Technorealism, Alvin Toffler, and the Forgotten Third Wave - <AUTHOR> http://txti.es/technorealism <comment> temp-dude-87844 Both the author's own words and the quoted ones use big words to make the writing appear more intelligent and insightful that it really is.

The gist of the concept seems to be that a utopian future predicted long ago never came to pass, and despite globalization, fast communication, and free movement of goods and sometimes individuals, people devolved into narrowly scoped groups instead. There's contention about control of institutions, control of capital, fruits to the gains of economic activity, so these groups are often at odds, and traditional solutions to their conflict are either too ineffective (government, compromise) or too drastic (protests, unrest, warfare), creating an awkward passive-aggressive state of pervasive discontent no one is happy with.

And all of the author's quote-mining seems to be a response to another overwrought essay that noted that tools like protests, angry mobs, identity politics, and the Internet, that were used by progressives to further their causes, did real damage to the credibility of institutions, and both the tools and that mistrust are now being repurposed by nationalists and fascists. This seems like non-news, and is completely to be expected, but somehow the author implies they find issue with the thesis, yet arrives at a very similar conclusion.

All these are too many words to say people will opportunistically group together and machinate towards a local betterment for their in-group above most others. Technology has generally lowered the cost and drawbacks of this opportunistic behavior, and free discourse and free assembly laws enable much of this in parts of the world, even when for-profit surveillance is prevalent. In other places, authorities have cracked down on dissent against the regime, so people who have more to lose than gain are too afraid to make waves online. But the factor limiting unrest is their desperation, which has little to do with technology.

To me, all of the author's points seem closer to realism, than technorealism. Technorealism tries to have a nuanced conversation about the things that change and the things that stay the same while living in an Internet-connected world, while this writing raves a lot about the decline of society itself and the supposed fault of a loose mob of electing a demagogue for the laughs. It's hardly deserving of the attention it's getting.

<comment><USER2> Without having the (IMO) chief reference link in the article - [http://www.criticalthink.info/Phil1301/Wave3lec.htm](http://www.criticalthink.info/Phil1301/Wave3lec.htm) \- I think it's easy to misread this one.

What's going on is not just in-groups operating towards local betterment. It's a disintegration of national consensus from the decline of mass (industrial) media. Democracy can't work without at least a rough consensus on what the truth is. The filter bubbles we increasingly inhabit lack conflict resolution and the bubbles drift further apart. We end up with factionalism, leading to balkanization, and unless we find a way to resolve the underlying tension, we're on the way to violence, IMO.

<comment><USER3> The polity was fractured like this before TV and radio.

Mostly the lesson over time has been that people don't want to agree about anything with their rivals until absolutely forced to. The content of the argument is less important than the medium of argument.

Network TV didn't create a realm of common facts exactly but a single forcing factor that compelled resolution because the system could not sustain a lot of competing ideas.

Of course this meant that better ideas would survive, and that very often meant good ideas that worked in reality—-though not always.

Now you have to show an idea is better by implementing it at a smaller scale and growing it rather than winning all at once at a national level.

It's all doable but it is harder and takes longer. It is possibly lower risk and more dynamic.

<comment><USER4> > The polity was fractured like this before TV and radio.

But it wasn't felt.

Before TV and radio, the main method of communication was print and conversation, so that a random person picked out of a population might come in contact with only a few political or cultural opinions in a given day. This continued into the age of TV and radio because only a few such opinions were permitted by those controlling the broadcasts.

Now that people might easily come into conflict culturally or politically hundreds of times a day, the real diversity of opinion across a large population is apparent to a given member of that population, in a way that it wasn't before, even if we assume that the differences were really there.

That constant conflict is a few clicks away at any moment leads many people to internalize that they are constantly fighting for their ability to hold their political beliefs and perform their culture, and/or to shut out most large differences to the extent they can, while conforming themselves to minor differences.

The only people who experienced this kind of constant churn in the past were travelers, and mostly only while traveling. We are all travelers now.

<comment><USER3> They had general strikes and civil wars and riots. I think it was felt. With blood.

<comment><USER4> You can have all those with just two sides. The difference now is that the attempt to corral all views into two main camps is breaking down, revealing the chaos of the actual landscape of opinions.

<comment><USER3> This analysis doesn't fit history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The election of 2016 was the absolute subversion of the idea and practice of legitimate bureaucracy and traditional media and all the Second Wave political science."

Or, widespread Internet use decreased the ability of the traditional gatekeepers of information to manipulate voters.

<comment><USER6> It ruined the safe guard of using the time tested tool of fact checking and having credible sources of information. And opened the flood gates to bad actors acting on irrational actors.

The internet is not some magical haven for information and knowledge. In its current form, it's comparable to information anarchy. It's not tenable.

<comment><USER7> > _It ruined the safe guard of using the time tested tool of fact checking and > having credible sources of information_

The same fact-checking that got Nixon and buried McGovern, or elected Raegan twice, or George Bush of CIA and Iran-Contra fame, or the war mongering Clinton and Bush Jr., or the more-of-the-same Obama?

<comment><USER6> The same fact-checking system that got Nixon impeached, that revealed the Iran contra controversy, and the one that lead to one of the largest protests against a war in American history (the Iraq war protests).

You took events that transpired and then placed the blame on the system that allowed us to correct for these events in the first place (or at least attempt to). I'm sorry your criteria for a functioning and healthy media system is one that A) Never makes mistakes B) Can preemptively stop government officials from doing bad things.

I'd be interested to see you expound on the statements you made.

<comment><USER8> The system didn't correct anything. Not one of those presidents went to jail, not one of those who followed them learned anything, and none of the issues were stopped because of it, their had either already happened or are still an ongoing issue.

<comment><USER6> >(or at least attempt to).

Hello thanks for reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> God I love these clean blogs whenever they pop up. Looks great on the phone, nice and high contrast, loaded in about a half second on my parents terrible internet. Wonder if they just hand wrote HTML or used some sort of generator?

<comment><USER10> It's [http://txti.es](http://txti.es), which you could have checked for yourself.

<comment><USER11> Sometimes on HN a comment will pop up on a biology article from a Ph.D biologist, or the sort. There are lots of severely brilliant people here whose familiarity with web tech is well below average, but who nonetheless add immense value to the community.

For that reason it's a mistake to assume that everyone on this website is evenly skilled just because _you_ have the wherewithal to check whether the TLD is a web service or a private domain, or to intuit that the name in the footer might be a company and not a random string.

So while perhaps this person _could_ check for themselves in the most literal sense, it's uncool to use a tone that implies their inferiority for not having done so.

When you make people feel bad for asking questions, you teach them not to try and get smarter, and that's a bad thing for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> By all means, let us understand the world through the sweep of grand theoretical terms, without too much reference to quantitative data, free of the muddling influence of specialists busy complicating their painstaking little fields of knowledge and endeavour; let us do this lest we larp somehow a life of inferior concerns: let our vision and mastery remain clear and effortless.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article,instead of starting at first principles, starts at a hypothetical idealized future and works its way back to reality through narrowly focusing its attention, gaslighting and selective amnesia. I guess that what journalism is these days: an attempt to reconcile ideology with reality.

</comment><comment><USER14> Captivating, well-written piece. But who is the author of this? No credits, no info: very intriguing! I'd be interested to see what else they've written.

[Edit: looking at submissions from that domain, I think the writing in a couple of the other articles seem very similar.]

<comment><USER15> It's probably best its authorship is (for now) unknown, this way people can make judgements on their own rather than thinking is right or wrong based on how they perceive the author(s).

<comment><USER16> Why?

<comment><USER17> Because humans judge the quality of the message by the messenger. If the messenger is unknown, we (likely) just focus on the message

<comment><USER18> Especially since the first sentence alone is enough to tell it was probably written by someone well known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is about where the article lost me: "It was Facebook, not Russia, that caused the election of Donald Trump."

The margin of election was small. A few tens of thousand of votes in a few states. Every factor that produced an effect that size can be said to be causal. And there were many, many factors that qualified.

Anybody who says that Trump's election had a single cause is, at best, selling something. And I'm not buying.

<comment><USER20> This is missing the point that cable news always gave Trump a huge share of attention even when he was a fringe candidate. During the campaign Fox would interrupt programming to show him speak live. Lots of candidates of all ideologies would love that. Why did they do that for him? Ratings.

<comment><USER19> Fox? That is probably not why Fox does it. Fox is owned by a right wing ideologue, and Fox News was started and run by Nixon's former TV guy. Profit matters to them, but ideology definitely is primary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is backwards. Countercultures are dead. There is only one Facebook. There's no hippie Facebook, no goth Facebook, no punk Facebook, no right-wing Facebook. Not with any market share. The Village Voice and the rest of the alternative press are gone. So is Tribe.net, which was briefly the goth Facebook. Even the Weekly Standard just went bust. Instead, there's one big system which automatically caters to the interests of its users.

<comment><USER22> whether we are legally or physically on the same platform (facebook), has little to no bearing on whether we are cross-exposed to content.

So yes tribalism can absolutely exist on facebook. It is a digital platform, not a supermarket. There is no guarantee you ever bump into someone you don't want to bump into, and completely isolated communities can be formed on the same base-structure. Reddit has made this sort of design explicit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >It was the intervention of Twitter and 4chan.

The author has lost the plot.

>It's pretty apparent that the reason Trump won wasn't Russian intervention (note the extremely Second Wave nature of the explanation: nations playing at geopolitics).

Ah yes, a nation pouring an immense amount of resources into propaganda targeting a specific subsection of american society and having close contact with the currently elected administration definitely wasn't the reason they got elected.

Let's Correct the Record (don't spritz all over your keyboard HN):

Russia abused Twitter/Facebook. But Twitter and Facebook aren't _the_ reason he got elected though. Facebook and the like are useful tools because you can post anything and have it reach a large, "odd"/targeted audience. But without that audience, without that sounding board, the information is nothing. Facebook and Twitter, and all the other social media platforms have significant design flaws with their raison d'etre: the spread of information across some social graph.

Assuming that the social graph is comprised of rational actors is a question that keeps getting begged in these discussions. There is no evidence for this being the case and all the evidence against that assumption. So we should correct for it. Just like the existing media platforms do (well, with the exception of one notable media giant who loves abusing that fact who's had a hand in creating the absurd situation we find ourselves in today).

We need to fix the problems we know about. That's all. It wouldn't hurt to remember why the media is structured the way it currently is (or was). In any system that gets re-implemented, there is always a duplication of efforts and lessons learned. These New Media systems will be no different.

The U.S. had a useful law for dealing with the problems of "today." And it's sad to say we've basically created problems where there never needed to be. Time to re implement the Fairness Doctrine -- across the board.

>But the core of the "brain-force economy" is politically retarded - it has a low political IQ and has not achieved political self-consciousness. The old smokestack barons and trade union leaders who dominated during the second wave are still running rings around you guys in Washington."

It's not so much as a new wave, but a new class of citizens who desperately need to become actively engaged in the political process. And understanding that the systems they're creating has lead to new power structures and information conduits, and with power comes responsibility. A responsibility to ensure the consumers of their platform are not unduly influenced by incorrect, false, and misleading information (Facebook tried doing this but was lambasted by the right, can't imagine why). A responsibility to support good governance and to support policies that provide a continued foundation for a functioning, healthy, productive, peaceful society.

The situation we're in isn't a technological problem. It's a social one.

<comment><USER23> >Ah yes, a nation pouring an immense amount of resources into propaganda targeting a specific subsection of american society and having close contact with the currently elected administration definitely wasn't the reason they got elected.

Here are a few questions for you: Why did Russian ad-buys during the 2016 campaign fund both extremist sides of the political spectrum? For an example, why did they try to simultaneously organize pro- and anti-gay rallies in Kansas?^1 And just who is Vladislav Surkov?^2

>The U.S. had a useful law for dealing with the problems of "today." And it's sad to say we've basically created problems where there never needed to be. Time to re implement the Fairness Doctrine -- across the board.

Okay, now where is the threshhold to qualify for consideration in the Fairness Doctrine, particular in a society with manifold subcultures? Is it party members? Is it adherents? Is it hashtags? Who gets to be on the Fairness Board? How are violations handled? Who gets to determine what speech is acceptable (because clearly revolutionary parties exist)? When is a platform accountable? Are foreign platforms accountable? Are personal servers broadcasting or narrowcasting?

>It's not so much as a new wave, but a new class of citizens who desperately need to become actively engaged in the political process. And understanding that the systems they're creating has lead to new power structures and information conduits, and with power comes responsibility. A responsibility to ensure the consumers of their platform are not unduly influenced by incorrect, false, and misleading information (Facebook tried doing this but was lambasted by the right, can't imagine why). A responsibility to support good governance and to support policies that provide a continued foundation for a functioning, healthy, productive, peaceful society.

In so many words, you're advocating for fixed fortifications in an age of Blitzkrieg.^3 Or to paraphrase Toffler, instead of automobiles, we need to just make stronger and faster horses.

>The situation we're in isn't a technological problem. It's a social one.

The notion that it's a monocausal issue of social policy has been addressed thoroughly for decades by luminaries such as Marhsall McLuhan and Jacques Ellul. The Medium _is_ the Message. For a more up to date take, I _strongly_ recommend that you read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death.

\---

[1] [https://www.advocate.com/media/2017/11/03/why-did-russia- pro...](https://www.advocate.com/media/2017/11/03/why-did-russia-promote- kansas-rally-against-westboro-baptist-church)

[2] [https://youtu.be/Y5ubluwNkqg?t=126](https://youtu.be/Y5ubluwNkqg?t=126)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzkrieg#Definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzkrieg#Definition)

<comment><USER6> >you're advocating for fixed fortifications in an age of Blitzkrieg.^3 Or to paraphrase Toffler, instead of automobiles, we need to just make stronger and faster horses.

I'm sorry, there is nothing to respond to here if you're going to make that kind of equivocation. Reread my post and respond in a non-disingenuous manner.

I know it's hard for tech people -- who generally have no kind of appreciable liberal education -- to appreciate social systems (even though people on "hacker" news should definitely be intimately knowledgeable and interested in how these systems act). Asimov was right, technology is moving faster than our social practices and wisdom know how to handle.

> that you read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death.

I have, and your post makes no use of your superficial use of this source. Your entire post is basically responding to a straw man. Try something substantive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The most important part I got out of the article was the side link about the Third Wave (information age):

[http://www.criticalthink.info/Phil1301/Wave3lec.htm](http://www.criticalthink.info/Phil1301/Wave3lec.htm)

In order to remain in the Second Wave (industrial age), the following would need to happen:

      9. Families will become non-nuclear.

      Many say the family is falling apart today. They define the family as a husband-breadwinner, mother-housekeeper, and a numebr of children. This is the "nuclear family" which was created and idealized by the Second Wave. It is falling apart, because the Second Wave industrial complex system is falling apart.

      If we really want to maintain the nuclear family, here's what we would have to do:

      * Freeze all technology in its Second Wave stage to maintain a factory-based, mass-production society.
      * Block the rise of the service and professional sectors in the economy. White-collar, professional, and technical workers are less traditional, less family-oriented, more intellectually and psychologically mobile than blue- collar workers.
      * "Solve" the energy crisis by applying nuclear and other highly centralized energy processes. The nuclear family survives better in a centralized society.
      * Return to mass media, and ban cable television, cassettes, local and regional magazines and radio programs. Nuclear families work best where there is a national consensus on information and values, not in a society based on high diversity.
      * Forcibly drive women back into the kitchen. Reduce wages for those who insist on working. The nuclear family has no nucleus when there are no adults left at home.
      * Slash the wages of young workers to make them more dependent, for a longer time, on their families.
      * Ban contraception. This makes for independence of women and for extramarital sex, a notorious lossener of nuclear ties.
      * Cut the standard of living of the entire society to pre-1955 levels, since affluence makes it possible for single people, divorced people, working women, and other unattached individuals to "make it" economically on their own.
      * Resist all changes in our society which lead toward diversity, freedom of movement and ideas, or individuality. The nuclear family remains dominant only in a mass society.

This is the only explanation of provincial US populism, Trumpism, the Alt- Right, etc etc etc that makes any sense to me. I think that the yearning to go back to a memory of how things were is an instinctive desire deeply rooted in the psyche like sexuality, religion or political affiliation that can't be changed. It may not be mine, but I sympathize with aspects of that sentiment.

The great tragedy of it though is an inability to imagine something akin to the nuclear family in a post-industrial society. They don't imagine a coal miner doing subsurface work on the moon. This is why I think that the current hardline focus on escaping the reality of a changing world is going to be short-lived. At some point, as traditionalists get more of what they want, the idealists of the world will pull away to such an extent that their new normal will have the wholesome things manifested rather than just shadows of what once was.

<comment><USER25> Can you expand more on what you mean by "this is why I think that the current hardline focus on escaping the reality of a changing world is going to be short-lived. At some point, as traditionalists get more of what they want, the idealists of the world will pull away to such an extent that their new normal will have the wholesome things manifested rather than just shadows of what once was."

<comment><USER24> Ya sorry my comment was kind of vague. I just meant that times are changing so quickly now that fundamentalism is becoming increasingly harder to maintain.

I think that a sustainable Third Wave culture akin to the Federation on Star Trek that embraces true technology that improves lives (as opposed to the distractionary and zero-sum vulture capitalism that we have now) will feel tangibly real in a way that authoritarianism can never be. Like how the internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it but in a physical reality where everyone has renewable energy and makerbots.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ideas for improving HN s/n ratio - <AUTHOR> For those who think HN is fine as it is, this post is not for you. For others I'm sure this topic has been discussed many times before. I'd been giving some thought as to what might work for my defn of 'improve'.<p>I was hoping to get a list ideas here that you think would work and references to other lists/discussions. <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3636213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3636213)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's from 2012. What I'm specifically asking about is returning the s/n ratio to 2012 days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A way to filter submissions and comments to only those submitted by accounts that have either applied to YC or one of its programs.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very specialized filter. Seems more like a sort of 'Ask YC' type thing for topics of concern to the group.

I thought of something similar but less restrictive like an 'opt-in' version of that for those who would like less volume of posts and more of the 'in- depth' variety (identified by upvotes by same).

Filtering comments is tricky since dropping messages in the middle of the thread loses context. Counting comments/votes-on-comments (by opted-in) might work for surfacing posts or reording displayed comments.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One problem for me is going through the sheer volume of posts and finding those gems that are don't sit at the top.

I made [https://hackerer.news](https://hackerer.news) to show all the top posts, Ask/Show, and recent on a single page split by date. That saves time so I don't rescan headlines I saw yesterday and I can quickly see less mainstream posts in the middle.

Are there other HN viewers that try to improve S/N? (I had been using hckrnews.com previously.)</comment>


Agony of an African programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.iafrikan.com/2014/04/03/agony-of-an-african-programmer/ <comment><USER2> I would gladly start working with programmers in Africa. I'm based in Europe (Poland), and for a long time I've been thinking about how we're working with people around the globe while completely ignoring the huge continent that is right within ±2h of our timezone.

The problem begins with the word "Africa". Obviously, this is a meaningless word, describing an entire continent full of radically different countries. And yet we use it. I know how I get annoyed when my country gets generalized as "Eastern Europe" (first, we're Central Europe, and second, countries in this part of Europe are quite different from each other). I can't even imagine what it feels to be thrown into an "Africa" bucket.

Then there is the issue of whom to work with (and where), how to start, how to build trust. It's just immensely difficult. I know next to nothing about African countries, much less about major cities, good schools, places where I could find programmers and business partners.

I am hoping for more ties between European and African developers and entrepreneurs, so that we can start working together. Which would hopefully make the life of an African programmer easier, at least on a practical (economic) level.

<comment><USER3> You could probably get in touch with the trade representative of any the embassy of the country you are interested in. That would most likely be a good starting point to get general information.

In Ghana a few good points of contact would be:

Ghana Consulate Warsaw: [http://www.worldembassy.us/embassy/ghana-poland- warsaw.html](http://www.worldembassy.us/embassy/ghana-poland-warsaw.html)

Google Ghana:

Mark Davies: [http://markdavies.net/](http://markdavies.net/)

Ghana Telecom University College: [http://gtuc.edu.gh/](http://gtuc.edu.gh/)

Meltwater: [http://meltwater.org/](http://meltwater.org/)

University of Science and Technology: [http://www.knust.edu.gh](http://www.knust.edu.gh)

</comment></comment><comment> chestnut-tree The patchy and expensive internet access that many people around the world experience really emphasises the importance of offline or native apps. There's a relentless (and in my view unnecesary) push by many technology companies to run everything online as if it's some natural progression we should all be moving towards. Some of us, even with broadband access, don't want to run apps in the cloud, (where everything we do is gleefully tracked and recorded). It's clearly to the benefit of many companies to push for an "online first" approach, but I feel it's unsuitable for many apps. I'm not convinced it's a better experience for users either.

<comment><USER4> > I'm not convinced it's a better experience for users either

It's a weird situation where we have vast power available on our local environments and burn it all to run JavaScript VMs to access huge server farms for functionality which in many cases was already available in local applications.

<comment><USER5> It's all about moving the software market from an _owning model_ to a _renting model_. If you depend on their online service to always be around and available to you in order to access _your data_ and get things done, they have a tighter leash on you. Not to mention that cloud apps make it that much easier to data mine usage, pander advertisements, and squeeze pennies out of users at every opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article really nailed it. I spent two months last year in the D.R Congo and in those 2 months I had approximately only 4 hours of coding.

Electricity was reliable only between 11PM to 5AM and we spent New year's eve in the dark.

My data provider had a special 3G plan where you get 1Gb data between 12AM and 6AM for $1. This worked well for the first 2 weeks only then connection became non-existent. The only thing the provider had to say was "sorry but we don't have coverage in your area."

Yet I met some brilliant folks who would make amazing programmers if only they had access to all the resources we get with reliable internet and electricity. I spoke with many of them about starting a computer club where we meet weekly, share ideas and learn from each other. Some were kin but many were skeptical because they're used to unkept promises.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the state has installed fiber optic in some parts the capital city but nobody wants to use it because they know the government will abuse it and extort millions from users. And the country's ccTLD .cd is still one of the most expensive in the world.

<comment><USER7> I wonder if Joey Hess has any advice he could offer to people in such a situation. He's obviously optimized how to be productive out in the middle of no where with limited network connectivity.

I reckon a big piece of being productive involves learning how to get as many needed resources available offline as possible. If you have offline resources, your biggest hurdle is limited to electricity availability, which I imagine can be solved with batteries and renewable energy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Africa is a big place. From what I hear, Nairobi is one of the most interesting places to be an entrepreneur these days. Yes, there are huge challenges all over africa including, but not limited to, corruption, unreliable power, political instability, and terrible infrastructure.

But this very constraint is what drives projects like M-PESA, and Ushahidi, and BRCK.

Also, Software Developers in the US and Europe don't necessarily make 100,000 Dollars. In some spots you'd be luck y to make half that.

<comment><USER9> > _Also, Software Developers in the US and Europe don 't necessarily make > 100,000 Dollars. In some spots you'd be luck y to make half that._

This is correct. Moreover, European salaries are also often lower than those in the US tech hubs.

I would also go so far as to say that nowhere in the US does a median web developer's salary afford her/him a particularly luxurious lifestyle. Salaries are always adjusted, among other things, for regional cost of living.

When I made 6 figures in Washington DC, it afforded me roughly the same standard of living I have in Pittsburgh while making $30k less. That is to say : access to a studio or 1-bedroom apartment, a low cost vehicle and the ability to socialize occasionally while still contributing modestly towards my savings.

<comment><USER10> Here in Western Europe, earning $100,000 per year would be exceptional. You would have to be both self employed and a highly valued rockstar developer to make anything in that ballpark. A third to half that much is more common, and that doesn't take cost of living into account. Paying $15,000 a year in rent and another $10,000 in utilities for less than 1000 sqft of living space, another few thousand per year for a parking license, about $5000 a year in road tax etc. A California cost of living on a Mississippi income.

<comment><USER11> Europe is a diverse place - From my experience, 100K isn't unreasonable for a seasoned programmer in London or in most of scandinavia. You'd be lucky to get half that in the less well-off countries, even within EU. And outside of EU, well ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This description sounds a lot like eastern europe :) When I used to live there, electricity was only available when it wasn't raining. The internet was really crappy and it used to cost a pretty big percentage of my salary. Investors were practically non existent, and the brain drain took its toll on any innovation attempt (alongside the corruption). I have now left eastern europe for a better western country, and I have to face their '1st world' complaints. A brit does not, can not understand what that is like. I think the same goes for americans. Feel free to downvote your ignorance :)

<comment> guard-of-terra I can totally relate to this, but it gets better, doesn't it? Today Internet is often faster and cheaper in the eastern europe than in the west. We no longer need computer books so much. As for brain drain, it's more of an opportunity if you're a developer.

On the other hand, we have every piece of software available in the pirated form and had no shame of using that. Haven't we?

<comment><USER13> he's very probably exaggerating the electricity thing and yes the internet is better today in romania (where he left from) than in many other west european countries mostly due to brand new communication infrastructure and a booming IT sector.

<comment><USER12> @leaveyou exaggerating? really? Otopeni had power outages during most rainfalls, although it's neighboring Bucharest. I still talk to people there (relatives) complaining about this situation in 2014. I know that the capital city had it easy, and probably still does, along with other major cities. But the only internet available in small cities was via copper phone lines. I could go on about this forever, we had to use electricity generators and diesel heaters just 10 km away from the capital city. I guess some people take a lot for granted :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars > per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least > $100,000 dollars per year.

"at least $100,000 dollars per year"

..."at least $100,000 dollars per year"

Where can I find one of these mythical minimum-100k-salary programming jobs, without having 10+ years of experience and working for a massive tech company?

Source: UK twenty-something.

<comment><USER15> In London with 5 years experience that's a reasonable estimation for web developers, especially if you are contracting

<comment> V-2 If anything, that's an average for well-seasoned developers in one of the best paying cities in Europe. Not a minimum salary ("at least") of a regular programmer in Europe in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> V-2 While 100k (especially as a minimum treshold) is an overestimate even for richest European countries, "Europe" is not equal to "just Western Europe" or "just a bunch of richest countries in Western Europe", as some seem to think.

Apart from the UK, Switzerland or Germany, there are countries like Greece and Portugal, and there's Central and Eastern Europe, too.

Median programmer salary in Poland is 5500 zl, which is about 3900 zl after deductions and 1 USD = ~3 zl, so it's 22 thousands per anum (gross pay) or 15.6 grand net pay.

Grass is always greener, huh?

<comment><USER10> I can tell you from experience that anything close to 100k would be an exceptional salary in Western Europe (Germany, Benelux) as well, depending on how you factor in the exchange rate. If I simply multiply my income in EUR by 1.4 (average exchange rate vs USD) it doesn't look that bad, but you can only really take advantage of that when mail ordering something from the US or Asia under the minimum amount to owe import duties. You generally spend a euro like you would a dollar in the states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Working without stable power is such a hassle. Good luck coding something complex with a diesel generator going brrrrr a couple of meters away and all the UPSs in the building going wild. Or all the restaurants just shut down because the roads washed away and power is out for days on end. So no dinner. Or you find a place still serving but you end up with food poisoning because they can't cook properly in those conditions. True story.

</comment><comment><USER17> Get out of Africa. Africa will steal your life.

If you choose to stay in Africa and have your potential limited by silly things like bad Internet and no electricity, then make that choice consciously, and for good reasons, like wanting to be near family. If you stay because you feel some deeper connection to Africa because you were born there, get over it. Get out of your comfort zone, live your own life. Consider carefully the costs of maintaining that irrational connection. Personally, I think it's a cop out, an excuse to be mediocre. It's a global world, stop thinking locally.

What would Elon Musk have achieved had he stayed in Africa? Substantially less. Get yourself into an environment that is supportive of your dreams and goals, not one that works against you.

<comment><USER18> You've not noticed the massive barriers to legal immigration being built in the West, have you?

<comment><USER17> You've found an excuse to give up on your dreams, have you?

<comment><USER18> I'm in the West looking out..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am based in the US but travel to South Africa a few times a year. The tech community there is strong. Though I haven't had my feet on the ground in Kenya I also hear that there are some amazing things happening there. Startups like Soko.com come to mind.

Growing these areas will help. With that being said Africa is a large continent and a large portion of it lacks the basic infrastructure that we are used to. For example I met a guy through a friend who's entire business is setting up and maintaining generators for lodges and other businesses in northern Botswana. He was telling me that there are many areas up there where there is no access to a power grid so your only option is to have a generator (or solar farm) for power.

With that being said some of these challenges have also spawned some interesting solutions. There is a reason why Whatsapp sold for the amount that it did. It is really exciting to see technology begin to make it's way to this continent. The rest will come with time.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think the article is plein of cliché about the africa: electricity, internet price ?!! seriously these things have been improved in most of african countries especially in the north of Africa (Ghana has the fastest internet speed in africa ), and now its much more an advantage than of disadvantage for tech companies.especially for salaries and low fees.

The question that I looked for an answer for in the article is : where is the silicon valleys of Africa?, I know that there have been many attempts to create tech hubs , like the "cyber parks" in Algeria and Tunisia, where you can rent offices with a symbolic price and create your startup where the process is covered by professionals of different fields (juridique,financial, banks ...) , but these cyber parks remains pretty much empty , or just occupied by big international companies selling their stuffs or promoting dead technologies to young students (like Microsoft)

<comment><USER21> I wonder if creating the environment is enough. The thing that valley has and you can't find around is investors: From seed money to angels. Every region has 2 or 3 but that's about it. The culture is different and you can't change that overnight. Not to mention that Europeans are way more skeptical/prudent when it comes investments anyway compared to USA.

<comment><USER19> I volunteered at a Startup Weekend in Johannesburg last year and do agree with this statement. With that being said I do think that the investors or starting to get more tech savvy.

My family on my fiancee's side is from South Africa and I regularly travel back and forth between South Africa and the US. Whenever I'm there I try to line the trips up with tech conferences and/or local meetup groups. South Africa has a strong tech community that is doing really interesting things.

The thing that surprised me was that on my last trip I found out that one of my fiancee's family members is a investor in a startup. This guy is not very tech savvy, but even he could see the possibilities. Does the community still have a ways to go, yes. But with that being said I do think they will get there.

Also, the stuff happening in Cape Town is really exciting.

<comment><USER22> South Africa has serious structural issues preventing a tech revolution: a rotten school system, a welfare-based economy with a tiny tax base, that is dependent on credit-driven consumer demand rather than production, underinvestment in infrastructure, and government with a huge mandate, that is too timid/rent-seeking to change things (heaven help us if our Proportional Representation system fragments into something like those of Israel or Italy), big business that has a long tradition of collusion and price-fixing, a white minority that is hell-bent on maintaining the status quo, and a union movement that cripples job creation. Previously, South Africa was a resource-driven economy - there are limited traditions of entrepreneurship.

The chances are good that the African startup revolution, if it comes, won't start in South Africa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The trouble with software is that, of all industries, it has the lowest barrier to entry and the lowest capital costs. Crucially, the marginal cost of deploying software across the globe is next to nothing. This is why the Microsoft stack is so dominant worldwide. It was so easy to export when it had a monopoly in the US, that Microsoft had nothing to lose and everything to gain by spreading its products across the globe.

African countries are not the only nations lacking in indigenous technical solutions. A place like Canada has over the years lost all of its comparative advantage in the technology sector to massive US companies.

One of the many consequences of "free trade".

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is an interesting read that I can relate to, moreover, the author is from Ghana where I currently reside so I understand the challenges he's referring to. I however think that the issues raised are the same generalist ones being made about business/entrepreneurship in Africa that don't go deep enough to address the root causes of the challenges, the solutions successful people are implementing and some possible solutions that are yet to be explored.

Before I go any further I would like to state first that I'm speaking from the point of view of a Ghanaian entrepreneur and not an African entrepreneur because I am more familiar with the situation here at home and I would only be speculating about what transpires in other African nations.

Cost of equipment:

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

It's true that the duty slapped on the importation of IT equipment makes you wonder what the rational is because I was under the impression that one taxed heavily the importation of luxury goods or items that are manufactured locally to protect indigenous industries. However the market is flooded with used computers/laptops from abroad that are cheap and can get the job done (albeit a bit slower that one would prefer). A core 2 duo desktop with a 15" lcd monitor and a UPS will set you back Ghc700 ($260).

But if the cost is still prohibitive then you have to come up with an alternative solution. For example, when I got my first freelance project, I couldn't immediately afford a pc so I leased one from an internet cafe and agreed to share the work and revenue with the owner.

Availability of learning material:

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

I think IT is one of the few industries where so much leaning resources are available online for free and more so now with the advent of MOOC. If you don't have an internet connection at home or a usb modem then go the an internet cafe.

PayPal blacklisting:

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

Now this is a very annoying and unfortunate situation! West Africa is made up of the following countries: Benin. Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa)). Of all the listed countries PayPal isn't in 4, namely: Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Liberia ([https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/country- worldwide](https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide)). One of the reasons PayPal doesn't want to do business with us is because of credit card fraud which I think is a rather lazy excuse. If Skrill can make it work then really...

However iTunes, Skrill, iStockPhoto, Hetzner.de, Linode, AWS, Rackspace, Register.com, Gandi among others all accept visa cards from Ghana so you can get by without PayPal (although you can't register your copy of Sublime Text so you have to I've with the annoying reminders or switch to Komodo IDE).

Banks here don't issue Visa Credit cards willy nilly but you can more easily apply for an international Visa Debit card and if your bank doesn't offer one then change to another institution!

I'm going to end this comment here because it's getting too long and I'm running on a UPS (lol) but my main point is that yes, there are challenges but they are surmountable. You either solve them head on or work around them but there is always a solution. And besides entrepreneurship is all about the fun of solving challenges anyway so come over to Ghana and have some REAL Fun!

<comment><USER22> Regarding fraud, I think that African (huge generalisation) governments just don't seem to take it seriously enough. Even in South Africa, where every SIM card should be registered, it isn't uncommon to see phishing emails with local numbers.

Companies also don't really care: phones stolen in one African country are sold in others (South Africa to Nigeria seems to be one popular route), and blacklists aren't shared cross-border. In South Africa, SIM-swap scams result in people's bank accounts being cleared out with cellular networks and banks both disclaiming responsibility.

Until the attitude to this sort of fraud changes, I don't blame payment companies for staying away from Africa.

<comment><USER24> Very true. PayPal has an incentive to handle _more_ transactions, not fewer ... so making the deliberate decision to blacklist a region wouldn't happen lightly, wouldn't happen without careful study, and likely would be revisited from time to time.

The article writer speaks in this general direction, actually:

 _It is also high time our governments start to stand firmly behind young African men and women developers ... It is not enough to congratulate them vocally of their achievements, it will be right if you can support them with your resources be it financially, intellectually, skills and much more._

I would call taking their reputation seriously and dealing with the problems falling under the "much more" category.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The author forgot to mention something; Finding good staff.

Finding staff is difficult because of the scarcity of developers and anyone talented almost always has a job paying far more than a startup can afford.

Training juniors is the only alternative, but in doing so your company ends up being a training shop for other companies to headhunt from.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree with you on this. We had the same problem with recruiting talented staff when we started. We ended up hiring graduates who where on a 1 year National Service Scheme. We spent a quarter of the year training them and got about 8 months worth of production work out of them. A couple stayed on after the 1 year "obligatory service to the nation" period had expired and the rest joined better paying companies.

Honestly being a training ground for young graduates isn't that bad. It was very good for my personal development because teaching/training inexperienced but bright coders really raises your game because believe you me, they will challenge you and put you on the spot! Lol. I should probably make a living of organizing bootcamps for CS graduates and after 3-4 months, "auction them off" to companies … evil laugh!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> >"A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least $100,000 dollars per year."

Either he doesn't consider Eastern European softwware developers as colleagues or he thinks all of Europe is London, which it certainly isn't. The upper limit he gave is more than most Eastern European developers make.

<comment><USER21> In Greece PhD level programmers make from 25-35 EUR[1]. It's abotu 26,5k with taxes paid. It's extremely bad, but that's the Greek reality apparently and Greece (was supposed to be) in Europe last time I checked. A _normal_ BSc programmer is around 1,5k/month. You get the (sad) picture...

[1] [http://www.dotnetzone.gr/cs/forums/thread/34443.aspx](http://www.dotnetzone.gr/cs/forums/thread/34443.aspx)

<comment><USER27> "In Greece PhD level programmers make from 25-35 EUR[1]. It's abotu 26,5k with taxes paid. It's extremely bad, but that's the Greek reality apparently"

Uh that's pretty decent anywhere in Europe for anyone doing actual 'programming', i.e. not management or consulting, so basically meaning all junior- to mid-level software development jobs. I'm not even sure what 'PhD level programmer' means - it's not like 'programming' is an academic exercise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least $100,000 dollars per year."

I don't think this is factually true.

That said, the article really makes you think how much easy we have it in the developed world, yet we always find the time to complain about everything.

<comment><USER29> I, in Italy, as a junior software developer, earn €17000/year.

And genuinely I'm not complaining.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, it's not really accurate for the PIGS , and even in northern Europe, it's not as high as in the States.

<comment><USER31> I had to look the term up, but my first guess was correct ("Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain")

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIGS_(economics)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIGS_\(economics\))

<comment><USER32> FYI - Another one I learned while being in Europe is FIGS, which sort of represents the "more economically developed" Euro languages - French, Italian, German, Spanish. This pretty much covers every nation you would need to speak to in order to do legitimate business in Europe. (Scandinavia generally will do business with English speakers)

<comment><USER30> The Germans are pretty solid English speakers too. More so than the French, Italians, or Spaniards, anyway.

<comment><USER33> I live in Germany, good luck trying to speak English outside the big cities or people with lower levels of education.

Thankfully it doesn't matter to me as I speak the language fluently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > The problem is that, though the syllabus looks good and would be a good > starting point for being a software and web developer, these students do not > spend time working on their personal projects and instead code for a grade > "A" in exams.

What, these students only work on getting good results in school, where they're studying? What a bunch of slackers.

<comment><USER35> I think that this may feel like a fun line to poke at but based on my experience in this part of the world I would say that what the author is getting at is that in education (with no exceptions given for learning software) there is a base belief in learning by route. people learn the single method to accomplish a task, if you ask them to do that very specific task that was on their c++ final in that way they will execute it flawlessly because that is what an A looks like and so they have memorized it. But the minute you change the constraints in any kind of way you find that people are missing the breadth of the entire skill set needed to function.

<comment><USER36> Which is a strong argument for rigorous coursework. The type that's sufficiently time-consuming that it trades off with personal projects.

<comment><USER35> Definitely, however this is a situation caused by a lack of teaching talent. Teachers are simply not skilled enough to create a programming curriculum that could be considered rigorous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> proper link: [http://www.geektime.com/2014/04/06/agony-of-an-african- progr...](http://www.geektime.com/2014/04/06/agony-of-an-african-programmer/)

<comment><USER38> Thanks. Fixed.

Edit: On closer inspection, that post was blogspam, so I changed the url again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Sometimes I think it would be a better idea to let any educated African (or any African for that matter) immigrate to any country he wants. In the first world, programmers (and most other professionals) are more productive and earn more. They can then send home some of the money they earn, which results in a net-positive effect of emmigration.

Currently the barrier to this solution are the immigration controls inspired by irrational fear (rationalized by unquestioned assumptions and generalizations).

Fixing African institutions to a point where they can compete with the rest of the world will take decades or even a century or two. The process could be accelerated by returning expatriates.</comment>


Microsoft buys Havok, the physics engine for pretty much every game ever - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/02/microsoft-buys-havok-from-intel-promises-to-keep-licensing-physics-tech/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't bug me as much as it might of back in the days when Microsoft was trying to build a closed system with all of their technologies. It very much looks like they are trying to pivot into a platform agnostic services company. Good for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't agree more. I think what really made me have a change of hearts was when they started their investments in open-sourcing a bunch of their products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I remember when I first saw Havok in action (Half-Life 2 tech demos). It ushered in a new era in gaming. Things were expected to behave at least very close to reality. The way the developers described it back then made it seem like a revolution and I think it's easy for gamers these days to take that stuff for granted, since it is indeed "in pretty much every game ever".

Integrating it into Azure seems like a natural step for MS. I hope this ultimately means better environments for us to play in!

<comment><USER4> > Integrating it into Azure seems like a natural step for MS. I hope this > ultimately means better environments for us to play in!

Could you explain that some more? I have to admit I don't immediately see what connection a physics library has with cloud hosting. How does some software for making balls bounce much more realistically connect with virtualized Linux & Windows OSes and hard drives?

<comment><USER3> This is the type of stuff that I mean: [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/08/how- crackdown-3-uses-t...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/08/how- crackdown-3-uses-the-cloud-to-make-whole-cities-destructible/)

[http://www.cloudgine.com/technology.html](http://www.cloudgine.com/technology.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Development of 64-bit C/C++ applications (28 lessons) - <AUTHOR> http://www.viva64.com/en/l/

<comment><AUTHOR> The course is devoted to creation of 64-bit applications in C/C++ language and is intended for the Windows developers who use Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010 environment. Developers working with other 64-bit operating systems will learn much interesting as well. The course will consider all the steps of creating a new safe 64-bit application or migrating the existing 32-bit code to a 64-bit system.

Lesson 01. What 64-bit systems are.

Lesson 02. Support of 32-bit applications.

Lesson 03. Porting code to 64-bit systems. The pros and cons.

Lesson 04. Creating the 64-bit configuration.

Lesson 05. Building a 64-bit application.

Lesson 06. Errors in 64-bit code.

Lesson 07. The issues of detecting 64-bit errors.

Lesson 08. Static analysis for detecting 64-bit errors.

Lesson 09. Pattern 01. Magic numbers.

Lesson 10. Pattern 02. Functions with variable number of arguments.

Lesson 11. Pattern 03. Shift operations.

Lesson 12. Pattern 04. Virtual functions.

Lesson 13. Pattern 05. Address arithmetic.

Lesson 14. Pattern 06. Changing an array's type.

Lesson 15. Pattern 07. Pointer packing.

Lesson 16. Pattern 08. Memsize-types in unions.

Lesson 17. Pattern 09. Mixed arithmetic.

Lesson 18. Pattern 10. Storage of integer values in double.

Lesson 19. Pattern 11. Serialization and data interchange.

Lesson 20. Pattern 12. Exceptions.

Lesson 21. Pattern 13. Data alignment.

Lesson 22. Pattern 14. Overloaded functions.

Lesson 23. Pattern 15. Growth of structures' sizes.

Lesson 24. Phantom errors.

Lesson 25. Working with patterns of 64-bit errors in practice.

Lesson 26. Optimization of 64-bit programs.

Lesson 27. Peculiarities of creating installers for a 64-bit environment.

Lesson 28. Estimating the cost of 64-bit migration of C/C++ applications.</comment>


60 Minutes: Elon Musk and SpaceX [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50121782n <comment><USER3> It is really unfortunate that Aldrin and Armstrong seem so critical of efforts like SpaceX. Both of these men are very intelligent and highly accomplished. That said, every transition in thinking and technology has always found opposition from those deeply invested in what is about to fade away. I would hope that, in this case at least, things start to change as further proof of the merits of private enterprise is produced.

Elon, if you are reading this, know that you have something pulling for you that Aldrin and Armstrong will never have: The next generation. My kids want to be like their mother and father (who are scientists) and we make it a point to highlight people such as yourself as role models. They want to be just like you. And so will countless others.

<comment><USER4> After seeing that clip, I wondered how Cernan and Armstrong could have said the things they said and, eventually, how they could even feel qualified to comment. I think the answer to both questions is related.

Armstrong and Cernan are just the Spam in the can. They're glorified pilots. As such, they are extensions of the PR arm of NASA and the entrenched aerospace industries. I've phrased that a little harshly, but not by much. Certainly, as trained monkeys go, they are marvelously trained. And not just any monkey could be trained to perform as they did in their, and I emphasize, highly specialized and limited roles within the space program. But, when we see a well-trained dog, the credit goes to the master.

If Armstrong and Cernan were rocket designers, if they had captained a startup that created a new launch vehicle, then I could take their statements seriously. If they were systems integrators, if they were manufacturing engineers, if they were anything other than good pilots, then they might have something useful to add to the discussion _on a national level_. Until then, all I want to hear from them is how beautiful the Earth looks from space, how fun it is to play golf on the Moon, and various other fun facts about events that took place 40+ years ago.

I feel awful trying to cut these men down, trying to knock them back into place. However, the truly shameful thing is that they've used their legacy to usurp beyond their areas of expertise. I console myself that the bounds over which they've stepped are generous bounds, the bounds of heroes, and it takes a truly cataclysmic level of folly to behave as they have done. It would take nothing less than the legendary ego of a pilot.

Cernan and Armstrong, rest on your laurels, and get out of the way of people who are doing.

<comment><USER5> I really wonder what Von Braun would say about Elon Musk and SpaceX.

<comment><USER6> None of his early literature mentioned private space exploration, but considering he fell out with NASA over the bureaucracy and spent the last years of his career in private industry, he would have been all for it.

<comment><USER7> Consider also the similar passion and ambition both von Braun and Musk have for manned spaceflight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The lack of government funding for a space exploration program makes me as sad and angry as anyone. However, I find Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan's argument against commercialized space-flight lame.

They say it would be less safe than a NASA program and that "To be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature..." Note though that some of their argument was directed at the cancellation of NASA's planned moon missions.

With that in mind, let's consider the shuttle program. In 135 missions, it had an abysmal safety record that claimed the lives of 14 astronauts, making it the deadliest spaceflight program in history. It's budget cost $196 billion dollars over the craft's lifetime instead of the estimated $43 billion (adjusted for inflation), while making around half of the promised flights. The shuttle was an important (for both good and bad) craft that helped accomplish great things, like build the ISS and Hubble space telescope. But nationalist pride shouldn't make us blind to the fact that NASA's last program probably set progress in spaceflight backwards, or at least slowed it, and never attempted to leave low-Earth orbit. Those astronauts may not like it, but Elon Musk has a clearer vision and more ambition than NASA (or the politicians) have had for a very long time.

<comment><USER9> >The lack of government funding for a space exploration program makes me as sad and angry as anyone

Lack of funding??? NASA gets 17 Billion a year and typically around 10 billion is for manned space flight - 2011 has 9 billion.

How much more does NASA need?

<comment><USER10> Why the downvotes? It's one thing to say that NASA should have more money than it does. However, the idea that $10 billion isn't enough is ridiculous. That's a crap-ton of money, and the ROI of NASA manned spaceflight in recent years has been abysmal.

<comment><USER7> They are doing _mother fucking rocket science_.

I say give them what _they say_ they need, not what internet armchair economists say they need. _None_ of the alternative uses for that money that the US government is finding are as important.

<comment><USER10> NASA manned spaceflight has been almost exclusively an unmitigated boondoggle from the time of the end of the Apollo program to today. The Shuttle program was a bill of goods that never lived up to any of the claims it was sold on. Not only was it one of the most dangerous orbital launch systems in history it was far and away the most expensive heavily used launch vehicle in history. It came very close to dooming all spaceflight, manned and unmanned, in the US on at least three separate occasions. But the one thing it did better than ever was funnel billions of dollars a year to high paying aerospace jobs in key congressional districts.

And now we have the so-called Space Launch System. Another boondoggle jobs program that is so ridiculous that fundamentals of its design have been specified by the Senate itself. The Planetary Society, Space Access Society, and the Space Frontier Foundation have all called for the SLS to be cancelled. It's a poorly designed rocket, a huge waste of money, and overall a project that is not likely to succeed.

I love space exploration. I love rocket engineers. But I cannot abide either being abused to serve as pawns in congressional pork-barrel spending games.

This is not a question about what NASA manned spaceflight "needs", it's a question about where the Senate wants to funnel money.

NASA manned spaceflight has spent a quarter of a trillion dollars over the last 4 decades.

A quarter of a trillion dollars.

That is the cost of the Shuttle legacy and the ISS. Does anyone think that we, the American taxpayers, actually got a pretty good return on that money? Before you answer keep in mind that we could have easily paid for 150+ Saturn V rockets as well as the appropriate payloads and spacecraft for them for less money.

Meanwhile, companies like SpaceX have managed to build entire orbital launchers from scratch for less than the cost of a single Shuttle flight.

 _None_ of the alternative uses for that money are as important? How about using that $10 billion a year to buy commercial flights on Boeing, LockMart, or SpaceX rockets? Right now only a fraction of NASA's funding is actually serving the purpose of advancing the state of the art or improving access to space.

There is an argument about whether the amount of money governments spend on various activities could be better spent on spaceflight.

This is not that argument and has no bearing here. This is an argument about whether NASA is a good conduit for spending money on manned spaceflight activities. And there is overwhelming evidence that despite a handful of successes it has not been. Over time it has gotten less efficient, less safety conscious, and less capable. There is every indication that with Apollo era budgets in place the NASA of today would not be able to get back to the Moon in 10 years or even 20 years.

The unmanned spaceflight portion of NASA still does some pretty good work, but the manned spaceflight portion has become a bureaucratic infused pork-barrel shell of its former glory. There are lots of reasons for that, a lot of them due to consistent political meddling from without, but it's still the truth.

<comment><USER7> You'll have no argument from me that the agency could be better managed, and that politicians need to stay the hell away from it.

And indeed, other arms of the space industry need much more funding. They will ultimately do all the common varieties of manned spaceflight better, that is inevitable.

The question is, will problems be _solved_ by reducing NASA's budget? I think that is incredibly fucking unlikely. Instead as far as I am concerned we should be shoveling money at all of them like coal into a locomotive. Don't reduce NASAs budget so you can give more to Boeing and SpaceX.. give more to Boeing and SpaceX _in spite of_ NASA's budget.

 _One half of a penny_ of every dollar you pay in (federal) taxes goes to science^. That is appalling. For as shitty and expensive as those shuttles were though, that money got us more return than pretty much the rest of that dollar.

If you look at how we budget for science and think _"NASA is getting too much"_ instead of _"Science is not getting enough"_ , then you are missing the bigger picture.

^(ie, NASA. the money spent on the NSF isn't even worth bothering to include...)

<comment><USER11> Or we could take all that money and dump it directly into R&D.

If the government shit canned NASA tomorrow, and took that money and pumped it into the project Google is doing on self-driving cars wouldn't the world be a better place? Space is great, but how many lives could be saved by implementing self-driving cars nationwide?

Or took all that money and pumped it into computer science R&D. Or biotech R&D. Or nanotech R&D.

The argument for NASA often boils down to an argument for R&D, and there are a lot of more efficient ways to fund R&D than spending a bunch of it on non-R&D type stuff.

<comment><USER7> Why is everyone so insistent on cannibalizing science to fund science? NASA's budget should be pretty damn near the end of the list of programs to take funding from, 1) because all the others are even worse than it is, and 2) because it gets such a _fucking minuscule_ amount of funding compared to the other things.

Furthermore, shitcanning all the non-manned stuff NASA does is a fucking _terrible_ idea. Science without study of the universe is crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whoa. Greenhouse on mars as a photo op to get people interested in space again?

Elon Musk is probably the most amazing entrepreneur of the modern day. Electronic payments. Electric cars (which might prevent the next middle eastern war), and solar power. Space.

<comment><USER12> What's funny though is the Middle East is a sunny place which is perfect for generating power from solar, if electric takes over from oil it may still be in the energy business.

Add to that oil is used for more than just fuel for vehicles so electric power and oil both in the Middle East, but I'm sure other sunny countries will generate their own.

<comment><USER13> Generate power from the sun in Saudi Arabia - doable.

How do you get the power from there to where it can be used?

<comment><USER5> Same way we use geothermal in or hydro in inconvenient locations today -- make aluminum there, or other energy intensive products. Also water desalination for local use. Maybe synthetic fuels, like hydrogen, or using waste to fuel conversion (which uses energy). Saudi has ok port infrastructure although it is at risk to Iran and Somalia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This guy is my hero, more so than any entrepreneur out there.

What always fascinates me about Elon's story is his ability to self-teach himself the subjects he needs to effectively compete in an industry. He literally taught himself rocket science. I can barely finish a book on business.

<comment><USER15> Same here... when people ask "where will the next Steve Jobs come from" - <USER2> attitude he's already amongst us, and his goals are loftier and perhaps more socially pragmatic.

Keep in mind the man wants see Mars in his lifetime, taken in that perspective learning rocket science is a pretty small feat. Creating SpaceX is the first step to that goal, and leaving anything on the table - ie. just being a CEO/leader, and not being able to work hand-in-hand with the engineers/scientists he has under employ is a risk.

To me, the key takeaway is if you want something bad enough the seemingly difficult becomes doable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> was shocked to see Elon tear up a bit when the interviewer asks him about Buzz Aldrin's criticisms.

<comment><USER17> what he should have said is that he can't comment because neither he nor his company is in making or deciding on politics. elon is a businessman after all - the government decided to retire space program but there still be a need to travel both cargo and life. he's seeing future opportunity and betting on it, which should be every wise businessman approach.

<comment><USER18> I respectfully disagree.

Being human is something we have washed away with dedicated PR staff. I feel 'numb' to public figures now, especially political and that takes something intangible away.

Elon is leading us into space by setting incredible goals and asking for the best from the best. He is a leader in more than one sense. Showing emotion and character is important in leadership and I thought it was appropriate and touching.

<comment><USER19> Hear hear

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really wish a reality show would focus on SpaceX and take us along for the ride so to speak. One way to really get kids excited about science again is bring things like this to the forefront-- show everyone it's an adventure, hard work and a ton of risk but ultimately leaving an indelible mark in history.

<comment><USER5> You could possibly pay for a mars (and certainly moon) mission just by doing a bunch of movies, reality shows, etc.

$5b incremental cost to do a moon mission, probably, for SpaceX in a few years. $10-20b to do Mars Direct. That's not incredibly far off from a major video game or movie franchise.

<comment><USER17> where are you getting your numbers from. I am not an accountant for NASA but they sound extremely low!

<comment><USER5> Zubrin, Mars Direct. He estimated $10-15b to do it, and if you were SpaceX, you could probably do it for less. The key to making Mars cheap is to do multiple launches -- first launch is a fuel production facility (automated) which uses Mars resources to make fuel and oxygen, then housing, then a return vehicle. Launch the crew once everything is set up, in a vehicle which can't return on its own -- they use the stuff already on Mars to live and return.

I mostly just made up the moon number, based on it being a whole lot easier than Mars. I think you could probably do a recreation of Apollo pretty cheaply (a quick flight to the moon, simple landing, etc.). Certainly a trip to the moon without landing wouldn't be THAT hard once you had a rocket able to escape from earth gravity (maybe 2x as hard as launching to GEO?). You could maybe do it with a Falcon 9 in a single launch, so that's about $2b. It's less fun if you don't land, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This was a really great episode of 60 Minutes - also see the in-depth story on face blindness; it's an excellent demonstration of a mysterious capacity of (most) people's ability to recognize faces.

BTW - 60 Minutes should be retitled "40 Minutes" - from the time codes on my DVR I find that the Musk story was 15 minutes, and the face blindness story was 25 minutes. Is it any wonder people would rather consume video online (rather than watch 20 minutes of Cialis ads).

</comment><comment><USER21> For Elon:

"Here's to the Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - are the ones who DO!"

</comment><comment><USER22> Elon is a testament to dreaming big and achieving. Truly inspiring stuff.

</comment><comment><USER23> SpaceX's launch prices are already much lower than its competitors. Things will become even more interesting in a few years when SpaceX starts reusing its rockets. Launching stuff to orbit will become so cheap, it's difficult to fully comprehend the impact SpaceX will have. The imagination runs wild. Massive spaceships anyone?

<comment><USER10> There are several "big things" that will happen.

First, there will start to be a lot more people going into space.

Second, there will start to be significant off-Earth infrastructure. Not just satellites, the GPS system, that sort of thing, but meta-infrastructure. Space stations where people do actual work (instead of just research). Systems of transportation. Fuel depots. Repair facilities. Etc. Instead of mounting expeditions to the Moon or Mars or asteroids we will undertake commuter trips. A regularly scheduled vehicle will ferry crew up to an Earth orbit station. There they will travel in a craft that never touches the surface of a planet from that station to another station in orbit of the Moon and they'll take yet another ferry ride down to a lunar colony.

Third, as a consequence of all of this there will start to be a significant effectively permanent off-Earth population and off-Earth economy.

Fourth, as an additional side effect of so much activity significant effort will be spent tackling the medical and other problems of living in space for long periods of time.

And then all of this snowballs until sooner than you realize it there are kids going to college who never knew a time when mankind didn't have cities in orbit, on the Moon, on Mars, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I had no idea that Neil Armstrong and other veteran astronauts are against Musk and SpaceX. Other than being in the government's back pocket, I can't think of a reason why people who have _been_ in space would not support going back (putting safety aside, which was considerably the same thing back in NASA's early days).

<comment><USER25> They aren't. They're just opposed to terminating a functioning program before we have a better one ready to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Elon Musk is amazing. That was a great piece on what SpaceX is doing.

Here's an episode of Risk Takers on Bloomberg for Elon Musk: <http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184/>

Great episode as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone knows why these "60 minutes" shows are actually just 15-20 minute shows? Is it 60 mins on TV and just 15-20 on the internet?

<comment><USER28> Because that was just one segment of the show. The other part of that episode was on "face blindness."

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What an awesome human being. (And a thoroughly sleep deprived one, in some of those segments, I am certain.)

Truly inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER30> It refuses to play on the CBS website for some reason so I've downloaded the torrent, their adverts work just fine though, but not the actual video.

</comment><comment><USER31> Nobody deserves it more than Elon. After PayPal the guy could have just done what so many others do, lay down and casually invest, chill on a beach, and let others do the hard work.

Instead he's killing himself running multiple ground breaking companies, directly challenging near government monopolies in GM / Ford / Boeing / Lockheed (protected by massive lobbying, deep political ties going back decades, and regulation designed to protect them from competition).

If America could get a few more Elon Musks, we might start to get our mojo back. Hey there immigration policy.

<comment><USER32> Elon Musk is certainly to be commended but when you talk about him challenging government monopolies, it should be mentioned that the government helped him out quite a bit too. Tesla was bailed out with government loans. AFAIK even his rocket business benefited from government orders, although I think he had to sue the government to get their orders.

<comment><USER33> _"Tesla was bailed out with government loans."_

Respectfully, can you please cite a source for this assertion?

Emphasis in italics is mine:

"The loans are part of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, which provides incentives to new and established automakers to build more fuel-efficient vehicles. Created in 2007 and appropriated in September 2008, the $25 billion ATVM aims to reduce America's dangerous dependence on foreign oil and create "green collar" jobs. _The program is entirely unrelated to the stimulus package or the so-called "bailout" funds that General Motors and Chrysler have received._ " [1]

[1] [http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla- gets-l...](http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla-gets-loan- approval-us-department-energy)

<comment><USER34> You just cited a source for parent's assertion, although I'm not sure you realize. IIRC the loan came through at a time Tesla was finding it hard to get a loan through other sources. You could argue that Tesla was more deserving of government funds than Detroit auto, but it seems to me the government did bail the company out.

Also see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailout>

<comment><USER33> _"You just cited a source for parent's assertion, although I'm not sure you realize."_

I disagree with this, because the funds available under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program are not related to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). They are entirely different programs, under different government departments: ATVM is under the Department of Energy, while TARP is under the Department of the Treasury.

 _"You could argue that Tesla was more deserving of government funds than Detroit auto [...]"_

One "Detroit auto" company did participate in the ATVM loan program: Ford Motor Company [1].

[1] <https://lpo.energy.gov/?projects=ford-motor-company>

<comment><USER32> I did not say that Tesla participated in TARP. I said Tesla was bailed out with government loans. The phrase "bail out" has generally understood meaning in the English language that is not limited to TARP.

<comment><USER35> While we're quibbling (and I have no idea why some in this thread have been mentioning TARP), it's not clear to me from any of the cited evidence that ATVM was a bailout. Is someone assuming that all government loans, whether "stimulus" or for some other ostensible reason, are bailouts?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Weekly Spotify playlists to discover new music - <AUTHOR> http://lbld.it <comment><AUTHOR> Discover new music from a different independent label every week. Delivered to your inbox and updated on Spotify every Wednesday at 8am (UK time).</comment>


Malcolm Gladwell's 5 Steps to Success - <AUTHOR> http://dealflow.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/11/billionaire-lessons-from-malcolm-gladwell.html

<comment><USER2> For those who don't click through, here are the 5 steps:

1\. Find meaning and inspiration in your work.

2\. Work hard.

3\. Discover the relationship between effort and reward.

4\. Seek out complex work to avoid boredom and repetition.

5\. Be autonomous and control your own destiny as much as possible.

<comment><USER3> first, let me say i am a malcolm gladwell fan...but that advice seems nebulous at best. maybe i just need to read the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> 3\. Discover the relationship between effort and reward._

I think that's by far the biggest stumbling block. Once there is a direct relationship between effort and reward most people behave appropriately and put forth a lot of effort. It also smooths over a lot of the lesser issues. Doing very boring things can be very exciting when doing it well results in big increases in reward. It becomes a high stakes game.

<comment><USER5> Agreed,

IMO this is the only point that matters. Rich or not, we only value rewards that take effort. If your fairy grandmother showed up, waived her wand, and you suddenly had a couple billion, you wouldn't value it. If you work your a __off to make a couple hundred K though, or to learn a new language, or learn to surf, etc. you will feel a great sense of accomplishment far more valuable than the coin.

<comment><USER6> it's pretty rare in our society, but believe it or not some people do appreciate what they have even when it is given to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let me guess without reading, based on what I know of Gladwell:

1\. Learn to write pretty well.

2\. Come up with a hypothesis.

3\. Collect data.

4\. Throw out all data that disagrees with your hypothesis, even if it is the overwhelming majority.

5\. Write book/article about the data you kept.

<comment><USER8> 1\. coin catchy phrase

2\. write book

3\. create a demand for books based on pseudo-intellectualism

4\. make sure it appears in every airport gift shop

5\. ...

6\. profit!

i kid, i kid, i own and read all his books.

<comment><USER9> Gladwell is successful because he relays a great anecdote. Anecdotes lend themselves well to re-telling, thus his books are popularised by word of mouth. "Man, I read this great piece by this guy called Gladwell about a policeman who could ready body language so well he held fire when facing off a kid with a gun."

<comment><USER10> And isn't that precisely the scenario outlined in Tipping point? That's pretty cool - a book that proves its own point. It also reminds me of people who get rich selling self help books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's worth pointing out where Gladwell is wrong about overnight successes and why.

While it's true that in a field where continued effort is required for continued success (like acting, to continue the theme of his 'American Idol' remarks), software (web software in particular) can be a different kind of beast. For sites that derive value from the network effect, your work can taper off once the network size reaches a certain point. (Witness Markus Frind of PlentyOfFish.com.)

Furthermore, while times are tight now, the 'get bought' method of internet riches, where/when available, has to qualify as an 'overnight' success.*

*Not to say that this is the most likely or desirable case, just that it qualifies as a counterexample.

<comment><USER12> If you define success as making a lot of money quickly you should go into sales and cut out the middleman.

You can buy one lottery ticket and make a lot of money. You can buy many lottery tickets every day of your life and never cover the cost of your lottery tickets.

Most of the time the opportunity for "overnight success" is sold by folks who are interested in making a profit on your dreams without actually fulfilling them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Seek out complex work to avoid boredom and repetition."

Kind of ironic coming from the guy who invented formulaic non-fiction.

</comment><comment><USER14> For some reason the most important ingredient for success always seems to get left out in these lists: Luck

</comment><comment><USER15> Whether overnight success exists depends on the definition of "success". Becoming skilled can't happen overnight, but recognition does and, since most people are not independently wealthy and have to work, recognition sadly matters a lot more than skill, practically speaking.

Growth in one's skill level is gradual and relatively steady, but the selection process for the "stars" is full of dumb luck, black swan events, ridiculous inefficiencies and, often, catastrophic failures (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, the guy who stole the right idea from the right people in the right place at the right time).

The relationship between skill and recognition is complex. Most writers and artists who become "established" devolve into mediocre hacks, because the cocktail parties take over the time they'd otherwise be using to improve their skill. On the other hand, what happens to the vast majority is that the utter lack of recognition, despite their talent, discourages them and they move on to other things. In truth, the "star" system that has infected most aspects of American life-- business, art, academia-- is one of the worst influences on quality imaginable, and much of why the product of humanities academia is utter jenkem. The 2007-08 financial clusterfuck is a result of many individuals' efforts to become "star" traders. Bankers are not stupid people who just happened to be broadsided by a black swan; they deliberately took extreme risks (often hidden behind models known since the '80s to be flawed or incomplete) with others' money, knowing that they'd become stars on the upside.

<comment><USER10> Right, b/c to become a star you need recognition from the masses. Thus, you must conform to the criteria the masses have for success in your field. Who's most likely to have the worst idea of what entails success in your field? The masses.</comment></comment>


Lower refunds amplify calls to restore key tax deduction - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/policy/finance/431227-tax-filing-season-heats-up-fight-over-key-deduction <comment><USER2> I have serious existential doubts about our country's future when I read articles like this. Are people really that innumerate? from the article:

"Most taxpayers, even in high-tax states, are expected to receive a reduction in their tax liability."

So people would rather pay higher taxes, and make a large interest free loan to the federal government?</comment>


Announcing prosper (php dbal) - <AUTHOR> http://ihumanable.com/blog/2009/11/announcing-prosper/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a new database abstraction layer I wrote for PHP</comment>


Bazaar vs Git vs Mercurial - <AUTHOR> http://versioncontrolblog.com/comparison/Bazaar/Git/Mercurial/index.html

<comment><USER2> Makes it clear that it doesn't matter which one you choose, for the vast majority of us, as long as you choose to use one. If you are an independent developer, or in a small group project, choose one of these DVCS (choose CVS or SVN if you've got a substantial number of people well-trained in using them; a lot of hw chip designers seem to be used to using CVS). Any one of these three have enough tutorials and intro docs online that most of us can get started using any of them with very little effort.

I've been using Mercurial for most of my projects for over a year and a half now, have used git for a handful of projects, and have used bazaar for one (git and bazaar were chosen by others who started the projects). I have encountered nothing troubling (except for my own fumbling errors) ever.</comment>


Get a free Jawbone/Fitbit/Misfit/Withings device from @addappio - <AUTHOR> http://labs.addapp.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> You can read more on the press release: [http://addapp.pr.co/92748-addapp- labs-launches-to-better-und...](http://addapp.pr.co/92748-addapp-labs- launches-to-better-understand-how-consumers-use-data-from-wearable-devices)

This is not a scam but an actual program to help verify our data collection methods.

</comment><comment><USER2> too bad they don't have an Android app yet :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted it down. Thanks for your feedback.

<comment><USER2> thanks for listening. I'm already totally geeking out with a Fitbit flex and have given several other apps permission to its data. So I would love the opportunity to play with your stuff on Android</comment></comment></comment>


Inside Obama's Stealth Startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3046756/obama-and-his-geeks <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a be careful what you wish for:

lackluster privacy laws + conservative social agenda + plus top notch tech talent = Big Brother.</comment>


China Is Building a Robot Army of Model Workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601215/china-is-building-a-robot-army-of-model-workers/ <comment><USER2> >Wages in Shanghai have more than doubled in the past seven years, and the company that owns the factory, Cambridge Industries Group, faces fierce competition from increasingly high-tech operations in Germany, Japan, and the United States.

It seems we found a solution to the fabled race to the bottom that globalization was supposed to bring. Instead of competing through reduced wages and lax environmental standards, it seems that technology is the main arena of competition with technologically advanced nations being able to edge out those with lower wages. . .

Now we just need a solution for the massive unemployment this may produce.

<comment><USER3> It won't produce massive unemployment, we still have yet to conquest the universe. Even with the help of machines, there's lots of work to be done. If you feel otherwise you're just not thinking big enough. Or else machines really will become better generalists than humans, but after that we simply won't be in Kansas anymore and all conventional economic arguments become moot.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu 20.04: Welcome to the future, Linux LTS disciples - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/?p=1672493 <comment><USER2> I'm really interested in seeing how the Zsys management tool develops. The article claims that what Canonical brings to the table is "a solid background in producing GUIs that make tools like ZFS more accessible for users". Is that really the case? Or is that more the realm of desktop environments like GNOME?

<comment><USER3> No matter if it's true or not, I hope this will become a focuspoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They clearly were not paying attention to the snaps debacle. But they may turn out to be right, for bad reasons.</comment>