2018/05/starting...](https://digitalmicroenterprise.blogspot.com/2018/05/starting- with-service-as-way-to-learn.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I got hired by one of the freelancers in my company. I worked with him, did a really good job, didn't give up. That's basically how I get referrals for almost all my clients. Just work really hard and stick to your word.

</comment><comment><USER9> I found a job ad posted, and then went to a normal job interview. I'm not even sure I realized it was a freelance job until after the fact. But I worked with them for a few years on and off anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you still freelancing? Was it easy for you to find other clients after this first client?

<comment><USER9> I don't, and I didn't really look for any other that as I got full time employment after a year (different company).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reaching out to my network.

</comment><comment><USER11> What are your skills?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ruby and Javascript.

<comment><USER12> What have you built with those languages?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Networking from an old co-worker.</comment>


Has esketamine been overhyped? - <AUTHOR> https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/lifestyle/article/esketamine-antidepressant <comment><USER2> Holy shit:

> there are concerns about the drug's withdrawal effects after three of the > study's participants committed suicide within 20 days of its end

It doesn't say how many people committed suicide from the control group, but regardless, 3 suicides sounds pretty bad for an anti-depressant. Who would approve a drug like this?

The cynic in me says an addictive drug with severe withdrawal effects is exactly what pharma companies want...

<comment><USER3> I cannot imagine being severely depressed, entering a study for it since I'm resistant to most of the drugs, finding one that works....

and then having to stop the thing that works and return to a crappy mind state. Only it is worse because I now have withdrawal symptoms on top of my severe depression, which already put me at risk for suicide.

In my opinion, the issue isn't that there is dependency nor that there is withdrawal effects. After all, these are things that happen and despite the risks, might still be the best available choice for relief. The bigger issue is that we didn't do enough to help folks during this time. We should have provided adequate medical care to keep folks safe. Perhaps we should wean folks off in a better manner and/or provided better psychiatric care to this vulnerable group of folks after trials ended.

<comment><USER4> I understand that. I was on prozac for years. I chose to come off it because it was messing me up, otherwise I'd have been happy to take it for the rest of my life (why not?)

I was aware that if the blackness returned and going back onto prozac failed to work (which can happen) then my lifespan would be a few months at the most.

People without really bad depression can't understand how bad it can be. Death really is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> About the safety:

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nzdnak/why-ketamine-is- th...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nzdnak/why-ketamine-is-the-best- drug-on-earth)

So the half S, half R compound (I assume "esketamine" is S ketamine and "arketamine" R ketamine) is a commonly used drug in every emergency unit, probably in much higher doses than the ones used for depression.

Using the S half only seems a way to get it patented.

The concern seems to be that a nasal spray could lead to addiction beacuse fast assimilation. People that have used it illegally tell me that tolerance builds up very quickly, but they're talking about high (K-hole) doses. They don't use it often, just once in a month and mostly the racemate.

They say esketamine only is weird and a little scary. The R half is what gives the happines feeling and mild hallucinogen effect, while the S half is the cause for depersonalization.

A curious detail: the gq article says it's administered IV, while in vice article it's said that IV is dangerous because laryngospasm.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't really get it. Why not just go with ketamine? Is it that the approval takes too much money which other companies could then reuse (the investement does not lead to benefits)?

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's exactly the reason. They are filtering racemic Ketamine just so that they can patent and upsell it at exorbitant rates.

<comment><USER8> Can the results be used ti justify off-label use of normal ketamine?

<comment><USER7> There are hundreds of Ketamine clinics using it off-label already, the problem is that the insurance won't cover the off-label use and a course of about 10 infusions might cost around $5k at the current rates.

<comment><USER9> > _the problem is that the insurance won 't cover the off-label use and a > course of about 10 infusions might cost around $5k at the current rates._

But I thought the goal of the pharmaceutical companies, according to your earlier comment, is to synthesize K to charge exorbitant prices. Aren't prices already exorbitant?

<comment><USER7> The ketamine their are using costs a few bucks. Most of the money goes to the clinics for facilitating the treatments. Depending on the kind of session it can take about 2 hours and there are a few medical professionals involved. This cost stays, the cost of esketamine will be added on top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's nothing wrong with bolstering the Psychiatrist's armamentarium with a novel drug that could help with clinical edge-cases of depression. This article was unfairly biased.

<comment><USER11> And why not just regular old ketamine instead of a dangerous, untested new derivative? The whole system is broken beyond repair.

<comment><USER12> It is being tested and it's not a "dangerous, untested new derivative", it's a enantiomer of ketamine, it's literally 50% of the molecules in ketamine. And why don't we just use normal ketamine, why test any new drug, to see if it works better than what we had before.

<comment><USER13> > it's a enantiomer of ketamine, it's literally 50% of the molecules in > ketamine

I'm not a biologist or a chemist. Why does this imply the chemical is as safe? What is the benefit? It seems like a blatant patent grab to bypass the low profit margins of ketamine. Is there evidence otherwise?

<comment><USER14> The short answer is it can be both (ie safe, beneficial and effectively a patent grab). It is also unlikely that an enantiopure chemical is less safe then it's racemic counterpart and not unlikely that it is beneficial (this is not without precedent... this is also chemistry 101 and I don't feel this is the forum for it)...

The doubt is not so much the safety but is the benefit of the enantiopure version worth the cost.

<comment><USER4> Per my comment above, thalidomide is a clear exception. This stands even if the chirality changes within the body.

<comment><USER8> That was an example on the other direction. A pure chirality was safe, but a racemic mixture was dangerous. Here we know the racemic mixture is safe, which strongly suggests that either chirality in isolation is also safe.

<comment><USER15> And to make in the previous worse it would apparently "autobalance" and flip to chirality which meant that even if they 100% isolated it at great expense is why we never saw "rebranded Thalimoide but isolated to be all morning sickness drug no birth defects". I don't know enough details to tell how long it took and if it could even be used safely under ludicrously impractical assumptions like "if you it freshly isolated in bulk and take it within five seconds it would be safe but expire in an hour".

<comment><USER4> I think it flipped when in the body, so however long the shelf life was, it still wouldn't matter.

Incidentally, and AIUI, the body has a tagging system for unwanted proteins. Once tagged, the proteins are removed. Thalidomide tagged the proteins the were specific to embryonic limb formation, and the body duly cleared them, leading to the infamous result. Again AIUI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vincent-toups Capitalism overhype a potential product? No way!</comment>


How an Uber account can become lost forever [Audio] - <AUTHOR> https://gimletmedia.com/episode/91-the-russian-passenger/ <comment><AUTHOR> According to Uber, when you update your email address, they are unable to tie your old email address back to your new email address.

This caused a bit of a problem when the host of Reply All lost access to his account when a Russian person "hacked" his account.

I don't understand why Uber doesn't have a history on the account "table" in their data store.

<comment><USER2> Their app database fields got leaked back in Dec when a former exec sued them and he included the info in his court filings. You can look for yourself...Funny thing I noticed is every account seems to have a Grey Balls flag.

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3227535-Spangenberg-...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3227535-Spangenberg- Declaration.html)</comment></comment>


Two Years of Experience Doesn't make you "Senior" - <AUTHOR> http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2012/06/two-years-of-experience-doesnt-make-you.html

<comment><USER2> I think the article misses the point that some companies (mainly big ones) do, which is bump people's titles up so they can bill customers more. At Mandalorian we don't even have formal job titles as such. It's usually "X will be leading, Y will be on the job and Z's handling account management".</comment>


Ask YC: Non-US Founders, What's Your Story? - <AUTHOR>

According to pg, there's been various non-us founders who moved to the valley. So, what's your story? What challenges did you have (legal or cultural)? <p>I'm asking because I'm considering doing the same (I'm from Amsterdam). <comment><USER2> I'm one of those founders, last time i put out my email for anyone needing advice I got like 20 different people asking me questions. I'm happy to answer any questions in the forum.

This is what think:

1\. Don't worry about VISA until you get accepted, it will take too much time

2\. To get the right VISA is hard, lawyers will tell you what the law say, not necessary what is the right thing to do in the situation

3\. Don't be too honest at the border control. I had a friend once who where touring with their band in US, at the border the asked if they where going to work in the US? (I.e get paid) and they were honest and said yes, the border threw them out. As long as you are not earning money in the US, you're best off by saying you are on vacation.

<comment><USER3> This is terrible advice because if you don't have your story completely straight and they figure out that you have lied to them you could easily find yourself permanently inadmissible to the US.

Unless you are an experienced professional at telling lies to people whose job it is to determine if you are lying to them or not you probably shouldn't try to enter the US without having your visa in order.

<comment><USER4> Ha. It's only mildly relevant here, but my inadmissibility to enter Canada just recently expired. I was touring with a band trying to play a show in Vancouver and we got banned for a year for lying to border guards. Boneheadedly, we let the bassist do the talking and the Canadians googled their way to quite a few holes in his story.

<comment><USER5> If it were up to me amusing anecdotes would always be relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> right now -the distraction of being buzzed by the blue angels while I'm trying to work!

More generally - we've not yet secured our visas but our E2 (foreign investor) application is in and we should be eligible as we've brought a chunk of money from the UK (you need a 'viable' amount - more for a factory, less for a coffee shop).

Culture is great and much better (and cheaper) than the UK. SF is a very positive place to be starting a company (Boston's not a whole lot better than London thoguh).

Not having a social security number us a royal pain and if you're not careful can sting you all over the place (like bank accounts). One of our founders had very good relations with his bank so we just about managed to get personal and business accounts but that can take a long time and you need one before you apply for your visa.

3 month stints are feasible but dangerous. We're on our second and I know others who've done three but who are definitely on the edge now.

As Gustav said, don't say you're getting paid - treat YC as a training programme and if you at all can then pay yourself through your home company. Don't lie to customs either though - our lawyer (who used to do visas for you tube and google advised that you're much better off being bounced honestly than having a lie highlighted during your actual visa interview.

All in, it's all just about possible (though we can confirm that for certain if and when our visa's get issued - the process takes 4 months and that's after you've sorted out your bank account, incorporation, investment etc) but tricky. It'll definitely sink a lot of time.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a very important topic for me. I asked a while ago if a B1/B2 visa would be enough to incorporate a company, but no one was able to provide an answer.

<comment><USER8> I came to the US on such a visa to create a startup in the Valley. I was not the one responsible for the incorporation paperwork so I can't exactly say. I think it should be ok. However, you will not be allowed to work or receive a salary until you change your visa status. This usually entails leaving and re- entering the US.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, guys.

I just need to clear one thing now: considering I incorporate in the US, how do I manage to "pay myself and my co-founder"? I mean bills, common expenses, rent, food, etc? Can I transfer company revenue to a personal account? I know it is bad to mix personal/company cash flow, but is it ok/acceptable to use a corporate credit card?

I know that this is not something to worry enough to make me lose my sleep, I am just curious about how things are handled fiscally and in terms of accounting.

* edit: Removed the "pre" formatting. Sorry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you edit your reply? The pre/code screws up the layout (in Safari). Thanks!

<comment><USER5> It does it in Firefox too, it happens pretty regularly when someone accidentally puts a space in front of a paragraph of prose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Legal question: what visa do you arrive in the US?

<comment><USER10> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40208>

<comment><AUTHOR> That doesn't tell me very much. Should I forget about the Valley then, because visas are too hard to get? I've got better things to do than dealing with immigration issues - it seems a big drawback.

The next best option is probably London. I'm guessing it's the best place for start-ups in Europe?

<comment><USER10> Ease of immigration/visa to US depends on which country you are from. So ask around your place. If anyone has immigrated to the US they are the ones who will be capable of giving you the best picture.

And yes, if its too grim, forget about the Vally. Yes, its sad and disappointing especially with all the pundits stressing the value of location. But be wild. Its a constraint, and last time I checked constraints promoted creativity. So use your resourcefulness to make up for your lack of resources. Its fun. Really!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From my research, the following process is legit. But please check with a lawyer/US Embassy.

1\. Set up a bank account in your host country.

2\. Get a B1/B2 visa and then go to the US.

3\. Assuming you get selected at YC you will need to setup the a company which is fine.

4\. Next you will need to take the YC investment of $15K, but you can't take that into a US account, so instead have them wire it to your account in your host country. After this when you come back for 3 months, you should be okay as long as you withdraw money only from your account. If possible get your visa status changed to a work visa then.

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh, on big challenge: cheap country is very demotivating. (I'm from Poland)

<comment><USER2> Yes, my understanding that "All countries are equal but some countries are more equal than others"...i.e people from eastern Europe have a bigger problem entering US than people from western. That sucks bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you are from a friendly country, I understand it is easy to get a long tourist visa. All of the immigration drama is about employment, so if you do not get paid while in America then as far as I can tell you are actually a tourist.

edit: or ask petenixey</comment>


Stop Commenting Your Code, Please. - <AUTHOR> http://designbygravity.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/stop-commenting-your-code-youre-just-confusing-things/

<comment><USER2> The types of comments I've found useful are ones that explain "why". Either summarizing a function or class at a high level (why I should use this thing, why it exists), _or_ explaining a single line iff it's highly counter- intuitive. e.g.,

"This is a Foo to replace the broken one in the Bar library, which doesn't frotz Baz correctly." "Yes, we actually have to do this because Qux isn't in magic mode yet."

I figure a comment is worth it if it's highly likely to save someone from ripping out/changing a section just to see why it's done that way (which is sometimes a fun exercise, but mostly just reminds you of some subtle detail you forgot).

<comment><USER3> A friend of mine always says "Your code should explain what it does, comments should explain why.". I agree with with you and him completely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After reading "Refactoring" by Martin Fowler, I would say "comments are bugs". I still operate that way, excepting a one-line description of a function or class. In rare situations, a longer explanation of convoluted code is called for.

Yes, I am still trying to reconcile this with "Literate Programming", unsuccessfully.</comment>


Jeff Bezos Wants to Give More Money to Charity. He Should Pay His Workers First - <AUTHOR> https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59a7220fe4b07e81d354e6e3 <comment><USER3> Dont understand why this was flagged, read the article and they werent making wild claims without citations.

Payroll and charity issues aside which is up to interpretation, I dont understand why HN can not take the article. Maybe HuffPost isnt a credible source?

<comment><USER4> Could be flagged because of the back button hijack? Can someone find an alternate source to resubmit? As you said the citations are valid and this is a discussion I'd like to see develop here.

<comment><USER5> >Could be flagged because of the back button hijack?

If so, that's not a valid reason for flagging an article.

It's particularly odd because as far as I know, none of the articles about Amazon's search for a new headquarters have been flagged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If he pays them more he also pays payroll taxes.

If he donates to charity he gets a tax credit.

Am I missing something? Else seems logical to me.

<comment><USER7> Charity also has higher PR value for each dollar.

<comment><USER8> And that's exactly this approach that is criticized in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On the footnote:

       Fredrick Kunkle is a staff writer on The Washington Post's Metro desk
       and co-chair of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild's bargaining unit
       at the Post. The views stated here are his own.

It looks like WaPo labor union leader is trying to bargain a better labor contract with their employer/WaPo owner with this piece.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bezos's wealth is based on Amazon stock value.

Amazon the company pays salaries, not Bezos. An increase in X$ to warehouse workers may mean a decrease of X*Y$ in Bezos's wealth. It's not so simple.

Also, the workers that everyone feels bad for are less than a decade from being entirely replaced with robots. It's sad but if your entire job consists of walking around a warehouse picking up objects and putting them into boxes because you have thumbs and robotic ones are not good enough yet, I don't see why you should expect anything more than minimum wage.

</comment><comment><USER11> To a first order approximation, every $3500 he donates the against malaria foundation would save a life.

I'm all for Jeff Bezos operating as a more ethical businessman. And you can criticize him for that till the cows come home with no objection from me. But lets not criticize his plans for charitable giving. Lets not discourage that. Because at the end of the day, billions of dollars to effective charities will save millions of lives.

I live in NZ, which has a population of 5 millions or so. It doesn't feel like a small country at all. And yet Jeff Bezos could probably save that many people from dying if he wanted to. He could literally create another NZ worth of people in the world. It wouldn't quite be as cheap as $18B, but I suspect it could be done for less than $40B. So he would still have another $40B left to fix those worker-welfare issues.

</comment><comment><USER12> Amazon often pays its workers top dollar. The problem is what is expected in exchange...

<comment><USER13> They pay their software developers top dollar because if they weren't they'd work elsewhere, but everyone else....

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The workers are just going to waste it on stuff like food and shelter.

<comment><USER5> I work at an Amazon fulfillment center, and I've asked my managers to just let me live in the Kiva field because the cost of living is so much higher here than what they pay, but they keep refusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why should he pay them more than market value? As a shareholder, I definitely don't want this to happen. It's not Bezos' company, it's a public company.

<comment><USER16> What's market value? Seems like a better description would be "as little as you can get away with".

<comment><USER17> If he pays his workers too little, they will go work elsewhere. Nobody is forcing anyone to work for Amazon.

<comment><USER18> That makes sense in an economy where supply (jobs) is greater than demand. If there are no other jobs then your choice becomes work for as little as offered or _starve_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What does the "[flagged]" mean in the title?

<comment><USER20> It means someone flagged the article as not suitable for hn. You can [vouch] for it in the hn area at the top (I think it's called vouch, and I'm not sure the reputation requirement)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the truest article I have ever read.

</comment><comment><USER21> Off topic, but did anyone else notice the sneaky back-button highjacking? I don't know if there's a better word for it.

Open the article in a new tab, and instead of the back button being greyed- out, it is functional -- when clicked, it redirects to the home page with a full-screen headline.

<comment><USER22> Nope - the back button is grayed out for me on Firefox 56 on desktop - <USER2> is the normal behavior.

<comment><USER23> But Chrome swallows the hijack whole.</comment></comment></comment>


Cartography Comparison: Google Maps and Apple Maps - <AUTHOR> http://www.justinobeirne.com/essay/cartography-comparison <comment><USER2> If I had to tl;dr my conclusions from this post it's this, Google is better at showing you how to navigate, Apple is better at showing you places worth going to.

Really great analysis. I wish it was a bit more succinct, but there's a lot of great information here. One thing that's not clear in each comparison is "which is better?"

The analysis seems to be indicating that the answer is "more", but I'm not entirely convinced that's correct in all cases.

<comment><USER3> To simplify: I'd say Google is for drivers, while Apple is for people being driven.

Apple is much more informative, but only where you have the time/energy to focus on the map, such as someone in the back of a taxi wanting to find some tiny location. Google is much easier to read at a glance, ie by someone actually doing something other then using the phone and needing the info to inform that task minute by minute.

<comment><USER4> There are uses for maps that that don't even involve cars at all! I know I've spend a fair amount of time just browsing around.

<comment><USER3> Not all drivers are driving cars. Some 'drivers' are actually on foot. A driver is someone both navigating and controlling their movement, requiring different type of map than a passenger or wandering tourist who cares more about seeing lots of place names and interesting landmarks. The driver wants/needs an uncluttered display that can be scanned for vital information quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apple maps is beyond awful where I live (Romania), it's not even worth mentioning it as an option. The problem is not only with the maps, but also with the points of interest.

<comment><USER6> I'm in Chile. It totally blows here too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > And both are in a race to become the world's first Universal Map — that is, > the first map used by a majority of the global population

First I've heard someone say that about _any_ Apple product.

<comment><USER8> Important to point out this guy used to work for Apple on the maps product. So he may be a little biased.

<comment><USER6> I looked him up also. He spoke at Google IO a few years ago. I can't tell if he worked at Google, but he also wrote some posts on their Geo Dev blog. So he could biased toward Google too.

Anyway, I read the post twice (it was good) and had trouble even finding bias. It reads more like a lab report than an opinion piece and he had criticisms of both maps.

Kinda can't believe he even worked on apple maps. The post was surprisingly fair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple Maps is only available for Apple products, right? The claim in the article that it could become some kind of a universal map seems simply ridiculous. I've never seen anyone use it, I've never heard a good word about it. Here Maps, Bing Maps, and OpenStreetMap all seem to have a larger following.

Then again, I've been wrong countless times before.

<comment><USER10> I've seen people use it, and I've heard good things about it. Never seen anyone use bing maps, or say anything good about it.

Having said that, I agree: there's no way in hell Apple Maps could ever become a universal map.

<comment><USER11> I think Bing's maps are the best for looking at multiple countries in a region, since it seems to better at choosing which detail to drop or keep, and it does a better job stitching photography so that the imagery isn't as obviously from different days or years. The "bird's eye" view is also good for getting an overview of a town you are visiting. I've never used it for directions, but I don't know it's bad for that purpose either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple Maps is useless in India and South Asia in general. It was useless on Day 1 and is pretty much just as useless today.

Google Maps on the other hand, not only has turn-by-turn directions, but has even customized it to give directions the way they do it locally (using buildings and landmarks instead of streets where applicable).

If Apple Maps wants to become a Universal Map platform, they have a very long way to go.

I don't see it in their DNA to make these types of platforms.

<comment><USER13> Of course they started at least 10 years after Google.

<comment><USER12> Google had to wait for the tech to catch up. Apple didn't have to.

Apple is the world's richest company - ´ if they really wanted to make maps work everywhere they could have.

Its simply not a priority for them (which is fine).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My main use case for directions is inter-city travel in the US with an iOS device.

From a mapping capability standpoint, the two products are equals at the intercity level. (Google local directions are better at finding places)

But... Google is seemingly committed to making the maps app more obtuse to use as time goes on. So I find myself using Apple as my map app with Waze as a backup.

</comment><comment><USER15> I liked the previous article and this one too but the website layout is just annoying. 50% width of the page is blank.

<comment><USER16> And the images are too small.

<comment><USER17> Click on them and they will get bigger.

<comment><USER18> Can't say that helps much.

[http://i.imgur.com/CI33nx3.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/CI33nx3.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't it fallacious to count users of both types of maps since they're installed by default on each of the two tech giants' OS?

</comment><comment><USER20> God, if there was ever a need for use of an appendix on the internet, this article would be it.

Really didn't need to see 90% of the images. The article was so verbose, too, taking ten pages to conclude a simple arithmetic count of cities and road shields.

Didn't help that on my screen the content/white distribution was literally 30/70, like I'm running a mobile phone simulator on my laptop spent a minute in the CSS to change it.

Anyway this was a great first pass, although it feels to me like the least interesting. Why? Because maps start to really make or break as a utility tool, once you introduce some kind of goal, which has some level of interaction, configuration and changes to the map.

For example, search (say by voice) for Starbucks and everything pops up. The notion that Starbucks didn't show on the default map view at the default zoom, is pretty meaningless. Or pick a location and then press 'navigate', and relevant roads and shields pop up. The notion immediately prior to this interaction all roads and shields they weren't sprinkled all across the map in all directions, isn't really important.

But none of that functionality was examined, which is THE driving force between differences in maps for actual human beings with actual human being purposes.

Anyway I'm sure it'll get covered in the future, but I felt it to be a surprisingly weak article. Let's not forget this isn't just some random guy writing an essay, this is one of the leads of the Apple Maps cartography for almost half a decade.

I think one thing went missing too in the focus on two of the biggest anglo- saxan cities in the world and the backyard of Apple/Google, which is that the world's population doesn't live there, and that Apple sucks and Google functions in less Western areas. Just read this thread and you'll find lots of anecdotal evidence.

<comment><USER6> ironic that this comment needs an appendix

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love this website. Very clear.

</comment><comment><USER22> Apple Maps is great because

1\. the sign it shows actually matches the sign on the roads

2 UI is clean and clutter free

3\. Takes less battery life

4\. uses lock screen properly unlike gmaps

5\. Better voice

Google Maps on the other hand is just a buggy app and a battery hog. However there're few things Google Maps does better

1\. Which lane to use

2\. Suggest new route mid route for faster speed

For me (in US) routes are exactly the same all the time.

<comment><USER23> Sounds like you're using Google Maps on iOS? Shouldn't you then use Apple Maps on Android for a more fair comparison?

<comment><USER22> I've never used Android. I'm providing my personal experience of these two tools on the platform I have.</comment></comment></comment>


How does Twitter threading work? - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/2020/02/22/033212.html?title=howDoesTwitterThreadingWork <comment><USER2> One way could be to have an additional "thread_id" in your database that just points to the root of the given thread. Boom, problem (naively) solved.</comment>


Confusing the Map with the Territory in Software Development - <AUTHOR> https://riskfirst.org/Map-And-Territory-Risk <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here.

This is a page from the Risk-First project, which has had some interest on HN before. This page is about the mistakes we make within development teams confusing our internal mental model of the world with reality.

I hope it's of interest. Feel free to ask anything.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I understand the point of this article, other than to say - in a long-winded way - that sometimes people are wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> That could be the TL;DR, I guess.

Also, machines, agents, processes, organisations, whole markets... any time we have an information-based model of the world which we use to interact with reality.

As a whole, I am trying to categorise different risks that we face on software projects, and explain why they are there.

Map and Territory Risk being one of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Discussed a bit a few weeks back on HN, perhaps?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084102](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084102)</comment>


Data mining Reddit posts reveals how to ask for a favor and get it - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/527496/dating-mining-reddit-posts-reveals-how-to-ask-for-a-favor-and-get-it/ <comment><USER3> > It turns out that their algorithm makes a successful prediction about 70 per > cent of the time. That's far from perfect but much better than random > guessing which is right only half the time.

From the graph, it looks like only about 27% of requests are fulfilled in the best case (jobs). In which case I can do better than 70% just by constantly predicting "no".

(I assume that this is just bad reporting. I haven't read the reference.)

Edit: skimmed the referenced article. Average success rate is 24.6%. The 70% they give (well, 67.2%) is "the probability that a classifier will rank a randomly chosen positive instance over a randomly chosen negative one".

<comment><USER4> They got a ROC AUC score of 0.67. This means that for a randomly chosen denied request and a randomly chosen accepted request, they will give a higher score to the accepted request 67% of times.

<comment><USER5> Below 0.8 is pretty much random

<comment><USER6> No, reread the parent's statement. The test involves distinguishing exactly one _known_ accepted request and exactly one _known_ rejected request. Probability of an acceptance does not come into play here; hence a random algorithm would choose the accepted request correctly 50% of the time.

What the algorithm performs poorly at is determining whether any _single arbitrary_ request is accepted or rejected; that's the test that would require around 80% success rate.

<comment><USER5> Eh - ok - let me rephrase. anything below 0.8 with ROC curves is usually considered to be very poor.

Can't quite recall the paper that gives the details. Think it might be this one [http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2003/HPL-2003-4.pdf](http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2003/HPL-2003-4.pdf)

<comment><USER7> From the PDF you cite:

"Since the AUC is a portion of the area of the unit square, its value will always be between 0 and 1.0. However, because random guessing produces the diagonal line between (0, 0) and (1, 1), which has an area of 0.5, no realistic classifier should have an AUC less than 0.5."

So it appears that not 0.8 but 0.5 is the randomness threshold; therefore 0.7 is not so bad.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately not. IIRC, any classifier with AUC < 0.5 can be improved by just inverting its output. Real classification quality requires being significantly above 0.5 -- 0.8 is a common threshold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Off topic now, but is the title confusing? The word "Dating", I can't make sense of why it is there and/or what it means.

<comment><USER10> Typo, should be "Data Mining" not really that confusing in this context though.

<comment><USER9> Aha. In hindsight, that does seem logical.

<comment> UVB-76 Please tell me this is a typo, and "dating" has not become an acceptable shortening of "data mining"

<comment><USER11> I propose "data'n"...

<comment><USER12> damning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Random pet-peeve. I dislike how the graph in the article has markers at each decile.

This is model-generated data so they could put an infinite of markers at arbitrary locations. The use of markers implies to the viewer that is a data- generated figure, which it is not.

<comment><USER14> I was burned by this, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >We find that Reddit users with higher status overall (higher karma) __[...] __are significantly more likely to receive help

There could be a common cause to these two factors (a certain way of writing, for instance), that could explain the correlation. I can't imagine someone basing a judgement on a stat reported on someone's user page.

<comment><USER16> Do you think someone with an account of say 10 karma points and 2 comments on a month old account is equally likely to receive help, ceteris paribus?

<comment><USER15> I'm sure it could be a factor (nothing's preventing someone from doing that, after all) but my original point was essentially as characterized in this post below [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7793607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7793607)

The tone of the article, I think, was suggestive of a causal relation, which surely doesn't (necessarily or plausibly) hold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd expect better from a publication titled "MIT Technology Review" than to start a Y-axis oh-so-close to – but not quite at – zero.

Makes "craving" seem to perform much worse than it actually does at a status of 0.

<comment><USER17> "MIT Technology Review" has more similarity to BusinessWeek than the actual university.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's been a long time since a date of mine was satisfied with pizza.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Althoff and co used a standard machine learning algorithm to comb through > all the possible correlations.

What exactly is a "standard machine learning algorithm"?

I'm sure that probably means that they used something from scikit-learn but "comb[ing] through correlations" isn't as simple as clicking the Go button.

The rest of the article does start to get into labeling, holding out a test set, and some of the data cleanup (the real combing working).

I guess I was just hoping for more detail of _how_ it worked and not _that_ it worked. I get that this wasn't meant to be a PhD thesis on supervised machine learning, but the mechanics of data analysis are really interesting as a process of discovery.

Curious to know what others think. How did the balance of _how_ vs _that_ work for you?

<comment><USER20> It's a logistic regression model, a basic statistical technique which wouldn't have even come under "machine learning" a few years ago. Later they use some kind of LASSO regression to penalise the inclusion of redundant features.

"Combing through the correlations", it seems, literally means calculating the (Pearson) correlation between two variables (success vs. an input feature) and adding some interpretation, as they do on p6 of the arXiv paper. For test/training data, it looks like they just used a 30/70% split rather than k-fold cross-validation and holdout, but I'm sure it makes no difference either way and in this case (as often) is trivial to design and implement. Presumably their AUROC could be increased just by dropping in an SVM or a Random Forest in place of the logistic regression.

From what I've skimmed of the paper you're over-estimating the complexity of the study.

<comment><USER21> Great Comment: Having studied graduate statistics within the stats department and a data mining within the CS dept, It amazing how well the CS crowd has rebranded statistics into something you can talk about at a bar without people's eyes glazing over.

<comment><USER22> Is train/test split part of a normal statistics?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's a project I put out in January, 65% accuracy, that does the same thing. These guys actually contacted me back then, surprised to see no mention.

And it has a live demo!

[http://randomacts.media.mit.edu](http://randomacts.media.mit.edu)

</comment><comment><USER24> This is why the coming AI overlords will not need to kill anyone. They will just be really convincing instead.

</comment><comment><USER25> A more interesting analysis would be to identify the correlative features that describe the giver of pizza vs the asker.

</comment><comment><USER26> Internet access but no food - strange world.

<comment><USER27> Are you suggesting that these people aren't being truthful about their need, or, are you saying it's amazing that internet access is so [relatively] cheap? Or... ?

Internet access costs less per month than a takeaway pizza in my country. Libraries and other community centres provide free access to computers with broadband internet.

One of the surprises for me when, some years ago, I found myself in a developing nation (with unstable power supplies and non-potable tap water) was that every street corner in the town I was staying in had a (hand painted) advert for an internet cafe. It wasn't cheap compared to food prices - <USER2> since then globally food prices seem to have gone up and internet prices gone down considerably.

<comment><USER26> I just wanted to express how bizarre this situation is but not imply anything about (possible) reasons. My first thought was like just terminate the internet contract, sell the phone or computer or whatever you are using and buy you 50 kg of rice. That would be even healthier than pizza!

But I decided not to phrase it this way because this is obviously a very simplistic view and the people on the internet will tell you that in full detail even if you are aware of it. _They might have free access to internet. It might be a temporary situation and not be economical to sell and later buy back the computer. Corn is much cheaper than rice. You have to cook rice and that requires energy. Rice alone is not healthy. Maybe they just do this to get in contact with others not because of having no money for food. They might need the computer for work. They just got robbed late at night, no money left but they still have a phone._</comment></comment></comment>


Dark matter in galaxies is distributed exactly the same as matter is - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160921085052.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.05917.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.05917.pdf)

One of the possible conclusions:

"Thirdly, the one-to-one correspondence between gbar and gobs suggests that the baryons are the source of the gravitational potential. In this case, one might alter the laws of dynamics rather than invoke dark matter."</comment>