AI tech generates entire bodies of people who don't exist - <AUTHOR> https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/ai-tech-generates-entire-bodies-of-people-who-don-t-exist-1.4405165 <comment><USER2> It's fascinating how in the 80s and 90s we imagined virtual worlds being populated by 3D graphics built on modeled / digitized wireframes — and then this technology comes out of nowhere in the past decade. The holodeck seemed so implausible in its ability to just synthesize things. Doesn't seem so implausible anymore. "Computer: Sherlock Holmes, in his study, speaking with Albert Einstein."

<comment><USER3> Stop peddling meaningless hype. Current 3D rendering technology is lightyears ahead[1] of these AI toys and you can trivially parametrize it. Many games already do. So if you want to generate people, _you already can do that_ while having full control, instead of some glitchy sliders.

Something genuinely useful might, perhaps, be achieved by applying GANs to parameters of those 3D models to allow easier customization, but I haven't seen any work in that direction.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ9mb3Jylb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ9mb3Jylb0)

<comment><USER4> > Stop peddling meaningless hype.

Your comment has value, but your tone is unnecessarily harsh. Would you talk to a coworker like this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While AI models might replace catalogue models for small labels that are starting out (maybe) and for e-commerce companies (definitely). I highly doubt it that they will replace real models for large companies and fashion boutiques now or ever. Because what people (women _and_ men) are buying is aspiration wrapped in dead plant fibers. The reason why I buy a dress from Hervé Leger is because I want to look like old school Crawford making body-con a thing in the '90s [https://media.glamour.com/photos/56959302d9dab9ff41b2a79b/ma...](https://media.glamour.com/photos/56959302d9dab9ff41b2a79b/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/fashion-2015-09-cindy- crawford-black-herve-leger-dress-1996-main.jpg) and make the painful process of getting into that shape and look seem "easy" while doing it.

Fashion isn't about looking good in of itself. It's about social proof-of- work. Knowing what to wear and pulling it off isn't easy. It's the raison d'être of the multi-billion dollar fashion and fitness industries. Women eat grass all day everyday and go on ridiculous juice cleanses while contorting their body into shapes that would put a pretzel to shame. If the world endures so much pain to look effortlessly good, Why should manufacturers be allowed to forego the pain? If the root of aspiration is making the impossible look like a breeze, then why would anyone want to buy from a computer generated perfect model that never had to feel the pull of a difficult stretch and stare in the mirror with guilty eyes?

The suspension of disbelief necessary for the social economy to function crumbled as soon as something is too perfect. Like Instagram photos. It's not cool to slap on a filter anymore and stage a perfect photo. It's too easy now. Just like Prisma was. What's cool is to put in the work and make something imperfect so that everyone knows that you put in the effort and looked unflappably blasé while doing it.

Most models that are hired today are hired partly on their social presence. Having an audience, even a micro-audience, is essential for getting high paid gigs, because brands aren't just selling the look; they're selling the whole package associated with the look. Women like to buy from other women (and men like James Charles) whom they can aspire to. Tweens and teens want to look like the models on tik-tok. Young-adults and grown women want to look like their favorite YouTuber and Instagram celeb. They all want to participate in making something cool happen with their friends.

All of this and more is intrinsically social and human.

All of this and more means that as long as humans buy from other humans, brands will hire models to appeal to what's most human; sexy, sexy crazy- making envy.

<comment><USER6> Another vote for agree and disagree.

Take for example Japan - the land of anime girls on every piece of advertising. How much would the demand for human models expand if illustrated characters were not an alternative?

There's a scarcity in the type of human beauty that's sought after by the fashion industry. What if that scarcity didn't exist?

If people grow up with this new economic model of beauty and scarcity, maybe it would change the landscape of fashion entirely.

<comment><USER7> I'm posting this message from a local train in rural japan. The sides are plastered with ads but nowhere where i look at can i see anime girls.

While i know few instances where they exist, that's just not the reality in japan. Akihabara is as much of a japan as Silicon Valley is Usa. At certain level yes but on the other hand not at all.

<comment><USER6> I am Japanese. It was hyperbolic but not that much.

<comment><USER7> It was pretty damn hyperbolic. I seriously haven't seen that much of an anime advertisements anywhere except near konbinis and stores related to them.

There might be an collaboration with some anime and product once in a while but from my experience (and this is an experience of an foreigner living in japan) it's far from norm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this really generating anything new or is it essentially just morphing between existing photos that it's been trained on?

It would be interesting to take some of these GAN demos and write a utility where for each output, have it find the closest-matching training input, and see how similar it is.

<comment><USER9> Typically these animations that look like morphings are generated by auto- encoders. Contrary to automatically generated morphings, you'll notice that all intermediate person is realistic.

I don't think GAN work that way (I haven't followed it last year though). My understanding is that a GAN simply tries to determine if an image is generated or authentic. I suppose they used one there.

One way to do what you propose would be to plot all the training pictures in the kernel space of the autoencoder and match the closest one to the generated picture.

<comment><USER10> The intermediates are not realistic. There are many artifacts and they are obscured by the small, lossy video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm sure this could have applications in porn as well. Want to cater to someone's specific kink? Just generate it.

<comment><USER12> I do wonder if we'll ever reach a liberal enough society to be OK with machine-generated porn of all types, especially those taboo or illegal now (child pornography, sadism, zoophilia, etc). I could foresee it being banned before it even gets commercialized, which in my opinion would be unfortunate because I could see it as the methadone of porn to the "real stuff's" heroin.

<comment><USER13> That's already illegal in the US:[0]

> Child pornography under federal law is defined as any visual depiction of > sexually explicit conduct involving a minor (someone under 18 years of age). > Visual depictions include photographs, videos, digital or computer generated > images indistinguishable from an actual minor, and images created, adapted, > or modified, but appear to depict an identifiable, actual minor.

But that's not so in Japan. So one ought take care when torrenting Japanese films in the US.

0) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_the_United_States#Definition_of_child_pornography_under_federal_law)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> would this mean that outside of runway models, you wouldn't need models to showcase your clothing anymore since you can just "wrap" your clothes over these AI humans?

<comment><USER15> Exactly. If you're Gap and have a lineup with thousands of articles of clothing, why would you go through the trouble of procuring models? You have to deal with modeling agencies, photographers, set managers, etc... When the AI gets good enough, it will be even better than the alternative. It will serve ads showing only your body type. Maybe the models will even have....your face.

<comment><USER16> It could lead to more than just putting casual models out of work. Fewer stylists and designers would be needed.

Let the AI generate the color patterns (sticking with Gap as an example, it might retain their chosen /size as constraints) and boom, on demand styling

<comment><USER17> Not to mention you wouldn't need photoshop anymore to give the models unrealistic proportions. Adopt this system and proudly declare that you don't photoshop the models! Like fat-free soda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They can use this technology to generate a model to fit a particular user profile. Filter bubbles are going to get even better! Or maybe they can ask user to upload his photo and feed that as a prior to the model so it can generate visuals of that person wearing different dresses. That would be cool!

<comment><USER19> That would be neat. Imagine going to a site, adding some photos of yourself and seeing all the clothes as they would look on you based on your actual dimensions. You'd never have to wonder if something would look good on you. I imagine this would save a ton of shipping costs on returns.

<comment><USER20> The AI showed here is not even a step in that direction. If you want photo- realistic images of how a piece of clothing would look on your body you need:

\- very accurate measurements of your body

\- a very accurate representation of the materials used in that piece of clothing, including weight, tensile strength etc.

\- a very accurate physics simulation matching the materials to your body measurements

The technology showcased here does nothing similar. It could perhaps generate pictures of what someone who looks sort of similar to your general body shape, as seen in your pictures, looks in clothes. It would be no better than what you currently have: look at the picture, and try to guess how well that fits your actual body.

Even worse, you would completely miss details like "the material is very stretchy, it looks good on the model's abs but it might look bad on my belly fat" because the AI would NOT be doing a simulation of how that clothing actually fits a human body - it's always producing an idealized simulation.

Edit: and to make this clear, I'm not saying that "the AI can't do that _yet_ ". I'm saying that the technique they are using can't achieve the goal you are talking about. There is nowhere near enough detail in pictures of clothing to get the kind of simulation you are looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Amazing! This pretty much enables clothing brands to generate extremely targeted ads on the fly. Models can have similar body shape, hair style, skin colour to the user. Based on past photos the advertiser can figure out preferred colours, patterns and possibly even styles.

<comment><USER22> "Mirrors" in a store display that shows the clothes on "you". And conveniently adjusts your figure...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This makes me think about descartes' devil, if in such a short time we are able to generate fake bodies. What if we could generate fake people (not necessarily conscious but behaving as if they are.) in the future.

and with enough advances in brain/computer interfaces one could live a whole life without meeting a real human . In fact, in that case, one wouldn't even need accurate models since there would be no baseline to compare to.

Or maybe, we could implement surgical lenses that applies a filter on other people generating a fake person.

You can basically, eliminate _ism(s) in the workplace by making everyone look and sound the same.

People can pay to make their images in others' eyes different. Or one can pay to make their spouse look like a their true love in their eyes.

</comment><comment><USER24> Super interesting. How soon does this tech become the next 6-7 figure instagram start? Curious if anyone can take this soon to build a following around a fake beautiful person doing fake interesting things.

<comment><USER25> They are not something new, they've been in the news in the last 5 years. I'm talking about GANs. Their 'father' Ian Goodfellow, has been recently poached by Apple from Google. Even NVIDIA is into GANs [1]. Thousands of papers have been written on the topic [2].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOxxPcy5Gr4&t=56s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOxxPcy5Gr4&t=56s)

[2] [http://www.arxiv- sanity.com/search?q=generative+adversarial+...](http://www.arxiv- sanity.com/search?q=generative+adversarial+networks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I never trust these unless they show the generated images next to the nearest images in the training set. I have a strong suspicion that most just end up being training set picks. Which invalidates the claim that these people/models/whatever do not exist.

</comment><comment><USER27> One wonders if the people whose photos were used to build this system were compensated appropriately for their contribution. Something tells me that royalties were not discussed.

Uncompensated, or grossly under-compensated, use of personal data for AI systems is a serious issue that one no one seems to want to address.

<comment><USER28> I think that every time I see these AI people generators. Do they release their training sets of images, or is there even a way to check?

<comment><USER29> I'm sure some lawyer will get the list in discovery the first time it comes a bit close to a model's look. I do wonder if they have the list, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is useful to generate models for clothing shop, or new fashion models.

More general: I'm not surprised to see some day, one AI bot could automatically register a Twitter account, and have "real" conversations there. One day, i might retweet their tweets, too.

<comment><USER31> Some day more and more movies will have virtual actors, possibly licensing physical/voice tracts from known stars of the past. I would expect also virtual music bands to be created as such.

<comment><USER19> Or maybe they'll sort through all of the publicly available voice data for any actor and start talking and sounding exactly like them. No need for any actors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I always wonder about their use as movie extras. Does anyone here know what's happening in the realm of movie-making? I had friends who did that as a lark, but there were pay minimums, so I imagine it's a substantial expense to studios.

<comment><USER33> Many crowd scenes are full CGI (can't tell at a distance) or composites of many shots of smaller crowds stitched together.

</comment></comment><comment> alok-g News previously posted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19806373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19806373)

</comment><comment><USER34> I'll bet one could use GANs now to generate high res textures for 3D models. Say for video games or other 3D renders. In various styles too.

BRB next startup idea.

<comment><USER35> This has already happened to some degree. The technique is so easy, kids out there are using it to immediately renovate old games overnight [https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18311287/ai-upscaling- alg...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18311287/ai-upscaling-algorithms- video-games-mods-modding-esrgan-gigapixel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The Stones nailed this in 1967 with "2000 Man":

Well my wife still respects me I really misused her I am having an affair With a random computer

</comment><comment><USER37> My arch enemy; tiny low res thumbnails strikes again!

<comment><USER37> Although there is one higher res image available, which is better than usual. Of course it's high enough res to show that there's visible artifacting. But this is pretty impressive.

I wonder if an easy hack would be to train a second separate neural network to clean up the kind of artifacting that you get out of the first neural network...

<comment><USER38> My understanding is that this is exactly how these images are generated. One network makes the image, and another tries to find flaws... They both get better together.

Here's the first 2 Google results for "GAN" meaning "Generative Adversarial Network"

[https://skymind.ai/wiki/generative-adversarial-network- gan](https://skymind.ai/wiki/generative-adversarial-network-gan)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_netwo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This would have marketing value if the network could somehow generate the person wearing a particular clothing.

</comment><comment><USER40> Maybe someday instead of seeing models in a catalog I could see renderings of myself in the clothing?

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/](https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/) has done that for a while...

<comment><USER41> Even with complete bodies? AFAIK, your link is only heads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> On the importance of language: generating "entire bodies" is a different class of problem then generating images of bodies

<comment><USER43> The title is awkwardly worded, but I don't think it's so unclear. If the people don't exist then neither do the bodies.</comment></comment>


Microsoft enjoyed 60% profit growth in 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/28/technology/Microsoft_earnings/

<comment><USER2> "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated" -Microsoft</comment>


Ask HN: How can I make a custom dumb phone? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm looking for any tips or pointers to resources I could use for designing a custom flip/slider cell phone. I want it to be able to make calls, exchange texts, and (maybe) run simple apps that access the internet.
My basic motivation is: I much prefer small phones that have actual buttons over the ubiquitous large rectangles with touch screens of today's world. Unfortunately, phones like that that are available today either are a) too old and use outdated networks, b) new but seem like they have awfulness engineered into the UI as a feature to push people towards smartphones. None of them seem even remotely hackable, because they're all proprietary. The new open phone OSes (like pinephone) are encouraging, but everything still seems to be pretty firmly entrenched in the smartphone paradigm, and don't run on semi-dumb phones.
I've hacked a bit on arduinos and raspberry pis, so I could figure out how to wire up a pi with a 4G modem with a battery and a screen. The problem is: it would be huge and clunky, and I haven't found a 'maker' friendly phone keyboard or slider/flipper mechanism.
So.. my question for you all is: - how would I begin prototyping the hardware involved?
-- OR -- - how would I go about taking a relatively new flip/slider phone and making it run my own OS instead of whatever proprietary code it came with? -- OR -- any other suggestions?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Take a look here for an epic build:

[http://justine-haupt.com/rotarycellphone/](http://justine- haupt.com/rotarycellphone/)

No SMS, no internet, but it shows that it is possible if you're dedicated enough.

Edit: See also these Arduino shields:

[https://www.adafruit.com/category/867](https://www.adafruit.com/category/867)

One walk-through of using one:

[https://learn.adafruit.com/arduin-o-phone-arduino-powered- di...](https://learn.adafruit.com/arduin-o-phone-arduino-powered-diy- cellphone)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links! That rotary phone is pretty awesome.

I have poked around on those arduino shields links before - definitely the route I would go. I was more looking for ideas about how to tie it all together in a single (small) unit, and maybe that rotary phone posting will give me some ideas. So thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't it be more efficient and more convenient to get a dumb-phone or flip- phone that was made by the nokia or motorola (or other) company back in the early 2000s (in the pre-iphone era)?

Some of those had internet access, usually just a browser.

As for the OS, if I remember correctly, some were able to be 'rooted' and another OS installed.

There's certainly a lot of internet delving required, which will make it a very interesting project. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> The main problem is that those old phones use networks that are discontinued or use signals that are seemingly unable to penetrate some common types of buildings.

At least, I think that's what's happening. I've had a number of older phones recently, and they would tend to have terrible service in the middle of the city, and absolutely no service inside a lot of buildings, especially office buildings or basements - both places where most people had full service.

<comment><USER4> Would the revised Nokia 3310 work?

[https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-3310](https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-3310)

It's basically an old style Nokia rebuilt for the modern era.</comment></comment></comment>


US Government Is Building a 'Media Influence Database' to Track Journalists - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/homeland-security-wants-to-build-an-online-media-influe-1825060190 <comment><USER2> I don't think this is as sinister as it can be made out to be, or at least, I don't think this is a signal that things are becoming _more_ sinister than they already were. It should be well known that this is one of the major things intelligence agencies like to track. It's hard to imagine that this wasn't part of the purpose of the original ORACLE contract; at this point it is a mystery to me why they need to contract externally for this, but I guess there's a bit more to it than is reported here.

This is part of what they mean when they say PSY-OPS. In order to conduct the op, you have to select [an] asset[s]. In order to select [an] asset[s] you need to have some idea of which potential assets you can develop, and whether or not they will be helpful.

From a policy perspective, I'm not sure operations like this should be permitted, but the mandate is there, and it has been there for decades by now. It is not unreasonable for them to request resources to fulfill that mandate.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is no good reason for anybody to be doing this. I used to give the benefit of the doubt whenever a new action was taken by the government that seemed to have an exploitable loophole; but I've learned that if a regulation or agency _can_ be weaponized and exploited, it will be.

So to paraphrase George R.R. Martin, what's the worst reason that they could have to wanting to do this? Well, they likely want to stifle the voices of whoever they feel is opposing their power, or to map out the relationships between people in the media who make up the political left. Then, they may attempt to harass them, get them fired from their jobs, buy the organizations supporting them, and so forth. Or they may try to find some point of disagreement among them to turn them against each other.

You probably think this is paranoid; but history suggests that something like this is what will happen.

</comment><comment><USER4> They can't store data from European journalists, it's not GDPR compliant to gather personal data without consent. (I'm assuming there is no law requiring this information to exist)

In seriousness, it's scary how the US and EU seem to be driven apart recently. Incompatible laws and unilateral policies will lead to all sorts of real world problems.

<comment><USER5> Is your public work personal data?

<comment><USER4> I think not, but if you were to take thousands (maybe millions) of public articles, take the authors names and process the content to extract affiliations, opinions, religion and beliefs and compile a database from that, you are creating a new (and i.m.o. extremely dangerous) database with personal data. IANAL, but I think creating/having such a database would be highly illegal under GDPR.

<comment><USER2> Good thing the U.S. Federal government doesn't conduct business in Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sounds like what Elon Musk wanted. Maybe his "Pravda" company can put in a bid.

</comment><comment><USER7> How short is the typical time to bid on a government contract? FTA, this was only accepting bids for 10 days! That hardly seems like enough time. Has there been any follow-up since the bid period closed on April 13th?

<comment><USER8> ...you don't actually think that the majority of government bids are anything more than for show, right?</comment></comment>


Sol – a sunny little virtual machine (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://rsms.me/sol-a-sunny-little-virtual-machine <comment><USER2> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4656605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4656605).

<comment><USER3> Rasmus quoted an exciting project... I wonder what that became</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Is there a service for micro-endorsements on the web? - <AUTHOR>

Suppose a user makes a claim in a discussion forum without justification or with justification that I do not understand.
Whether it's worth time and effort to pursue this further depends on the expertise of that user for that topic.
Is there a service where I could check that his/her expertise in this topic has been endorsed by someone with expertise in that topic?
You could calculate PageRank on the expertise endorsement graph for a given topic to determine the extent of expertise on that topic. <comment><USER2> You mean something like <http://jyte.com/> ?

That also uses OpenID, to help strongly verify their identity.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is a really _really_ good idea amichail.

I've been playing around with applying pagerank to people to figure out if there is a way to really use it, I think you have really nailed it with that idea.

You'll have to somehow make it 'multi-valued' so someone can be endorsed in multiple topics.

Now you need to follow through and work out how you'd implement it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. If it could be integrated easily with discussion platforms, I can see it catching on in contexts like HN where discussion quality is valued.</comment>


Writing the Fastest Code, by Hand, for Fun (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/technology/28super.html?_r=1&sq=Kazushige%20Goto&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> "Mr. Goto"

The name suits him well.</comment>


Inside Apple Software Design (A16Z Podcast) - <AUTHOR> https://soundcloud.com/a16z/inside-apple-software-design <comment><AUTHOR> Worth the entire listen. Amazing how small the original iPhone team was and how they structured (or didn't) themselves.</comment>


Fogbeam Labs revamp website, release new tools to cut through information fog - <AUTHOR> http://www.fogbeam.com/news.html#press_release_08282013

<comment><AUTHOR> And we never would have gotten here without all the love and support from our HN brethren!

Seriously though, just getting to this point has been a crazy trip, and seriously exhausting. And this is only a small milestone on the way to getting this thing off the ground. But I do appreciate all the advice and wisdom and what-not that I've gleaned from all the HN contributors over the past months and years.

Wish us luck, it's a long journey ahead, still...</comment>


Show HN: Archbee – Architecture diagrams for software development teams - <AUTHOR> https://archbee.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, I created Archbee because I wanted an opinionated way to build architecture diagrams that makes it easy to get beautiful results and collaborate with your team.

</comment><comment><USER2> Only because it bugs me: "Check out" (in the video header) is two words in this context.

<comment><AUTHOR> hi hi. thanks!</comment></comment>


Trending Technologies That Would Bring a Revolution in the Education System - <AUTHOR> http://www.dustmoon.com/trending-technologies-that-would-bring-a-revolution-in-the-education-system/ <comment><USER2> Seems to be a confusing article and site. It lists AR as a disruptor, but mentions Google Glass and not Hololens. The link to "Augmented Reality" links to an article about VR. Then it says that cloud computing is a threat to the textbook, where most textbooks can happily sit on an SD drive. And then "multi-touch LCD" is a disruptor? Seriously?</comment>


Artificial Intelligence Study of Human Genome Finds Unknown Human Ancestor - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/artificial-intelligence-study-human-genome-finds-unknown-human-ancestor-species-180971436/ <comment><USER2> Okay, stop. Stop. This is called statistics. People have been using it to analyze the human genome for decades, since we first had the sequence. I wrote my thesis on such work a decade ago. This is not "artificial intelligence". Enough already you clods.

<comment><USER3> Respectfully, I have to disagree.

While it's true that deep learning reduces to "curve-fitting with stochastic gradient descent," in practice, working with deep neural nets is and feels _qualitatively different_ , even when they are used as universal function approximators within a commonly used Bayesian framework, as is the case here.

Unlike the simpler statistical models of yore that identify easy-to-understand (e.g., monotonic) relationships between variables, deep neural nets can find relationships that in practice _cannot be articulated except on their own terms_ \-- that is, they can be articulated only as long sequences of non- linear transformations.

In my view, the word "intelligent" is probably the best we have today for describing models that can learn to recognize patterns in data at such high levels of abstraction, even if this kind of intelligence is very _narrow_ and only of a _perceptual_ nature (i.e., there's no reasoning, planning, creativity, etc.).

<comment><USER4> Things like Breiman's ACE (alternating conditional expectation) are also qualitatively different, in many ways more magical, but it is still just statistics.</comment></comment></comment>


Earthquakes and storms leave climber stranded on Canada's highest peak - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/03/climber-natalia-martinez-stranded-canadas-highest-peak-earthquakes <comment><USER2> Interesting how it's not feasible to rescue her right now but it's possible to be in contact using a sat phone. Wonder how she is doing on her provisions: water is abundant around her but as ice, so she needs heat to recover it... but food? Did she had provisions for those many days ?</comment>


Ask HN: How feasible is it to "live" on the command line? - <AUTHOR> I've been wanting to try going without a GUI for some time now. For those of you who have tried it: how hard is it? Are there any pieces of software, tricks, Emacs packages, etc. that make it easier? <comment><USER2> I did it a few years ago out of necessity on an underpowered dev laptop. I didn't have resources to build my app and also run a GUI.

It was awful. I don't know why anyone would choose to do it, unless they're a hipster dev who thinks "old and difficult" is "better" for some reason.

There are lots of drawbacks and no benefits. If there's some task you like to do with a command line, just use a terminal emulator when you want.

Honestly, thinking about it now, it's even crazier because most websites are fairly useless in a terminal-based browser...

<comment><USER3> I definitely agree. As someone who has been programming long enough that I "lived on the command line" in many different operating systems (Unix, DOS, VMS, IBM mainframe, and more) back when that was the only option, I really don't want to go back to those days. The Unix shell is a wonderful environment and I love it, but there are lots of useful GUI programs that make my life easier, and using them doesn't make me a lesser programmer.

(I also don't want to go back to punched cards or typing in machine code in hex.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I live in ssh, vim, Linux command line. I also have Chrome running at the same time. Much faster and more powerful for me, and I can work from anywhere. Freelance programmer.</comment>


Visualizing the U.S. Higher Education Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://seekingalpha.com/article/224333-visualizing-the-u-s-higher-education-bubble

<comment><USER2> I'm not at all convinced by the "higher education bubble" articles.

There's a difference between a bubble and lack of price elasticity.

The stock bubble was different, because there are periods where stock prices are driven well beyond their inherent value by humans acting emotionally. Then the prices crash and get closer to their inherent value.

The same irrational behavior happened with housing bubble where speculative behavior driven by cheap (and irrationally given) credit drove house prices up to a level where there was no one left to bid up and speculators were left with unpaid credit and houses whose value plummeted, hence the crash.

Bubbles are tricky to predict before the crash happens. Just showing that a price of something goes up faster than income is not enough.

When oil prices hit the stratosphere not that long ago no-one called it an "oil bubble".

The fact that Apple computers consistently cost more than an average PC doesn't constitute an "Apple bubble".

Prices are still governed by supply and demand and there's another explanations for quickly rising prices of higher education: there was money left on the table and universities caught on to that fact and are rising the prices until they find a price that people are not willing to pay. Even then I don't expect a crash, as in dramatic reduction, just a small correction to the acceptable level.

I can imagine some structural changes that would lead to lowering cost of higher education.

1\. Supply side increases i.e. more universities, leading to more competition for students and lower prices as a result.

2\. Demand side decrease e.g. a mass change of people's opinion of the value of higher ed leading to massive drop in number of people applying to college and going to work instead. Or a mysterious virus decimating college-eligible population.

I don't see neither of those scenarios playing out on a scale big enough to change the fundamental supply/demand dynamic.

The problem with the "higher ed bubble" articles that I've seen so far is that they focus on one variable (cost of higher education raising faster than income) and making simplistic analogies to bubbles of the past.

They don't consider that those past bubbles had systematic changes that were the root causes of said bubbles and they don't provide data to show a systematic change that leads to unrealistically inflated prices of higher ed and how that systematic change is not sustainable in the long run.

High prices are symptoms, not causes, of bubbles. However, just because you cough, doesn't mean you have a flu and being gray doesn't automatically make you an elephant.

I don't see society as a whole suddenly deciding that higher education is not worthwhile or a sudden surge in number of available options or any other scenario that would alter supply/demand curve.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a fan of the provided definition of "bubble" as it's a purely statistical definition, free of any causal factors. You know there's a bubble when you see it pop; the boom is inflated by the misallocation capital which sows the seeds of its eventual bust. The best one can hope for it to look for things which cause systemic misallocation of capital within a market.

Without claiming there's a bubble, I do find it interesting that factors leading to the misallocation of resources in the housing sector -- near-zero interest rates, government-subsidized/guaranteed loans, an "everyone should be able to own a home" political mindset, etc. -- very closely parallels the current situation in higher education. The only thing missing is the ability to securitize college loans, leverage them to the hilt, insure them, and then wait for the eventual government bail-out when the music stops.

<comment><USER4> Students loans have been securitized for quite a while: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset- backed_security#Student_l...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset- backed_security#Student_loans)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not convinced that there is a bubble. A few weeks ago I was in a discussion with yummyfajitas about the cost of college education. The list of possibilities that I gave at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1615842> seems to me to offer food for thought about why costs may have been rising.

Well, thinking about it, there is a bubble. For-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix have been caught engaging in behavior that simply cannot be sustainable long term. There will be backlash. But I doubt that, say, Harvard has much to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER6> The author ignores one of the key requirements for a bubble, in the definition he provided: that the asset in question 'may be freely exchanged'. A year of college (or a diploma, for that matter) cannot be freely exhanged, and consequently there can be no bubble. There is no market for an education as an asset.

There is a market for education as a service, and it can be argued that while demand is high for the service now (leading to higher prices), that demand will drop in the future. But there won't be any secondary effects like the housing bust, where people depended directly on the value of the asset. Not sure why people are promoting this fallacious 'education bubble' meme as some kind of scare tactic, but there must be an angle for them somehow, I see a lot of it.

</comment><comment><USER7> An "education bubble" has been discussed on quite a few sites in the last year - the problem is that if it bursts, what will that mean? No one that I have seen has presented any ideas about what a "bursting" education "bubble" will look like in real world terms. So, if it can't burst, is it really a bubble? Or is it just excessive price increases, that may keep rising or that may stop without any collapse?

</comment><comment><USER8> The graph is deceptive, I think. The X axis is household income, which has not been linear with time, and likely declined during some of the recessions noted. It makes no sense (to me) to use that as the independent variable.

<comment><USER9> In addition to that flaw, the prices are nominal. Even if the real price were staying exactly the same, you'd still expect to see an positive slope on this line because of inflation. What a worthless visualization.

<comment><USER10> Household income (in principle) should also increase with inflation, so the positive slope should always be there. The significant part of the graph (if there is one) is that the slope is not 1 (which would mean that tuition and income are growing at the same pace) with periods where tuition grows significantly faster than income.

There's also the added complication of comparing an average with a median. Averages are much more sensitive to outliers than medians (when Bill Gates enters a bar, the average income increases significantly, but the median remains the same).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ok, enough already. We need to move on to the next step.

Assuming you're right, and we are in a higher education bubble-

\- What are going to be the consequences?

\- How do we fix things?

\- In an effort to avoid the bubble, what actions should an individual take?

If you won't be helpful about it, as far as I'm convinced you're just another doomsayer.

<comment><USER3> >How do we fix things?

Simple, stop doing the things that result in misallocating capital into the higher education market, the boom half of the boom-bust cycle. For example, ending government guaranteed college loans would instantly make private lenders more wary of handing tens of thousands of dollars over to an Art History major with a 2.0 GPA. Of course this would result in fewer people going to college, a necessary feature of mitigating a bubble.

Simple things are not always easy.

Large swaths of our society think everyone must go to college to succeed in life. Apparently the media and political elites who foment and abet this notion don't know how much a plumber makes, especially when your water heater breaks on a Sunday morning.</comment></comment>


Education and Men without Work - mighty-fine https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/education-and-men-without-work <comment><AUTHOR> The article is long on detail and short on suggestions (which is understandable). However, the suggestions it does make are not obviously going to work. The men illustrated in the article do not seem incapable of work, but rather disinterested. Vocational training isn't going to fix the fact that the government benefits the article cited allows the men to stay at home playing video games all day. Most people (but especially men, given the propensity of the male psyche to become dependent on dopamine) would rather take the short term thrill of continuous dopamine hits provided by video games than working to make a living.

Who can really blame them? For the vast majority of history, the main impetus for men to seek status of any kind is to impress women and provide a legacy for families. As the article mentions, men who are cut off from each of these simply stop participating in the kinds of behavior that make modern society possible. Enabled by the preponderance of easily accessible government money, drugs, etc, these men, lacking any legacy or dependents to speak of, would rather bide their time hedonistically. Some, realizing their situation, choose not to bide their time at all (look at the rise of middle aged male suicides).

Unfortunately, the two causes the article cites (dissolution of family structure and rise of single male households) are unaddressed. This is understandable as even mentioning these problems in high society today would be frowned upon. The article admits this, but, the writer, being part of the same society he's criticizing, falls into the same trap.

<comment><USER2> I don't think the two causes listed in the article are actually the causes. I think both are yet another symptom of an underlying problem. I would argue that men doing worse in schooling is likely another symptom of the same issue.

I think that the heart of the issue is that more men nowadays feel that they just don't matter. Not to society nor to anyone else. This leads to a situation where they will simply sacrifice less and try to enjoy more.

So why would men feel that way?

My initial thoughts were that perhaps it is due to the recent demonization of men and the removal of some of their privileges, while the burdens (selective service, unfair family court) remained. While I think that these could be contributing (accelerating) factors, I don't think this is at the heart of the matter. We see similar trends in other countries, where lots of (young) men are essentially checking out from society. Japan is an example of a country where this problem has likely progressed further than in the US. My initial thoughts don't fit, because they couldn't explain why this same process would happen in countries with a pretty different culture from the US.

I'm stumped. Perhaps it's somehow linked to the falling testosterone levels in men that we have observed?

<comment><USER3> What jobs still benefit from a man's physical strength anymore? Most things that need serious brawn use 'hydraulic muscles'? Soon women won't even ask us to twist the lid off jars anymore, there will be an iRobot for that. Where are men needed these days?

We automated away manliness. It's worth less these days. The least valued men are now valued even less. Frankly, I think these disaffected men should go back to the countryside where it's still relatively cheap and grown their own food and drugs. It's not economical to grow your own calories the old fashioned way, but neither is collecting welfare. And it'd be a heck of a lot gentler on the psyche to create something with your own hands. I remember Richard Feynman talking about researching topics that already had been written about just for the joy of discovery. It wasn't needed, but was done recreationally.

<comment><USER4> Landscaper. Arborist. Construction. Orthopedist. Orderly. Bouncer. Soldier. Sailor.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The entire construction and trade industry is huge and these people get paid ridiculous money because nobody wants to do these jobs. These are pretty manly jobs imo.

<comment> blaser-waffle Construction and trades get paid ridiculous money because no one wants to do those jobs? Bollocks they do. Have you actually spent any time doing any of these things?

Most of the jobs that nobody wants are outsourced to illegal immigrant labor -- the housing boom of the 2000's was built on their backs and their hard word.

Most of the tradies are pulling $50-80k USD, and that's a lot of hard work. That's good money if you're 20 year old, but a Network Engineer with a CCNA, some kinda degree, and 5 years experience will pull $105k USD in a big US city, all while at an air-conditioned desk. And those are the well paid tradesworkers; basic labor and less in demand trades often pays like shit, and doesn't provide benefits.

I ain't saying you can't make good money doing it -- I knew a carpenter who was like #1 ranked on Angie's List and pulled well north of 6 figures -- but those are the exceptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a very weird "let them eat cake" attitude in this thread which I find distressing. The study reports on the millions of working age men in the US who are essentially too depressed and face too many obstacles to search for work. Instead, they're spending their days staying inside, getting high, and playing video games. They essentially have little to no chance to pursue romantic relationships. Many of them eventually take their own lives.

Perhaps some are enjoying their "hedonistic" lifestyles, but likely most have totally given up on life, much like the Japanese hikikomori. It's not healthy mentally or physically. But it seems like as long as people treat these men as "losers" who deserve their fate, the more this problem will grow.

<comment><USER7> To give my perspective: I'm a cake-eater. I have a dayjob, but I don't really care about it beyond basic professionalism, and I spend a fair amount of my spare time with cannabis and video games rather than with people.

Who cares if my male peers think I'm a loser? Most of them are incompetent mooching pieces of shit, and I don't have to believe in their crab mentality. They can say "loser" all they like.

Who cares if my female peers think I'm a loser? I've gotten laid enough in life, and it's not like job sites are dating sites. I already dodged the bullet of having to raise somebody else's kid or having to be stuck in a loveless marriage, which makes me not-a-loser in my book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Youre right you have dodged a bullet in not having to raise another mans child or being in a loveless marriage. However, societally speaking, there is an alternative.. Good enough marriages where men raise their own children.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Benefits are much more generous and much easier to get in countries with much higher worker participation. And they have the same video games in other countries too.

And marriage does not cause entry in the workforce, participation in the workforce is what makes marriage partners more interested.

Reduction in benefits has not and is no increasing work participation. There was not spike in worker participation in the 90s when massive "reform" was undertaken. There is no increased work force participation from the cut backs being done now or in recent years. Yet loosening of work safety regulations would certainly be expected to increase disabilities for manual laborers. So the best conclusion is that the supposed cheaters aren't.

Also, if those not participating in the work force are merely enjoying life on theses supposed benefits, one would not expect the already high and ever increasing suicide rate in this sector.

The author's ideology entails denying calls for higher wages by diverting what is clearly a demand/wage problem[1] into a culture war issue.

[1] I'm guessing the author is a fan of Adam Smith where lack of participation is _always_ caused by under pricing. Apparently the author is willing to accept pretty thin evidence to drop Smith when that theory might benefit labor.

<comment><USER9> Welfare reform was always bullshit. It was a compromise where the Democrats got some added benefits and changes, and the Republicans got the ability to cut off traditional welfare and transition people to Social Security Disability

This pushed the costs off the states' books and the federal budget, and made the costs a problem for social security. It backfired as it created a permanent underclass and drove up Medicaid utilization and costs.

<comment><USER10> > Welfare reform was always bullshit. ... This pushed the costs off the > states' books and the federal budget, and made the costs a problem for > social security. It backfired as it created a permanent underclass and drove > up Medicaid utilization and costs.

I'm not entirely sure this is a bad result. Driving down welfare costs may indeed drive up medicaid costs, but this seems like a decent trade. Rather than giving people a check, give them health insurance and support for them to get their own job.

Give people the minimum necessary to keep their dignity (basic housing, public education, foodstamps, basic healthcare), and if they want more give them opportunities to grab it.

<comment><USER9> I was unclear. A local administrative law judge makes a determination that you are "disabled", you are placed on SSDI and _cannot_ work without losing it.

<comment><USER10> > A local administrative law judge makes a determination that you are > "disabled", you are placed on SSDI and cannot work without losing it.

It's not easy to get SSDI, it requires many requests, hearings before judges, and lots of forms. However, I agree that once you get it, you're basically trapped within it. There's definitely room for improvement (e.g., if you have SSDI and a job, some progressively increasing percentage of your income is subtracted from your SSDI benefits).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see why this is such a surprise, most people hate working.

I thought it was almost a truism that people work for retirement, i.e. the point in their life when they have enough saved to stop working and just relax and travel or fish or whatever.

If there's a way to skip 30 years of working at a job you hate and just start now, most people would take that option.

This is the basic problem with basic income, although I still think it's important and necessary, we're going to have to undertake a huge cultural shift and accept a large XX% of the populace just sitting around, vaping and playing video games all day. Not everyone is built to seek out the constant struggle of self-improvement.

<comment><USER12> _we 're going to have to undertake a huge cultural shift and accept a large XX% of the populace just sitting around, vaping and playing video games all day_

I don't think most people care too much about that. Unlike communist states which forced people to work, even if the job was bullshit, this is a free country, and if someone wants to sit around doing nothing useful all day, they are perfectly welcome to do so.

What the people do care about though is when the government takes their money that they earned through their work and gives it to people who sit all day vaping and playing video games, so that they can keep enjoying their leisurely lifestyle. This is blatant unfairness, being punished for working and rewarded for not working.

<comment><USER13> > I don't think most people care too much about that

I feel like a LOT of people care strongly about this. Almost all of our national dialogue about immigrants, taxpayer-funded healthcare, etc, is centered around how unfair it is for Other People to get Free Stuff.

The idea that we could _build housing and give it to homeless people_, or just pay for everyone's basic healthcare needs (even if you could still get better by paying more), raises the ire of a significant portion of the population here. Our country is in love with the idea that if you fail, it was because you made mistakes, and _deserve to be punished_ for them. (Never mind that often times, people go bankrupt because of unplanned medical issues, etc.)

<comment><USER12> > The idea that we could _build housing and give it to homeless people_, or > just pay for everyone's basic healthcare needs (even if you could still get > better by paying more), raises the ire of a significant portion of the > population here.

Does that surprise you that people who earned their own houses and their own healthcare through their own work resent the idea of skimming some of the fruits of their labor and giving them to people who didn't do so?

Look, this thread started with suggestion that "we're going to have to undertake a huge cultural shift and accept a large XX% of the populace just sitting around, vaping and playing video games all day". I don't like this bait and switch, where first I'm forced to support people who just want to live life of leisure, and when I complain about that, I get slandered by suggestions that I want to _punish_ unlucky chaps with medical bankruptcies.

<comment><USER14> As I understand it, it is a matter of looking at the total picture instead of just the free house. I don't have specific numbers, but I recall an article I read several years ago which was talking about costs that are incurred by a homeless person, covering such services such as police, hospitals, etc, and concluded that the costs were way higher than giving the homeless person a house. Therefore, the reason to give a homeless person a house is not motivated by just altruism, but actually also from saving taxpayer money. It's a similar concept to making sure the poor have good healthcare, so that the spread of diseases are contained.

<comment><USER12> > I don't have specific numbers, but I recall an article I read several years > ago which was talking about costs that are incurred by a homeless person, > covering such services such as police, hospitals, etc, and concluded that > the costs were way higher than giving the homeless person a house. > Therefore, the reason to give a homeless person a house is not motivated by > just altruism, but actually also from saving taxpayer money.

This assumes that the world is steady state, and that government policies don't create any incentives to change behavior. Sure, it might be cheaper, all else being equal, but such program would not make all else equal. You'd get more people who otherwise wouldn't be homeless, but the free house for homeless program made them decide that it's worth it to become one. As a result, you'd have many more homeless people than before, and so your free house for the homeless program quickly becomes very expensive. Indeed, you need to look at the total picture, instead of just the free house.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This story really needs another graph showing "NOT-IN-LABOR FORCE RATES FOR WOMEN AGES 25-54; 1965 TO 2019".

See [https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/images/hipple- fig6.png](https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/images/hipple-fig6.png)

It appears that the non-participation rate for women is about twice as high as for men.

<comment><USER16> So the current prevailing theory is that the guys are getting high and playing video games? What's the current prevailing theory for the girls? Doing unformalized work that doesn't show up in the stats? Also playing games and doing drugs?

<comment><USER17> Look at the chart. There are now a lot more women in the labor force than there were in the 1940s. Back then, they were staying home with the kids. Now, women are having children later and often working (at least part time) once they have them.

<comment><USER16> Sure, I'm talking about the 25% of women and what the theory is for them that's analogous to the 10% of men that aren't working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Even after controlling for age, ethnicity, and education, married men are decidedly more likely to be in the workforce than men who have never married. This "marriage effect" is so powerful that married prime-age male high-school dropouts generate labor-force participation rates in the same league as their never-married, college-graduate peers. Analogous but somewhat less powerful effects are seen when we drill deeper into family life: Irrespective of marital status, education, and ethnicity, a prime-age man is more likely to be in the workforce if he lives in the same home as children under the age of 18, regardless of his race or education.

This is pretty damn interesting but not all that surprising. For those whom the institution of marriage is still relevant (and those lucky enough to find a partner), getting up and going to work everyday is not a huge problem.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, most men work because people depend on them. I don't like my job but I show up at work because what the hell else would I do? I have two kids who need food and a roof over their head.

<comment><USER20> Isn't this why most people (incl. women) work? We work because we want to pay for food/water/shelter. Then past that we work for things that we want.

<comment><USER19> I mean clearly some people work for other reasons. Tom Brady still wants to play football at age 43 after achieving enough for two separate Hall of Fame careers. Meg Whitman is CEO of a new company even though her net worth is over $5 billion. They are doing it for other reasons.

<comment><USER20> Yes, that is why I said "past that, we do it for things we want."

In those cases, they are doing it for things they want to do. My point is it's not just a male phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > but they nevertheless suggest that changes in family structure had a > powerful and adverse impact on male work rates and labor-force participation > rates...

This article seems to assume that changes in family structures are a _cause_ of men not working. I see no mention that it could actually be an _effect_ of that. Who's gonna want to marry (let alone have kids with) a man who is unemployed and isn't even looking for work?

<comment><USER22> >Needless to say, the relationship between family structure and prime-age male labor-force participation is complex, with causation arrows pointing both ways. Yet on balance, the net effect of such changes appears to have been a withdrawal of male labor from the workforce — a "supply-side effect," and a major one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My impression is that young people are just catching up with Bucky:

"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."

― Buckminster Fuller

</comment><comment><USER24> Something to highlight in this article is the prevalence of pain medication use among the out-of-work population:

"Apart from the small fraction (around 13% in 2015) of prime-age male non- workers who are adult students, the remainder report spending many of their waking hours watching and playing on screens — over 2,000 hours per year on average. Almost half of these non-working men report taking pain medication on any given day (which should raise a red flag for those worried about the opioid crisis)"

The watching and playing on screens isn't ideal (2000h/y == 40h/wk _on average_ \-- which doesn't seem to leave a ton of room for a base level of healthy exercise and socialization) - but at least it is relatively harmless.

But that _half_ of these folks would take pain medication on a daily basis seems staggering.

The author seems to correlate this abuse with the availability of opioids via Medical and Medicare. That does seem like a problem. However, reading further into the blog of the quoted author[0], that writer (who visited many affected areas during their research) attributes it to the private sector pushing opioids heavily.

Personally it seems fairer to attribute most of the cause to the private industry which made the painkillers popular and mainstream, as opposed to Medicare and Medicaid, which functioning as desired should be making all healthcare more accessible (with the unfortunate inclusion of opioids as a dangerous subset of that).

[0] - [http://samquinones.com/reporters-blog/2016/11/21/donald- trum...](http://samquinones.com/reporters-blog/2016/11/21/donald-trump- opiates-america/)

</comment><comment><USER25> > According to the latest monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor > Statistics, "work rates" for American men in October 2019 stood very close > to their 1939 levels, as reported in the 1940 U.S. Census. Despite some > improvement since the end of the Great Recession, Great Depression-style > work rates are still characteristic today for the American male, both for > those of "prime working age" (defined as ages 25 to 54) and for the broader > 20 to 64 group.

The premise of this article is based on this statistic. Oddly enough, no definition of "work rate" is given. After some quick searching, I didn't find anything accessible, either.

This may be significant. Is a full-time "investor" included in the count? What about a programmer working on a startup? What about some other kind of self- employed contractor?

There are many ways a person might not show up in a tally called "work rate." Many (all?) of them have become a lot easier to pull off over the last 20 years.

<comment><USER26> Labor force participation rate. It says in the article.

<comment><USER25> Sure, but how is that measured and what does it exclude?

<comment><USER27> participation rate = (employed + actively seeking work population) / (non- prison population of age 16-64)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think male socialization has left many men poorly-equipped to deal with the modern workplace. Prior to the information age, the primary challenges in the workplace were physical or motivational. So an attitude of "be tough and work through the hard times" was effective and allowed you to earn a living. Boorish behavior was tolerated or even celebrated as "male bonding". But as women entered more professions, that behavior became divisive.

In the modern workplace, the primary challenges are emotional, and I don't think a lot of men have the tools to deal with them. Many men never had to learn how to deal with anxiety, fear, uncertainty or anger. Bad behavior from men was tolerated or even celebrated until recently. What worked to get them where they are is no longer appropriate going forward. So it's no wonder more men are opting out of work altogether because they feel they are in a no-win situation. You see a lot of this in "incel" communities where many self- deprecatingly refer to themselves as "neets" (no employment, education or training).

To be clear here, I'm not blaming men as this is a societal problem. It does not affect all or even most men. This is part of the "toxic" aspect of "toxic masculinity" \-- it harms men just as much as it harms women, only in different ways. It is possible to undo, but it takes years of therapy and a commitment to "be better" in the face of misleading signals that say you don't have to change / compromise.

<comment><USER29> _What_ male socialization?

Who are our teachers in the United States? Over three-quarters are women, less than a quarter men. And given that recent studies indicate that women teachers tend to rate boys (unfairly) lower than girls for the same performance, that's women's socialization teaching boys how to behave in schools.

Societally? Go on, search to see what doodles Google made for Father's Day.

Which parent seems to have the final say in the courts? Again, we seem to default to Mother Knows Best.

What about relationships? US society seems to have ceded the ground entirely to Venus. So very, very many "men are stupid" posts on Twitter and it does not seem to have an end in sight.

Men's clubs? Legislated away wherever possible, on the grounds that it granted men an unfair business advantage. Meanwhile, an organization set up for women in business and creating a co-working space for them had members complain that men are showing up, with a startling lack of self-awareness.

Perhaps this is female socialization not working for boys and men.

<comment><USER28> Not sure you really understand my point; "male socialization" is simply "the way we raise boys" \-- which includes the ways we as a society neglect their needs.

This isn't a "men versus women" thing, but rather a "we need to pay better attention to boys' emotional needs" thing. When you don't, you teach them that their emotions don't matter and aren't a thing they need to manage to have a healthy, happy life.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure you understand _my_ point: the way we raise boys has largely been ceded to women for a while now and heaping "toxic masculinity" (really, when was the last time you saw the second word without the first tugging it along?) shaming on men is just more of the same.

We need less of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is a large double standard applied here that a man who don't work is checking out of society, but a woman who does the same is a productive citizen since she can produce babies.

We wanted and most of us still want equality in the work force with both women and men equality responsible to earn their place in society. The bread winner model is cultural obsolete, even through we still behave, and given many comments here on HN, still think in those terms. A mans role culturally remain to support his children and their mother. If he doesn't do this then we declare them as checking out from society, become hikikomori, an drug addict and hedonistically waster of time. Increased rates of depression and suicides only reinforce our belief that men must fulfill their role or they will only harm themselves and others.

So let me make a suggestion. Maybe it is time to change the culture.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's interesting to see the contrast in discussion with other posts that talk about how we need to get rid of useless jobs. Those posts normally talk about how we need to make it so it's possible to just live off government benefits instead of spending our lives working, meanwhile this submission calls it a national crisis when men are leaving the workforce and choosing to live off of government benefits. I don't think people choosing to leave the workforce is necessarily a bad thing, but there should be a way for them to find a sense of purpose or community, if that's what they desire.

<comment> non-entity I'm not going to go into detail because it will inevitably lead to a pointless flame war, but HN seems to flip flop politically between threads that deal with primary economic issues and threads that have more of a social focus

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Talking from the perspective of an EU country, the salary deductions on employment contract for a single person are brutal and exceeding 40% of the gross salary, while public institutions treat young single native male as their worst enemy. Enormous successes simply don't happen over here, no point engaging in a startup and risking the mental health. The dating market is... well enough was said already by now. Once achieving housing and certain financial comfort, why should one bother with employment?

</comment><comment><USER33> As unpopular it may be to say such a politically incorrect thing (admitting this is a generalization, and all the caveats that come with it) --

Men generally have the biological need to go _do_ and _wander_ and _discover_ things. I don't know whether it's hormones or what. Debate all you like elsewhere (I'm not trying to debate that point here).

My point is that when they don't get an outlet to do this, they cause trouble. Idle hands are the tools of the devil. They get in trouble, they cause trouble. They create things, but also get into trouble.

And a society that doesn't provide outlets for working-aged males to go out and do things is inviting trouble.

What I observe about the US is that we are making the cost of employing people so high that we have no incremental way to put people at the low end of the skills ladder (or at the high end of aging out) to even minimal use -- and the only way to get even a low level purpose in life is to be employed by a company that goes through very constrained legal and regulatory calculus to employ someone.

In other countries, people who are unemployed can:

\-- Be community volunteers next to government workers to augment local capabilities

\-- Be ticket takers on buses, trains

\-- Be part time informal labor / delivery people

\-- Be "shop minders" who aren't fully employees but help when needed

All these things for even a paltry wage, but purpose in life. In other countries, you notice immediately the presence of such people.

But we in the US have foreclosed the ability for people to fill these roles. I guess the last time we did this was with the WPA. The very rules we have in place to protect people (and claimed benefit of workplace standards, etc) prevent many at the bottom from being useful.

It's to our societal peril, as we can see lately.

<comment><USER34> "Men generally have the biological need to go do and wander and discover things."

I see no evidence that this is a male thing, versus a female thing, or even that all men feel this. I see plenty of men who just coast through life with no curiosity or drive. They don't explore or discover, they just consume and do what they're told so they can consume some more.

<comment><USER35> > I see no evidence that this is a male thing, versus a female thing

I've yet to see a valid generalization for men that did not hold for women. Though sometimes the perspective changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> National Affairs is a publication of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. It's important to keep in mind their ideology when reading anything they publish.

</comment><comment><USER19> I thought that government benefits in the US were shite? I can understand why European men might opt-out but I thought that you were basically dooming yourself to homelessness without a job in America. How are these men living?

<comment><AUTHOR> Government benefits in the US are not shit, at all. They are very generous if you qualify. The issue is qualifying, or lying to do so.

<comment><USER19> Hm, then I suspect that soon enough those benefits will go the way of the LL Bean return policy.

<comment><USER37> Historically the benefits are either narrowed in eligibility or more constraints are added. For example, while you can call federal disability benefits "generous" there are lots of nasty constraints that make them awful regardless - while your disability benefit may be "generous" you're forbidden from having much in the way of savings and your "net worth" for that calculation often includes things like a retirement account from work you did while you were still healthy. (Yes, really)

Means-testing and carve-outs like that to catch "cheaters" are a common way to eat away at benefits in the US, and politicians are actively adding more stuff like that to food assistance and other programs currently. Means-testing is especially effective here because a "reasonable" limit can be set with the knowledge that the limit will cease to be reasonable after 5-25 years of inflation and expense increases because lawmakers will never, ever raise the limit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I can't help but think that we need a serious national discussion about this. I feel that this issue is just going to get worse, because there simply aren't enough well paying jobs to go around, especially on the lower end of the skills market (remember that only ~1/3 of the US population graduated from college).

In my opinion, this is why we need a president that understands and deeply cares about this problem. This is why I am fully supporting Andrew Yang in his presidential bid. He understands the state we're in and has accepted the reality that all these jobs are not coming back and we need to start working on solutions now. But please don't take my word for it and instead look into him yourself, his Iowa Press interview is a great start: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DahyKQccudQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DahyKQccudQ)

</comment><comment><USER39> I've only skimmed the article, but nowhere does it seem to compare men to the overall population. As it stands, these distressing trends could hold for everyone, which makes the focus on men needless.

Did I miss something here? Does anyone know whether these trends are unique to men? Because if (and that is a big if) this is not unique to men, that would be some horrible cherry picking / manipulative statistics.

Regardless though, the data on unmarried non-immigrant men is really disturbing. If it extends to unmarried non-immigrant women, that would harm the narrative of the article, but still present a very big problem. In general I would expect that married people have lower labour participation, because there is a partner to pick up the slack. In general, living with two people should be cheaper per person than living alone.

<comment><USER40> I think the article takes as a given that men's labour participation is tanking, while women's isn't. For most of the audience, this will be common knowledge. Here is a graph about female participation: [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.NE.ZS?lo...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.NE.ZS?locations=US)

<comment><USER39> But do we see the same disparity between immigration and marital status for women? The issue raised here isn't (I think) that labour participation is shifting away from men. It's that _men_ have some specific issues. If those same issues are present in women, we need to have a different discussion.

<comment><USER40> Okay, thanks for the clarification.

I do understand why the article hasn't touched upon this, since it's just an attempt to diagnose the pattern seen in the overall male subpopulation, which is not seen in the overall female subpopulation. But I agree it could be interesting to look there too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is the reality of what Basic Income will look like for most. It may still be a net positive, for the fraction that has enough internal gumption to self- direct into a fulfilling avenue - but many, many people will drink and drug themselves to death idly.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Among economists and policy analysts who have examined these unsettling > trends, the general consensus is that declining male workforce participation > in modern America is mainly a structural, demand-driven problem — a matter > of evaporating local jobs, and especially jobs requiring limited skills, in > an increasingly dynamic and globalized marketplace.

Basically these are the men would have traditionally "built stuff"; factory workers, etc.

We don't have any factories anymore.

>If this assessment is more or less correct, it would be hard to overstate the importance of education and training as instruments for addressing our "men without work" crisis.

How would that help? We don't have jobs for them. And the few that maybe could find work, well, those jobs will soon enough be automated away.

> Third, there is America's curiously poor prime-age male labor-force > participation-rate performance in comparison with other affluent never- > communist democracies. Between 1965 and 2015, U.S. levels fell faster and > sank lower than in any comparable country, with the exception of Italy > (where official employment figures notoriously neglect "unofficial" work > income). Yet America's race to the bottom in prime-age male labor-force > participation is not readily explained by lackluster economic growth (which > could also be called sluggish demand).

In America (USA) you ARE your job; it defines you. The American Way is to be hard working and self sufficient. If you can't do that, there are tremendous psychological effects. You can't blame these men for giving up.

We need to accept that this is the way forward and stop treating people who don't work like leaches. We need to retrain society that there will be plenty of able bodied people without work and society will need to take care of them.

<comment><USER43> > We don't have any factories anymore.

Factories still exist, they're just in other countries.

And in China alone, they employ 100 million people.

<comment><USER44> I don't think the parent meant otherwise. Or are you suggesting that Americans looking for unskilled factory work can just move to China and get a job? Aside from the cost and language barrier and family ties and other challenges of relocating, I think legal barriers alone (visa issues, work permits) would make that hard. It's already hard enough even for highly skilled professionals to get work permits in another country.

<comment><USER43> I just think it's important to properly identify the nature of the problem, so we can try to solve it.

Many people assume that we don't have factories anymore because of automation, but worldwide, manufacturing employment is still enormous. An import economy is good in some ways, but it's bad for people who would like to have a factory job.

<comment><USER44> Ah... It was beyond my imagination that GGP would believe, or intend to imply, that there's any shortage factory work to be found in China. But since you find that you do meet people who actually believe that... Then all I can say is I'm just very amazed!

<comment><USER43> It's Andrew Yang's whole platform: automation is putting us all out of work. But it's not true - China is putting Americans out of work, not automation.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/andrew- yang-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/andrew-yang- automation.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Disability benefits are never lavish, but, together with eligibility for > additional benefits unlocked by disability enrollment and with resources > from family and friends, they can and clearly do provide the basis for a > viable work-free existence for many millions of prime-working-age men today.

This really bugs me because I think the author has an opinion that is revealed when they say "viable."

The focus is on the bare minimum benefits instead of the awful job prospects for those at the bottom. Unlivable minimum wage paired with jobs that only offer part-time employment, with wild, unpredictable shift schedules. No health benefits or any notable discounts on food or clothing or anything.

These people live in areas where it's untenable to live without a car. So they end up paying more in car maintenance to drive to a job that pays them less and less.

Gov't benefits that disappear the moment they get a job, which put them in a worse position than if they'd just stayed unemployed. Benefits they might need to _pay_ back to the government.

Of course people opt out. Good for them. But don't for a moment think that they're actually happy about this.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is a wonderful example of how to lie with statistics. Look at the first graph [0].

Super scary up and to the right line that appears to show our labor force being destroyed over time with no link to economic conditions.

But wait. Look at the scale. This data represents a 6% change over 50 years.

Very weak sauce. Why trust a paper that starts off by deceiving people in such a base way?

[0] [https://www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/media/Winter%202...](https://www.nationalaffairs.com/storage/app/media/Winter%202020/Eberstadt%20Charts- Tables/xeberstadtchart1small.jpg.pagespeed.ic.24sadX9bfY.webp)

<comment><USER46> Why the downvotes? It would be great to hear why my observation is incorrect if you disagree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> >"The fall in participation for prime-age men has largely been concentrated among those with a high school degree or less... …"

What would a high school diploma or 2 year college give them that would enable them to get higher skilled jobs?

I'd be inclined to think that rather than needing "GE" (general Ed) they need vocational type trading that focuses on making them skilled in a particular area (no, not coding). That might have to be complemented with a few other skills that allow them to integrate into the workforce (what it means to be dependable, how to add value, etc., rather than "show up" which is half of it, but not all of it).

<comment><USER48> "What would a high school diploma or 2 year college give them that would enable them to get higher skilled jobs?"

When I look at programming jobs you pretty much need a college degree to even get a company to talk to you. I wouldn't be too surprised if there were other jobs where having 2 years of college or a high school degree is required to be even considered. There may be exceptions but in general there is a trend for employers to require certain education levels if it makes sense or not.

<comment><USER34> I disagree. What you need to get your first programming job is some kind of evidence that you will be able to do the job. That might be a piece of paper from a college, but it could also be a portfolio, which is how many novice programmers get started.

I actually believed what you're saying and paid for college for a couple years. When I got my first job, it turns out they didn't even care about my degree. All that mattered was that I was better than the other applicants. 1 applicant in particular had a much better resume, but I blew him out of the water on a set of BrainBench tests that the company paid for.

At my current company, we mostly hire self-taught programmers because they're consistently the ones that show the most promise.

Of course, at Google or Apple, this might be different, and the competition is going to be much more fierce.

<comment><USER48> At the companies I have worked at or contracted with a college degree was the minimum requirement to get a foot in the door. Not necessarily a computer related degree. Any degree would do. It's kind of silly but to me it seems a fact of life. Thats why I recommend to get a college degree. You can live without but life is much easier with.

<comment><USER34> I'm sure that's what they say, and for entry-level jobs it's probably mostly true, even.

But I guarantee that if a mid-level developer with lots of experience applies for a mid-level job, they'll look at them with or without a degree of any kind. And they won't even care for senior-level.

Just about everything on the "requirements" list of a job posting is negotiable. You just have to make up for it in some other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's just corporatocracy [0] and it's inevitable effects.

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

<comment><USER50> [https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/when-to-use- it...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/when-to-use-its-vs-its)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I will make a guess for the causeses (that I stole from somebody smarter Tucker Carlson [1]), and if they sound plausible, also will offer solutions.

a) The reason for "... Instead we have witnessed a mass exodus of men from the workforce altogether. ..."

Is that man are looking for work that allows them to earn more than women, that would likely (or like) to date.

Women are not likely to marry/create family with man that earns (or has less earning potential) less than them.

Just as simple as that -- reasons may be deeply cultural, biological or whatever... but I believe this is to be true.

Solution:

De-urbanization/ De-metropolization of work opportunities.

Basically more gov tech, fin tech, bio tech, and other 'high-margin' business need to spread across a given country (UK, or US or whatever).

That spread will create a number of supporting job opportunities as well, that will equalize the earning potential opportunities, lower cost of living averages, create more 'geographically attractive cultural centers' and so on.

That (lowering cost of living, lowering barriers of entry into sustainable jobs, with less competition), in turn, will lower the barriers of entry into economic stability -- which is a requirement for a modern family core.

It is, actually, desirable, that one-person-income should be enough for a family of 4 (two parents and two children). Whether parents choose that or both work, simulatenously, is up to them.

Stable family creates purpose and emotional stability, necessary for healthy work ethics.

\---

With that said, 3 other important fed gov initiatives that will be needed

a) affordable, not necessarily free, but truly affordable health care

b) 4-day / 6 hour work week as a 'encouraged' standard.

c) equitable divorce model where man are treated using same criteria as woman (including for not just financial separation, but children custody as well).

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgvpxE_WKxw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgvpxE_WKxw)

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm going to say something crazy, and it's cool if you disagree if you don't call me names or kick me in the shin.

Pay people to go to school. At least for a while. Why not?

<comment><USER53> "Why not" ideas seem hard to sell to governments populated by agents finding hard to allocate resources to their own preferred causes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> > Teachers must be not only teachers, but surrogate parents, secular > confessors, makeshift therapists, boot-camp drill instructors, financial > advisers, de facto cops on the beat, even truant officers or dress-rehearsal > probation officers. Little wonder they cannot accomplish all these missions > — much less the more modest but hardly trivial duty of inculcating academic > excellence.

This x 1000. We need to these issues before they get to the classroom.

</comment><comment><USER55> Self-checkout cash registers. Amazon. AI. When public assistance is more profitable than entry level jobs (and the maintenance of those jobs, gas, etc).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dZ_lvDgevk&t=11s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dZ_lvDgevk&t=11s)

</comment><comment> Paul-ish Is child rearing and changing gender norms a factor here?

</comment><comment><USER56> Perhaps television fucked my head up too much, but shouldn't a society where women have equal pay, get rid of all this animal hierarchy bullshit and find someone they actually connect with? Is the divorce rate still 50%? Is all of this just to spit out a child?

</comment><comment><USER57> > Unfortunately, the two causes the article cites (dissolution of family > structure and rise of single male households) are unaddressed.

It's unaddressed because it's the journalist class and their kind that has waged a war against family, gender roles, gender itself and males. At least since the 90s as far as I remember, the predominant message in media is fathers are bad, males are bad and family is bad. Media has discouraged men and women from getting married, having children, encouraged divorce, abortion, etc. When a nation's media pushes nonsense like "toxic masculinity", isn't it about time to declare the media the enemy of the nation? But what's interesting is that the media are just propaganda of the elites. The elites decide the media campaigns and trends which transform and socially engineer society. The question is why? After all most of these elites and many of these journalists are males themselves.

One solution is the diversification of the elites, media and society in general. Not in superficial aspects like race, gender, etc, but ideology, thought and values. Seems like there is a lot of incest within the elite/media class. They all seem to think alike and that's not a good thing.

Also, these attacks on men are also ultimately attacks on women as well. Ignoring the fact that half of a woman's genetic history comes from a man ( their father ), the attacks on men ultimately harm their future prospects of a husband, family and kids. And their future hopes of happiness.

Men's suicide is increasing and women's happiness has been plummeting.

[https://www.nber.org/papers/w14969](https://www.nber.org/papers/w14969)

Add to that the below replacement birth rate of american born women, you'd think there was a crisis in america. But we can't really discuss the real issues here because it's verboten.</comment>


The Aggregator Paradox - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2018/the-aggregator-paradox/ <comment><USER2> > At the same time, what Google is doing seems nakedly uncompetitive — thus > the paradox. The point of antitrust law — both the consumer-centric U.S. > interpretation and the European competitor-centric one — is ultimately to > protect consumer welfare. What happens when protecting consumer welfare > requires acting uncompetitively

This is a very interesting question. I can understand why people hate AMP and why Google comes of as an 800 lb gorilla flexing his muscles. But then, in absence of Google's force-feeding of AMP, why didn't a free market solution pan out? Why didn't we see successful websites which prioritize excellent user experience over anything else? Or why didn't we see widespread monetization alternatives for publishers than the ad-based revenue model?

It seems consumers really don't want to pay for quality content on the web[1] and/or publishers are inept enough to not being able to offer quality content for which users will fork over money[2]. Efforts like AMP or Chrome ad- blocker, while anti-competitive on one hand, also seem to be loved by users and publishers alike because market ultimately failed to come up with a better alternative.

[1] It raises an interesting question - why are people willing to pay for Netflix / HBO, but not for NYT? I believe the answer lies in exclusivity of the content. I have to pay HBO in order to watch Game of Thrones. I can read about a topic covered by NYT at some other website for free.

[2] Its somewhat amusing to see that NYT still shows me ads even after paying them for digital subscription.</comment>


ZGC: A Scalable Low-Latency Garbage Collector [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF_r3GE3zOo <comment><USER2> The talk has a lot of interesting technical details, but the bottom line for java developers or jvm sys admins is that the new GC trades off throughput for reduced maximum pause times (current goal is 10ms max pause time, longer term goal is less than 1 ms).

The upshot of that is that you _probably_ don't want to swap to this unless you use a relatively large heap (at least 32 GB, maybe more), because below that level the STW latency of the other GC options aren't _generally speaking_ bad enough to be worth the trade-off.

Also if latency is a big concern for you and you've got dollars to spend consider Azul zing as well. (That part isn't from the talk.)

<comment><USER3> Yep, this. Although to be fair, Zing is pretty good but not a panacea. It causes latencies to increase across the board -- probably due to increased allocation times, or maybe messing with the cache

<comment><USER4> > probably due to increased allocation times

Doesn't C4 still use a thread-local bump allocator? How does that increase allocation time?

I would think it's much more likely to be the complex barriers.

<comment><USER3> Yes you're probably right. I haven't dug much into it myself

<comment><USER5> If you did (dig into it yourself), you'd quickly find out that the urban myth about Zing somehow hurting latencies across the board is plain wrong. In fact, these days it tends to be percievably faster (in both latency and throughput) in about 70-80% of the workload we encounter. Certainly when compared to G1GC and CMS, and often even when compared to ParallelGC... E.g. it is typicaly >10% faster at things like Cassandra, Spark (TPC-DS), LMAX Disruptor workloads, etc. etc. etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slides for folks that don't want to watch a video:

[https://cr.openjdk.java.net/~pliden/slides/ZGC- Jfokus-2018.p...](https://cr.openjdk.java.net/~pliden/slides/ZGC- Jfokus-2018.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting that the conditional read barrier is so cheap (4% overhead on SPECjbb). In past work, read barriers have been considered relatively high overhead and thus algorithms dependent on them avoided for that reason. For example: [https://hosking.github.io/links/Yang+2012ISMM.pdf](https://hosking.github.io/links/Yang+2012ISMM.pdf) (see Table 3 on page 41).

<comment><USER8> BTW, it's not a read barrier but a load barrier. It's not encountered every time when reading an object field, but only when reading object reference that's stored on the heap (i.e. loading it into a register).

<comment><USER7> Isn't that the traditional definition of a read barrier? E.g. a Baker read barrier is triggered when a field of object reference type is loaded from a heap object. It checks if the loaded pointer is in from space, and if so forwards the object.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I expect Rust's resident GC expert enlighten people working on ZGC why their approach is wrong in trading throughput for low latency. And that they need to learn from hotspot GC.

<comment><USER10> Rust doesn't have GC.

<comment><USER11> Rust has a static GC

[https://words.steveklabnik.com/borrow-checking-escape- analys...](https://words.steveklabnik.com/borrow-checking-escape-analysis-and- the-generational-hypothesis)

:)</comment></comment></comment>


Shadbolt Review into Computer Science Graduate Employment in the UK - <AUTHOR> https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/shadbolt-review-universities-must-work-closer-employers-improve-computer-science <comment><AUTHOR> Very UK centric I know, but I found it to be a very interesting report. As pat of a wider review of STEM subjects [0], Sir Nigel Shadbolt investigated the performance of Computer Science graduates, specifically why they have higher rate sof unemployment follwoing their course, relative to other STEM subjects. The full report can be found here [1].

[0] [http://www.hefce.ac.uk/kess/gradstemreview/](http://www.hefce.ac.uk/kess/gradstemreview/) [1] [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/computer- science-...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/computer-science- degree-accreditation-and-graduate-employability-shadbolt-review)</comment>


Show HN: Customer research form built with Elm - <AUTHOR> Hello there,
I've built my first Elm [1] app, and I must admit it was pretty exciting and can't wait to use Elm again very soon. [2] I've written about my experience. [3] It's open source as well.
It is a small customer research form when doing call/interview with users/customers. It simply logs the learnings you are receiving from the customer.
You may optionally send the learnings to an existing or new [4] Roadmap account. Roadmap is my SaaS that helps with feedback management, product prioritization and communicating product vision via product roadmaps.
I'd say this is the main benefit of this tool; it is another feedback channel for the centralized feedback inbox inside Roadmap.
I wanted to build something tiny as first production app with Elm, and this tool was perfect to learn the basics.
Any feedback is appreciated. <comment><AUTHOR> Links:

[1]: [https://roadmap.space/call/](https://roadmap.space/call/)

[2]: [https://dominicstpierre.com/thanks-elm-i-had-my-first- taste-...](https://dominicstpierre.com/thanks-elm-i-had-my-first-taste-at- functional-programming-your-turn-now-893f2bf8f4be)

[3]: [https://github.com/dstpierre/customer-research- form](https://github.com/dstpierre/customer-research-form)

[4]: [https://roadmap.space/](https://roadmap.space/)</comment>