From video game to day job: How 'SimCity' inspired a generation of city planners - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity-inspired-urban-planners-20190305-story.html <comment><USER2> I loved SimCity and it's probably among the reasons I got a masters degree in GIS with a focus in city planning.

It turns out for a lot of reasons, real city planning wasn't for me, though it took that degree and six years on my city's planning board to figure that out. Glacial speeds of progress, a job that's mostly reactionary instead of visionary, "stakeholders" with infinite time to tell you why any change is the worst thing in the world and a conspiratorial worldview - no thanks, I'll just go back to my sims.

<comment><USER3> What is the bigger barrier to getting things done - regulations or politics with locals? I grew up learning that regulations were the reason things would take so long, but the older I get the more I realize its just a bunch of really loud NIMBYs.

<comment><USER4> Aren't most the regulations enacted in order to placate the really loud NIMBYs?

<comment><USER3> I don't think so, at least the sort of regulations I'm thinking of: environmental, structural, earthquake protection, etc. I think most of that stuff comes from outside studies and not from residents. But stuff like building height codes or putting wind farms near your city, yes I think that's mostly NIMBYs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is a lighthearted and doesn't talk about the underlying models behind simcity. Would recommend also reading:

[https://logicmag.io/06-model-metropolis/](https://logicmag.io/06-model- metropolis/) \- which talks about simcity's inspiration from Jay Forrester's 'Urban Dynamics" and it's flaws.

Also, [https://placesjournal.org/article/a-city-is-not-a- computer/](https://placesjournal.org/article/a-city-is-not-a-computer/) , which is something I've been meaning to read & contrast alongside Geoffrey West's works ( [https://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations) ).

There's also a recent interview between an urban planner in portland (the citybeautiful youtube channel) and a developer at cities:skylines: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c5pSCgbZ84](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c5pSCgbZ84)

<comment><USER6> The talks are nice.

The articles are very disappointing though.

The first one claims that Jay Forrester's urban model was wrong, because it produces right-wing/libertarian results. I may disagree with libertarians too, but that's not how you criticize a scientific model. How about some concrete stuff?

The second article is just bland. It asks a very good question: what should we optimize for when constructing a city? And then proceeds talking about different things none of which helps to answer the original question. The only takeaway: a city must have a library. A good thought, but not an eye-opener.

<comment><USER7> The argument isn't about results—it's that the model itself was built on ideological assumptions instead of anything empirical.

<comment><USER6> Well, I tried to find out what these ideological assumptions were, but:

 _There were no neighborhoods, no parks, no roads, no suburbs, and no racial or ethnic conflicts._ \- surely a simplification, but doesn't sound ideological.

 _Tax contributions of poor people are lower_ \- well, again, this is probably a mathematical fact, rather than an ideological.

<comment><USER8> The ideological problem is assuming that all these factors don't matter—that taxes and zoning are the only factors that matter.

Some very fundamental examples of what's missing: Selective policing affects incarceration rates, neighborhood ethnic makeup affects city budgets which in turn affect land values and safety (Flint water crisis and other pollution) which in turn affect economic prospects and future tax income, what goes on in city A in terms of taxation and opportunities affects neighboring city B, it's assumed that traditional zoning policies generate the most land value which is incorrect in many cases, it ignores how public spending on infrastructure affects economic opportunities in the short an long term..

<comment><USER9> I am as far left as we go in France but that's a recurrent leftist criticism that I keep seeing and that I think is really misguided.

I do think that right-wing libertarians are wrong because they have a much simplified model of the world, that does not take into account all that you mention.

Scientists use simple models because they have technical constraints. Even more so for game designers who have to make a fun game while staying a bit realistic. They are biased, but not politically: they are biased technically, toward models that present a simplified model of the world that can be simulated reasonably.

It is easier to have a model of criminality where it is just a function of population density minus distance to police station than a multi-parameter model taking into account different social and ethnic makeup of the population.

But this is an interesting philosophical and actually scientific problem of the left: we do not have naively simplified models like the right has. Because free-market and capitalism are based on simple rules and an ideal but modelizable world.

This is also the reason why Adam Smith "The Wealth of Nations" had more success than his "Theory of Moral Sentiment" where he studies things like charity and non-selfish behaviors: the first one provides a mathematical model of how important variables change.

I would love to write a urban simulation that takes into account things like inclusiveness, corruption, inequalities but when it comes to actually code it, I don't know how to write a function of population growth based on that that would give results that make sense.

"Pop growth = 0.05% population * wealth factor" is much simpler. And when I think about it, I think that a leftist model is not a different model than a libertarian one, it is just a more complete one, I don't think a model that takes more humanitarian values into account can be as simple.

So please do not accuse every bias towards simplification of being a libertarian bias.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but what's the use in a simplified model that spits out a result that's wrong? Take the assumption that the "underemployed" pay little in taxes while taking money from the welfare system. Sure, on the surface. But that doesn't account for increased spending power as a result of money in their pocket (which isn't saved or put into a hedge fund, but actually spent immediately out of necessity) that goes back into the economy, nor does it account for upward generational mobility as a result of good health and affordable education, or a host of other factors that potentially turn the conclusion on its head.

The problem isn't with simplicity for simplicty's sake. My concern is that we're making public policy decisions based on models that are plain wrong

<comment><USER9> It is not wrong. It gives an approximation of reality.

With 2 or 3 differential equation, you can model the growth of a city and the densification of its center in a kinda realistic way. It gives you a baseline.

In such a model, population is a number. One way to look at it is to say that it has the assumption that everybody is equal, but another way to look at it is to say that we are averaging the population differences.

Such a model would fail at modelling some behaviors like the densification of some suburban island, would be totally oblivious to the creation of ghettos.

If the goal is to make a game, that can be enough. In some type of scientific or economic simulations they could be enough as well.

> The problem isn't with simplicity for simplicty's sake. My concern is that > we're making public policy decisions based on models that are plain wrong

Models are, fortunately, not the only way to establish a fact-based policy. And far more complex models do exist taking more parameters into account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's crazy how much SimCity cities look like the cities we've built for the last 75 years. Our cities really can be simplified to a game "fun" for someone to dive in right away. My thesis is that cities are oversimplified and stratified into easily separable blocks because they're easier to "industrialize" that way. This is causing crazy transportation requirements and isolation. If we mixed uses up a bit we could save on transportation overhead and be exposed to more things. The driver of this SimCity pattern of development is undoubtedly the single occupancy automobile. Sprawl works best for the car and the car works best for sprawl. Denser, mixed up uses work best with walking, biking, and transit. Conspiracy theorist in me says the auto industry influenced city planning from the ground up because they could profit off of it. Who profits when you walk more? Well, everyone... healthier bodies, healthier minds, more efficient transportation, etc. etc. etc.

<comment><USER11> My biggest problem with both SimCity and City:Skylines (its spiritual successor) is that neither allows mixed-use zoning, forcing you to rely heavily on either cars or dense (expensive) transit networks. It's like they can't break the mold of the US suburban mindset.

<comment><USER12> In the latter, while you can't build a building zoned for multiple uses, you can certainly very much blend zoning very thoroughly, alternating commercial and residential buildings as you go down the street. Of course, the simulation likely isn't sophisticated enough to make full use of that (people will travel across the entire map to go shopping). I can also understand from a gameplay perspective why this is the case.

<comment><USER13> It's very much because of gameplay issues. Theoretically the computer can simulate whatever model you can dream up, but the much harder problem is the user understanding, visualizing and editing that model with an easy interface that feels fun like playing a game, not tedious like doing your taxes in Excel or rigging skeletons in 3D Studio Max.

Think of the number of extra user interface panels and gizmos and views and pop-ups and menus that users would have to wrangle in order to build, edit, query, visualize, and maintain 3D multiple story mixed use buildings in a city simulation, instead of having a simple 1:1 correspondence between space on the 2D map and zone type.

The closest thing SimCity comes to mixed use zoning is multi-layered Arcologies, and the interface to those is pretty complicated and unwieldy. Imagine if every building and skyscraper in the city were that complex!

Sim Tower supports mixed use zoning (with different discrete rooms in the same building), but just within one high rise tower, not a whole city. It's as much a game about pedestrian traffic, elevators, queuing and congestion, as an economic simulation.

The Sims is whole a game unto itself at a different level of abstraction, that lets you build multi-story residential and commercial buildings with walls, doors, windows, furniture, etc. But it doesn't simulate "urban dynamics" between zones, just "personal dynamics" between the people and the architecture and contents of the buildings. The Sims 3 was scaled up so you could seamlessly walk around small towns, but The Sims 4 went back to focusing on houses or apartments in individual lots or flats, instead of expanding to simulating entire cities.

<comment><USER14> Couldn't we solve this with a percentage type for zoning, or adding a "mixed commerical/residential" zone? UI wise that shouldn't be any more complicated.

Or you can change the zoning into japanese zoning, where the UI can stay simple as you escalate the permission level of a zone. [https://code.uberinternal.com/T2597239](https://code.uberinternal.com/T2597239)

<comment><USER15> Seems like you've accidentally posted the wrong link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cities: Skylines is an outstanding successor, but it lacks much of the charm of the SimCity series and feels more like a sandbox than a simulation. It's too bad Maxis decided to take the series in a simplified direction before killing it off.

If anyone knows of any other city-building simulators worth mentioning, please let me know.

<comment><USER17> > Cities: Skylines is an outstanding successor, but it lacks much of the charm > of the SimCity series and feels more like a sandbox than a simulation.

I feel the opposite.

I think SimCity's charm is just nostalgia. C:S is definitely more of a simulation, as it simulates individual vehicles, including commercial traffic. All the SimCity games before SC4 used a statistical model for traffic, and SC4's path finding was very unlikely to use highways and mass transit without a mod.

And with mods, you can make C:S look like a photo [0], or add outlights to make it look like Borderlands [1].

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/axhrg7/stre...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/axhrg7/streets_of_coru%C3%B1a_a_nova/)

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/GY7Tn](https://imgur.com/a/GY7Tn)

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's quite what the OP meant by sandbox vs. simulation.

To me it didn't feel like there were many challenges or ways you could irreparable damage your city in City Skylines. You could maybe invent your own goals, like creating a specific look to your city or building the most density possible while maintaing efficient transportation. But that's what I'd consider sandbox: using your own creativity on a blank canvas with almost no chance of entering a complete failure mode you can't recover from.

The SimCity games felt more like they were a challenge needing to balance the budget and build a sustainable city all while being resilient to events like disasters. Might just be me, but I never felt like I could fail at C:S; whereas in SimCity you could make a few stupid decisions or expand too fast and start losing money, and all you could do is watch the city degenerate into a wasteland that can't be gotten out of (without cheating anyways). That made it feel more like a simulation.

<comment><USER11> > I never felt like I could fail at C:S

This. The only times I've irreparably crashed a city in C:S is when I've been purposefully going for achievements like "<50% unemployment for 6 months".

<comment><USER18> There was a"making of" interview with the C:S devs a while back. They stated that they intentionally made the game easier because it was more fun that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >That issue speaks to a larger criticism of "SimCity": Wright's vision imposed an old-school approach to city-building, influenced by Robert Moses and the Chicago school. For those early urban planners, and in "SimCity," there were binary solutions to problems. To lower crime rates, build police stations. If people complain about traffic, build more roads. If you need space to build a freeway or a stadium, raze working-class neighborhoods.

Will Wright explained the motivation behind the vast oversimplifications he made in the design of SimCity, in "Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)":

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-user-interfaces- to-...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-user-interfaces-to- simulation-games-bd7a9d81e62d)

>Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like "which ontological urban paradigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?" He replied, "I just kind of optimized for game play."

Also, here's a talk about "Micropolis: Constructionist Educational Open Source SimCity" which discusses educational applications of SimCity:

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/har-2009-lightning-talk- trans...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/har-2009-lightning-talk-transcript- constructionist-educational-open-source-simcity-by-don-3a9e010bf305)

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's a video of an urban planner playing Sim City 2000, and commenting on the various ways in which it's accurate or inaccurate: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUQaCoxybW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUQaCoxybW8)

</comment><comment><USER20> If anything SimCity, makes transit heavy options seem really easy to build. Building a new subway in the game is easier (and not very expensive) than re- doing a grid of roads in an area that's already developed.

</comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps this type of simulation may one day help us choose better town planners; perhaps one day may even give us an alternate method of choosing administrators. How radical will it be in a Mayoral election, to see how different candidates will perform in a simulation, and the voters will be able to compare their scores and gain much more insight into how the prospective candidates shall perform.

<comment><USER22> That actually happened at least once, of course, with disastrous results for one of the candidates.

[https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/24/1717221/-Can- you...](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/24/1717221/-Can-you-trust-a- mayor-who-can-t-win-SimCity)

</comment></comment><comment> trevor-e This reminds me of how I got into programming by playing Starcraft: Brood War. If anyone is familiar with the Use Map Settings game mode, you could program your own scenarios using a Map Editor that came included, eg a Tower Defense map.

The map editor only allowed basic logic in the form of conditions/actions, but soon some very smart people figured out how to compose this into more expressive logic. Big communities and clans formed around map making, standards were made, and eventually, super high-quality maps started to come out. Many people I know from that time are now successful programmers.

<comment><USER23> Yep, this is how I got into programming.

It may have been mostly trivial, but it did get you ready to dig into the internals of a program and not be afraid of big scary configuration pages and charts.

I remember being EXCITED when Warcraft III came out, and the huge upgrade in the map editor. Spent a whole summer making horde-mode style maps for WCIII. It was always SO EXCITING when you saw someone else playing the map you built!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It really is something. I remember a friend from childhood who gave me a pirated copy of the original Sim City. He's now a city planner in Los Angeles.

</comment><comment><USER24> This bridge in Alexandria Egypt must have been inspired by SimCity.

[http://i.imgur.com/YbrJG2h.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YbrJG2h.jpg)

<comment><USER25> What's the point of this bridge??

<comment><USER26> It looks like the bridge is only in one direction, making the whole like a roundabout.

But why on earth do they need six lanes per direction?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My mother worked in city planning/government and at a conference Maxis was giving out copies of their brand new game, Sim City 2000. It was a great way to get the kids of these professionals (or the professionals themselves) into both gaming and city planning.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised, as I often notice things in a given city and think "hmmm seems like someone in city planning never played SimCity"! haha ;) .. like when multi-million-dollar highway construction projects which take 10 years are built to usage levels measured at the start of the project, not for what the projected population/needs will be way down the line...

</comment><comment><USER29> SimCity was my childhood. Played thousands of hours trying to find the right formula to optimize land value and population. Then they introduced more sophisticated terraforming tools and the ability to import contour maps in SimCity 4. I spent more time on landscaping than the actual game. The community behind SimCity 4 was great as well with all the mods.

<comment><USER30> In SC2K I always used to make capitalist dystopias with a elevated elite neighborhood of low-density residential and commercial, separated by a mountain range from the plebes with their belching factories. The Mayor's House was on a private island. The Mayor's Statue was on a single tile on the mountain ridge that was the tallest point in the city.

Pray I never get elected President.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I still play, the mod scene for SC4 is great. There are bike lanes now and all the parking lots you could want. You can easily build American suburban shopping centers with acres of beautiful cement.

When I was in high school I went to city counsel meetings, was active in youth in gov't, and even met the city manager. All because I loved playing SimCity for much. We never had a computer powerful enough to play SC2k so I saved and bought a Sega Saturn and the AT keyboard adapter and spent hours playing on that.

</comment><comment> john-radio So what career should I seek out if I love to play the game Opus Magnum?

<comment><USER32> Well, obviously you'd be a phenomenal alchemist. As soon as you find that job opening, let me know, I'll be applying as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> My favorite is the 9% tax that a presidential candidate wanted to have and that was based on SimCity.

e.g. 9% personal income tax, 9% federal sales tax, and a 9% corporate tax.

</comment><comment><USER34> Given its popularity, tech minded players and complete failure of Maxis as a steward of the game, I'm incredibly surprised a popular and well maintained Open Source city sim hasn't appeared[1]

1 - I'm aware of Lincity, OpenCity and OpenSC2k, but none of them are popular and/or are recreations, not full-up new city makers.

<comment><USER35> successful open source game dev is pretty rare. i don't know why, but i'd guess mostly that polishing a game to modern standards is a heck of a grind.(not to mention artists aren't really keen on working for free either) There's plenty of half-baked open source games...

<comment><USER36> The problem is more that game creation requires radically differentiated skills. Even something "simple" like a Sim City clone would need a sprite artist, someone capable of implementing a 2d renderer, someone to write the AI logic, someone who can do UI, someone to do sound design, you probably want music, etc.

Most open source projects, at the worst, might involve UI design. And honestly you can see how bad that can get already when programmers start making their own interfaces without being "good" at it in most Xorg GUI apps.

That isn't to say there aren't communities around libre music, sound effects, game textures, models, etc - there are large vibrant communities around all of these. The problem with games in particular is that you need to reach across the aisle and involve people from all these niche libre communities to build something, and most of the time without the fundamentals fulfilled you won't be able to pitch or demonstrate a project enticing enough to attract participation.

Its a chicken and egg problem - you can't really get good artists if your game art is placeholder polygons, and you can't get someone working on the renderer until something is already rendering to the screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think they read [https://logicmag.io/06-model- metropolis/](https://logicmag.io/06-model-metropolis/) and were wise enough to give their article a more click friendly headline.

</comment><comment><USER38> I can't deny that SimCity was quite an awesome game at the time. I can see how it might have inspired some architect.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't get the feeling that SimCity suggests that car-centric solutions are the "right" answers. My interpretation always was that it shows you how ideal mass transit solutions were but why economic pressure could keep them from working. Ultimately it seemed like the message was that pure capitalism was biased towards solutions that just barely met the citizens' needs.

The lack of parking lots was always an obvious bias, though a reasonable game design choice considering the visual appeal. I remember when SimCity 4 modders started making more buildings with "correct" parking lots (and other scaling aspects), it was so contrastive with the built-ins that people often either rejected it, or worked to acquire enough custom buildings that they could turn off _all_ the default ones, which required a pretty staggering number of assets.

<comment><USER19> Mass transit enthusiasts would probably love OpenTTD. Instead of managing a city, you manage a transit company that operates ships, planes, trucks, buses, and most of all trains.

Cities grow as you serve them with more mass transit, which maybe is more optimistic than real life, but on the other hand the game also teaches you that tearing up half the city to install a massive train yard is very expensive and will make local politicians furious with you, requiring you to bribe them with cash (or reforestation campaigns..) if you want to continue construction in their city.

Unfortunately it's missing subways, but the trams provided by community extensions are a pretty decent substitute.

<comment><USER21> While OpenTTD is a fun for a time, I think the Rail Road Tycoon (Esp 2 and 3) are more detailed games, with a simulated stock market and financial system, where one realizes that though through a well planned rail network and well maintained rolling stock, you could stay afloat and expand some, greater personnel wealth is more often and more easily obtained through creative ploys in the financial markets.

<comment><USER19> OpenTTD's economics is fundamentally flawed, it's trivial to have billions of dollars before long, meaning you never have to worry about money again (although local authorities will still hassle you for too much demolition.) It would be nice to see the economic system revamped completely, but I don't think it's a high priority for anybody. I think most of the fun in the game is in the finer logistics of optimal rail networks, particularly junctions and switching, not so much the money management.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Getting Creative Things Done: How To Fit Hard Thinking Into a Busy Schedule - <AUTHOR> http://the99percent.com/tips/6956/Getting-Creative-Things-Done-How-To-Fit-Hard-Thinking-Into-a-Busy-Schedule

<comment><USER2> Here's a trick that works for me:

I've noticed that creative ideas often pop in at random times when I'm doing something unrelated to the idea. So I created a little script that, upon hitting the F10 key, opens a dialog. I type in my thought and it writes it to a file called jot.txt. At the end of the day, I review jot.txt and act on the ideas. This allows me to capture interesting ideas when they happen without losing my current train of thought.

If you're interested in adapting this script for your own use, I've published the script here: [http://techiferous.com/2009/12/streamlining-your-workflow- wi...](http://techiferous.com/2009/12/streamlining-your-workflow-with- applescript/)

<comment><USER3> I use remember-mode in conjunction with org-mode for the same thing. Random notes go in my personal file or the file for the client/project they relate to. Then periodically I review the "notes" section and work it into the doc better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that for me this only makes sense for projects that have no explicit deadline. For a procrastinator, a deadline is the only thing that matters. I can block off all the time that I want to for a project, but if my brain is in procrastination mode, virtually nothing productive will get done.

Early on, I imagine that guilt about doing nothing during the creative blocks would motivate me. Over time, I suspect whether anything got done would roughly break down based on whether there is an explicit deadline. With no explicit deadline it would depend on how excited I was about a specific creative project.

If you're doing creative work for a living, I don't think that you can assume deadlines away.

<comment><USER5> Some kinds of creative work have deadlines that aren't on the same kind of timescale that procrastination happens on, though. Writing a book, for example—you're given an advance and six months to write the thing; whether you waste an hour watching TV when you could be writing has a negligible effect on how much time you have left to write.</comment></comment>


Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Forced to Apologize for Eating Chick-Fil-A - <AUTHOR> https://amp.businessinsider.com/twitter-ceo-apology-chick-fil-a-gay-pride-month-2018-6 <comment><USER2> I think Jack's feeling the genuine pain of making a mistake on his own platform. It's poetic in a way, and hopefully visceral with regards to helping him really understand the power and danger of what they've built at Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not linking to jack's tweet directly? Does it need a whole article?

</comment><comment><USER4> This planet has reached 'peak intelligence', and is not on the downward slope.

<comment><USER5> Maybe so, but could you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe Twitter should be shut down, to atone?</comment>


Status Update of Pyston, an Alternative Python JIT [video] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pyston.org/2015/11/24/pyston-talk-recording/ <comment><USER2> Is there a plain text version somewhere?</comment>


Probabilistic M2M Relationships Using Bloom Filters - <AUTHOR> http://zacharyvoase.com/2012/08/31/m2mbloom/ <comment><USER2> Maybe i'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't this mean that there would be no way to safely remove a relationship? I guess there are a number of cases where this would be ok.

But people tend to make mistakes. When you discover that someone has added a link between Daniel Day-Lewis and Ernest Goes to Jail all you would need to do is delete a row in the movies_people table. But because of potential collisions in the bit arrays you can't safely remove a relationship?

<comment><USER3> You're indeed correct as this is built upon bloom filters and standard bloom filters don't support deletion[1]. You could reconstruct the bloom filter minus the deleted element from each of the individual relations but then you'd need the relation table.

The other substantial issue with the proposed scheme is false positives. In this situation, you have no way to ensure that a given relation is not an accidental match. For that you would again need the relations table.

What's fun about this story is that the author has inadvertently re-discovered the bloom join[2] - he's just missing one of the important steps. Traditionally bloom filters are used for a fast, initial check which is then followed by a full check to remove false positives.

[1]: There are some modifications to bloom filters that support deletion but they're all more complex than bitstrings.

[2]: [http://www.databasejournal.com/features/oracle/oracle- bloom-...](http://www.databasejournal.com/features/oracle/oracle-bloom- filters.html)

<comment><USER4> Sometimes a few false positives don't matter. Or matter less than latency. Nobody dies if a query returns Daniel Day Lewis as the star of _Ernest Goes to Camp_ and many people might just write it off as human error...even if it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Came here looking for some Grindr social networking data analysis. Was disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Perfect timing, was just thinking about ways to do this, to store which images have already been viewed by the user, with fast lookups to ensure that the next image hasn't already been seen by them.

</comment><comment><USER7> The guy did not add indexes for junction table, that is why it took so much time. The benchmark is incorrect.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you keep your Knowledge Base? - <AUTHOR> For years I've used things like self-hosted wiki (mediawiki, TracWiki etc), Atlassian Confluence, and lately just a Github wiki to note down things I or team mates might forget and having a place to keep a structured knowledge.
It all still feels clumsy, no longer want self-hosted services and they are all somewhat hard to edit&navigate.
Are you happy with your solution for sharing with the team mates&storing your knowledge for easy retrieval? What is it? <comment><USER2> I started using [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/) a few months ago and I love it and would strongly recommend it. I can easily save information in notes, which has the option of being connected to a link or not. Then I can easily access the notes I created using tags I create myself (I love that it uses autocomplete!). Histre supports easily sharing your knowledge with others. You can share a single note with anyone, whether they are a histre user or not. You can publish a note just by tagging it with #pub (see [https://histre.com/pub/valeriemettler/](https://histre.com/pub/valeriemettler/) for an example). You can also create a team and have a shared notebook where the entire team can have one central place to share and access useful information on any given topic. I recently got my team at work to start using it and they absolutely love it!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in the same boat, I decided to turn all the features ive hard coded into my wiki (dokuwiki) over the last few years into a standalone fresh, from scratch, file manager with wiki journal capabilities.

I sort of outlined some key points here: [https://tumblr.macleodsawyer.com/post/187317505027/file- mana...](https://tumblr.macleodsawyer.com/post/187317505027/file-manager- alpha)

* Making this for myself, but might open source it. Should be able to run independent without server, or on a server for cloud capabilities accessed through a browser since it uses a flat-file structure with a json registry of file names and metadata for collections and records.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am perpetually changing this up, but the one constant is workflowy. Things like a cars Vin number, small notes like shell one liners, all the way to large categorized outlines for projects. It takes some getting used to, but the key lesson is for a great many things - text as individual files per subject is not the right metaphor.

I wish they would support an official api, and it kills me that the native desktop app is an electron thing, but all the ways they have not fucked it up in the last 10 years is what makes it worth looking at.

I have a nagging fear that as a VC funded (yc I think) company they will have to sell out eventually.

<comment><USER5> I've been rocking NVAlt (with SimpleNote on my iPhone) for a while now. It's just a basic note application but I use it for scratch space, quick notes, gift ideas for friends/family, etc. It's my person central knowledge base (even though it's not organized great, it's more of a knowledge dump). I'm not particularly attached to it to be honest but any replacement would have to meet the follow criteria:

* Light - I don't want "yet another electron app"

* Hotkey-able - I need to be able to assign a hotkey to quickly show/hide the UI. This ONE feature is huge for me and changed how I used NVAlt once I mapped Ctrl+1 to show/hide it

* Mobile clients - iOS needed, android would be nice

* Sync service that I can trust OR using iCloud/Dropbox as a backend

I'm half-considering attempting my own notes app (for the desktop and maybe iPhone) once Swift UI ships since NVAlt doesn't do a ton so I can't imagine it would be terrible to re-implement. I would like to add some minor features to it (Maybe basic to-do list or scheduled reminders) and fix the damn smart quotes thing (I have been bitten too many times from making small tweaks to code/json I throw into it for just 1 second and the quotes being those stupid smart quotes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let me links to a previous discussion on this topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17892731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17892731)

Are you talking about knowledge storage for you personally or within a work context?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly work, but simple enough for personal use.

Ask HN title was somewhat misleading, because it comes from a place where I have to organize tons of content that potentially gets shared to and collaborated with the team.

I guess something between Confluence and GitHub Wiki would work. Ideally with an in-place editing and enough hand-holding when it comes to linking existing pages&headings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I keep a git repo of a 'commonplace book', which I prune to plain text, and keep scraps of various texts - short tutorials, poems, a password vault, and usage examples. The same repo gets loaded at home and work, and so those examples are available to each other.

One subdirectory is more magical, 'data/cheatsheets/<filenames>. If I run a bash function 'cheat $1' with the filename, it will just dump the file into a pager like the less command.

When I fizz out on how git works, I run 'cheat git' and get my own notes. I can edit it when something ends up being useless to me, and keep the most important stuff at the very bottom. Eventually it gets drilled into my head and I learn it.

This scales to one person very easily. The value is the subjectivity. With some actual editing, this would also scale to a small team of maybe 4 people.

Of course, most of the stuff in my repo would not be appropriate for sharing, but the model would extend in general.

<comment><USER8> I have an alias in git called "cheat" that will return a page of useful notes I've written (for myself).

I find it funny that I type "git cheat" where you type "cheat git".

I like your technique better, as you can easily add more technologies to the mix.

What happens if you type "cheat" with no parameter? Does it list all of the cheat sheets? (i.e. ls data/cheatsheets/*)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a folder called "TIL" (today I learned) and under that I have one folder for each technology/topic. Every time I learn or do something that I need to remember, I create a new markdown file in the relevant folder (or create a new folder). Most of this I publish to the internet, at [https://TIL.secretGeek.net](https://TIL.secretGeek.net)

To publish it all I have to do is push.

I have a private repo too for TIL's I don't/can't share (and all passwords go in a password manager)

At work we have have a custom in-house wiki that stores all of our shared internal notes.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a folder `~/Projects/KB/<Subject_Area>/' with the usual subfolders:

\- Documents: my notes, Anki flash card files

\- Books: Related to that subject area

\- Sources: one off PDF's, or PDF exports of interesting articles on the web

\- Papers: that I read related to that subject area

\- Code: which contain git repos of code that is related to any of Books/Documents/Sources/Papers.

The idea is all related to one 'Subject_Area` in one directory. I have a large private KB directory hosted on `Gitlab` and backed up to the cloud/2 local disks.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a semi regular question and search for personal knowledge base or personal wiki on HN gives a few previous discussions with lots of pointers to software.

Three months ago "Ask HN: Do you keep a personal knowledge repository?" with 100+ comments [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20007108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20007108)

<comment><AUTHOR> The focus of that post is about personal stuff, where things like suggesting Emacs, plaintext, evernote etc is appropriate, but far from what I'm looking for :-)

I'm looking for something that also works within the teams.

Like GitHub wiki but less clumsy&in-place editing. Got one hint from your suggested thread - Notion, maybe that would work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of my customers told me that they use my Helpinator for this. It allows to generate a static HTML knowledge base that they update from time to time and release to co-workers. It's mosty HR inner company instructions stuff. It's not that I recommend everyone to use it that way, but it's a fun experience to know that someone uses your tool in a way you never thought of.

</comment><comment><USER12> Give Notion a try. I came across it in one of these threads on HN and have been loving it.

It basically feels like if Slack made a wiki.

</comment><comment><USER13> Dokuwiki with some plugins for me

</comment><comment><USER14> Zim Desktop Wiki for personal needs(although it supports a local web server) and Wikidot for hosting online.

</comment><comment><USER15> Emacs org mode

</comment><comment><USER16> github gist</comment>


10 Sales and Marketing Tips I learned from Strippers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wisecamel.com/2007/06/20/10-sales-and-marketing-tips-i-learned-from-strippers/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty good. I found it pretty funny and witty to relate sales techniques to what strippers do.</comment>


Russian deaths from malnutrition rate 5x lower than in the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrition/by-country/ <comment><USER2> Setting Russia aside for a second, the UK has a malnutrition rate that's 4-5x lower than the US as well. Why is this? I suspect this is related to the high rates of obesity in the US, and that this site is including all deaths caused by obesity related problems?

<comment><USER3> France also has a rate ~4x higher than the US, and even Norway has a rate double that of the US. I do wonder how much of this is difference is legitimate differences between countries and how much is a difference in categorization. Are the French really 20x as likely to die of malnutrition as the neighboring Germans?

<comment><USER4> How much of it is pure noise?

Those numbers are smaller than 1/100,000. You are counting 200 occurrences an year at the US, and many less at France or Germany.

<comment><USER5> I have it hard time to believe that only 200 people die in the US due to malnutrition it's likely different classification.

Death due to lack of certain nutrients isn't that uncommon.

While VAD deaths in the US and the west are probably rare VDD related deaths are quite common especially in cardiac cases.

Same goes for many other things.

If you only count acute starvation then 200 cases per year might make sense but diet has a huge impact on mortality.

<comment><USER3> > _Death due to lack of certain nutrients isn 't that uncommon._

Citation? My understanding is that study after study has generally shown little impact from vitamin supplementation except in specific cases where subjects show obvious signs of deficiency (e.g. iron deficiency in pregnant women).

> _VDD related deaths are quite common especially in cardiac cases_

I'm assuming this is "vitamin D deficiency". I'd against ask for a citation. I couldn't find anything supporting this claim. Seems to be a risk factor but that's very different than being caused by the deficiency.

 _We're still a few years away from clinical trials that explore the possible link between taking vitamin D supplements to achieve higher vitamin D levels, and lower cardiovascular risk._

[http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/heart_vascular_institute/clin...](http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/heart_vascular_institute/clinical_services/centers_excellence/womens_cardiovascular_health_center/patient_information/health_topics/vitamin_d_and_the_heart.html)

<comment><USER5> Nothing to do with supplements, that is nonsense but we're talking about very low levels of certain nutrients including vitamins and various minerals.

Low levels of vitamin D have been directly linked to increased death rates from cardiovascular conditions that doesn't mean the swallowing pills would help.

Vitamin A deficiency is one of the leading causes of blindness amongst children and pregnancy related mortality in the world, this also happens in western countries by not as much.

And so on and so on, eventually you can tie a lot of medical causes to poor diet, not getting enough X which causes or makes condition Y worse leading to death.

Dying to starvation proper (excluding famines and other natural disasters) is kinda hard in the west, and in many other places unless it's enforced starvation, you simply tend to die to exposure way before that.

<comment><USER3> > _Nothing to do with supplements, that is nonsense but we 're talking about > very low levels of certain nutrients including vitamins and various > minerals._

I don't know how to interpret this. You're saying that supplements are nonsense but the deficiencies are real? So the deficiency causes mortality but from fixing the deficiency doesn't reduce mortality?

> _Low levels of vitamin D have been directly linked to increased death rates > from cardiovascular conditions that doesn 't mean the swallowing pills would > help."_

Vitamin D deficiency is _correlated_ with certain cardiovascular conditions. "Directly linked" doesn't really mean anything and is misleading because it could easily be interpreted to be causal which is definitely not established. If it were causal then supplements _would_ fix it.

> _And so on and so on, eventually you can tie a lot of medical causes to poor > diet, not getting enough X which causes or makes condition Y worse leading > to death._

This is the sort of statement that I don't think is supported by the science, but is so vague that it's difficult to meaningfully discuss. What is "a lot"? Is it some small fraction of a percentage? My understanding is that in the western world, vitamin deficiencies are fairly rare and clinical evidence doesn't indicate most conditions are clearly tied to deficiencies.

Obviously what you eat will impact your health but the area is so complex that the contribution of minor deficiencies is basically impossible to separate from the noise. An implication of this is that recommendations of specific supplements or specific foods for correcting deficiencies are generally not scientific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gosh I'd need to know a lot more about this number before drawing any conclusions. For example, what counts as malnutrition? In the US, do addicts die from spending too little on food? If a baby dies due to untreated gestational diabetes, is that malnutrition? Does Russia categorize the death of a drunk differently than the US?

So many sad questions.

</comment><comment><USER7> According to the russian media they also have higher levels of freedom there too.

</comment><comment><USER8> The rate is so high In France it's hard to believe.

<comment><USER3> 20x the rate in Germany. It's very hard to believe this data is consistent across nations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Russians have a habit of employing scientific information in their daily lives. For instance: I've been told that a Russian or Eastern European weather forecaster sometimes gives health advice based on the air pressure changes.

In America or the UK I know this would be dismissed as 'woo'.

Unless it was contextualized correctly of course. Such as between friends or within a relevant domain like medicine.

Sometimes I worry we might be retarded.

<comment><USER10> It's more likely that Russia simply underreports malnutrition.

Anyway, got more specifics on the weather forecaster giving health advice on air pressure changes? I mean, other than, "watch out for rain"?

<comment><USER11> For one thing, air pressure changes are a common trigger for migraines:

[http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/migraine- heada...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/migraine- headache/expert-answers/migraine-headache/faq-20058505)

[http://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/headache-and- migrai...](http://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/headache-and-migraine- trigger-weather)

<comment><USER10> And so what would you do if you had a migraine? It's not like you can adjust the pressure by staying inside- it equilibrates.

<comment><USER9> You might want to talk to some engineers about that.

It may be possible to have a fine degree of control over air pressure in today's high spec houses because of their high air tightness requirements.

I don't know that it is possible, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was because they are so tight they have to employ mechanical ventilation. I know hospitals employ air pressure as a way of controlling for disease spreading.

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

<comment><USER3> > _It may be possible to have a fine degree of control over air pressure in > today 's high spec houses because of their high air tightness requirements._

Houses are not that airtight. Long before a house gets airtight enough to maintain a pressure differential efficiently, the occupants will get ill as off-gassing from carpets and paints and wood finishes cannot escape. If you run a large negative pressure in a typical house, you also risk carbon monoxide poisoning from sucking exhaust from the furnace into the living space.

> _I know hospitals employ air pressure as a way of controlling for disease > spreading._

They use air pressure this way specifically because construction is not airtight. If you run a negative pressure differential (which requires a pretty beefy blower to accomplish and isn't very energy efficient), you end up pulling air in from all the gaps and cracks and porous materials, which means that contaminated air is not going _into_ all the gaps and cracks and porous materials.

<comment><USER9> > Houses are not that airtight. Long before a house gets airtight enough to > maintain a pressure differential efficiently, the occupants will get ill as > off-gassing from carpets and paints and wood finishes cannot escape.

They are that airtight. That is why they put in mechanical ventilation such as HRV and ERV. The houses are that air tight that off-gassing is a problem once they get down below 0.6 ACH @ 50 pascals as they do in passive house builds.

> If you run a large negative pressure in a typical house, you also risk > carbon monoxide poisoning from sucking exhaust from the furnace into the > living space.

It happens, I read this the other week.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/TinyHouses/comments/5ec33i/the_big_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TinyHouses/comments/5ec33i/the_big_tiny_house_problem_nobody_seems_to_be/)

> They use air pressure this way specifically because construction is not > airtight. If you run a negative pressure differential (which requires a > pretty beefy blower to accomplish and isn't very energy efficient), you end > up pulling air in from all the gaps and cracks and porous materials, which > means that contaminated air is not going into all the gaps and cracks and > porous materials.

I understand why a negative pressure room works. The linked to Wikipedia page explains it. They are an example of manipulating air pressure to affect an outcome.

What I don't understand is what point you're trying to make.

If it is that the air tightness of a house coupled with a HRV is not sufficient to effect barometric pressure on a human body, then I already acknowledged that might be so. It also might be sufficient, which is why suggested getting an expert's opinion.

<comment><USER3> > _They are that airtight. That is why they put in mechanical ventilation such > as HRV and ERV. The houses are that air tight that off-gassing is a problem > once they get down below 0.6 ACH @ 50 pascals as they do in passive house > builds._

Yes, off-gassing is a problem. Off-gassing is a problem long before a house is really airtight enough to efficiently maintain a pressure differential, though.

0.6ACH@50Pa means that your house is extremely airtight by even modern standards. It also means that a very light pressure is sufficient to cause your house to completely exchange it's interior air in less than two hours. If you want to depressurize a house enough to offset a high pressure weather system, you're going to be moving a lot of air.

> _It happens, I read this the other week._

Yes, I know it happens. That's why I said it. This is another reason that you cannot significantly depressurize a house.

Plus your door would fly open and break your face when you turned the knob.

> _What I don 't understand is what point you're trying to make._ > _If it is > that the air tightness of a house coupled with a HRV is not sufficient to > effect barometric pressure on a human body, then I already acknowledged that > might be so. It also might be sufficient, which is why suggested getting an > expert 's opinion._

Yes, I'm saying it won't work. For many reasons. You don't need an expert. It doesn't even pass the sniff test.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nebula, a New YouTube Competitor - <AUTHOR> https://watchnebula.com <comment><USER2> Where are the actual videos and why is a sign in required?</comment>


Tig – Text-mode interface for Git - <AUTHOR> https://jonas.github.io/tig/ <comment><USER2> I've been using it for years! Really nice text-mode interface.</comment>


I logged off email for 99 days, here is what I learned - <AUTHOR> http://www.DaveCraige.com/99

<comment><AUTHOR> hey, thanks for checking this project out guys. I appreciate it.</comment>


GitLab is now used by Fortune 500 companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/gitlab-ceo-sytse-sid-sijbrandij-interview-2015-10 <comment><USER2> Used by Fortune 500 companies != 'in the fortune 500'. Poor title

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> That was not what I titled it though. I can't explain how it changed to "Gitlab is now in the fortune 500".

It was originally "Why this 'well-kept' secret for programmers is suddenly popping up in the Fortune 500", I shortened it by removing the "popping it". Sorry for the inconvenience.

</comment><comment><USER3> We're relatively new to the GitLab game, but it has vastly improved the overall transparency into our codebase and the work that's going into it. The ability to put comments in the diffs as code reviews is something that a lot of people might be used to, but we've been sorely missing as my company.

I've read other people's gripes, but I have none of my own yet. Thanks very much GitLab team.

<comment><USER4> Awesome to hear. Let me know if you have any further feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quite misleading title you have here.

</comment><comment><USER6> There are 26 million employees in the Fortune 500. If you manage to make a technology product that isn't being used by one of them, please let me know.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is hard to make something that isn't being used somewhere in the fortune 500. Completely meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER8> wow, can such title, with click-baityness level greater than of buzzfeed, be on the front page of hacker news?

the fact that GitLab is used by Fortune 500 companies is not news to me - totally expected and natural.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think HN changed the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As always, we're here if you have any questions or comments.

<comment><USER9> Can we expect to see more focus on improving merge requests within Gitlab? I've felt as though for the longest time it's not had any of the major functionality gaps filled and seems to be deteriorating with each release. I'm wondering now if Gitlab doesn't see it very high on the list of priorities for the product

(Apologies if this comes across as overly negative, I use Gitlab all day every day and it's a great tool)

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. Code review is at the core of the product and it should be amazing to use.

Coming up we will add the ability to revert merges [0]. We're also working on redoing the UI of MRs (and much of the rest of the app) and have someone working fulltime on performance now, which will also help here.

What would you like to see improved? Very curious to hear.

[0]: [https://about.gitlab.com/direction/](https://about.gitlab.com/direction/)

<comment><USER9> That's great to hear! Specifically, the lack of syntax highlighting on merge reviews is a killer feature. My team actually temporarily moved over to Phabricator, specifically for this feature.

\- Currently the only way for someone to indicate that a merge request is good to merge is by contacting them outside of Gitlab or doing the upvote on the MR, which fascinatingly is only possible by commenting with a :+1: thumbs up

\- Also multiple assignees on MRs

\- Ability for anyone to add labels to an MR, not just the assignee

\- On the index page listing MR's I've often felt like a solid improvement would be to show both author and assignee. I think Gitlab has alternated between one or the other a few times on this page but both seem to me to be pertinent information.

<comment><USER4> > the lack of syntax highlighting on merge reviews is a killer feature

Creating an issue for this and scheduling it. I agree we need this for diffs => issue here: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/3292](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3292)

> Also multiple assignees on MRs

We solved this with the 'approvers' feature. We still want to only have a single assignee, as only a single person can click 'merge'.

> Ability for anyone to add labels to an MR, not just the assignee

This should be anyone with editing rights to the MR, such as masters. We're improving the UX to make this easier in GitLab 8.2 or 8.3 (also creating labels on the fly and quickly adding more).

> On the index page listing MR's I've often felt like a solid improvement > would be to show both author and assignee. I think Gitlab has alternated > between one or the other a few times on this page but both seem to me to be > pertinent information.

Currently both are shown: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/merge_requests](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests)

One is inline, the other as icon. Let me know how you think we can further improve this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is a very misleading title. More accurate would be "GitLab is used by Fortune 500 companies", which isn't new information.

<comment><USER11> Article title is: "Why this 'well-kept' secret for programmers is suddenly popping up in the Fortune 500" which we are happy with. Maybe HN title can be changed.

<comment><AUTHOR> YES!. that is what I think as well!</comment></comment></comment>


The Quantum Thermodynamic Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/202

<comment><USER2> I don't follow: the article just goes through several known physical laws from thermodynamics. Where is the quantum revolution therein?

<comment><USER3> Essentially, the Laws of Thermodynamics, as normally stated, don't really work at the QM level and Oppenheim is working on restating them to be more applicable.

For example, changing the second law from "the entropy of a closed system never decreases" to "the free energy of a closed system never increases". It's a subtle change, but macroscopically all energies can be treated the same while at the QM level they have to be accounted for more carefully.

It occurs to me as I write this that entropy is harder to explain physically than energy, and that while we have math to manage entropy calculations, it isn't really anything "real", while energy is always conveyed by real things (photons, electrons, etc.).

So the second law has always been stated in a sort of negative (some thing "not a real thing" never decreases) while Oppenheim's work will reformulate in a positive way ("some real thing, quite a complex set of things, actually, never increases").

Intriguing. Simple changes of perspective sometimes have tremendous impacts on physics.

<comment><USER2> But I don't see the quantum difference: those very same problems exist at the macro scale eg Loschmidt's paradox [1] about time-asymmetric entropy while the laws of physics are time-symmetric (even classically). And the free energy reformulation has been just as relevant to classical macro systems.

[1] I prefer the Barbour/Drescher resolution, that the second law is an artifact of observer's abilities to contain memories, not the physical laws themselves.</comment></comment></comment>


Largest public employee salary database posted online - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/12/11/making-a-fortune-19-million-public-employees-across-america-cost-taxpayers-nearly-1-trillion/#214bce143b67 <comment><AUTHOR> you wonder why college costs so much?

Nearly 10,000 employees of the University of California system pulled down more than $200,000. This includes 65 highly compensated public employees who made between $1 million and $3.6 million.

Across the country, some of the largest salaries were paid out to athletic coaches at public universities. The retired football coach at University of Oregon received a $558,689 annual pension, and the fired Arizona State football coach got a $15 million payout. Nick Saban, at the University of Alabama, made $11 million.

<comment><USER2> Colleges make money from football programs, the 10,000 employees you mention are an big issue, but you destroy your point by not knowing Nick Saban makes the school money and brings in huge alumni donors</comment></comment>