Socialize paid $625 to Jonathanscard - that's enough for an iPad - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/Socialize/status/102101017260335105

<comment><USER2> Socialize seems to be a pretty big contributor to this, what's their stake?

<comment><AUTHOR> Trying to make the world a better place. :)

And we just launched our social API and SDKs that add a layer of business intelligence to any app via a drop-in social platform. Think Google+ Circles meets Flurry SDK in any app. <http://www.GetSocialize.com>

<comment><USER2> Well good on you guys :)

I might take a look at this API, been looking for some good weekend things to play with.</comment></comment></comment>


Mosso Launches CloudFS -- Real Amazon S3 Competitor? - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/mosso-cloudfs-s3

<comment><USER2> We tried Mosso out for a while about a year and a half ago, we were not impressed - frequents outages and performance issues. Also, MySQL DB connectivity often dropped. They responded relatively quickly but outages were too frequent to justify staying with them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone mind sharing his experience working with Mosso? I am currently debating using it vs other cloud services (Amazon) or more conventional hosting (SoftLayer/RackSpace).

<comment><USER4> I've been a user of mosso's for 2 years. And quite honestly I would not recommend them. They do some things well (availability of support, fast servers), and do others surprisingly bad: ill-informed support techs, really odd clustering problems like two authoritative ftp servers for one domain in one recent case that no one there seems to have a clue how to fix, and usage (hit based) metering.

I hope they fix the problems, but for now, I wouldn't recommend them.

<comment><USER5> I'm in a similar boat to plusbryan. I would say that they're OK for basic, static site hosting. We use them for hosting free websites for some of our customers. Otherwise, S3 is still the gold standard. And since their costs are reasonable, why not just use the gold standard?</comment></comment></comment>


Supercharging Tyk API Management with our first ever round of funding - <AUTHOR> https://tyk.io/blog/supercharging-tyk-with-our-first-ever-round-of-funding/ <comment><USER2> What a huge difference from the standard corporate formal announcements.

That's HOW funding announcement should look like!</comment>


California should emulate Tokyo, where housing stayed ahead of population growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-14/california-affordable-housing-is-no-mystery-just-build-more <comment><USER2> I really like the idea of Japan's zoning laws. They have 12 zones nationwide, and they restrict by maximum allowable nuisance. Industry is considered the highest nussicance and low rise residential the lowest. You cannot build a business in a residential area, but you can build apartments in a commercial zone. I feel this opens up many more options for growth while maintaining the spirit of American zoning laws. Here is a good explanation:

[http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/04/japanese- zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

<comment><USER3> Japan also has an entirely different relationship with residential buildings and real estate than we do.

It's so foreign to me that I have a hard time even believing it and I can only vaguely describe it. But, effectively, houses don't appreciate in Japan and they don't like moving into houses other people have lived in before. It seems wasteful at first, but they also build very different types of homes. And, their homes are more optimized for the particular people living in them. And, the economy seems to greatly benefit from the adaptability this provides.

But, please do your own research. I have visited and seen it for myself but still have a hard time comprehending all the differences.

<comment><USER4> This sounds really fascinating--do you have any links or search terms to use to learn more about the differences in homes there? I'm particularly curious about the optimization for the people who live in the homes. What would drive that difference in attitude and behavior?

I've also heard that Japanese homes aren't built to last and that they get rebuilt rather frequently by Western standards, although I'm not sure how true that is.

<comment><USER5> They don't particularly like old things, and so a building built in the 1980s would be considered an old house.

As a result new buildings get built all the time and everything is nice and newly renovated everywhere you go, including the subways.

One great example is stepping into the Ginza subway line, which is the first subway line in Tokyo (circa maybe 1920s or 1930s), and comparing it to the dungeons of some older NYC metro stations or London's tubes.

<comment><USER6> Japan is fond of its old temples though.

<comment><USER7> Old temples yes, old temple _buildings_ \- not necessarily.

The country's most holy Shinto shrine at Ise is ceremonially torn down and rebuilt every 20 years.

Most other temples need parts of the building (like the roof) replaced every now and then, and have burned down a few times over the centuries.

There's really only a handful of temple buildings that have _parts_ that are more than 500 years old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here in Los Angeles we have some of the most overvalued real estate in America. a bungalow in the city can go for millions, and is often torn down and replaced by a gleaming white McMansion because renovation is slower and costlier than filing new papers with the city. We cant just build more housing because traditional neighborhoods will fight to the death in courts to prevent multi family housing from devaluing their property or worse, competing for their rental income. The large apartment complexes that do get built are divided between anyone who can affort 10k a month in rent and fees, and "lower income" applicants who pay a fraction of this but are also held to strict terms and conditions. You wind up with millionaires and single moms living in beachfront Santa Monica communities, while anyone with a regular office job often commutes 40-70 miles in from the valley. Its often said you dont quit your job in LA, you quit your commute.

new apartments built are not priced affordably because banks and investors want their interest back quickly and have promised surrounding neighborhoods they will price accordingly to keep out the riff raff. in turn, dilapidated apartment complexes from the 60's go for about the same rates because these property owners know there is no "better offer" in town.

this doesnt even cover the 73,000 homeless people in Los Angeles county we cant seem to find a place for because no beach city wants to house their own unsustainable numbers of homeless, and no desert community is within a radius of health and welfare services required by many transients.

Then there are the haters. people like the Aids Healthcare Foundation who ran a 6 month campaign to defeat city legislation for new affordable housing. Why? Mike Weinstein doesnt want any development to obstruct the view from his penthouse.

[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-aids- foundation-...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-aids-foundation- political-spending-20170221-story.html)

My husband and I live in LA and love it. but honestly, its bittersweet. We will never truly own anything more than a latte here.

<comment><USER9> Hmmm... If I may ask you: I'm considering moving to LA for a job in Venice/Culver city. Wondering if I can live somewhat closeby for a reasonable rent. I definitely don't want to commute more than 30 min each way :/.

Edit: The offer is "developer salary" so I assumed it would be OK for a rundown but safe rental somewhere closeby.

<comment><USER10> Even though Venice and Culver City are technically right next to each other the office jobs in Culver City, for the most part, are a few miles from where the Venice office jobs are (see here: [https://goo.gl/maps/963isPRWKmL2;](https://goo.gl/maps/963isPRWKmL2;) short distance, but traffic from/to the 405 can be pretty brutal at rush hour even over short distances).

Getting a 30-minute commute to Venice is going to be materially more expensive, but on a dev salary (assuming $100k-$150k) you should have no trouble affording a place. If you're working in downtown Culver City you'll have way more choices at all price points because you can live almost anywhere between downtown LA and the beach and still get there in under 30.

<comment><USER9> Thank you! That is very useful information:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please call your state legislators - Senator and Assemblymember - about SB 827, which will do more to accomplish this outcome than any land use bill in the last twenty years. A lot of homeowners are opposing the bill and we could use your voice.

[http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/](http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/)

<comment><USER12> I very much hope this bill goes through. The city I live in is a terrible mix of NIMBYism and corruption making it impossible to move an electrical outlet or put up a private awning, let along build anything on your property (have experience with all these attempted permits and more). The only thing that can stop this is the state completely overriding local zoning laws like this bill does. The state tried the carrot and many cities like mine ignored it. It's time for the stick.

<comment><USER13> Don't just hope. Join California YIMBY and contribute time and money to defeating NIMBYism. [https://cayimby.org](https://cayimby.org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No one gets the message in London. There should be high rise condo/apartment buildings like Manhattan, Hong Kong, Singapore, even Toronto, all over the place given the population but height restrictions persist so people live in cramped, miserable conditions. There are vested interest that make allowing this politically challenging, existing owners would see property prices plummet if this was allowed, and then there's some powerful people just block it for aesthetic reasons. Either way it can't continue without having an economic and innovation hit long term.

<comment><USER15> I'm not convinced London has a housing shortage. Or the UK for that matter. The problem is that anyone can buy a house in the UK and they've become investment vehicles. Also consider London has just reached its pre-WW2 population, and all the properties bombed most likely replaced by more efficient housing.

I found a study about supply and demand for housing, but am struggling to find it. There's a post here which seems credible enough, related to the topic:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com/londons-housing-non- shortag...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/londons-housing-non- shortage-a059593432b5)

<comment><USER16> > The problem is that anyone can buy a house in the UK and they've become > investment vehicles.

Doesn't that imply that there is a shortage?

<comment><USER15> If you're competing with the the whole world - sure. But I have a personal belief property is one of the things that shouldn't be so freely purchasable. Want to buy and own a property in the UK? Fine, be a UK citizen then.

Look at how Denmark do it:

"Unless you have lived in Denmark for a period of at least 5 years, you must obtain permission from the Danish Ministry of Justice (Justitsministeriet) to buy property. However, this restriction does not apply if you are an EU- citizen, and if the property is to be used as a permanent residence."

[https://international.kk.dk/artikel/buying- home](https://international.kk.dk/artikel/buying-home) [http://um.dk/en/travel-and-residence/family-and-legal- issues...](http://um.dk/en/travel-and-residence/family-and-legal-issues/real- property-purchase-in-denmark/)

Seems reasonable to me. Maybe stop shell corporations based in tax havens from owning property as well? Seems they benefit from the income while paying that the government doesn't even get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think culture helps to keep the house price low as well.

1\. They don't like secondhand homes, they rather rebuild it[1]. So houses are not a good investment vehicles.

2\. They values good business practices in housing. (I don't have any data to support). Few months ago I was finding a room in Tokyo, the agent told me people usually live in the same place for years without rent increased. It's not usual to raise the price because it's considered rude and it's something the yakuzas do. It's an entirely different story in Hong Kong where I came from. HK people almost always increase the price so much that people are forced to move every 2 years. AFAIK there is no rent control in both HK and Tokyo.

[1]: "the ratio of used homes circulating in the entire housing market remains below 15 percent, substantially smaller than in the United States and European countries." [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/12/26/national/japans...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/12/26/national/japans- glut-abandoned-homes-hard-sell-bargains-opportunity-knocks/)

<comment><USER18> /me has "owned" (mortgage) two single dwelling houses in Southern California and on his third house in the Tokyo area.

Another reason for general dislike of second hand houses is that these houses are poorly designed. Older houses in the Tokyo area (Kawasaki included), from even ten to fifteen years ago have have a raft of design problems from lack of insulation to using too low cost of materials. The first and third house was a bespoke build and I was met with bewildered architects when I specified designs that they considered appropriate only for Hokkaido (northern island that get cold air from Siberia). Other crazy things I had to make them modify was moving the fresh air intake vent away from the fuel cell generator, that doubles as hot water boiler which has a backup burner. They didn't seem to realize that a backup burner exists. There were a number of other mistakes that I pointed out that seemed to have left the builder in a puzzled state. I made my sales guy work for his pay. Walking around the new development area I'm in, I could point out any number of usability flaws that most of the house have. If these were missed, most likely a large number of technical flaws crept in as well.

The second house was second-hand. (ha!) Very bad decision under somewhat forced circumstances. Very cheap specc'd floors that scratched easily. Practically no insulation. Poor air control, with vents pulling in air directly from the outside with no filtration or pre-conditioning. One of the reasons for moving on.

And while I'm here, the first place we bought (place 0 in Japan) was a room in a mansion (aka an apartment). We bought this new, upgraded to durable floors. I was lucky to have been able to sell the place five years later for nearly the same price as I purchased it. Unlike California, the all buildings depreciate to nothing in 30 years. The HOA (home owners association) is only run professionally for the first 10 years. The next 10 years is a hand off to the residents. From what I now understand, while under professional management, the fees while high are spent well and banked for renovations to be done every decade. But the pattern is that after the second decade, under home owner control, the association votes to cut the fees. The association quickly runs out of money and the building falls into disrepair, accelerating the depreciation. The apartment becomes nearly worthless and difficult to sell, leaving people with 35 year mortgages under water. Nuts.

I've also been in rental apartments and they have been cheaply made.

Regarding rentals, I think the attitude is that the owner would rather deal with someone who is known to pay rather then having to deal with an unknown entity. It's a risk averse culture.

<comment><USER19> How did you develop the skills to spot these issues yourself? Just time living and investing in various places?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's too late for California. Either housing prices do come down considerably, and a lot of people have their futures ruined, or they don't come down considerably, and a lot of people have their futures ruined.

Theoretically massive inflation would be able to fix this, except that would screw over everyone who's using the US dollar outside of California.

<comment><USER21> Yep. I'm not an economist, but I've been watching this weird "urban inflation" trend too.

People in big cities, even though they don't produce more or better work than others, get paid a lot more to account for the housing bubble, essentially increasing their buying power tremendously compared to people living in smaller cities.

Imho we should give up on the idea of maintaining large cities as aesthetic monuments or something. It's bad enough for cities like London that have a decent population density, but places like LA where people just won't give up on the American suburbia model of housing is just insane.

Cities aren't just a place to hang out and look at pretty buildings, people need to live there, work and transport within reasonable cost and time constrains. It's a very practical issue that needs to be solved. Living in a big city isn't just a luxury, it's a need too for many people.

<comment> barry-cotter You're wrong. People in cities do produce more and better work than others. They're also easier to serve so more businesses are viable there.

Firms do not pay people more when rent is higher out of the kindness of their hearts, they do it because it's worth the greater expense to them, because the workers are more skilled and more productive. Some of those higher wages accrue to landlords.

Relevant link [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration)

<comment><USER21> Does a developer in SF really produce 500k of work while one in Nevada produces 80k? Would Google and Facebook pay up so much money if they were stationed in a European city? No they wouldn't. Cities provide more people because of their higher population densities. Some of the residents are world class experts. Most of them certainly aren't. Most of them aren't even very skilled. Companies pay more money because they have to, not because they want to. They have to be stationed in the area with the highest population density to have access to more workers. What if they had both high pop density _and_ low rents? How would that be bad in any way?

If you really believe in the "markets will fix it" rhetoric about workers wages (not to mention the wage=merit idea) then why don't you let the free market fix the housing bubble by allowing taller residential buildings? Right now, almost all of the extra wage ends up in the hand of land owners. That can be fixed, so the wages will actually reflect how much value the workers produce, not how exclusive the area they live in is and how much status they have.

<comment> barry-cotter I find myself in vigorous agreement with you. As far as I'm aware no one gets 500K without being a known quantity, worth it.

Companies pay more money because they have to, if they want to get the people everyone else also wants to hire. That's why the Steve Jobs wage suppression agreement happened. And then Facebook said hell no and wages rose, at companies that made enough per employee to pay the new market price.

High population density and low rents sounds like a great combination. If you know it a developed country that lasted please tell. I'd hold out more hope for high density and Georgist land value taxes so that the economic rents accrue to the government/citizenry not the property owners, insofar as it's rent, not a return on investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _One other reason that density might have been more politically acceptable in Japan is that houses are not used as a vehicle for middle-class wealth accumulation._

On the spot.

<comment><USER23> >One other reason that density might have been more politically acceptable in Japan is that houses are not used as a vehicle for middle-class wealth accumulation.

How do the Japanese build wealth, then? Buying a desirable home in a solid market is pretty much the only way for an average person earning the median wage to make it into the middle class.

<comment><USER24> The same way the Germans do, they save money.

Rising housing prices have played out the same across the Anglophone world. It's not sustainable as a means to get the lower classes into the middle class, because the higher prices rise the more debt they need to take on to join the game.

Housing is something people consume. It's durable, but so are cars and imagining them as being a gateway investment to the middle class because they will cost more in the future should be just as silly as for housing.

<comment><USER25> The house itself normally isn't appreciating; it's the land that does. People don't consume land (usually).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it's important to have a bit of perspective on this graph. While it includes the tail end of "the bubble", the vast majority of this graph documents a time that is pretty difficult to compare with any major city. After the bubble, real estate prices lost up to 80% of their value. It slowly crept back up and in the early 2000s there were signs of vigorous recovery, but in 2006 when the government saw prices going up again, they _restricted loans_. This stabilised prices. In the last decade, while the prices have gone up and down, the price index now is practically the same as it was in 2010.

There are a couple of other important factors. Between 1988 and 2013 (the part documented by the graph), the population of the country grew by only 5 million people. Tokyo's population grew from about 11 million to about 13 million in that time -- so it absorbed almost half of the total population increase of the entire country. Although I haven't looked, I'm willing to bet that Osaka absorbed the other half. So it's quite a bit easier to focus the government when all of your growth is in the same place.

Furthermore, if we look at the population increase and compare that to the household increases in the graph, something is pretty apparent. Population increased by 2 million and households increased by 2 million. What that means is that Tokyo was _overcrowded_ in 1988, with large numbers of people living in the same household. As new residences became available, they spread out. It's especially important to understand that in the early nineties, prices were getting _cheaper_ , so that made it easier for people to move.

So while building new residences is important, there are a whole host of other factors that led to Tokyo's success in this regard. Personally, I think the resolve to avoid real estate bubbles, even at the cost of economic growth is huge. One last thing I really need to point out because it's confusing for people who don't live in Japan: "Tokyo" usually refers to the _prefecture_ of Tokyo, not just the city. There are parts of Tokyo prefecture that are decidedly rural, so it is doubly difficult to compare it with cities in other countries.

<comment><USER27> If you want more data, see the chart in this article (sometimes behind paywall, so I'm linking archived version): [http://archive.is/oXNHv](http://archive.is/oXNHv)

The chart shows a comparison of increase in population vs increase in price, for four regions: San Francisco, London, "Tokyo", and the central district of Minato-ku. While the first three are vaguely defined since they could be either city limits or metropolitan areas, there is no such uncertainty about Minato-ku.

Minato had a much larger percentage population increase than SF or London but a much smaller percentage price increase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Meanwhile, rural places in Japan are being rapidly de-peopled by both urban migration and an aging population.

I read last year that some towns will actually GIVE foreigners a house if they promise to live there a certain numbers of years.

<comment><USER29> Not just in Japan either. There have been cases of crumbling historic villages in Italy promising very cheap housing provided that the buyer commits to renovating and living within a certain period.

I think stories like this couple well with one also from this week on HN:

      Why Cities Boom While Towns Struggle
      https://archive.is/9yDHx

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> California is bleeding something like 60,000 residents to Texas each year. That sounds like a big number.

[https://qz.com/1189388/conservative-californians-are- moving-...](https://qz.com/1189388/conservative-californians-are-moving-to- texas-for-the-home-prices-and-politics/)

<comment><USER31> That's not nearly fast enough. We can't possibly loose enough people. But, it's a good start. Ideally, we would have a mass evacuation! I'd leave too, but we have family and friends here, not to mention a good job.

<comment><USER32> I don't really see the reason for downvotes. I don't take his comment as hostile, but rather simply as a function of economics.

Suppose for a moment that everyone of the 7 billion people wanted to live in a single city. Taking it to the extreme. It doesn't work. Land prices would make everything unaffordable, there wouldn't be enough space to produce goods and provide space to live and work. The best thing in such a situation would be to say, let's have substantial people move away from this particular city, to live and work somewhere else where natural resources (land, what's on and under it) is abundant.

To me it seems pretty obvious that this is the position that some price cities find themselves in.

You can sort of look at a heat-map or height-map of population density. This map essentially expresses demand for that land, and that expresses the cost of the land. In that sense, population density to land can be viewed as interest rates to debt. The smartest thing to do in a debt situation is move high- interest debt to low-interest debt. Redistribute your debt to where it is cheap. Similarly, we ought to redistribute our demand for land to where it is cheap, which means moving people around. In that sense, the above comment makes sense to me.

I'm not advocating for some kind of forced migration or anything, but companies and governments should inform, educate and incentivise this redistribution in a soft manner. Introducing (progressive) land taxes is probably part of the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> IDK about some of this. When thinking about what policies we should have, we tend to overemphasize policies' effects on whatever we're we're looking to fix. A common trope is policing methods and crime rates.

For example, I've heard a lot of talk this past year about german housing policy with Berlin cited as the best example. It rarely mentions that Berlin's population peaked before the war, reunification and other things that aren't housing policy. I'm not saying that Tokyo's housing policies are not good, just that there's likely a lot of context to their successes.

Housing can be pretty complicated and nuanced. Policies don't translate well from one place to another. Where I live (dublin), house prices are effectively a derivative of bank policies. Whatever banks will loan the median person becomes the median house price. Now that we've had boom, bust & boom again... it's very easy to see how these two things track.

In a less supply constrained scenario I think bigger houses, not cheaper ones. Another big part of the story here is a near unanimous objection to development in general, more out of conservatism than NIMBYism. So, stasis biased.

Anyway, my point is that it's complicated. The dynamic in Dublin is different from Austin or Berlin, and policies exist within these contexts. It sounds like NIMBYism is a big factor in california. I imagine that the economic & population growth in these cities is another big factor.

<comment><USER34> Bigger houses by definition mean cheaper, at least in the city.

This is because a bunch of young people can get together and live together in this hypothetical bigger house.

Twice the size IS half the cost if twice as many people are living there.

<comment><USER35> It's bullshit that people who would prefer to live in studio or 1-bedroom apartments are forced to live 3–5 roommates to a house with all available rooms converted to bedrooms (for which the same land could easily fit several apartments) because the zoning doesn't match demand, and otherwise it's too expensive to stay anywhere within commute range. Especially bad when one of them wants to start a family but it's simply impossible because giving up space in a rent controlled unit makes the whole region entirely unaffordable.

<comment><USER36> Unfortunately, it's incredibly good politics to be for "real families" and against young single antisocial techies who want to live alone. One of the restrictions on multifamily construction is a minimum proportion of 2- and 3-bedroom units.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Not only is there enough housing, but the market calibrates it to be affordable. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6SbFlZMbU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6SbFlZMbU)

And there's enough space in the housing market to allow for ultra-precision housing alternatives like capsule hotels.

If you need to commute in, there's an astonishingly good public transit system.

The same youtube channel has an excellent multipart series on homelessness in Japan that's absolutely worth watching. Here's the episode on housing the homeless: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBPyN3LE65g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBPyN3LE65g)

</comment><comment><USER38> Everything in America should emulate Japan, pretty much.

<comment><USER39> Just not the oppressive gender norms, the work-life balance at mainstream employers, the level of direct political corruption, or the thousand other very real problems Japan has that are worse than in the US.

Let's not idealize foreign countries, please and thank you.

<comment><USER40> I agree that we shouldn't idealize.

As an American, I've lived in western Europe, eastern Europe and spent months in Japan. There are some things these places do worth idealizing.

Americans should travel more and replicate the best parts.

<comment><USER41> >Americans should travel more and replicate the best parts.

I hope you realize that the vast majority of the country isn't as privileged as we are when it comes to being able to afford to travel, or even to get time off in the first place.

<comment><USER39> I think this gives those of us who _do_ have that privilege an obligation to be responsible about the ways we speak and write about our experiences. For the majority of Americans who never make it to e.g. Japan, it makes a difference how they hear travelers speak in person, on TV, or in commenters on reddit (or even, _gasp_ , Hacker News).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Japan is so idiosyncratic that you cannot assume that any policy from there will behave similarly anywhere else (except in some cases Singapore)

<comment><USER27> When did "idiosyncratic" come to describe a country where people are polite and keep their society clean and running punctually?

Japan has little litter even though there are few trash cans in public.

In the NYC subway, there is a ton of litter in the tracks even near a trash can.

Maybe it is the West that is actually idiosyncratic?

<comment><USER43> Every culture by definition is idiosyncratic compared to others. Cultures are demarcated by their differences.

There is no objective measure by which individual aspects of one culture can be judged better than another, unless the majority of people from every culture involved in the comparison have agreed to certain principles, e.g. slavery is unacceptable.

The litter example simply illustrates a different cultural norm in a very homogenous society. The US is profoundly diverse and individualistic.

Besides, the NYC has litter, when Tokyo transit has men reading rape comics on the train. Japanese culture is not perfect, nor is any culture.

<comment><USER27> Men reading rape comics while keeping to themselves is still less of a nuisance than all the musicians, panhandlers, and people talking to themselves on the NYC subway.

Those who litter when there's a trash can nearby are not demonstrating individualism. They are demonstrating a profound LACK OF CONSCIENTIOUSNESS.

These same people vote too, you know. The nuts have taken over the nuthouse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I enjoyed this read a while back.

How I Used Eve Online to Predict the Great Recession (2013) (gamasutra.com) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16469619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16469619)

</comment><comment><USER45> What if I don't want to live in an apartment most of my life?

<comment><USER46> Earn more or move or commute longer.

<comment><USER47> Or vote and be politically active.

Ignoring that as a rational choice for many people already in expensive areas is just asking for your proposals to fail.

We very frequently talk about the economic value that could be produced by different housing actions, but policy is not purely determined by economic value. I know more people opposed to upzoning because they _like_ their yards and their space than because they're worried about their property values (denser cities in the US are very rarely _cheaper_ ).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What are some other cities which are in-demand but have plentiful housing. Berlin? Montréal?

<comment><USER49> Not sure what the definition of plentiful is but Chicago is a great city and housing is far less expensive than other cities of similar size and with lots of stuff to do/eat. Doesn't have mountains or coastal California weather, so you win some you lose some. Seasons are nice though.

<comment><USER50> And the residents complain of high property taxes. They may not realise the blessing.

<comment><USER49> Better than prop 13. Also, Illinois has lower state sales and income tax than California (not as low as other places though).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Seems that 'not in my back yard' is a big problem. So what about a rule that says, "If you build a high-density apartment you must financially compensate nearby residents"?

<comment><USER52> Nearby residents are already compensated. When you build a high density apartment, the value of land near it goes up.

<comment><USER51> The _value of the land_ goes up, but the potential _rental income_ goes down due to increase in supply. For house-owners the net change in property value will likely be positive, but for apartment-owners it might well be negative.

In any case, support for NIMBY suggests the current level of financial compensation is insufficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> which will only help the property developers IMHO

<comment><USER54> Let's also set limits on how much milk farmers can make.

Producing enough milk to fully satisfy demand only helps farmers.

<comment><USER53> you think developers aren't going to game the system big time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> "Sadly, the bill is already encountering opposition from homeowners' groups, which are no doubt eager to push up their property values."

My impression is that neighborhood groups aren't generally interested in raising property values, but rather in preserving the less-developed neighborhood in which they have invested and chosen to live.

<comment><USER56> I agree, it's more the "I got mine, screw everyone else" mentality.

<comment><USER57> A large influx of people into your area is almost guaranteed to lower your quality of life, either by increased crime, or just by increased congestion, increased noise, decreased property values, and possible demographic shifts that marginalize your culture.

To minimize these concerns in the way you do seems non-productive and can only lead to more polarization.

These types of initiatives stem from Agenda 21 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21) proponents that, while advocating many admirable things, tend to completely ignore the feelings of the populations they are intent on engineering a radically different future for.

I am saddened that the dream we all shared of allowing small towns to once again flourish, because knowledge workers could be located anywhere on the planet, are being quickly forgotten in favor of ultra-dense citiscapes.

<comment><USER58> This is the definition of "vaguely racist": "increased crime... and possible demographic shifts that marginalize your culture"

Don't want none of them other demographics moving here to increase the crime, and marginalize the culture.

<comment><USER59> . . . It wasn't, though? He could easily be talking about Midwesterners moving there, too. He never brought up race, and thinking "Increased crime rates!? Demographic shifts by [Anything can go here, try "Neoconservatives" or "Neoliberals" or "Social Conservatives" or "Fiscally Conservative Liberals"]??!? HE MUST BE THINKING ABOUT [RACE]!"

I think they're not the racist one here.

<comment><USER58> They could've been, but they weren't.

I wasn't calling it "explicitly racist", I was calling it "vaguely racist" because, while we all new what they were implying, They didn't come out and say it. Ergo "vaguely racist".

Nobody is talking about "neoconservative demographic shifts" causing problems in cities in this article. The demographic referred to is "poor people".

But please continue being intentionally obtuse for the purpose of calling me a racist.

<comment><USER59> > They could've been, but they weren't.

> I wasn't calling it "explicitly racist", I was calling it "vaguely racist" > because, while we all new what they were implying, They didn't come out and > say it. Ergo "vaguely racist".

You're saying that "poor people" can't include Caucasians and Asians, then?

Midwesterners are quite notable for being both neoconservatives and poor, along with (generally) being majority-white. He could have easily been referring to them. What made you associate "Poor people" and "Racist"? Poor people are a demographic.

<comment><USER60> > Midwesterners are quite notable for being both neoconservatives and poor

No, they aren't, especially the former.

<comment><USER59> They very much are - Reagan's loved and Cheney even moreso in the Midwest. Both of which are notable neocons. [0]

And economically, they're on average more poor than a lot of areas. See "County Level Poverty." [1] And if you're comparing wages between the two, Midwesterners make significantly less on average than those on the West Coast.

Although I was moreout giving an example and sticking with it for the sake of the main argument to begin with.

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

[1] [https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy- population/rur...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy- population/rural-poverty-well-being/geography-of-poverty.aspx)

<comment><USER61> Thanks, those obvious points really needed references. And come on... SF is the last place a Midwestern neocon would consider!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Supply that meets demand means prices come down... however, it.needs to be the right supply for the right demand. A bunch of high end housing doesn't make middle or low end housing cheaper.

<comment><USER63> If people who would be buying high-end housing are forced to buy lower-end housing because the supply is tight, then prices will be forced to go up everywhere.

<comment><USER64> That's been happening in Bay Area for last 20 years, folks buying lower-end and demolishing and doing a rebuild. Palo Alto/Menlo Park are just more local and visible to me, but I assume it's the same elsewhere gradually. Coming from a softer market back around 2000 it was crazy to get outbid on a starter home and see someone demolish it right away.</comment></comment></comment>


A16z: 16 Books We Read Winter 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2018/12/24/what-were-reading-winter-2018/ <comment><USER2> We were only _4 days_ into Winter when this was posted.</comment>


How to find most frequent item of an array? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@AmJustSam/how-to-find-most-frequent-item-of-an-array-12015df68c65 <comment><USER2> Hey Usama. Nice walkthrough for the uninitiated. It may be worth discussing the pros and cons of this implementation, however.

The algorithm you have described runs in O(n^2), or quadratic time. This means that if your array has length n, you perform n actions for every item in the array. This is fine for small arrays (9 actions for 3 items), but becomes problematic for larger arrays (100,000,000 actions for 10,000 items).

Compare that with the algorithm described in the first article you've mentioned [1]. This uses a map/hash/dictionary to store information about each unique item in the array and retrieve it (typically) in constant O(1) time instead of needing the inside loop to count matching items again. As a result, it is only necessary to perform one action for each item in the array, achieving O(n), or linear time. Now we perform 3 actions for an array of length 3, and 10,000 actions for an array of length 10,000 (10,000x times faster!).

Of course, this depends on how long each 'action' takes. For example, if we simplify the algorithm in your article, we might just be incrementing a variable. Consider that to be 1 time unit. The algorithm in [1] may need to perform some kind of hash on the array object taking 10 time units before also incrementing a variable, so each action in [1] might be considered to take 11 time units. For small arrays this might actually take more time. An array length of 3 gives 3 time units for your algorithm, and 33 for the algorithm in [1]. Once the array is large enough however, the algorithm in [1] will be superior, taking only 110,000 time units (10,000 * 11) for an array of length 10,000 compared to the 100,000,000 units for the algorithm in your article.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1053843/get-the- element-w...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1053843/get-the-element-with- the-highest-occurrence-in-an-array)</comment>


What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for? - <AUTHOR> http://superuser.com/questions/231273/what-are-the-windows-a-and-b-drives-used-for/231278 <comment><USER2> It's funny to talk about the 20 year old hackers who didn't ever have the experience of installing Word Perfect 5.x from 30-40 floppies, but let me tell you that those kids are going to feel just as old pretty soon. My daughter, who is about to turn one, is puzzled by why my Macbook Air doesn't do anything when she touches the screen. She doesn't recognize my dad's old Treo, which he gave her as a toy, as a phone, but will put a thin slab block up to her ear. We don't have cable at home, so she watches all her shows on Netflix and iTunes.

<comment><USER3> Sad that a 1 year old has "all her shows" to watch.

<comment><USER4> [Non-valuable contribution, removed]

Edit: I apologize for the rudeness of my comment. However, it is my understanding that the evidence available today points to things like TV being damaging to the development of the very young (1-3 years old)

<comment><USER2> Do you even have kids?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awww, that is an adorable question :)

I think in DefCon 18, Gordon "Fyodor" Lyon was talking about using Lua in Nmap. He said that the description mentioned that all of it and the doc could fit in a floppy disk.. And then he said "For the younger audience, a floppy disk is.." at which point the audience exploded in laughter.

I'm 26 now, but my oldest brother is 18 years older than me and almost all of us in the family are engineers so I had different technologies around the house. (Not old enough to see "drum memory", though).

</comment><comment><USER6> Also, even if you only had one physical floppy drive, it would still respond to A: and B:, albeit as split personalities. What I mean is that you could stick your programs disk in there and type A:EDITOR.EXE to run some editing program, and then go to save your document and type B:MYDOC.TXT as the filename, and DOS would know that you wanted to write this file to a different floppy, so it would day, "Insert disk for drive B and press enter", prompting you to swap the floppies. Then, when the editor program needed to access some of its files again, it would try to access, say, A:LIBRARY.OVL, and DOS would know that meant it was time to prompt the user to swap disks again.

<comment><USER7> At that time (okay, a little later, but there was some overlap), I was using RISC OS. Its disk format allowed for each disk to have a name, which would be used in fully qualified filenames (e.g. ADFS::MyData.$.Docs.Resume). The OS could then ask for the disk by name (MyData).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I got my first IBM PC in early 1982, IBM only offered single sided single density floppy drives with 160KB each.

But double sided drives were already available on the market. The only problem was that the PC BIOS and DOS didn't support the second side.

So I bought a PC with no floppy drives and picked up a couple of double sided drives at a local distributor for $300 each.

As I'd hoped, they worked fine as single sided drives too, so I was able to boot DOS. Then I got to work on supporting the other side.

It seemed a bit complicated to try to merge the two sides into a single FAT filesystem, so I wrote a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident program) that mapped the other two sides onto additional drive letters.

That turned out to be surprisingly easy. So the four sides on my two floppy drives were A:, B:, C:, and D: drives.

Later I got an awesome Tallgrass 10MB hard drive for only $5000, and that became my E: drive.

Now I knew my storage problems were over: I would never run out of space with that thing!

</comment><comment><USER9> I now officially christen this the "old guy thread of the day".

Back in my day, kid, we didn't have no stinking floppies for our PCs. All we had was cassette recorders, and we were happy to have 'em!

Reading this question took me down memory lane to doing a lot of PR#6. Couldn't remember if that command was for floppies or cassettes. Had to look it up. It was how we did I/O on the Apple II. As I remember, you changed the number (PR#3, PR#4, etc) based on the _physical slot_ the peripheral was plugged into. This was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and real men wore skirts.

<comment><USER10> If I remember correctly, "PR#6" was basically just a command that executed the code at $c600. Each peripheral card had a 256-byte address space which was mapped into $cx00 where x was the slot number. Slot 6 was the standard slot for the disk controller -- it may even have been wired in, in later machines. So "PR#6" basically executed the firmware boot loader for the floppy drive.

<comment><USER9> What I found weird was that I remembered the command, but not the technology it came from or exactly how I used it. So I'm Googling around trying to figure out when and why it was important. For some reason I remembered it as "Print #6".

Old age and forgetfulness is going to be really strange for a whole generation of computer nerds. So many different technologies, commands, and paradigms all jumbled up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A friend of my Father's was a mainframe guru, back in the day, and he told us about "cylinder" hard drives that would take several hours to power down because the torsional stress on them would get too high if slowed down too quickly. Also tape drives that were spinning so quickly they could be dangerous.

Sounds almost like heavy engineering!

<comment><USER12> I remember the time someone thought they'd save money by buying cheap paper for the high speed IBM 6400 line printer. The print head moved so fast it just shredded the paper into a fine dust that caked in every internal part. It sucked cleaning that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We're not very far away from "what is the blue 'Save' icon meant to be?" are we?

Kind of amazing really. Girlfriend's nephews are 6 and 9, pretty tech savvy (there's a lot in the house), but they had no idea what the slots in the front of their grandfather's computer were (and why should they?!).

<comment><USER14> The way things are going we will probably not have any Save buttons at all soon.

<comment><USER15> Maybe for certain applications we're used to saving in, but unless there are revolutionary changes in computing I'm betting that you'll be able to save in notepad for a long time coming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> OMG, i'm getting too old.

<comment><USER17> I came here to say that. In fact, bugger it, I don't care about originality! I'm going to say it too!

Oh gods, I'm so old.

<comment><USER18> I am only 27! Why is this happening?!

<comment><USER19> Just wait - in another two or three years, you will suddenly not be able to be trusted with meaningful architectural decisions, you will be looked down upon as too slow, and your years of knowledge will be ignored because clearly you don't have anything to offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Man, this question makes me feel old as hell--I'm 40, btw. It reminds me of the time when my friend's daughter asked what the car window handle was for. I was like, it rolls the windows up and down. She thought it was a new thing. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's pretty fun. I'm glad the highest voted reply on superuser wasn't snarky about the answer. This sort of reminds me of the "Who the hell is Paul McCartney?" thing on Twitter recently... which is an order of magnitude more irritating than a kid who never saw a floppy drive.

</comment><comment><USER22> The drive letter B: is also used by BartPE [1] as the default for its RAM disk. In fact, I think every time but one I encountered a Windows-era PC that had a B: drive it was a RAM disk, not a floppy drive.

[1] A bootable live Windows XP/Server 2003 environment. See [http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/](http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/).

<comment><USER23> A: and B: were more relevant when PCs didn't have hard drives. Back then usually the OS would be on A and your current game/app would be on B.

I still remember the first game that was soooo big it required both A _and_ B, meaning you to take the OS boot disk out (which you of course always forgot to put back in after you were done.)

Good thing I had a dad who soldered Philips' Apple ][ clone together when I was 2 so that I don't feel _that_ old for knowing this ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My first mass storage was a PhiDeck, a tape cassette drive that stored data digitally and that had motors to load and unload the heads and seek. It had a file system, of sorts, that fit in about 6K of RAM. Effective data rate was about 9600 bits/second, and it usually took 20-30 seconds to launch a program.

Primitive and slow as it was, it was still a vast improvement over audio cassettes.

Later, I wrote a software UART and interfaced my Z-80 system to a single Atari 810 disk drive. 96K of storage and tons faster. I got a lot of work done on that system.

<comment><USER25> One of my favorites memories is my dad trying to copy a BBC Model B compact audio cassette _without a cable_ ... speaker to microphone! He started it and crept out the room quietly closing the door behind him. It did not work.

<comment><USER26> I recall recording software onto audio tape from radio broadcasts, I think it was a regular BBC radio show. (If anyone remembers I'd love a reminder of the details.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In 2008 I got to play with an old oscilloscope/i486 hybrid beast with dual 5.25 inch floppy drives still in use at my physics lab. You could save the measurements to B while running the code off A. AFAIK it is still in use.

</comment><comment><USER27> For the rugrats among us: [http://imgur.com/bOdxEUW](http://imgur.com/bOdxEUW)

</comment><comment><USER28> When I bought a new computer in 2002, I specifically got one which still had a floppy drive, because I wanted to be sure I could play all my DOS games via boot disk [1].

DOSBox [2] was still in its infancy then, and the DOS emulation in Windows was...less than one hundred percent compatible with all the hardware tricks various DOS games used to squeeze the last ounce of performance out of the hardware. (In the DOS days, it was common practice for application programs, especially games, to directly deal with I/O ports, interrupts, DMA, etc.)

[1] A DOS boot disk is similar to a bootable Linux CD / DVD -- removable media containing an OS. In this case, you mainly use it to customize the loaded drivers on a per-game basis. Regardless of how much physical memory you have, in DOS only 640K is conveniently addressable [3], so it's very important to selectively load _only_ the drivers a specific game needs.

[2] [http://www.classicdosgames.com/interviews/peterveenstra.html](http://www.classicdosgames.com/interviews/peterveenstra.html)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_memory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_memory)

</comment><comment><USER29> Floppy DUO Imperial March:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHJOz_y9rZE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHJOz_y9rZE)

<comment><USER30> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enZ4P7Azxys](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enZ4P7Azxys)

Doctor Who on 8 floppies

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I found this really sad. I don't consider myself old, but I suppose I'm going to have to start at some point. Maybe this is it.

</comment><comment><USER32> I remember laughing at my instructor when he mentioned carrying a box of punch cards. Boy do I feel like the old timer now.

<comment><USER33> I spent a good bit of the summer of '89 writing C code to drive a tape punch for programming CNC machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I remember zipping the game on cca. 30 floppies at friend's place, then going home and trying to unzip. Of course 27th or so would be corrupted. Sometimes it took me 3-4 round trips to friend's place and back, to get the game transferred :)

BTW, does anyone remember having to enter no. of cylinders in BIOS to make the HDD work :)

</comment><comment><USER35> It's funny to think that only exposure folks have to floppy disks now is the look of "save" icons.

</comment><comment><USER12> I had to go digging for a 3.5" drive a couple months back because I found some floppies that had some college papers on them. I have a zip disk with some artwork, too. At one point I had a SCSI zip drive and an Adaptec controller for it, but I have no idea where they're at now.

<comment><USER36> Adaptec 2940 FTW!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Senility poll: Did you know the answer to this question?

<comment><USER38> You do realize that other people can't see your poll result right?

<comment><USER39> No

<comment><USER37> Nope. 7 yes so far!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> My first computer was an Atari 800. It had a cassette deck and a 5 1/4" disk drive. I spent a lot of my youth typing in BASIC games that were printed in magazines and books, then modifying them to learn how it worked. My first programming language...

When my parents brought home an IBM-compatible PC with an enormous _50 MB_ hard drive I could hardly believe my luck.

Anyway, I don't need this to feel old; my wife already does that. She was in middle school when I was in college, and asks things like, "What's Galaga?" But I suspect she does it on purpose about half the time now...

</comment><comment><USER41> My first PC didn't have a C: drive.

It had two 5.25" diskettes to load the systems.

<comment><USER42> Yup, me too. Put the DOS disk in start up the computer, then switch disks as you needed to to run programs. That was so fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> My dad worked for DEC in the 70's and 80's. When I was young he took us in and showed us a cabinet that had a bunch of spinning platters in it. They looked like 12" record albums, but they were light brown and made of metal. At least that's how I remember it, and I imagine they were the precursors to today's spinning hard disks.

My dad let my brother and I take a couple retired disks home. We tried to play frisbee once or twice with them, and then wisely decided that was probably a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER44> My first computer came with no drives, the tape drive was an optional accessory. Loading programs from tape instead of typing them into the basic was loads better. When I got my first PC I had a 3.5" (on B) and a 5.25" (on A) and a bunch of my friends kept coming over to have me copy their 5.25" disks to 3.5" disks and I was the cool kid on the block for a few months.

</comment><comment><USER45> And I've just noticed that the "save file" icon in word processors isn't a floppy disk as it used to be.

<comment><USER46> > _And I 've just noticed that the "save file" icon in word processors isn't a > floppy disk as it used to be._

Maybe the one you're using. But the "Save" icon in the most popular word processor is a 3.5" floppy disk: [http://i.imgur.com/WLFtT7A.png](http://i.imgur.com/WLFtT7A.png)

This is the latest version -- Word 2013.

<comment><USER45> ahaha thanks :) I checked on LibreOffice and naively assumed that anything else would have a more modern icon set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I've used floppy disks and tape recorders, but I'm a bit embarrassed that I never used punch cards.

</comment><comment><USER48> Seeing this made me smile. I haven't seen an A drive for ages now. I dont know about the times before 1998 where most people have a nostalgic memory of these, but they used to self corrupt like crazy all you had to fear was the "Do you want to format Drive A?"

<comment><USER49> Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,

System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,

Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,

Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:

Having reached the bottom line,

I took a floppy from the drawer.

Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command

But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore."

[http://badpets.net/Humor/Tech/NeverMore.html](http://badpets.net/Humor/Tech/NeverMore.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I had a Toshiba laptop once that came without any software floppies; instead at first boot you had to generate the installation floppies for windows 95 and MS Office. If I recall correctly it asked for something like 80 floppies. Nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER51> God I feel old. I'm getting flashbacks of a quarter mile sneakernet between my friend & my house where we transferred MP3s on a floppy disk with multi-disk zips.

</comment><comment><USER52> Luckily in Windows you can reassign drive letters in the Computer Management tool. I've reassigned my two optical drives to A: and B:.

</comment><comment><USER53> Seriously?

</comment><comment><USER54> TIL I am old.

</comment><comment><USER55> It just like talking about programming on punch card to Generation Y

</comment><comment><USER42> OH man. Knowing the answer to this makes me feel so old.

So, sooooo old.

</comment><comment><USER56> Are we that old? :(

</comment><comment><USER57> This comes out periodically.

</comment><comment><USER58> Oh man I am getting old :)

</comment><comment><USER59> Now I really feel old.

</comment><comment><USER60> FML I'm old

</comment><comment><USER61> I feel old.

</comment><comment><USER62> If I could, I'd start everyone off "learning" about computers by using an Apple ][+. It is an open enough environment to learn just about everything, and a restricted enough environment to encourage efficiency and elegant design. After that, kick 'em upstairs to something modern with a Lisp compiler and you've got 'em for life.</comment>


Wondering if you are getting a CR-48? Look for your zipcode here. - <AUTHOR> http://pastie.org/1366486

<comment><USER2> 3 shipped, and 6 already delivered... My town only has 30,000 people, so hopefully one will show up on my doorstep. Does anyone know why some were shipped Overnight and some by Ground?

More comprehensive tracker here (but w/o tracking numbers): <http://addicted- gamer.com/cr48-tracker/>

<comment><USER3> Any idea what the source of Addicted-Gamer's data is?

<comment><USER2> I can't be exactly sure, but it should be querying the UPS tracking API for reference numbers. These are assigned by the shipper (can be a description, customer name, or in this case sequential SKU blocks of 2000) so knowing the pattern would get you all of them.

Jey's guess (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1996388>) would be mostly correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Blah. Just as I convinced myself my app was lost in the flood and I wasn't getting one and your post keeps the painful hope alive. :P

Is Google sending warning emails yet that people have a package incoming or are they still going the surprise route? I'd imagine not everyone lives in an area where a package is safe on their doorstep. _shrug_

<comment><USER5> I was wondering the same thing. Unfortunately, the first day there was no email and it was sitting in an unmarked brown box all day. I hope that changes. I've had packages taken before, and I have to wonder if Google is keeping tabs on them, just in case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you think you have one headed your way - you can call UPS (1-800-742-5877) and track a shipment, speak the tracking number and then hit 0 to talk to an agent and tell them you want to confirm the address for your package. They will tell you where it's going.

<comment><USER7> I'm kinda concerned about the security angle on all of this.

You have people phoning up UPS finding out the addresses of where packages are going, and potentially writing down the address if it turns out not to be theirs.

You can see from the tracking results on UPS that UPS are leaving a lot of these on the steps of residences and thus if you setup the correct monitoring you now have the possibility of people running around to the houses of freshly delivered laptops to take them from the door step.

Additionally, where people have signed for them, their last name is listed and with the addition of the zip code from the original source this creates further concern. I've already been able to find out the identity of someone who received one who lives in my zipcode because he has an unusual last name. I just searched for their last name + zipcode on Google and could confirm he is a developer at Engine Yard.

The weak points in the chain are that UPS assumes you must be one of the authorized parties if you have a valid tracking number in hand, and so when you call up to enquire they take that as validation.

What this really comes down to is how these tracking numbers + zipcodes became public in the first place (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1996623>)

<comment><USER8> I don't think they say the address right away when you ask for it. Fairly certain they ask you to confirm your name and the address that's meant to be on the package and mention if it is the same or not. Regardless, this certainly raises a concern.

<comment><USER9> Just did it and the call went like this:

Me: I'd like to confirm the address of a package being sent to me.

Agent: Is it the package ending in the code XXXX?

Me: Yes

Agent: What is the address?

Me: The address is XXX XXXXX.

Agent: No, the address listed is YYY YYYYY.

Me: Thanks.

Beyond being disappointed it wasn't my address I have to say I was a bit surprised they let the address out that easily. She could have easily just said that was not the address it was shipped to.

<comment><USER10> same here.

Me: I want to verify the address.

Agent: One moment... The address is xyz.

Lol!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Called to check on the one listed in my zipcode. It's going to the house directly next door. Now I'm seeing the security issue with this...

<comment><USER12> while i agree that this tracking method isn't the best of ideas, I hardly think this merits a decree of a _security issue_. Any person could steal a package off a doorstep. Stealing mail and other packages not intended for you in a serious federal offense.

Besides all of that is the xmas season here in the U.S., and packages arrive to my apartment building in such quantities everyday, this time of year, that you could argue that XMAS itself is a 'security issue'... All these people, getting packages at close to the same day - all over the country! Imagine... /smugness

(oh and for those that down vote me for being smug, you should be down voting all the folks on this thread that keep calling this a security issue in the first place). It's not like you can subvert the package destination, and if you steal a physical object - you are definitely going to jail.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Source: <http://twitter.com/#!/kmobs/status/13787573671432192> (kmobs is an android hacker)

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe the first column contains the sender's reference number for the Cr48 packages? I.e., maybe someone generated this list by querying UPS using Google's UPS account number combined with knowledge of the format of the reference numbers (by looking at labels of delivered Cr48s)? </random guess>

<comment><USER2> I played around with the reference numbers, and it seems like Google sent out 3 batches:

AAC1XXXXXX (up to AAC1001982)

AAC2XXXXXX (up to AAC2002127)

AAC3XXXXXX (up to AAC3002115)

All of these turn up 6 pound packages sent within the past few days, with the earliest being the 9th.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> it looks like half of a list. Pretty uniform distribution for zipcodes from 00000-50000, very few 50000+?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, unfortunately for me as someone who lives in a 55xxx zipcode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sadly no international shipments. Yet?

Anybody from outside the US got a CR-48?

</comment><comment><USER17> There is one coming to my house!

I found two orders listed under my zipcode. I called UPS and asked to verify the address on each one. The customer service representative uncandidly gave up my (own!) address. Excited, I asked if the package is being delivered under my name or the name of my room mate. It is sufficient to say that now I'm jealous. I'm excited to tell him, "Dude, you're getting a Cr-48!"

The one thing that worries me is how easy it was to obtain the address information. Hopefully no one nearby tries to poach the package as it arrives.

</comment><comment><USER18> Dumb question, would Google not send an email to the people they are sending these too? I filled out that form when I saw it posted here days ago and promptly forgot about it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I received mine, but my zipcode is not on this list. Is this list for a different batch than the one mine arrived in? Mine was delivered early Friday morning (GMT-5).

</comment><comment><USER20> Zero to my part of SoMA in SF? Highly dubious, even if this is just one batch.

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems it's the slickdeals people that are behind these: <http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2459200>

The OP is just the last of the three batches sent out so far. The guy who made the addicted-gamer tracker hangs out there too [http://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.php?p=35270219&pos...](http://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.php?p=35270219&postcount=1773)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm heartbroken... :/

<comment><USER23> Two sent to my zipcode, neither of them mine. I feel like a kid who just found out there is no santa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great. There are two headed to my zip code. I think about a million people live in my zip code. Seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> The guy who discovered this list actually called up UPS and confirmed his name and address. Might want to try that in the morning.

<comment><USER24> Wow. He really wants to know. But all the pundits got theirs last week. I already know the scoop. It's a browser. It scrolls too slow. Google Docs. Nice rubber feel to the package. It has an SD drive. Be curious to see how you access it, and if you can copy data off the web with it, or is it really just a terminal. The whole fun of it was to create a wave. Not as much fun to be in the second or third wave.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I suppose it depends on your perspective. To me(college student) its a decent free laptop. :)

<comment><USER25> Yeah.. same with me, four of them headed to my zip code. Now the waiting game!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Two into my town (Nashua, NH). I have one.

I wish I could find out who the other is somehow.

</comment><comment><USER27> Two to my zip code, but we do have lots of Garmin employees here in town.

</comment><comment><USER28> From the back and forth on Twitter, this list is only from the 3rd batch of 2000 shipped out (on 12/10). Another batch of 2000 will go out Monday.

Has anybody heard a total number yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Heard a rumor of 60k. But I cannot back it up with any data or the source.

<comment><USER29> Heard the same thing, but yeah, it's a rumor, of course. [http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/12/08/report-60k-chrome-os- no...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/12/08/report-60k-chrome-os-notebooks-on- their-way-to-google-from-inventec)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not one person from WISCONSIN? What's with that? I'm a CISSP and CISM and I applied to evaluate the CR-48 from a security and usability perspective. So far, I'm not on the list :-(

<comment><USER30> I now see there are several in Wisconsin. My mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> 1 to my zip - 3 to my city. Unfortunately that city is Santa Clara, CA so I am sure I am not the only one who requested one.

Hopefully I'll find out early next week.

</comment><comment><USER32> One's headed to my zipcode. That's interesting because ours is a smallish town. However, there are quite a few IT people around (where both me and my wife works).

</comment><comment><USER33> Bah.

Just from I'm from Canada they think I'm slow, eh.

<comment><USER34> Yes, what a pity it's reserved to US citizens :/

<comment><USER35> Yet another reason why you should move to SF. :)

<comment><USER36> Or Lake Wobegon. S.F. ⊆ U.S

<comment><USER37> Since Lake Wobegon got left off the map, it might be hard to move there or get your Cr-48 delivered :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> One heading to my zip code, population ~45k, so my odds are probably better than 1:1000, particularly if signing up earlier helps your chances.

</comment><comment><USER39> None explicitly for my zipcode, but one to Hollywood CA with no zip listed, which is my zipcode. Well, we'll wait and see, won't we?

<comment><USER40> Me too, may the best man win.

<comment><USER41> Same here. I was looking to see if anyone had noticed that there was no zip code (I'm in '0028' in HW) specified for Hollywood.

...Wondering if there was anything specific that you guys specified on your app?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My girlfriend is worried about how google is going to own her soul (with all the tracking) if she ends up getting one. Lol.

</comment><comment><USER42> I just checked the list and found out I'm not getting one. Does anyone know how many are being shipped out in total?

</comment><comment><USER43> I called. I didn't get it but they did give out the address and name of the person it's going to. That's worrying.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious how a list of tracking numbers was obtained/derived. Anyone care to guess (or know)?

<comment><USER44> easy. with ups you can track zip/city to zip/city. thus they know what city and zip they are coming from thus they add your zip or city and wahlaa you have your results

<comment><USER7> How do you do that? I've just looked again on UPS customer tracking pages and their developer API pages and can't find any such search functionality.

Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Two comming to Stanford ... but I am sure 100s must have applied :(

</comment><comment><USER46> No one in my zip code is getting one. Hope the DB is wrong ;)

</comment><comment><USER47> My Zipcode is in there but I live near a University.

<comment><USER48> Hopefully not the same university as me

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Where are these packages being shipped from ?

<comment><USER50> Seems like they are all being shipped from LOUISVILLE, KY, US, according to some tracking numbers I looked up coming to Menlo Park.

<comment><USER51> That would be cool, seeing as one is headed to my ZIP and I'm a 45 minute drive from the louisville ups hub...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> one to centercity philly, dont like those odds

<comment><USER53> one to 19103 as well. many thousands of IT professionals in the city. we're sol brotha

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> anyone from India getting one? or they even shipping outside US ?

</comment><comment><USER55> I have to say, Im really waiting for that laptop to be useful. At the moment is a tiny step up in performance from my shitty non-ssd ubuntu netbook.

</comment><comment><USER56> GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

<comment><USER56> Sorry I mean it will be delivered on the 15th.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Despite the prerequisite of caring about the web on this site, I wish someone had explained what the Hell any of this meant.

-I didn't know what a "Cr-48" (note the lowercase "r") was. It's apparently the Chrome netbook Google is putting out.

And it seems they're giving away 5,000 for free to random addresses? This should be a news story, not a guessing game.

<comment><USER57> -1, Smart aleck?

So what if you don't like how I said it? Tell me I'm wrong about the original post, then tell me you're not lying to yourself. The link is cryptic, and to assume prerequisite knowledge of a non-headline event of the day is absurd.

<comment><USER58> What degree of knowledge should be assumed?

There's plenty on HN that I don't understand but I'm yet to come across anything that 30 seconds with Google couldn't explain.

The only knowledge that is a pre-requisite is how to find information on the internet.</comment></comment></comment>


iOS port of $1 Gesture Recognizer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chrismiles.info/2012/12/introducing-cmunistrokegesturerecognizer.html

<comment><USER2> Does this step on the unistroke patent that Xerox holds that they used to sue Palm over Graffiti?

<comment><USER3> Looks like that patent was invalidated in 2004. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)#Lawsuit>

<comment><USER4> Nope. Read the next sentence:

"Xerox appealed the ruling and won, obtaining $US 22.5 million in retrospective licensing fees. Palm and Xerox agreed to not sue each other for seven years over certain patents, without publicly specifying which patents."

<comment><USER5> Issued in 1997, so if everyone just ducks low and hides from Xerox for the next 5 years...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why was it called $1 Gesture Recognizer? On the original project page they don't mention this.

<comment><USER7> The name isn't all that obvious, but from what I recall of the original talk by Jake Wobbrock, he intended the recognizer to be very simple and easy to implement [edit: and computationally simple] (as opposed to HMMs or the like). This is alluded to in the pdf of the linked paper: "we present a "$1 recognizer" that is easy, cheap, and usable almost anywhere in about 100 lines of code."

<comment><USER8> It seems like it's mentioned in the paper already (see abstract). Probably not the best name, but it is pretty catchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great stuff!

I have this idea for a long time to use this gesture recognizer (at the time I found this implementation <https://github.com/preble/GLGestureRecognizer>) to create an App prototyping application.

Today, sketching is the fastest way, but it's very bad quality. Apps like AppCooker let you create better quality mockups but are much slower to use.

Imagine if you could just draw a T and a tableview would show up, same thing for buttons, navbars, etc.

Anyways, thanks for sharing and I'll let you know when I use it!

<comment><USER10> You should also check out the SILK project: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLQcW6SpJ88> by James Landay, now also at the University of Washington.</comment></comment>


In Groundbreaking Decision, Feds Say Hacking DRM to Fix Electronics Is Legal - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xw9bwd/1201-exemptions-right-to-repair <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18303560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18303560), where the article has more background info.

</comment><comment><USER3> I swear I misread this for a moment as "In Groundbreaking Decision, Feds say Hacking DRM to Fix ELECTIONS Is Legal" and I actually said "what the fuck" out-loud.

This is a good first step, but I think it has to go even further. Once a system is no longer officially supported you really should be able to do whatever you want with it.

I wonder how supporting certain features plays into this. For example, I own a WiiU, which was officially declared to be at its end of life in 2017 [0]. Although they still support its online features, that will only continue on for a few years. Once they shut down online services I won't be able to use it to play online. At that point I think I should be able to legally hack the device to setup my own server in order to continue playing online.

In fact, we've already seen this play out before: Nintendo killed off online support for the Wii a few years back and a community-supported solution sprung up to take its place [1]. I have no idea of its legality, but I think it's perfectly reasonable. There's actually a surprisingly vibrant online community of people still regularly playing Mario Kart Wii. Even cooler, there have been hundreds of custom tracks [2] created by passionate users that love the game.

Our current copyright laws are too focused on benefiting our corporate overlords and maximizing profits, usually at the peril of regular users. This might seem like a joke but I assure you I'm quite serious: I think internet memes give us a glimpse of what an ecosystem with fewer restrictions could look like. Everyone pretty much ignores copyright associated with memes and can create their own variations. That means there's a lot of crappy memes, but sometimes you get hilarious outcomes. I love Pepe The Frog, because he's taken on a life of his own, which is completely different from what the original creator intended. Its creator even tried to kill it off because he didn't like what it had become (and to be fair he has been depicted doing some incredibly horrible things), but the fans rejected his murder and continued to keep him alive.

Once something has been around long enough it becomes part of our culture, at which point I think the creator or copyright holder should no longer have exclusive control over it. Right now copyright lasts for way too long and I genuinely believe it's harmful for our society. If you're a really big fan of a series and you don't like the direction it's being taken in you should be able to fork off your own story. For example, I've read that Star Wars killed off its extended universe, to the dismay of many lifelong fans. Imagine if fans could fork off from the "official" story to keep the extended universe alive through their own content.

Forking a story to add you own twists or variations isn't anything new either. I've read tons of book which mix in aspects of historical mythology. There's no difference between historical myths and modern stories, except we've arbitrarily decided that we one is off limits until the author is dead.

[0] [https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/19/14313914/legend-of- zelda-b...](https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/19/14313914/legend-of-zelda-breath- of-the-wild-last-nintendo-game-for-wii-u)

[1] [https://www.polygon.com/2014/6/20/5775924/how-to-get-ds- wii-...](https://www.polygon.com/2014/6/20/5775924/how-to-get-ds-wii-online)

[2] [http://wiki.tockdom.com/wiki/List_of_Custom_Tracks](http://wiki.tockdom.com/wiki/List_of_Custom_Tracks)</comment>


Mortality rates drop sharply in parts of India, bucking coronavirus trend - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india-casualties/mortality-rates-drop-sharply-in-parts-of-india-bucking-coronavirus-trend-idUSKCN2260WM <comment><USER2> " Indian doctors, officials and crematorium employees suspect a drop in the number of road and rail accidents is a major factor."

<comment><USER3> Of course countries with more dangerous roads should expect larger drops during shut in. I wonder if this'll cause political agitation to create safer roads once this is all over.

<comment><USER4> The phrase "Never let a crisis go to waste" applies so well here.

This is the chance of the largest democracy and their people to demand better infrastructure, sanitary services from their civic bodies.

<comment><USER5> The current government's 2019 election manifesto was to spend $1.4 trillion on infrastructure by 2024. Sources - 1\. [https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/stocks/infra-power- stoc...](https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/stocks/infra-power-stocks-rise- after-bjp-announces-manifesto/story/335180.html) 2\. [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/india-bjp-releases- ma...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/india-bjp-releases-manifesto- upcoming-elections-190408072851526.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Complete lockdown implies very less movement of populace implies less cross transmission implies less Covid 19 patients implies less deaths due to Covid and otherwise. Not rocket science I presume..

</comment><comment><USER7> Given the lack of testing (and thus low confirmation numbers) that led to WILD speculation about how heat kills coronavirus, I will not believe a single word about how coronavirus is magically different in India.

There are plenty of other logical explanations for undercounting.

<comment><USER2> Read the article. It's referring to mortality from other causes (road accidents/rail accidents,etc)</comment></comment>


How to tax the rich - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/02/02/how-to-tax-the-rich <comment><USER2> The _effecitve_ marginal tax rate for the poor can be much higher than it is for the rich.

> the effective marginal tax rate when a person moves from the bottom to the > middle quintile is 1 - (15.4-12.9)/(12.6-2.2), or 76 percent.

[http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-effective- marginal...](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-effective-marginal-tax- rate.html)

If you believe in basic economic concepts like: 1) people react to incentives, 2) diminishing marginal utility of income, or that 3) perceived fairness is important for the functioning of the society, you should look at the effective marginal tax levels in different income categories and at least even it out and maybe add more to the richest.

Another way to increase taxes and level the playing field would be to remove loopholes in taxation with sweeping taxing reform. Combined with higher marginal tax rate for very high income individuals, Warren's proposal would probably generate even more income than $2.75 trillion over decade.

Almost all economists agree, that the best way to tax the rich is taxing the land and property. All taxation has some negative effects but property tax has least harm and would be net positive. From this perspective Sanders has the best proposal, but Warren's is also good.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Combined with higher marginal tax rate for very high income individuals

US economy has a non-negligible percentage of workers that are subject to windfall distributions - relatively low income for a long period and one excessively large payout upon success of some project. Book writers, movie industry, professional sports players, engineers at pre-IPO startups, real estate developers and everybody's favorites - hedge fund managers.

It's unrealistic to expect them to continue enjoying the same level of income every year, for many it's simply a one-time chance at retirement money.

Excessive taxation on such income without accounting for the previous (and future) years of low or no income seems unfair and will likely stall many long-term ventures.

We could also introduce a 99.9% tax on Powerball winnings, but what does that do to the long-term health of the lottery?

> the best way to tax the rich is taxing the land and property

In an economy where large shareholders of Apple are subject to such tax (through their US residency) but large shareholders of Samsung (who happen to be Korea residents) are not, aren't you providing a leg up to any foreign money? (The actual companies are irrelevant, could be Ford and Toyota, or Boeing and Airbus.) Foreign entrepreneurs based in Singapore or Monaco have more spare cash to fund and operate their companies and invest in R&D. In the long-haul does that make the US economy stronger?

Another issue is high-wealth but low-margin businesses. A family-owned supermarket chain might bring a wealth of >$50 mil, but their annual earnings on that might not be that outrageous. Under Warren's plan, they would effectively have to part with 2% of the supermarkets each year, not having enough cash on hands to pay the wealth tax bill. Is it a net win for the economy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://archive.fo/RiTLT](http://archive.fo/RiTLT)

</comment><comment><USER4> OP, did you read this, or just the title? Link = pay wall. Not helpful!

Taxing the rich tho is not a good idea because they will GO ELSEWHERE!

Anyone got a link that is not a paywall?

<comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/55xZSe](https://outline.com/55xZSe)

<comment><USER4> Thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Slack beats email, but still needs to get better - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11417726/slack-app-walt-mossberg-stewart-butterfield-interview <comment><USER2> What is this? More disguised marketing for slack?

Now it claims to beat email, which is a non-proprietary and decentralized protocol that is usable by just about anyone, without costs.

Reminds me of the silly hype behind Docker.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg: I Donated to Diaspora project - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/zuckerberg-interview/ <comment><USER2> _So I don't know, one thing that is personally a bit disheartening…. It bums me out that people immediately go to "You must be doing this to make money." Because that's just so different from the ethos of the company. It is so different from how we actually think about stuff that you feel so misunderstood._

It's pretty sad that people think that someone should or ever would run a huge operation without money being a major factor, and it's even more sad and also insidious that Mark is playing along with this fallacy himself.

<comment><USER3> Money can be a major concern to a huge operation without being its primary focus. Money is a big deal for the Red Cross, but the Red Cross doesn't exist to make money.

<comment><USER4> The Red Cross is a non-profit.

facebook has a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value:

       Whereas for-profit organizations exist to earn and
       re-distribute taxable wealth to employees and
       shareholders, the nonprofit corporation exists solely to
       provide programs and services that are of self-benefit.

<comment><USER5> No, it has a legal obligation to do what (the majority of) its shareholders say. If they tell it to dance a jig and give all its assets to the Flat Earth Society, it's obliged.

Maximizing shareholder value in the way that's usually meant is a business school doctrine, not a legal doctrine. (Edit: on second thought, it is _a_ legal doctrine, just not _the_ legal doctrine.) See, for example, <http://www.virginialawbusrev.org/VLBR3-1pdfs/Stout.pdf> :

" _Dodge v. Ford_ is a mistake, a judicial "sport," a doctrinal oddity largely irrelevant to corporate law and corporate practice. What is more, courts and legislatures alike treat it as irrelevant. […] Only laypersons and (more disturbingly) many law professors continue to rely on _Dodge v. Ford_."

<comment><USER4> If they go public as expected, I'm doubting many equity holders will be interested in a jig.

I stand by my observation that a non-profit is poor evidence for the assertion "Money can be a major concern to a huge operation without being its primary focus"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading his responses, he doesn't come off as the money-hungry psychopath that he was claimed to be. Either he knows how to hide his agenda very well, or, well, he's just your usual young founder.

<comment><USER7> No majorly successful founder-CEO is "in it for the money." If he wanted to just buy Lamborghinis and penthouses, he would have sold the company for $1 billion several years ago.

Anyone like Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Ellison, etc. are in it for the power, megalomania, and manifest destiny -- not for the money.

<comment><USER8> The 11 Companies That Tried To Buy Facebook

[http://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that- ever-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/all-the-companies-that-ever-tried- to-buy-facebook-2010-5)

<comment><USER9> Why does image 15 of the slide show have a picture of Shaq and Tim Duncan?

<comment><USER10> SHAQ ATTACK!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He's probably one of the people who donated 2k for a box, pre-installed, just to study it.

I like this move regardless. it's showing his personality, great PR story too.

</comment><comment><USER12> Diaspora needs to be the Dropbox for Facebook (plus any other social network). They need to launch as the diaspora facebook app. P2P with just your friends. The abundance of legitimate uses provides a legal shield that will allow all kinds of files to be traded freely and you're carving out a niche that facebook can't compete with.

</comment><comment><USER13> Just like how Apple's iAd initiative allowed Google to close the AdMob acquisition, Diaspora will inadvertently give an outlet for pundits looking for a privacy/open alternative to Facebook, giving them more flexibility to be aggressive in their growth strategy. Not to mention it makes him look generous.

It's a brilliant move.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's great to hear, but I would be happier if he had said that he wants Facebook to be able to interoperate smoothly with Diaspora (assuming Diaspora goes well), and that he's willing to make that happen.

</comment><comment><USER15> It all just sounds like:

"I'm not the bad guy; see? See? This donation proves it."

"I'm just like the Diaspora devs. I'm a hip young hacker too! I'm just like them! I'm a good guy too."

"Daww, aren't they the cutest things? Making either what I already found wouldn't work, or what did work but what I've already done better."

It is cool that he's donated to the project. That said, his responses in the interview just come across as posturing, self-promoting, and some light FUD apropos Diaspora. Not terribly convinced here.

</comment><comment><USER16> One page view of the whole article:

[http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/zuckerberg- interview/...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/zuckerberg- interview/all/1)

</comment><comment><USER17> I saw this and wondered if my nutty conspiracy theory might be true.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1345430>

But reading the interview I don't get that kind of vibe. Which is really too bad because I thought he had real super-villain potential.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's not that crazy. Some companies thrive with competition. Microsoft enjoys having apple as competition and vice-versa. Microsoft bailed apple out a little over a decade ago for that exact reason.

Zuckerberg is very competitive. I'm sure he wants the competition to step up and give him a run for his money.

<comment><USER19> _Microsoft enjoys having apple as competition and vice-versa. Microsoft bailed apple out a little over a decade ago for that exact reason._

No, Microsoft "invested" in Apple to settle the potential multi-billion dollar lawsuit Apple was threatening to file: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess it would be a public outcry if they came out and said it is in their interest to have lower privacy to compete in Twitter like real time search and with Google.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Even if it's true, stating it in an interview like this just comes off as trying to sound cool.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, a better answer to the asked question would have been "Sorry, I'd really like to comment, but I can't without sounding cool."</comment></comment>


Surely, all alleged rapists get this attention by British police - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/08/16/foreign-embassy-julian-assange-sovereignty.html

<comment><USER2> Nice editorializing.

But yes: I would expect the Met Police to not let off someone they want to arrest just because they're hiding in an embassy, and further to sanction that embassy if they let a non-diplomatic person take refuge there.

Presumably you have not the slightest whiff of evidence to prove otherwise.</comment>


Categories of Optics (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.00738 <comment><USER2> Note that "optics" here is in functional programming (or rather, category theory) sense, not in physics sense.

<comment><USER3> E.g in Kotlin: [https://arrow-kt.io/docs/0.10/optics/lens/](https://arrow- kt.io/docs/0.10/optics/lens/)</comment></comment>