Homelab: Intel NUC with the ESXi Hypervisor - <AUTHOR> https://henvic.dev/posts/homelab/ <comment><USER2> The ultimate NUC for a vSphere lab is the "hades canyon" NUC8i7HVK. I have three of them in a vSAN cluster.

* dual NVME drives for all NVME vSAN

* dual nics work out of the box for ESXi

* dual thunderbolt 3 ports to enable 10GbE via TB3 adaptor or PCIe expansion

* Linux friendly AMD GPU that has no problems being passed through to a nix or win vm

* low profile and easily stackable for a rack shelf

* Supports 2x32GB SODIMMs

* Power efficient

* Low noise

Love these things!

<comment><USER3> Aren't vSphere licenses a bit expensive for the average homelab? I personally went with a larger former workstation with more cores and RAM, because I expect to only ever have a single node, even if I'd love to have a full cluster.

<comment><USER4> VMUG Advantage membership ($200/year) gets you a 6 socket, non-production license for basically the entire VMWare catalog.

<comment><USER5> For $0/year I can run Linux and ovirt.

<comment><USER6> That won't help you very much if the goal is to maintain familiarity with VMware products (which is the entire point of the VMUG licensing scheme).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> KVM and Proxmox also run very well on that platform, if you're more used to those stacks (and the management tools are free).

<comment><USER8> I'm looking for a hypervisor recommendation... I am hoping to virtualize at least two if not all three of my machines: Unraid (pass-thru HDDs); pfSense (pass-thru NIC); and Windows 10 (pass-thru Graphics). I am hoping to have Windows 10 running fast enough to do some light photo editing. Which hypervisor would you think to try first?

<comment><USER9> Proxmox. ESXi client is windows only and most of KVM's clients are either linux only, cli only, or dogshit.

Proxmox is great as long as you have the mental fortitude to ignore the tickler that pops up on login if you're on community support only.

<comment><USER10> ESXi web is good. Why you need an app for this?

<comment><USER9> I dumped it years ago when my container work kicked off and they started paywalling everything behind vcenter.

If web works with base ESXi great! If not then I'm not interested.

I just don't work on a lot of companies in the position of needing VMWare anymore. Either they're all in on AWS or they're too small to justify the expense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've just discovered PhotoPrism [1] through this article, which looks like a great solution for organising my photos in my homelab/home server - which is an HP N54 Microserver (Gen 7), recently reformatted to run FreeNAS; loving it so far (previously was some Frankenstein mix of Windows Server 2012 running an Ubuntu VM via Hyper-V, with the storage being ZFS within the VM... terrible performance!)

There is also PhotoStructure [2] that I like the look of, but PhotoPrism is OSS and already integrates machine learning for identifying objects in photos... yes I know I can't expect great performance out of my N54L on that front!

[1] [https://photoprism.org/](https://photoprism.org/)

[2] [https://photostructure.com/](https://photostructure.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> off-topic: Here's a weird thing... I've to admit that one concern I've is to like PhotoPrism (this is what is keeping me a little bit afraid of trying it). The issue is that I'm a Go programmer and it seems to be a good piece of software, but it uses the GPL license, and I've as a motto to avoid reading GPL'ed source code, especially when it affects what I do for a living. It'd be even worse if I think about contributing to it...

I discovered it a few months ago when I was searching the web to see what is out there. Previously to moving to iPhoto (regretted a lot), I used digiKam and I enjoyed it.

* I don't want to risk reading something I like there and ending up copying the idea or writing similar code unwillingly, as this license is viral.

Thanks for showing me PhotoStructure!

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > but it uses the GPL license, and I've as a motto to avoid reading GPL'ed > source code

So, don't? Just pretend that it's a proprietary application with no source that just drops from the sky as a binary or docker image. Can you not get what you want as just a "normal" user?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd argue this is hard to do when it's so easy to explore a bit further, so I'd rather just stay away from trouble :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I run my homelab on NUCs as well but no hypervisor. Everything I run is in Docker containers. So the NUCs have CentOS installed and then just containers across the Swarm cluster.

Storage is an NFS mount from my Synology NAS.

The only reason I would really care to have a hypervisor is because then I can do more from Terraform.

I use Terraform to configure my DNS, my Ubiquiti gear, and the Swarm cluster but that leaves a gap where I need to do something to manage the actual CentOS machine. There isn't much to manage (users, SSHd config, SSH keys, packages such as vim, docker, and htop, and then NFS mounts) but the less I have to manage myself the better. Just don't think it's worth adding a whole hypervisor just to pull possibly some of the networking into Terraform.

Anyways, NUCs + Docker Swarm = great win.

<comment><USER13> That's exactly what I want to do. Do you have any guides you used? I'm having a little trouble with nfs and docker permissions (guid/uid I think) trickling down to the nfs share in my Synology.

<comment><USER12> With regards to NFS permissions, I set my Synology up as so:

* Client: 192.168.0.8/29 (whatever the smallest subnet is I can use that includes my NUC)

* Privilege: Read/Write

* Squash: No mapping

* Asynchronous: Yes

* Non-privileged port: Denied

* Cross-mount: Denied

This is fairly out of date (I keep my own stuff in a private monorepo, this was a snapshot I posted for a friend), but here is the basics of a script to setup my NUC: [https://github.com/regner/homelab- stacks/blob/master/scripts...](https://github.com/regner/homelab- stacks/blob/master/scripts/init_node_common.sh)

Of note, the "Adding NFS share to fstab" part doesn't actually do that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I currently run my Sandstorm.io server on an 7th Gen i5 NUC.

I recently picked up some old budget Gigabyte BRIXs that will take on some other fun roles. (A 6th Gen Celeron and a 4th Gen i5.)

I have wanted to run an AD domain for managing my gaming PCs, but I had some difficulty with ESXi IIRC (probably also NIC issues, like in the article), and Intel has decided to be a complete tool about network drivers for "consumer" chipsets being installable on Windows Server. One of the perks of the old 4th Gen BRIX unit: A Realtek LAN NIC.

One of the things I'm sad about on newer NUCs is the removal of the LED ring. 7th gen NUCs in particular have a neat multicolor LED ring around the front panel that can be programmatically controlled... pretty neat for server status like uses. But I suspect they found it rarely used and so left it out for cost or something.

</comment><comment><USER15> VMs work ok, but much I am much happier with Linux containers. NUCs get bogged down pretty easily and go from quiet purring kittens, to screeching and whining when they get under load. A dozen containers, with different distorts and versions runs nicely.

</comment><comment><USER16> I just got one of those NUCs.

The network device is annoying - I couldn't get it to work on debian stable, but it is supported in Debian testing thanks to kernel 5.5

I also had problems with the HDMI video - It didn't work with the hdmi->dvi cable I got with either of my spare monitors, nor did it work with my TV and the existing hdmi cable I had there. I did get it to work by borrowing the hdmi cable from a friends htc vive.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have a couple of Raspberry Pis and Onion Omegas on my LAN and a few Linux and BSD VMs on my MacBook (NATed). They can mostly ssh amongst themselves, but the biggest problem I have is that I haven't been able to come up with a satisfactory DNS/mDNS setup. I just don't like fiddling with IP addresses. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER18> I thought the point of mdns is that it just works with zero configuration.

Other alternatives include running pihole on one machine (or all machines for backup), or giving them static IPs in your DHCP server and then copying a hosts file to them all.

<comment><USER17> A couple of my systems have resolvers that can't resolve .local names (OpenBSD, OpenWrt/musl)

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Does Avahi not work there? Implied to be available: [http://www.idoru.be/notes/how-to-configure- rendezvousbonjour...](http://www.idoru.be/notes/how-to-configure- rendezvousbonjourzeroconf-in-openbsd-with-avahi-deamon/) [https://openwrt.org/docs/guide- user/network/zeroconfig/zeroc...](https://openwrt.org/docs/guide- user/network/zeroconfig/zeroconf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> On the cheap side, I got old Lenovo m93p - USFF with 8GB RAM, i5 (2 cores, 4 threads) with 4 USB 3.0 ports, which is just enough for lightweight VMs, some test containers and ZFS mirror for backups / NAS. Whole package with 2x2TB disks was around 350$.

<comment><USER20> I still swear by my Ameridroid H2's - Celeron quad core, dual channel DDR 4, 2 x 1Gbps nic, 1 x NVME, 2 x Sata, 4K video - less then $120. I have 3 that I got the end of last year - tricked out with 16G DDR4 and 2x480G SATA - $250 each

 _edit_ clarify it was $250/each

<comment><USER21> A few days ago I picked up a SFF Dell (precision T1700) with a Xeon E3, 32GB DDR3, small SSD + HDD, 11 USB ports, and a thunderbolt pcie card. All for $200.

The CPU is roughly equivalent to a 6th or 7th gen i5, but with 8 threads instead of 4.

Installed proxmox with 1 VM and several containers. Couldn't be happier with everything. My wife can't even hear it under decent load in the living room.

<comment><USER20> I got a rack full of Dell and HP blade servers of Ebay years ago - nice gear - dual quad core xeons with 48G ram, SSD, and gigabit networking...

Thing is, running all 16+ blades pushes my electric bill over $500/month, and sounds like a fighter jet getting ready to take off :-P

Having silent gear is totally underrated!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone with similar homelab setup - do you use the free ESXi 5.5 or more recent versions which are quite pricey? If 5.5 how do you orchestrate it? vSphere Client on Windows is awful.

> I discovered the Ethernet NIC wasn't working.

> More Ethernet issues

Likewise with 5.5, where enabling the ethernet is often nontrivial (e.g. injecting the drivers for the Realtek NICs).

<comment><USER23> I think I signed up for a trial licence and got 6.7 u3, but I can't seem to find a link. It's been running a while so it isn't a 60 day one.

VMWares website is utterly impenetrable and it's like a form of hell trying to get out of the loops you end up in with licence agreements and download options.

<comment><USER22> > VMWares website is utterly impenetrable and it's like a form of hell trying > to get out of the loops

Oh man, yes. The only way to download installation binary of something specific was a direct link to VMWare servers found somewhere on the internet.

<comment><USER23> I torrented it the last few times. I have a licence and am unclear if this is a breach of TOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have an older NUC that I've been repaving as needs change, using it as a build agent for some projects, a homelab to experiment with hasura, etc. It's always done well, but it's perf relative to other options would never make me consider using it as a type 1 hypervisor like this. I may need to pick up a NUC10I7FNH.

</comment><comment><USER25> For my setup I was running ESXi on a 2012 i7 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM

At the time I bought it (2013?) it was far better value for money than any of the Intel NUCs.

I've always wanted someone to produce a NUC in a similar form factor, with good design but there doesn't seem much demand

And alas the current Mac Mini's are completely un-upgradable

<comment><USER26> You can upgrade the memory on the 2018 mini, but yes that's it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I got a NUC8i7BEH with ESXI. Works great, run dev lab out of it publicly facing vlan'd off on my home fiber.

Only negative I ran into is - I bought the bigger one with NVME and regular SSD. I couldnt fit a SSD in with NVME with heatsink :-/ Besides that this thing is snappy and uptime been perfect.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have an old Intel NUC D54250WYKH which I run ESXi on as my core applications server and where all my inbound homelab traffic gets routed through. There's a single CentOS VM with Docker installed which has all the host resources allocated to it.

Currently running the following containers-

      proxy [1] - Nginx proxy host for all ingress traffic, has a nice web interface and works with Let's Encrypt
      pihole [2] - Primary DNS server running Pi-hole to block ads
      cf-ddns [3] - Client to update Cloudflare records with my IP address (wildcard record *.myhomelab.dev which I run the proxy
      hosts through)
      unifi-controller [4] - UniFi Controller appliance
      watchtower [5] - Keeps the docker images up-to-date
      portainer [6] - Web interface for managing docker containers
      guacamole [7] - Apache Guacamole remote desktop gateway
      postfix-relay [8] - Open SMTP relay on my internal network which forwards everything to Amazon SES, makes email notifications easier

It's a great piece of kit and love the small form factor, it sits in my network comms cabinet and I've had no issues. I pass through a monitoring cable from a UPS in the cabinet to the CentOS VM which monitors if there's a power cut and shuts the ESXi host down safely.

I initially ran PhotonOS with Docker but had some networking issues so switched to CentOS 7. I have larger, more powerful SuperMicro hypervisor hosts which run the bigger application containers.

[1] [https://hub.docker.com/r/jc21/nginx-proxy- manager](https://hub.docker.com/r/jc21/nginx-proxy-manager) [2] [https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole](https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole) [3] [https://hub.docker.com/r/joshava/cloudflare- ddns](https://hub.docker.com/r/joshava/cloudflare-ddns) [4] [https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/unifi- controller](https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/unifi-controller) [5] [https://hub.docker.com/r/containrrr/watchtower](https://hub.docker.com/r/containrrr/watchtower) [6] [https://hub.docker.com/r/portainer/portainer](https://hub.docker.com/r/portainer/portainer) [7] [https://hub.docker.com/r/oznu/guacamole](https://hub.docker.com/r/oznu/guacamole) [8] [https://hub.docker.com/r/simenduev/postfix- relay](https://hub.docker.com/r/simenduev/postfix-relay)

<comment><USER12> Why run ESXi at all and not just install CentOS directly on the NUC?

<comment><USER14> The portability of being able to lift a VM off the hardware and onto another piece of hardware is a nice feature when you are using bargain consumer hardware for your "servers". The overhead is pretty minimal.

I'm not currently doing it with my NUC servers, but it's a pretty good choice to do so, and ESXi is free if you don't need to, you know, manage it in any competent way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yes, the Thunderbolt 1 to Ethernet adapter works with ESXi. I use it with my Mac Mini 2011 running ESXi.

</comment><comment><USER29> That was quite a thorough and interesting post, I was pleasantly surprised! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! By the way, I noticed this video [https://www.youtube.com/embed/WkA0dMudUG0](https://www.youtube.com/embed/WkA0dMudUG0) showing TempleOS didn't make when building from Markdown to HTML.

* I'm going to fix this later today + some misspells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> After playing around with ESXi, Proxmox, Hyper-V. I converged my mini-homelab to:

\- Any linux-based OS, Ubuntu in this case.

\- Ansible / Terraform for task automation.

\- K8s / Docker for containerization.

Given I have only 1 desktop + laptop, this option is good enough for me to learn cluster setup / networking / automation.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why is this better than running VietualBox in a host OS?

</comment><comment><USER31> 6 cores and 64GB max memory? It's hardly enough to run anything.

<comment><USER12> O_o what the heck are you trying to run in a home lab where that isn't enough? I currently run 20+ containers per NUC in my home lab. I have plenty of capacity left and nothing else to really run...

<comment><USER32> I think sqldba's post was sarcasm. As in, once you open Slack, Gmail and a few Chrome tabs, poof there goes 10GB of RAM.</comment></comment></comment>


Get ready for 'Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day' - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57565446-1/get-ready-for-objectify-a-male-tech-writer-day/

<comment><USER2> "Awesome Android app article from that hunky Seth Rosenblatt! @cnet."

...I appreciate the goal, but this might not have the effect she was intending.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tech writers seem to spend more time writing about themselves than time writing about technology.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with kchoze's comment there.</comment>


Coming soon: 37signals University - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1664-coming-soon-37signals-university <comment><USER2> Looks like they're looking to make money _five_ times off the same material. Good for them :) I'm referring to:

 _"Repackaging allows you to earn money multiple times on the same content. It's a great way to grow your revenues without significant marginal cost.

Money One: A lot of our ideas originate on this blog. We post articles which generate traffic. We make money off the traffic by running Deck ads in the sidebar. We make a few thousand a month off The Deck ads.

Money Two: We bundled up the best blog posts about our software development philosophy and turned it into a PDF book called Getting Real. We sell the PDF for $19. We've made a few hundred thousand dollars from the PDF.

Money Three: We take the Getting Real PDF and turn it into a paperback at Lulu.com. We sell the paperback for $25 and we make a few thousand a month on royalties. The paperback is currently ranked the 4th best seller on Lulu.

Money Four: We took the content from Getting Real and produced a Getting Real conference series. We held a few conferences a year and made about $50K per conference. We've produced about 5 of these conferences."_

from: <http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1256-making-money-twice>

<comment><USER3> Great comment, thanks for this as it really exposes the real motives for 37 Signals (which isn't a bad one btw)

I love how when 37 does this they are considered innovative or clever, but if some marketing/blog guru did the same thing they'd be run out of town for being exploitative or slimy (re packaging 'free content' for profit).

Hey I'm all for making more money but what I'm not for is a free pass for some while others get roasted for being 'marketing/affiliate promoting scum".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Krusty opens a clown college after running out of other ways to make money off his name.

<comment><USER5> You really think they need the money? They're a small company that made a million dollars off their last book sales alone, and they have another contract right now. They're legendary in the computer world and they said they weren't at all damaged by the recession. Don't you think there's a chance that they just really, really, really like what they're doing?

<comment><USER6> They certainly seem to need constant self promotion.

I'm at a loss to know what they could say in a 'university' that they haven't said already.

<comment><USER7> It's called marketing.

<comment><USER6> Marketing is a lot better when it just 'happens' though.

Google wasn't marketed, they didn't start selling books about the right way to make a business, they just made something good and watched as people started using it.

<comment><USER7> Back in the day Larry and Sergey accepted every interview they were approached for and hammed it up all over campus posing for photos standing on balls and playing with toys in order to keep that "wacky geniuses" thing going and get on all the magazine covers.

Once they found a business model and could hire enough programmers to basically churn out a new feature/project every week, they had built-in marketing and enough brand to self-sustain itself.

Are 37signals already to that point? I don't know, maybe, but faulting a 10(?) person, self-sustaining, Chicago company for keeping their name out there by comparing them to a grow-as-fast-as-possible, well-funded, Valley startup- gone-gangbusters that's been the feather in the web's crown for the past 10 years is a little unfair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "University" means a place to learn universally applicable knowledge, something which a trade is not.

<comment><USER9> Yes. I, too, really wish that places would stop calling themselves or their training programmes "university" inappropriately. A university is a centre of research, a place for deep and distinguished study. It is not a place for cheap training courses in pretty wrapping, and it is insulting to those who spend several years of their lives dedicated to learning at a real university to pretend that a few videos from a small commercial group is even on the same scale.

And anyone who presumes to teach others had better learn to write better than the first paragraph of that blog post first.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, University isn't the right term for this, or this:

[http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/hamburger_universi...](http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/hamburger_university.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I eagerly await the 2010 blog post by 37Signals telling everyone how dead simple it is to make money by starting a "university".

</comment><comment><USER12> You may not like their style, but I bet they have the following they do because of a particular style of operation. If they were any different, I am pretty sure none of us would have known them as well as we all seem to do.

As a company, they or any other profitable company for that matter would try to maximize the profits. As long as the company doesn't get into illegal or shady activities, as capitalists (I assume most of you are), one should be o.k with it.</comment>


Genetics outweighs teaching, Gove adviser tells his boss - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/11/genetics-teaching-gove-adviser <comment><USER2> So the people of Finland have different genetics from the English?

The article also states that he is against extending pre-school education, which has to be shown to be highly effective again and again.

But those studies were done in the US, so genetics probably works different for them too.

It is important to realize that there is a heavy strain of racial superiority thinking in the English upper class. As far as I know, there is nothing similar anywhere in Europe today.

<comment><USER3> > So the people of Finland have different genetics from the English?

Yes, of course. I'm not saying that this explains the difference in educational outcomes but Finns, Basques, Sardinians and another group I always forget are descendants of the original (or at least earlier) Europeans. They are genetically different from waves of peoples who entered and conquered Europe later (Slavs, Germanic tribes, etc) which in turn differ from each other.

<comment><USER2> Funnily enough, last week a comparative test of educational outcomes was discussed in the press showing that today there still exists a clear difference between outcomes in (former) East Germany and (former) West Germany. East German Children were better at mathematics and natural sciences.

So with identical genetics there is still an effect on the scale of typical European inter-country differences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am sure most agree that genetics is integral to educational success. But so what ?

Is the aim then to measure IQ in kindergarden and then decide at that point whether that person should be afforded the privilege of going to university ? And what happens if the tests are flawed (like almost all are) are we then going to accept an entire generation of disadvantaged children ? And surely everyone has worked with people who aren't book smart but are brilliant in their respective fields.

If recent history has taught us anything is that humans are the sum of many, many parts. And the minute you start narrowly categorising them you do them and humanity a massive disservice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't agree more, you should not put people into boxes, especially not according to artificial measures like IQ tests.

What you should do is design the education system in a way such that more variance is possible, so that especially gifted students get the stimulation they need. In the paper the argument is put forward, that a "good school" improves the average performance of students, but also increases the variance between performances.

<comment><USER5> But how do you decide which students are gifted without some way to measure general intellectual aptitude which is the purpose of an IQ test.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ideally you don't decide anything. You just give them the tools, and see what they do with it.

<comment><USER5> But how do you know what to teach and grade students on?

<comment><AUTHOR> I could imagine that something not unsimilar to how optimization algorithms work. You start with all student doing the same material, and then you supply the students with the amount and kind of material that suits them. Ideally, you don't grade at all.

<comment><USER5> How do you decide which material suits which students the best? What they enjoy the most?

If you have a class of 20 , how can you teach 20 different curriculum?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's where computerised tools come in. You can give the students tasks to do, the computer supervises how these tasks are completed, and suggests new tasks to do depending on how previous tasks were handled. The task of the teacher would then be that of a supervisor rather than that of an instructor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "In England, few are well trained in the basics of extended writing or > mathematical and scientific modelling and problem-solving," he writes.

When people talk about teaching problem-solving, they need to justify whether they actually know what they are talking about. I'm not going to say that problem-solving _can 't_ be taught, but most of the people who talk about it are just using a meaningless buzz-word.

Problem solving is mostly about domain knowledge. There's domain-specific strategies which can be taught. There's also a small number of more general strategies. And there may be ways to encourage students to find strategies, and try to transfer ones from other domains, but this isn't a field where you can assume that anyone who just happens to be using a few of the right buzz- words is going to be helpful.

But just saying "teach kids to solve problems" is arrogant and moronic. Kids already know how to solve problems - human beings are pretty much problem- solving machines. And most teachers already try to get kids to think for themselves - it's just not that simple (especially when there's a lot of pressure to get exam results, set lots of assessment, and to prove to some public servant that they are teaching problem solving).

As for genetics; he might be confounding "genetics, home environment, and other stuff which doesn't happen in class".

</comment><comment><USER7> I completely agree with the adviser, everyone who denies genetics plays a major role in academic performance/learning is living in denial. I've seen it many times, people that with no effort whatsoever manage to solve complex problems that require hours of hard work for most people. We need to accept our genetic limits and act accordingly.

<comment><USER4> > We need to accept our genetic limits and act accordingly.

This statement reminds me a lot of the movie Gattaca.

One should never discount the importance of ambition, work ethic and passion.

<comment><USER7> First of all thank you for bringing up the movie, I've seen it as a kid and I've been wondering ever since what was the title, since I only remembered bits. This movie has literally been bugging me for years, now I can finally see it again.

That said, ambition, work ethic and passion are also important, but they're a product of genetics too.

Take two guys, one is smart and spends his days trying to solve complex problems, while the second one is just as smart but spends his days on Netflix. What's the difference between the two? Mostly dedication, but what provides the former with it? Yep, genetics.

<comment><USER8> I think both extremes are bad. Ignoring genetics would be wishful thinking but ascribing things like dedication to genetics? We already know how strongly nurture affects motivation, work habits, self-control etc. Even genetic potential for intelligence can be fostered or inhabited by (lack of) nurture.

<comment><USER7> Read my other answer to threeseed, who brought up a similar point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > He says: "There is strong resistance across the political spectrum to > accepting scientific evidence on genetics. Most of those that now dominate > discussions on issues such as social mobility entirely ignore genetics and > therefore their arguments are at best misleading and often worthless." He > claims research shows that as much as 70% of a child's performance is > genetically derived.

Does anyone know the research papers he is referring to ?

<comment><AUTHOR> The entire paper (which includes references) is also available there, here is a direct link:

[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/interactive/2013/oct/11/...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/interactive/2013/oct/11/dominic- cummings-michael-gove-thoughts-education-pdf)

<comment><USER3> Is there a way to download it? This viewer is an absolutely ridiculous and contemptible attempt at keeping readers on your website. Using someone else's paper, no less.

EDIT: Yes, it's here [https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/8043...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/804396/some- thoughts-on-education-and-political.pdf)

(The PDF also has clickable links, and lots of them, if anyone wants to chase down the sources.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the article: """Cummings sets out what appears to be an end point to the first wave of Gove's reforms, saying: "Hopefully, it will push the English system towards one in which the state provides a generous amount of funding per pupil, which parents can spend in any school they wish, breaking down the barrier between private-state school"""

It's interesting to think about systems of providing education over time:

1\. Since the mind of man can remember: your son grows up to do what you do, because that's what you teach him how to do.

2\. Quite far back: for a fairly hefty fee, you can have your son apprenticed to a tradesman. He'll provide unpaid labor for several years while picking up the beginnings of the trade.

3\. Rather recent: your son can attend a formal school, which will provide him the background of the correct social class. The last two systems were more focused on providing a living for the child; this one much less so. As with apprenticeship, this is expensive.

4\. The government will pay for your child to attend a formal school, because it wants all citizens to have a certain shared viewpoint.

5\. The government will now require your child to attend a formal school, though you can substitute a school of your own.

It sounds like this guy wants to head back to stage 3, but expand government payments to cover it.

It's also interesting to me that while there's a fairly coherent reform viewpoint in the US on the state of pre-college education and where we'd like it to go ("public school sucks, although not mine specifically; we should just dismantle the system and give everyone vouchers that they can spend at the school of their choice"), there are many wildly different views on what college should be. We see people vilifying colleges that advertise your ability to get a job post-graduation ("that's not what scholarship is about"); we do not see condemnation of the public schools (several are extremely prestigious); we see people saying that colleges organized as a for-profit corporation are inherently untrustworthy (somehow this idea doesn't apply to elementary schools?); we see people touting the job-placement benefits of university education... but we don't see much push for free tuition at public universities, or vouchers for them.

<comment><USER11> These apparent inconsistencies in philosophy can be rationalized by observing that USA has 300 million people and they don't all have a shared viewpoint.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I know. Why is the reform movement unified as to pre-college, but not as to college?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The UK system is unique for selecting kids at a very early age. At 11, kids take a test to enter super selective public schools: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school). In some parts of UK only 2% of the 11 year old make it in. For those who don't make it, their only chance to go to top universities is to pay for expensive private school.

<comment><USER13> Not quite. Comprehensive (non-selective) schools are the norm and have been for many years. Grammar schools only remain in very few areas, where the local authority has chosen to keep them. For the majority of the country, there isn't a local grammar school.

<comment><USER12> You are right. I should have written "Part of the UK system". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammar_schools_in_Engl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammar_schools_in_England). But the point remains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't need science to refute that the idea that achievement is 70% IQ is absolute horse shit. I've seen too many brilliant people who wasted their potential, and too many successful morons to discount the obvious effect of effort and motivation. It's self evident that brain power needs to be catalyzed to provide any real value.

<comment><USER15> Yet brains of geniuses are physically different than those of ordinary men.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "It is genetic" is the secular version of "because the Lord said so".It helps explain anything we have no clue about.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> How did this post drop from rank 3 to rank 148 within 5 minutes? Interesting algorithm at work here...

<comment><USER17> People flagged it, because the discussion has been had on HN before and it tends to go poorly.

This submission also involves the hateful Gove, a clueless fuckwit of the highest order.

([http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/jun/18/michael- gov...](http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/jun/18/michael-gove-exams- gcse-schools))

Here's another article from The Grauniad involving Gove, who calls for a return to teaching "Newton's laws of thermodynamics". The Guardian make no mention of that error.

[https://paulbraterman.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/newton- thermo...](https://paulbraterman.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/newton- thermodynamics-boyles-law-and-the-basics-a-lesson-for-michael-gove/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks for this. It is interesting, because on the photo shown in the article you can see both gove and the adviser, and gove seems to be an obvious "fuckwit", and the adviser an obvious nerd. So I would separate advised from the adviser here, and focus on the content of the paper which is very interesting. Disappointing HN community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Arguing that student genetics have any substantial influence on student success is a load of bullshit. It's the same argument that has been used in favor of organized eugenics, and, just to fulfill Godwin's Law, also used in favor of the holocaust.

But seriously, this is detrimental to improvements in education. All this will do is push us backwards, and delay actual improvements.

EDIT: I guess I should've been more clear: I was being sarcastic with my comparisons to hitler, for the sake of fulfilling Godwin's Law early and being done with that stupid.

<comment><USER19> However, to argue the converse is just as difficult. Can we really reject the hypothesis that genetics has an effect on a person's mental ability? On student success?

In China, researchers are looking at mapping the genomes of 'geniuses' to look for potential genes that impact intelligence. ([http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/genetics-of- iq/](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/genetics-of-iq/))

While, you argue from a point of pathos, that is that pursuing such genetics- based arguments of ability is dangerous and leads to dangerous situations, it is important to consider that with increasing knowledge of genetics, it is possible that we will find certain genes with impacts on knowledge and ability. I mean, even now, we know at least of genetic bases to diseases that negatively impact intelligence. Who is to say the converse won't happen? In a question of science and ethics, I would argue that it is better that we pursue, to a) not end up in lopsided world power (imagine if only China were to successfully pursue genetic bases for improving education) and b) look at potential ways of improving education across the board. If we do know a genetic bases, that may allow us to better target education. Ability is clearly myriad and manifold, and likely impossible to fully be determined by genetics. There will still be better objective measures than genetics.

To shove aside genetics effects on student success just on potential ethical ramifications might not be a very good idea.

<comment><USER20> The point is, how does it help a person improve themselves if the entire society is designed to reinforce the view that you can't help being dumb, because your Dad was, so therefore .. why try?

Genetics isn't good for anyone but bigots and haters. There is absolutely _nothing_ useful in the Genetics movement for the common man - fact is, the entire movement to categorize humans genetically is a corporate one, with the intent of providing insight into the nature of the consumers the corporations paying for these studies wish to acquire as willing - or even unwilling - subjects in their empire.</comment></comment></comment>


Enterprise Javascript is... - <AUTHOR> http://enterprise-js.com/ <comment><USER2> I wish they included the right way to do the stuff. _Then_ it would be fun and useful too, and that would be a great way to teach best practices and coding techniques.

<comment><USER3> If you want to help promote better JS documentation, see <http://promotejs.com> where we are organizing an organic deep backlinking campaign to the proper MDN documentation. Results have already been made and can be tracked at <http://arewefirstyet.com> For further details see, <http://voodootikigod.com/jsconf-eu-2010-speech>

<comment><USER4> For a project that's trying to improve documentation and documentation visibility, arewefirstyet.com is a pretty horrible site. I had no idea what was going on until I read the jsconf speech. Also, (this is nitpicky, but) you might want to reverse the vertical axis of your graph to emphasize that #1 is a good thing (and make the range 1-250, not 0-250).

Of course, if you only want 'insiders' looking at arewefirstyet.com, then what I said doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't really see how this snobbery helps anyone. Just serves to alienate those who aren't "in the know" without offering any resources to help them.

<comment><USER6> > I don't really see how this snobbery helps anyone

I find your lack of humor, amusing. Practically, it makes people laugh which I'msure if I bothered to look I could find some study that shows laughing reduces stress. It provides relief from dreary, serious business, grumple heads like you.

<comment><USER5> I meant how does it advance JavaScript? How does it make JS developers look to the outside world? Is it really cool to laugh at people who don't know better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the readme file on GitHub.

 _If you're someone that runs an enterprise-level website ( >100 hits per day), you've probably had to deal with the pains of scaling and maintaining your code.

Enterprises have dealt with these problems for years -- this is an attempt at gathering all of that knowledge and to share it with the world._

The sarcasm is so think I can almost taste it.

<comment><USER8> think or thick?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This one is best: <http://enterprise-js.com/16>

<comment><USER10> Usage shown in example is stupid. However to present this approach as antipattern is also stupid. If "enterprise" means even moderately big apps namespacing _is_ the way to go. Alas, that project mocks too much useful stuff to be liked by me.

<comment><USER11> Namespacing seems fine, but to torture the declaration syntax as shown on the site in order to get the Java-like com.domain.package.class.method() syntax is wrong. Just use underscores in the name rather than periods and use the syntax properly.

<comment><USER12> Not to mention, the next library you load will clobber the `com` variable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm bothered that when I saw the code on <http://enterprise-html.com> for rounded corners, the first thing I thought was "You forget to set cell spacing, padding, and borders..."

</comment><comment><USER14> Enterprise Javascript is making blanket statements about the coding styles of some fictitious out group in order to attract attention to yourself.

</comment><comment><USER15> The text is so huge and stretched that it is hard to read. The code is so small and uses such a bad colour scheme that I often cannot read it.

Your CSS3 is "using every feature available because you can"?

</comment><comment><USER16> I spent a summer interning at a large financial data company, and I was surprised to see javascript was used quite a bit internally, so I can attest that "enterprise javascript" really does exist.

My coworkers wrote very good code, however the quality of my JS was terrible. Of course. I only knew C++ and Java at the time, so I treated javascript like it was "Java without types"

<comment><USER17> I would probably bet most people approach JS like that. Which is probably related to the fact that there is so much bad javascript. People who don't really learn the language and just assume that they know [insert-statically- typed-language-here] and therefore can program javascript.

<comment><USER16> Indeed. Javascript: The Good Parts is a good book for getting past that stage. I feel like I'm finally learning JS, after having used it for years amateurishly, and it's becoming one of my favorite languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And the "cool" way is to fail on URL encoding?

<http://i.imgur.com/hUtkJ.png>

</comment><comment><USER19> I realize things are a little different in JS, but when you're working on a massive product with a small team, no matter how great the code is, eventually you learn that the variables DO have to be descriptive and properly organized namespaces ARE very important.

Many of these conventions evolved, in my opinion, because it's difficult to create large applications, period. No matter how much effort you put into abstracting everything and modularizing components into smaller components.

Anyway, these were the only ones that I thought were a little out of place.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wish there was a "refresh" link that would reload the "tip" via XHR, so I wouldn't have to hit F5 (wasn't even sure there are more the first time)

<comment><USER21> You can click on the "enterprise ___ IS:" bit to refresh. Not particularly intuitive.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I really like the idea of handling submissions from readers by telling people to fork the github and then send a pull request... so simple.

<comment><USER22> Seems like a great way to run a hacker specific news site.. that way only people who understand things like git and github would be able to submit stories :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If this is a joke, then it's a riot. Else do not read into this, this is not javascript.

</comment><comment><USER24> The most needed one is enterprise-java.com, so you can program like people do at Oracle.

<comment><USER25> Seems as though someone just registered that domain...feel free to fork.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I really hope the recommended method of suggesting tips (fork, modify, pull request) and the overcomplicated backend (complete with four dependencies!) is an attempt at meta-humor. Maybe we need an opensource-js.com.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In a similar vein I also like <http://twitter.com/enterprisey>

</comment><comment><USER27> Obviously it's not convention in Javascript, but this is the convention in Haskell and I quite like it.

<comment><USER28> What are you talking about?

<comment><USER29> Probably the initial-comma one - the page doesn't make it easy to see that there is more than one joke on refresh.

<comment><USER30> Initial comma actually is a good idea. It means that when you edit the list and add another on the end, you're less likely to forget the comma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yikes. That hits a little too close to home.

</comment><comment><USER32> i so hope this is all jokes

<comment><USER33> This is "Enterprise"!. It's a very nice collection indeed.</comment></comment>


A web video company that is most likely a hoax   - <AUTHOR> http://ihatelawyers3.github.com/ <comment><USER2> Here's more details: [http://www.timothysykes.com/2011/11/how-a-penny-stock- promot...](http://www.timothysykes.com/2011/11/how-a-penny-stock-promoter- used-55-million-to-create-a-400-million-pump-dump/)

The RAYS campaign was run by the same guys who did LEXG, the latter being one of the best pump and dumps last year-- ran from $1 to $10 in a short amount of time.

<comment><USER3> Glad you mentioned Tim here. He's one of about five truth-tellers in that world of scams. Great resource

<comment><USER4> Timothy Sykes a truth teller? Now I've heard it all...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It means the _normal.mp4 file was encoded in an absurdly high bitrate for no reason except to make their claim of 90% compression.

<comment><USER6> You hit the nail on the head here. While it's possible that the video they posted is 6fps (which is close to what those mencoder flags will achieve), it's more likely that they simply saved the first video with no compression and saved the second one as a regular video file with compression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I checked the demo videos:

"Original Version" - 1080p, AVC uncompressed

"Standard Compression" - 480p, AVC uncompressed

"Raystream Version" - 480p H.264 AAC, ~1200kb data rate

Nothing that fishy here. They seem to be advertising to broadcasters. It's possible they have some nice custom algorithms for their videos. That isn't uncommon - take a look at Apple movie trailers and iTunes videos: they have their own magic juice too.

With that, maybe the investment is a scam, but posting a "hoax" via "ihatelawyers3" on github is waaaaaaay more suspect to me.

[EDIT] they seem to be pretty active for being supposedly fake. Check their twitter feed. They tweet as much if not more than most video companies and it's not fluff.

<comment><USER8> "Custom magic algorithms" in this case being "off-the-shelf free software, using completely default parameters, that we've stolen and claimed is our magic algorithm".

<comment><USER9> H.264 is not "free software." You're thinking of x264, the free software implementation of H.264 that everyone uses.

There is a large market for proprietary optimised implementations of various codecs for use in industry. The same goes for mp3 and so on.

Unless people have found x264 headers left in the files, in which case, fail.

<comment><USER10> Try clicking on DarkShikari's username.

<comment><USER11> Nice. :) This made me register an account here at HN so that i can post comment. Thanks for the heads up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's been a number of hoaxes like this previously: <http://compressionscams.blogspot.com/> \- even down to "software demos" that turned out to be various utilities downloaded from the Internet bolted together (<http://www.c10n.info/archives/415>)

What is it about scammers and impossibly high compression? Is it because it's easy to explain but hard to prove the concept to non-tech savvy investors, or is it just because they read about it having been done before and copy it verbatim?

Guessing the latter, as there's other technologies (cryptography and semiconductor fabrication come to mind as easy to explain/hard to disprove) that could hoodwink unsophisticated investors.

<comment><USER13> this guy is a penny stock trader and he called it a pump and dump scam:

[http://www.timothysykes.com/2011/11/how-a-penny-stock- promot...](http://www.timothysykes.com/2011/11/how-a-penny-stock-promoter- used-55-million-to-create-a-400-million-pump-dump/)

<comment><USER14> This is an obvious case of fraud which the SEC should be investigating:

<http://www.smauthority.com/raystream/>

<comment><USER15> I've seen quite a number of such "Trader Advisor" Websites and have always wondered - how is their business model anything but a self fulfilling prophecy? I mean - you make a bet on a stock (or manufacture a stock to bet on), but tell an audience to follow your advice, thus increasing demand and drive up the price of the stock.

Seriously - how is this not transparently fraud to people in the stock market? How is this not transparently fraud to everybody, actually? Or is it just praying on the hobbyist investors who are deluded into thinking "get rich quick" works for ordinary folks while the people "in the know" are delighted to have an army of zombies to commandeer?

Would be great to hear if anybody has some insight into how fraudsters like this are prosecuted (or avoid prosecution).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is crazy... the website is a shell of an investment pitch. These guys need to get reported. Anyone want to make some money off the collapse.

Wow, their first 'contract' is with a company called edgefactory OMNIMEDIA, which I think is owned by martha stewart OMNIMEDIA?

edit: Wow, I just posted a link to this article and this thread on their facebook account and now the item has been deleted off their wall within minutes. everyone should let me know....

<http://www.facebook.com/RaystreamInc>

<comment><USER16> The market is way ahead of you man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A simple way of finding out if it's a scam is by looking at the balance sheet. If you see little to no assets it is most certainly a pump & dump; this "firm" has not assets. These scams are usually formed through reverse mergers, that is how they are able to sell stock.

<comment><USER18> <http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=RAYS.OB>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was involved on some contract work with effectively the same type of technology that Raystream is touting. We didn't hit the kind of compression ratios that Raystream are talking about, but we were able to compress video drastically while still maintaining video quality. That is, the technology is possible, and I've seen it with my own eyes. With that said, the company I was contracting to, could have easily spun the marketing to suggest we were getting 90% compression. To me, it looks like Raystream are making a lot of claims that are half-truths.

Looking at the uncompressed vs Raystream videos, it's difficult to tell if it's doing anything more than h264, x264, or neither. The conclusion being made by the OP may be true, it may not; likely they're exaggerating their marketing to look better than they truly are.

One of the marketing tricks they're using to make their technology look better than it is, is by not showing the videos side by side. Viewing them side by side, it's easy to see that Raystream's video lose quality in their color complexity, image sharpness, and some artifacting shows up if you know what to look for (I can do up some comparison images if anyone is interested.)

When we were testing our compression technology we would run our video through acid tests (difficult video to test the limits of the encoders.) We had a variety of acid tests, and depending upon encoder settings we could tweak each video to look good - however the problem was getting all of the acid test videos to look good at the same settings.

So while Raystream may be able to encode a promotional video that has very low complexity scenes, that doesn't mean this tech is any good at high complexity scenes. In fact, most of the scenes in the promo video our encoders would have had no trouble doing. Things like sports, live concerts, trees, or complex water (the surfer wasn't nearly complex enough, and the original quality of the humming bird wasn't good enough to produce a noticeable difference) were what we used to test our encoders.

I also notice they've got a "Live Streaming" section on their site. On demand content is easy to do, relative to live streaming. For on demand content you have no bounds like cpu, or ram, the biggest barrier is disk io and time to encode. Whereas live streaming is extremely complex. They claim they can do 1.7 Mbs live streaming; we were able to do 1.5 Mbs and less, but at that point the quality suffers significantly, and the video would infrequently go blocky for a frame or two. The only use case is for TVs that no one is going to get close to.

There comes a certain point with this type of technology where you can't stuff a 100 pieces of data, into a container that only holds 10 pieces of data. It doesn't matter how good your compression algorithm is.

<comment><USER20> Well informed and well put on all points.

Side note: The example streams are progressive download. I pulled one down and had a look. It uses AAC for the audio codec. They are not listed on VIA's licening page. (<http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/aac-licensees.aspx>) As a comercial company, they should be hip to this kind of stuff.

<comment><USER20> Nor does it seem do they have an MPEG-LA license. <http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not making any representations as to Raystream particularly, but it is not true that you can't make fancy encoding algorithms that will then run on a standard codec in a phone. Video standards are decoding standards, and specify what steps the decoder needs to do to take compressed video data and uncompress it.

Of course, this company may be a pump-and-dump, but it is also true that some kind of super-clever encoding algorithm may exist that would be much better than existing encoders and still run fine on existing phone codecs. That is, the fact that they claim an algorithm produces correctly-formatted mpeg is not a disqualifying factor.

</comment><comment><USER22> That page ends on a cliffhanger - does the hoax.avi look as good as the ray_480p.mp4 or not? How does the framerate compare?

<comment><USER23> Technically, they could be using pre-compression schemes / filters which modify the source to be more compressible by standard encoders. However, if that was the case, both files should appear to be encoded with the same settings to be a fair comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Step 1: take short position in company Step 2: publish site affirming company is a hoax Step 3: you know the drill

Not that I don't believe it's a hoax...

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_i...](http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67861454) should provide enough info about this.

</comment><comment><USER26> In 2001, a guy wanted to sell a revolutionary codec: I2BP. He claimed it could transfer 25 images/s and audio in 2ko/s. In France, he got press coverage, and funding. Here is the write up, in french: <http://www.transfert.net/a6836> Of course, he was a fraud.

</comment><comment><USER27> FWIW

Registrar ID: CORE-123 (Klute-Thiemann Informationstechnologie GmbH & Co.KG)

Created On: 2005-06-16 19:22:24 GMT

Last Updated On: 2011-09-15 12:17:38 GMT

Expiration Date: 2012-06-16 19:22:24 GMT

Status: member-lock

Registrant ID: COCO-10657700

Registrant Name: Roman Rumpf

Registrant Organization: Raystream Inc

Registrant Street: 2101 Midway Road, Suite 140

Registrant City: Carrollton

Registrant State/Province: Texas

Registrant Postal Code: 75006

Registrant Country: US

Registrant Phone:

Registrant Phone Ext:

Registrant Fax:

Registrant Fax Ext:

Registrant Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER28> My guess, based on the man page for mencoder linked on the page where he got the mencoder options, you can encode a source video file to target video file aiming for either quality of frames, or speed of frames (per second). "Very high quality" options results in a video output of roughly 6 frames per second. Comparing the file size of the output file hoax.avi, its basically identical. So the revelation is that this company's miracle method is simply delivering video at 6fps.

If you've ever played a video game that was too much for your system, you've seen 6fps before, and you know it is intolerable.

That's my take on it, I really wish the author would have elaborated more on the result.

<comment><USER29> No. They just deliver video compressed with H.264, with a target bitrate of about 1Mbps. The framerate is unaffected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hate to sound ignorant, but someone want to explain?

<comment><USER31> If you encode their test-video with an off-the-shelf open source H264 codec on normal settings, you end up with a video that is smaller than their sample video. Their "amazing new technology" is just vanilla h264 compression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Raystream was a publicly traded company called InterDom Corp, which was purchased for 200k by Unlimited Trade Incorporated, operated by Ramon Rumpf renamed it Raystream.

[http://reversemerger.dealflow.com/wires/article.cfm?id=xhtjs...](http://reversemerger.dealflow.com/wires/article.cfm?id=xhtjsrdkiecsfyc)

</comment><comment><USER33> _All_ "investment opportunities" in over the counter stocks are scams; there's no real news here.

</comment><comment><USER34> OP should contact some hedge funds with this info. If true they will be quite interested.

<comment><USER35> Looks like a pump-and-dump scam: [http://www.beaconequity.com/smw/14546/Raystream-RAYS- Stock-a...](http://www.beaconequity.com/smw/14546/Raystream-RAYS-Stock-a- Predictable-Dump-after-the-Blatant-Pump)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> this kind of reminds me back the increase your MEMORY BY 8 fold MS-DOS "RAMBOOST" days.

<comment><USER37> Whoa - thanks for the nostalgia. I remember spending SO MUCH time trying to work around RAM limitations using all these techniques only to find the best you could get was the ability to trick a piece of software into thinking more RAM is there, but the performance hit made it a worthless practice.

<comment><USER38> Well, under certain circumstances you can swap to a compressed ramdisk. There are ways that that can be helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This stuff is so common it's scary. Just do a search for "penny stocks" and this junk will come right to the top. Sad story

</comment><comment><USER39> Look them up on Google News. Disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER40> Doesn't the fact that a stock is traded on an OTC exchange really tell you all you need to know?

</comment><comment><USER41> <div id="roll" class="">

Revolutionary scrolling banner technology.

</comment><comment><USER42> Why not buy the stock anyways and sell it right before it gets dumped?

<comment><USER43> How do you know when it's about to get dumped?

If you're confident it's a pump and dump and it will fall you could short it, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't think there's any hoax being played here, and I don't think they're fraudsters. I suspect someone simply discovered the various advanced settings of x264 and found out that they can maintain good video quality at "lower- than-common" bitrates, mistaking it all for a flash of brilliance on their own part. Everyone knows that f.e. YouTube aren't really doing everything they can with whatever h.264 encoder they've been using.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is this a good example of information asymmetry?

<comment><USER46> Not anymore, the stock is down more than 50% since 11pm yesterday!

<comment><USER47> This repo was first created at 8am today though. ([https://github.com/ihatelawyers3/ihatelawyers3.github.com/co...](https://github.com/ihatelawyers3/ihatelawyers3.github.com/commits/master))

What's going on here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Please explain

bash$ mencoder -ovc x264 -oac mp3lame -x264encopts \ subq=6:partitions=all:8x8dct:me=umh:frameref=5:bframes=3:b_pyramid=normal:weight_b \ -o hoax.avi ray_480p_normal.mp4

then o god o god.. is this a porn?

<comment><USER49> Their proof is an unoptimized video vs an optimized video.

Their product is a standard recommended video optimization.

The people behind RayStream are either lying and/or don't understand what they are talking about.

<comment><USER50> If it is standard then why the author was surprised by the compression ratio?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What careers can an MD do? - <AUTHOR> I'm about to graduate with a United States medical degree matching into emergency medicine. I've always been involved in tech, coding in various projects during school. My goal has been to combine medicine with technology, but I haven't found my exact niche yet. Does anyone in the hackernews community have any insight? Thank you! <comment><USER2> You mentioned coding; do you want to code?

What projects did you find the most fulfilling? Move in that direction.</comment>


AT&T promised 7k new jobs to get tax break, cut 23k jobs instead - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/att-promised-7000-new-jobs-to-get-tax-break-it-cut-23000-jobs-instead/ <comment><USER2> The main issue here is that AT&T employs a large workforce that is not relevant to the current (Fiber) and upcoming (5G Cellular/WISP) service technologies being rolled out en masse.

Which means as their legacy business units are retired or pulled back, they are letting go numerous employees while simultaneously hiring a slightly smaller number of more educated (up-to-date) workers to staff up their new business units.

What we are seeing here is the decline of a historically booming industry (linemen) as the overhead required to maintain these networks becomes more specialized in nature and involves fewer people than before.

Now, the ethical strategy to mitigate impacting their historically loyal workforce would be to re-train the copper linemen to work with the new technologies.

The problem with this is that its' expensive. Insanely expensive. The training is made available to many of their current workers, in as many areas as possible (where the skills will be relevant) however at the end of the day an individual 'first-line' manager will not advocate for 64 year old Joe Schmoe with average performance stats to get this expensive training if 24 year old Billy Bob with a 'young man's' performance record is also asking to get trained.

<comment><USER3> That's a scenario they created. There's no reason the man in the van can't hang up a WISP device or whatever. I used to run a field tech services org — it's not that expensive to train new tasks, the hardest thing is hiring reliable people. Your old school HP and IBM CEs would service everything for 95% of service calls.

They are busting the CWA, period.

The same thing happened with National Grid in upstate NY. They'll use 5 subcontractors and 10 guys to do a job that was handled by a 2-3 man crew 20 years ago. The hilarious thing is that that union didn't have the stupid separation of duty stuff the contractors do. I saw one instance where they had a subcontractor on site specifically to spray bee spray.

<comment><USER4> _the hardest thing is hiring reliable people...They are busting the CWA, period._

My father in law was a linesman for AT&T, then the various Bell companies then Verizon for 30 years. He started when he was 21 and retired when he was 51 about 15 years ago.

He regularly brags how the union would set hour allotments for each job and how he could complete work in 30 minutes that the union required scheduling for 5 hours. Most of the time he spent on the clock involved him hiding his work truck in the woods behind his house and sneaking into his house to work on home improvements while he was being paid.

Every once in a while he would get caught doing something wrong and would be suspended. The union would then represent him and provide him groceries and other items during the suspension. Eventually Verizon paid him a lump sum of a quarter million dollars to go away which along with saving money from decades of generous overtime rules including double time and a half on holidays let him retire at the age of 51.

<comment><USER5> There will always be people who abuse the support the union offered, like your dad, who gives unions a bad rep - most members work with pride and want to do the best job they can.

Time allotted work is intended to ensure jobs are done safely; not everyone will take that long, but it ensures slower workers aren't going to cut corners just to keep schedule. Without a union, your dad would have been expected to take 30min every single time, and lose your job if you don't.

<comment><USER6> Union is bad.

Just put into perspective.

In the Garden State Parkway in NJ, the Union Toll Plaza has 4 lanes that accept exact change. No people involved. Then few months ago, they "upgraded" the exact change lanes and put people to collect tolls, 24/7\. Not to mention, it takes longer to pass the lane now if you need to pay cash.

That means, at 40hr/week per person, 168hr per week, they need 16 people to run this 4 lanes. Then another 2 to 3 people to cover for time off. Assume a low $50k per person/year, that's almost $1m per year.

What values do these toll collectors provide to society? The only reason why these jobs were created in the first place is because of the union. Don't you think money and manpower can spend on something better to serve the customers? Like repairing the road.

<comment><USER7> The fact we have toll roads at all is concerning, considering this is a common argument against privatization. Toll stops are also pretty dangerous, especially the ones on the West Virginia Turnpike, which recently doubled in price. What can we really do, though?

<comment><USER8> The fact that you're using toll booths to collect tolls is the concerning part to me. Here in Toronto we have a toll highway where everything is automated. Via cameras/license plate if you only drive on it occasionally, or via a transponder if you drive on it often enough it's worth the discount (I assume the discount exists because the cameras are unreliable, sometimes miss people, and they want to minimize errors).

<comment><USER9> Plate recognition has a fallthrough rate, and mailing out toll bills followed by processing incoming checks is a costly PITA that a transponder enabled vehicle mostly eliminates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Did anyone really expect anything different? These are the same companies who took tax breaks in return for a promise to build out a fiber optic network and then never did it while pocketing the money.

At this point AT&T and their peers aren't fucking society, we are actively asking them to

<comment><USER11> This article and your assertion are a really good example of how falsehoods become an unquestioned part of the accepted narrative. AT&T never "promised to create a _net_ 7,000" jobs. The article admits as much: it quotes AT&T's CEO as saying that AT&T would invest an additional $1 billion, which is equivalent to 7,000 jobs. The article _never analyzes the truth of that claim._ It never determines whether AT&T actually invested that money. (In fact, AT&T is in the middle of a big push to deploy more fiber: [https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/att-plans-to-expand-fiber- in...](https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/att-plans-to-expand-fiber-internet- to-14-million-locations-by-mid-2019.)) Instead, the article points to completely unrelated layoffs that resulted from a merger. (There was also the question of who exactly this "promise" was made to. The article quotes Stephenson's comments in a speech to the Economic Club of New York, not any sort of filing to the government.)

The same is true for the "promise to build out a fiber optic network." AT&T never "promised" to do that. The arguments at the time were that deregulation would lead to higher investment into things like broadband. What nobody anticipated at the time was that the mobile revolution would happen, and all that new capital would be redirected to building wireless networks instead. That doesn't make the original claim a misrepresentation. And from a practical standpoint, it's better that all this money got invested in mobile instead of building FTTH.

<comment><USER10> Yea, you're right. AT&T never promised those jobs. They just kept talking about all the jobs that would be made if the tax cut happened. That was the main argument when they tax cuts came up, all the job that would be created. But yea, no one made an actual promise.

The reason people are upset is the same reason no one likes talking to lawyer, and why no one wants to deal with corporate or political leaders who need to be talked to like a genie to make sure your wish doesn't get twisted around.

If the response to this event and to the fiber optic debacle is "wElL tEcHniCalLy We DiDnT pRoMiSe" then why should any tax breaks be considered in the future for any company? What is the reason to believe any statement about the benefits that will come through if we could just release these poor corporate giants from their terrible tax burden, if experience shows that they never come through?

<comment><USER12> > why should any tax breaks be considered in the future for any company

Unemployment in the USA after the tax cuts is at historically low levels that haven't been seen in more than four decades. The economy is booming.

Taxes on corporations are mainly good to encourage corporate behavior, revenue can be obtained by taxing the wealthy directly as well. Increasing taxes such as the capital gains tax while keeping corporate taxes at their reformed, globally competitive levels seems the way to go to me...

<comment><USER13> With 1 in 8 Americans living underneath the federal poverty line, and 10% of employed American adults facing food insecurity (i.e. hunger), it's arguably not the case that the economy is booming.

As for what you can credit the tax cuts with, well, here you go:

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-the-trump- tax...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-the-trump-tax-cuts- were-a-bust-2019-01-30)

The tl;dr: share buybacks and corporate profits are the biggest consequence of the TCJA, not employment.

<comment><USER12> I don't see what those two statistics have to do with whether the economy is booming.

Would you argue the economy has never boomed before? 1 in 8 Americans below the federal poverty line seems to be pretty decent when seen historically according to [https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Number_in_Poverty_...](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Number_in_Poverty_and_Poverty_Rate,_1959_to_2017.png#mw- jump-to-license)

Numbers for 2018 don't seem to be available yet but I'd assume they continue to trend down.

<comment><USER14> Another view is that the US is as bad as ever compared to peers: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates- in-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates-in-oecd- countries/)

<comment><USER15> Mexico has lower rates of poverty than the US? It wants me to pay to see how they gather the data but 33% of Mexicans live on less than $5 a day[0] while "42% of Mexico's total population living below the national poverty line" yet the rate in your graph is 16.7%

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

<comment><USER14> It's true that the oecd definition kind of breaks on poor countries with low median income. But still the list is interesting if you look at the more comparable rich countries vs the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Jobs" as a political issue to bargain vote is the real problem. Finally the voters ask their representatives "what you have done for jobs?" It is that misplaced attitude of voters that eventually gives us these evil policies and pretty much nonsensical claims like "someone else is taking our jobs".

Every company out there is trying to employ more people. The only problem is in finding people who are a right fit, who have right skills and so on. The problem becomes more acute in a country like USA where economy is always in optimal mode. Everything you get in USA is mostly state of art requiring specialized skill.

Government has zero role to play in "creating jobs" or "attracting jobs". If government gets into that it will end up with corruption with 100% probability. Government however can play a big role in ensuring people have skills. Government is the only entity that can publish macroeconomic data about skills and shortages, Government can help universities and community colleges and private entrepreneurs develop those skills.

<comment><USER17> > Every company out there is trying to employ more people.

That isn't true, many companies have far too many employees relative to the size of their business. Companies grow much in the same way that bureaucracies do (see Parkinson's law). Firing people isn't necessarily easy, but it can be very profitable.

> The only problem is in finding people who are a right fit, who have right > skills and so on.

Don't forget price.

> Government has zero role to play in "creating jobs" or "attracting jobs".

It has a massive role in increasing the price and risk of hiring people. Corporate taxes also directly affect the risk/return calculations for new investment.

This article makes it sound like AT&T execs lied about creating jobs, but they de-facto didn't. Creating 1000 jobs through investment doesn't imply _not_ getting rid of 1000 other jobs through restructuring. Of course you're not going to be boasting about planned layoffs in the same breath, at least not to the press that serves the general population.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How about next time we want to give a company a tax break to incentivize job creation, we make it a rebate payable in five years, contingent on the jobs actually being created.

Of course, that assumes 1) that giving a tax break is actually an effective mechanism for creating jobs, and 2) that the people involved are not corrupt to begin with. I'm not sure either is a safe assumption.

<comment><USER19> How about focusing on public works so at least we get some contractually obligated public infrastructure out of the stimulus.

<comment><USER20> The border wall obsession on one side and Trump investigation obsession on the other have replaced any possibility of focusing on infrastructure.

<comment><USER19> The Dems are talking about a Green New Deal for exactly this type of public works while the GOP has passed tax cuts and tariffs. Even if you assume the Democrats are all talk, the equivalency is a false one.

<comment><USER21> Ironically, the GND highlights why, as Obama put it, "there's no such thing as shovel-ready projects." [1]

In a nuthsell, environmental regulations and activism make large public works projects nigh impossible.

What's surprising is mostly that this is even a surprise. If environmentalists have been clear on anything, they've been clear that they don't like massive concrete and steel structures. It blows my mind that the Dems are going to try this again, when they're getting the mailers from Sierra Club promising to tie up these public works projects in court for 20 years.

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17obama-t.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17obama-t.html)

<comment><USER19> Pretty sure environmentalism is not what's causing right of way sand bagging and foot dragging on our phone poles and it's not what's standing in the way of fiber rollouts and other information infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've heard this story before. Friend of mine runs a small manufacturing business in Canada. Got subsidized by a Canadian government program to import and install a big new modern machine for his shop floor from Germany. Goal of the gov program obviously being to create manufacturing jobs. And sure enough, 3 new and good union jobs required to operate the new thing, and because the new thing is so modern and highly automated, he was able to lay-off 20 other workers it took to run the older machines it replaced...

<comment><USER23> Was the explicit purpose of the grant to increase employment? Or simply make the business more competitive with advanced machinery? These agreements can be set up such that the grant need not be repaid only if the business creates X full time jobs over a period of Y years. If that condition isn't met, the grant is repayable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Coincidentally, AT&T just strung fiber up on my street in late March, about a week or two after Sonic announced they'd be rolling their own.

For the past 3 weeks I've been happily using un-capped symmetrical gigabit fiber provided by AT&T, and re-sold by Sonic.

Once Sonic rolls theirs later this year, I'll immediately switch to them and save another $40/mo. As if I needed more incentive to make sure no more dollars flow into AT&T and other incumbent utility providers.

</comment><comment><USER25> For all we know they would have otherwise cut 30,000?

I don't think we should be enacting laws based on promises anyway. The effects of tax breaks are reasonably well understood without the need for promises.

</comment><comment><USER26> I had a Software Engineering contract at Verizon around the time Fios was starting up.

Verizon went through/is still going through the same thing.

The companies are a bit sketchy but the whole mismatch in workers is a real thing. They had lots and lots of unionized 55+ blue collar guys who couldn't even login to a computer and had near zero interest in learning. It always felt like the union was trying to fight for the status quo as opposed to trying to facilitate moving forward.

So it gets to look real attractive to try and get them to retire early and hire some young guy since the job requirements have switched to needing lots of computer skills.

The whole tax part.. that's just standard "Be as evil as possible." Given the whole "Be as evil as possible part" the union does become very necessary.

</comment><comment><USER27> When does AT&T never break a promise?

They broke promises here.

They broke promises with Time Warner merger.

They promise broadband speeds and deliver dial up speeds.

They promised raises after the tax break and only gave bonuses.

They promised to stop selling location data and kept doing it.

They promised 5G and only gave us 5Ge. (Ok, that ones a joke).

I mean, Randall is a master at lying on the scale of Zuckerberg.

There's lies, damn lies and then AT&T saying, "hold my beer!".

<comment><USER28> Can we stop letting the government make deals? They are doing a terrible job.

When AT&T couldn't maintain connection at my home, and wasted 3 half days fixing it, and didn't fix it, I stopped doing business with them.

This is a failure of government making one sided deals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The CWA union quoted in this article has been fighting its diminishing power for years.

About 10 years ago I spoke with them about DSLAM vs IP DSLAM tech. The contracts they had were only requiring union techs be used for equipment that didn't use internet protocol. They didn't like what I had to say about IP DSLAM.

</comment><comment><USER30> Do these tax breaks not have any regulatory teeth? "If you fail to do X, you must pay us back."

<comment><USER31> Corporate welfare, by design, is not meant to be accountable.

<comment><USER32> The funny thing is, incentives for startups here seem to have all sorts of requirements which are enforced. Seems like "Once you get big enough, we trust you" but then how did they get big in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why aren't tax breaks like these ever made absolutely conditional on companies doing what they've said they would do?

Eg if you say you'll do X in exchange for a tax cut, and don't do it then they have to pay back those taxes, with interest (otherwise there's little downside)

<comment><USER12> They are when they are intended for a specific purpose. E.g. tax credits for jobs are often given to companies like amazon in exchange for locating their HQ in NoVA . If the deal falls apart the credits automatically vanish or reduce proportionally.

This tax break was a general reduction in the corporate tax. It applied to every company in America and wasn't created in exchange for a specific promise. The concept was that we switch our US tax rate to a globally competitive rate, while also getting rid of the incentives for companies to shelter money overseas rather than spend it in the US after being double taxed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone here actually buy the "giving the rich more money lets them create more jobs" BS anymore?

Hasn't trickle-down economics been thoroughly disproven at this point?

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm sure that AT&T will helpfully explain that they hired 7,000 people and laid off 30,000 people for totally unrelated reasons.

</comment><comment><USER36> How much more proof do we need a sociality that tax breaks to create "jobs" is just a scam?

<comment><USER28> You will always have masses of people that think government can create jobs.

It's not a fact driven problem.

It's that companies will pay the members of a political party to create special interests.

I don't know the best solution, but I certainly don't trust the federal government to be the solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If that's true, isn't there some organization in the government that can sue them for this?

<comment><USER12> The Republicans came into power promising to push a tax break from the beginning of the campaign. It was a crucial part of the 2016 campaign and their promise to voters.

They aren't going to sue AT&T over a non-legally binding statement in a speech nor would they have legal standing to do so even if they wanted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> AT&T is just another big Corporation, not a person! Why would we expect them not to do what best for the shareholders vs. what good for its employees???!!!</comment>


Note to Entrpreneur's: It's Your Fault - <AUTHOR> http://www.marksonland.com/2010/03/note_to_entrpreneurs_its_your_1.html <comment><USER2> "Didn't get that round of financing? Don't tell me the VC's are idiots or didn't "get it." You didn't pitch it right. Or you went to them too early. Or too late. VC's fund companies every day - they didn't fund your company. That's your fault."

\- I disagree with this entirely. It's possible to pitch perfectly and not get funded. How often do VCs get it wrong? 8/10 times according to the conventional wisdom. Remember Google tried to licence their software to Yahoo for a million dollars in the early days. VCs are motivated more by missed opportunity (to other investors) than potential gain.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Entrepreneurs

[really sorry, but bad apostrophes get my goat]</comment>


Ask HN: How can I develop my design skills (coming from sw engineering)? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
One of the difficulties I get during the development of side projects is that I always get stuck with "programmer art" and not really able to create visually appealing representations of the concepts I have in my mind.
For example, I have several web app / mobile app ideas, I've created entire application models and actual prototypes, but get discouraged by the presentation part of it.
I figured that learning some design concepts and techniques might help, but whenever I work with actual designers I'm always impressed by the quality and speed at which they are able to create these visual concepts.
Is there any way I could learn (preferably from free resources) these concepts and techniques? The same trouble applies when creating presentations or proposals - the ideas are there but getting from idea to visuals is a pain.
Thanks in advance for your help and tips! <comment><USER2> Have you explored Google's Material Design visual language? It could be a good starting point

[https://material.io/guidelines/](https://material.io/guidelines/)

You may also want to search the archives of Designer News:

[https://www.designernews.co/](https://www.designernews.co/)

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will give it a go. I also found some interesting templates and design ideas here: [https://market.envato.com/](https://market.envato.com/)</comment></comment>


Hacking Away at the Counterculture (1990) - <AUTHOR> http://readtext.org/security/hacking-counterculture/ <comment><USER2> An essay about technology counterculture, now hosted by a tech startup on a website that serves ads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what you are trying to say here... If you're talking about ReadText, first of all its not a startup and second there is only one none-intrusive text-only ad on top and no one forces you to see it, you're welcome to use uBlock or AdBlock if you wish :-)

<comment><USER2> I'm not opposed to being served ads. I just think taking an essay about counterculture and serving it with ads is highly ironic.

And I didn't say readtext is a startup. I said it's hosted by a startup (vrocket). Also ironic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh ^_^ sorry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Date: 1990.

I wish readtext.org would put the date at the top of the article for context.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not all articles have original publish date. But for those that do, here you go ;-) Hope this helps!

<comment><USER3> Thank you. I find the context helpful.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What credit card do you use/recommend [USA]? - <AUTHOR> I've never really been a credit card user, but I am thinking about getting one. I have great credit so i think I will qualify for most and my income should also be fine. Unfortunately, most of the articles and reviews online are all sponsored and now I can't separate the bs. So as fellow engineers, what credit cards have your chosen and what were your reasons for it? <comment><USER2> Do you travel frequently? If so, Starwood Preferred Amex is the canonical right answer to this question. Starwood points are among the most valuable pseudo-currencies available (among frequent flyer miles, hotel points, etc) and if you redeem them for hotel stays you can easily get 4+ cents of value per dollar of spend, where the industry standard is 1 cent of value per dollar of spend.

If you don't travel frequently, then you probably want a cash-back card. Chase Freedom is a reasonably good option. There are a variety of other options if you want to get more reimbursement for particular categories.

Also: gainfully employed engineers who spend less than, say, $1k per month on their credit cards should not give this topic more than 10 minutes of thought. (This is not the case for e.g. self-employed folks who put substantial business expenses on cards -- you can justify a couple of hours amortized over the next few years if your business resembles mine.)

For modestly more detail on why: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10658150](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10658150)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the info, I had not looked into the Starwood Preferred Amex. Definitely a great card. I fly between SF and NY every two weeks, amongst other spaced trips, with international flights as well.</comment></comment>


The Pop Vs Soda Map - <AUTHOR> http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me a bit of a lot of places in South-East Asia - There were town and territories that were Coke and others that were Pepsi... If you were in one then that's all that you could get.

Not sure of the mechanism behind it. For all I knew the government cola rights to each region up for auction.

<comment><USER3> That struck me about visiting China, too. I remember I got to Beijing, saw that literally _everything_ was Coke and there was no Pepsi in sight, and thought "Damn, I oughtta buy Coca-cola stock." Then I got to Chongqing and Wuhan and everything was Pepsi, with not a Coke in sight.

<comment><USER4> When I worked in Mexico it was that way with beer. In northern Mexico every little pueblo was either all Tecate or all Modelo Especial. The residents would let you know their undying loyalty to the brand. "!Aqui somos tecateros!" The only exception I can think of was a remote mountain town loyal to marijuana instead. Locally grown, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was on a plane going to San Jose, the flight attendant asked what I wanted and I said, 'pop' (being from the midwest) and the guy next to me, turn to me and said 'not from california?' I always thought is was funny.

btw coke is not pepsi, it's better accept no substitutes.

</comment><comment><USER6> This map can't be accurate... I've never heard anyone say anything _other than_ soda in the greater Boston area.

<comment><USER7> FTA: _Map based upon 120,464 respondents. (Which they spelled 'Respondants')_

This isn't enough to draw a meaningful map of just Alaska. There are likely whole counties colored base on a single response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pfft. It's called "coke," regardless of what it tastes like.

<comment><USER9> How do you order say an orange drink? Do you say you want an orange coke? Or worse pepsi - do you order pepsi coke?

Sprite coke? Coke sprite?

<comment><USER10> Generally the conversation goes like this:

What kind of coke you want, hon?

Sprite please.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I seem to recall that there are places in the southern U.S. where soft drinks are called "dope".

Confusing....

<comment> a-priori According to the article, they call it that in the Carolinas.

<comment><USER10> I grew up in the Carolinas and I've never heard of "dope". It was all "soda" or maybe "coke" as the generic term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please try to avoid these "interesting factoids" genre in HN.

<comment><USER13> I didn't vote you down, I think your point is valid. Still, I think this is something that people like to see surfaced here. Who knows what ideas it peaks in the minds of readers? People could be getting ideas about anything from a GIS for human terrain . . . to a Pop vs. Soda civil war video game. You never know.

<comment><USER14> Voted up to equal your voting down. (I'm indifferent about the comment..)

And while the Coke vs Pop map is a but old / not really news, there were some other interesting visualizations on the blog a bit further down.

So even if a particular story isn't "hacker news," the site has some visualizations that might be of interest still. Which, imo, makes it ok to post here, even if the title could have been better. But thats just my opinion and I'd hate to force it on someone.</comment></comment></comment>


What does it mean for a journalist today to be a Serious Reader? - <AUTHOR> https://www.cjr.org/the_feature/serious-reader-adam-gopnik-new-yorker-tanehisi-coates-atlantic-rebecca-traister-jia-tolentino.php <comment><USER2> It's curious that there's so little written about serious reading. Are voracious omnivorous readers so rare? Or are they just too covert in this era of overt public posturing?

<comment><USER3> Need a serious reader be voracious or omnivorous?

I can think of a short list of books that would collectively qualify a reader as serious.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to see that list, please!

<comment><USER3> OK. I'll define this as "10 books that I'd recommend to my 40-years-younger self to prioritize", and leave aside the problem that 2 or 3 of these would not yet have been published.

      The Iliad
      Shakespeare
      The Life of Johnson
      Federalist Papers
      Pride and Prejudice
      Ulysses
      The Waste Land
      The Selfish Gene
      The Making of the Atomic Bomb
      Infinite Jest

<comment><USER3> 12 hours later and I still want to put Herodotus in there but can't pick one to replace with him. Sigh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess it's well that the conversation is going on. The novelist Larry McMurtry used to run a used bookstore, Booked Up, in Georgetown. In a memoir of his time in the the book trade, he remarked that he quickly perceived that a) in Washington the true stars were the journalists, and that b) most of them just didn't read. He named Joseph Alsop as an exception. Perhaps things have since changed in DC. (McMurtry moved his operation to Archer City, Texas, about twenty years ago, not from disappointment with the journalists but for lower rent.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Funnily enough, this article is one of thousands of articles I have read which are contributing to my own reading problem, as seems to be the case with many of the Journalists quoted in the article. The massive size of the media, all the angles and interpretations of all of the dizzying number of events has began to suck me in like a trap, while Slaughterhouse Five sits mostly unread. I think I'm slowly coming to the realization though that the news really isn't all that valuable to me, and I read way too much of it, and far too few books.

<comment><USER7> > I think I'm slowly coming to the realization though that the news really > isn't all that valuable to me, and I read way too much of it, and far too > few books.

Keeping up with the news has about as much value as watching soap operas. Maybe it's fun for you and that's fine, but the notion that it's making one a better person or allowing one to contribute meaningfully to society is mostly BS.

Blah, blah, informed electorate. Meanwhile most people have little or no grasp of the basics of political philosophy and economics, the history of both, are _terrible_ critical readers, know little about the actual structure and functions of their government, and so on, so if your concern is being able to evaluate policy so you can make better choices in the voting booth start with those things. Which... means reading books and journals, not the newspaper or Twitter or whatever.

Wading in day-to-day news is useless or harmful without that foundational knowledge—again, except as shallow entertainment, which if that's what you're into and you enjoy it that's _fine_ but don't subject yourself to it because you think it's making your life or anyone else's better. Even _with_ a good understanding of the relevant topics it's mostly a waste of time unless your job is writing about it (as it is for some of the people in TFA).

<comment><USER8> I think good news should present current events in the context of such ideas, with explanations for their implications in government or the economy. There are plenty of media outlets that do this, with various biases of course. The Jacobin for instance presents everything from a socialist perspective, where the reader can understand issues and events in he context of a Marxist analysus. Many of their contributors are well versed in the key works of this academic tradition so the reader is spared from having to be as deeply familiar with them in order to get the same level of insight into what the news has to do with the economy and politics from such a perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, maybe. I'm not sure how much good it has done David Brooks.</comment>


Less is more: our analysis of top logo redesigns - <AUTHOR> http://www.sketchdeck.com/blog/less-is-more-our-analysis-of-top-logo-redesigns/ <comment><USER2> Nice. If those coloured bars are timelines (even if not to scale), it would be good to get approximates dates on it (or each point).</comment>


Hadoop's Uncomfortable Fit in HPC - <AUTHOR> http://glennklockwood.blogspot.com/2014/05/hadoops-uncomfortable-fit-in-hpc.html?

<comment><USER2> A dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7761486](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7761486).

On our list is to normalize blogspot urls to blogspot.com, which should make these easier to catch. (We just changed this one from blogspot.com.au.)</comment>