Ask HN: Why did you quit your job(s)? - <AUTHOR> Looking back at my career, quitting each job meant I learned something about myself or the industry.
Job 1: Wanted more money.
Job 2: Learned that what companies say and promise isn't really worth anything. Wanted more money.
Job 3: Learned that companies change with time just like people and that sometimes you outgrow eachother. Wanted more money.
Job 4: I actually don't care about the companies mission. I just want to clock in, work and clock out. Wanted more time/shorter commute.
Job 5: Even if I'm wildly successful at this place, it's a career dead end and I don't want to stay here until retirement. Wanted more money.
Job 6: Self-employed contractor. 30 hour work weeks, paid well and plenty of energy for my family. Staying here for a while.
Why did you quit your job HN? <comment><USER2> I quite often feel like I was not made for full time jobs. I know that it's what lazy people say (and quite likely I'm one lol), but I'm amazed that even in spite of my laziness I managed to acquire FIRE money before I'm 40 (and also, without the help of the mad FAANG salaries). To answer your questions - I quit pretty much all my jobs because of the same reason - namely that I don't like working. The job I did were either too dull/repetitive, narrow- minded and/or pointless/stupid to hold my interest. I suspect that the job that would be acceptable for me may not exist - i.e. it would be so nice that the employer wouldn't have to pay for people to work it.

BTW now when I'm basically at FIRE money (I will still work for some months to pad out my account), I feel like I've swam through the ocean of shit to get here.

<comment><USER3> What do you do if you don't mind answering? I recently quit my job because of my mental health and would love to find a part time job though having trouble finding one in the tech space

<comment><USER2> I'm mostly working contracts (programming, architecture). I quit them fairly regularly - I've just checked and my median time of stay on a job is 12 months (ranges between 4 and 22). Between the contracts, I take ample amounts of free time to recover and convince myself that I can do it again...

Regarding part time, after proving to be a valuable addition to the team, I was twice able to convince my bosses to let me work part time (60% and 50%). Depends on the local market and how hot you are compared to an average replacement available to your boss, asking for part-time can be very feasible. However, in my case it didn't help much as I, in both cases, still quit a couple months later anyway.

At jobs, I feel like my soul is poisoned by all the crap and idiocy that takes place there and working less does not fundamentally change it that much (the poison is still there). Fundamentally, I feel like I didn't learn the skill of copying with job suckiness that most people seem to have mastered. Hence, my only hope is FI and then doing my own thing (I have some ideas) as a way to stay productive and generate some extra income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the last years I was working on several startups as a contractor.

I always put my very soul to the success of the project, tried to be friend for everyone on the team, committed for 40-50 hours per week. When projects demanded non-profile skills from me, I was open-minded, trying to learn new skillset in no-time to help as quickly as possible.

All the times I was dissapointed on being really no-one in the end for the project.

Despite I was trying to be guiding voice to help project to stay away from bad decisions, project owners were not really listening.

I said, many-many times things like "let's stop delivering new features until we will have at least 1 paying customer and focus on getting customer flow", CEOs just kept pushing in obviously wrong direction which ultimately meant end for the project.

Now I'm fed with all of this and decided to put my limited time to my own projects.

</comment><comment><USER5> Job 1: Graduated college and got a job in my major

Job 2: Economy shifted (dot-com bubble popped.) CEO asked me to over bill hours to our largest client

Job 3: Company went bankrupt

Job 4: Ran my own company for 13 years. Went to Burning Man and it flipped switches in my brain. I could no longer stand working alone in my basement and got a regular job

Job 5: After a fun 3 years, Board of Directors seized control of the company, fired the founder/CEO, and replaced managers with people from their last startup. I gave it a year, but we didn't click and I left over personality differences.

Job 6: Best job ever. Company and I both took a risk as I was under-qualified but the position was open for more than a year. Eventually wasn't able to perform as needed and we decided to separate. Cool company let me stay on as long as I needed to interview, let me make contact with anyone in their LinkedIn network, etc. Fired in the nicest way ever and still respect them.

Job 7: Myself an several others injured during office renovation. The office turned into a literally a toxic environment. After returning from Worker's Comp, CEO started referencing imaginary "performance problems" and thought our injuries were all "pre-existing conditions" despite OSHA investigation. Decided I liked being able to breathe air and not worry about getting fired.

Job 8: Having a great time with new coworkers and hope I stay here a long time!

(This covers 1996 to 2020)

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Owner didn't pay me. Lots of manipulative BS. Wanted more money.

2\. Startup seemed okay with me being remote at the start but weren't actually okay with it.

3\. Contract ended amicably with contracting company.

4\. Job seemed okay but they sold the client on an impossible deadline. Left when shit hit the fan.

5\. On a very longterm contract but grew bored with the tech and suspected the contract would get cut short so I jumped to something that seemed more long term with potential to learn something new.

6\. CEO made promises and didn't deliver so I'm fielding offers and will probably leave once I get something that pays more.

Lessons: 1\. You make more money every time you jump ship. 2\. Don't listen to what people say. Listen to what they do. 3\. No boss/company is interested in providing you with opportunities to learn. They all want to exploit an existing skill set and all real learning has to happen on your own time. 4\. Employers don't really want remote. They give it begrudgingly because enough of the talented people are demanding it. 5\. It's probably better to just let contracts end, then double-dip during the transition. 6\. These people aren't your family.

</comment><comment><USER7> Job 1: StartUp shut their doors, got laid off + they paid terrible.

Job 2: Not alligning at all with CTO nor CEO, terrible attitude (OH: "being sick is just a mindset...")

Job 3: Poured my soul into the company, was respected left right and center, but CTO was absolutely clueless. PhD, never coded in his life, had no idea what he was doing. Quit.

Job 4: Marketing and sales driven company, hundreds of Instagram people who drove the StartUp hype train without personality or interest. Good team but terrible environment.

Job 5: Went freelancing ever since. 4-8 months long projects, doubled my income, not attached anymore to a company mission or politics, do my best work and leave.

Job 6: Found a remote + freelance gig. Perfect combination. Have time for my family and myself (Hobbies in the middle of the day, bit more work after my kids are in bed etc.). Be able to have breakfast with them in calm and piece without having to catch a train or beat rush hour.

</comment><comment><USER8> Excluding jobs in High School and College...

Job 1. Not happy with the work I was doing, management was pushing me to learn ASP.Net and Windows stack, wanted to continue using Linux and open source languages.

Job 2. After 5 years I felt like I was stagnating and not learning enough. We started getting projects where I was again spending lots of time in the Windows stack again.

Job 3. Job was "Remote" and an awesome learning experience but I wanted to work "global remote".

Job 4. Currently where I'm at and enjoy the freedom but I do much less development than I used to and that is starting to eat at me I think (We'll see!).

Maybe I've been lucky but I've never switched jobs for pay.

<comment><USER9> What's your opinion on the windows stack now that .net is open source?

<comment><USER8> I'm totally for the open source bits, we use .Net Core heavily at my current job now. I like the change in Microsoft and windows. Still don't use Windows on the server or desktop but I like .Net core.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Job 1 was government related and very slow pace

Job 2 was for more money

Job 3 was because I didn't like the company (ended up going back to Job 2 with a big raise after 6 months)

Job 4 (same company as Job 2) because I wanted to change industries and live abroad

Job 5 was because of pay and startup having a bad financial moment

Job 6 was for a better offer, same industry and similar role. Worth noting that job 6 had promised me a raise that never happened. Likely if it wasn't for feeling lied to I would still be there.

Job 7 is current job and really happy about everything ! Not even open to conversations with other companies. I could likely double my salary in a FAANG if it was what I wanted.

</comment><comment><USER11> Job 1: Lucky to find a job during the recession at an aerospace consultancy which let me learn a lot but after 4 years without a raise I was looking for more money!

Job 2: I enjoyed the project, my team, and the salary was good, but corporate politics eventually killed the project and split up the team. I took a lateral move to a new company.

Job 3: Currently at a smaller company recently acquired, so everything is in flux.

When I am looking for a new job I am not just looking at the current salary but career growth and hoping to get in a strong industry. Right now industrial is a tough industry.

</comment><comment><USER12> Job 1: Very old technology. Wanted more money Job 2: Government contracting job and by the end I had no work. Bad culture (there was no work). Told me they were debating between a 2% and 2.5% raise and decided on 2.5% because they really liked me lol. Job 3: Company was in the process of going bankrupt and I wanted to relocate to Silicon Valley. I got laid off before I landed a new job though :) Job 4: FAANG - I'm happy here for now

</comment><comment><USER13> Job 1: They waited until after 5 minutes of the end of my last day to tell me the contract was being renewed

Job 2: I had the opportunity to be an early stage employee (#2 actually) at a startup I liked

Job 3: After 9 years, I had given everything I could to that startup I liked

Job 4: I found out I'm not built for corporate bulls __*

Job 5: They ran out of money and let us go

Job 6: I had a better offer

Job 7: I have a better offer and will work from a coworking space I fell in love with

</comment><comment><USER14> Most of the time when I've quit a job, it's because I'd grown bored with the work and wanted to do something new. Less frequently, I've also quit jobs because they were (or became) terrible, and because I wanted to move to a different area.

I think those three reasons covers every instance where I've quit a job (ignoring contract work where the contract ended and I opted not to renew).

</comment><comment><USER15> Job 1 (6 months): Bored at a big company and wanted a startup.

Job 2 (4 years): Burned out and was interested in a career change.

Job 3 (6 months): Not into career change, starting a family instead. Back to startup.

Job 4 (7 years): Startup was coasting and I'd done everything I wanted.

Job 5 (6 years): New startup that got acquired but didn't love role in new company so found a new, interesting role.

Job 6 (1.5 years): Didn't like the new role or company

Job 7 (still here):

</comment><comment><USER16> Job 1: learned everything I could there and got bored.

Job 2: lasted 3 months, fairly shit job, so I left

Job 3: got bored

Job 4: got a better offer

Job 5: not really left, we got accuired

Job 6: (blue app company) didn't like my direct manager and wanted a long time off. The team I used to be part of had the only project I wanted to work on at said company.

Job 7: still there, but I'm getting bored...

Every time I got more money

</comment><comment><USER17> \- Job 1: Moved to a new city

\- Job 2: a personal thing happened with my supervisor which sort of sent me into a downward spiral, emotionally and also professionally. I decided to get out of there to start over.

\- Other random jobs I've usually left because it just felt like it was time. Outgrew my post, that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Almost always a bad manager, or bad management in general. And by _bad_ , I mean _terrible_.

Switching jobs almost always came with a raise, but I never cared about money that much.

A couple of times I automated myself out of a job. Can't stand having nothing to do, even for good pay, so left.

</comment><comment><USER19> Job 1 (18 months): Desperately needed to change industry, I worked in game dev, and it was most probably the most unfulfilling experience ever.

Job 2 (20 months): Was startup, so company matured a lot and lost all of its glamour.

Job 3 (8 months in - still there):

</comment><comment><USER20> There are a few reasons:

"People don't leave jobs. They leave bosses." This is true. I have done it, and I see others do it. And it has happened to me.

You outgrow the position or company. This has also happened for me.

</comment><comment><USER21> I only quit once, the CTO (my direct-manager) was a huge micromanager and would belittle you when you answered his questions.

</comment><comment><USER22> More money, or the opportunity to work with "better" engineers. (Scare quotes because the betterness was by my perception from the outside. Sometimes they really were better, sometimes they were better at some things and worse at others)

At this point, only money- all the other stuff is subject to change, rapidly, without warning. But the money is written in a contract.</comment>


A little known hack to get your notebook organized - <AUTHOR> http://blog.highfivehq.com/posts/a-little-known-hack-from-japan-to-get-your-notebook-organized

<comment><USER2> In terms of getting a notebook organized, I prefer the Bullet Journal method [1], which I've been using for some time now and which has been effective for me.

[1] [http://bulletjournal.com](http://bulletjournal.com)

<comment><USER3> That system is rather similar to "The Cycle System", as recommended by the book _Time Management for System Administrators_ ¹, (also a series of lectures²) by Thomas A. Limoncelli, except the Bullet Journal uses months, where The Cycle System uses days.

1) [http://everythingsysadmin.com/books.html](http://everythingsysadmin.com/books.html)

2) [http://www.tomontime.com/](http://www.tomontime.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course this is a hack and not an organizational method, because hack is sexy (see: this site) and organizational method is not. It's also a little- known hack, because people don't like popular things, they like things that make them feel like they know something the experts don't (see: doctors HATE this!)

Don't do GTD; Trello is a little known hack for organizing your projects.

<comment><USER5> Hacks are sexy?

Man, some of my most functional hacks have been FUG-ly.

Either I've documented them in nauseating detail, carefully explaining why I did something so rude, so nasty, to save myself posthumous embarrassment and my heirs embarrassment by association on the off chance posterity should notice, or I've carefully hid them (Siri, how do I hide this fugly mess?) to prevent any and all returns.

This one is pretty cool, though. Pretty cool indeed.

<comment><USER4> The idea of being a hacker and hacking certainly _is_ sexy. That's why we have hacker news, lifehacker, little known hacks, hack your [summer, brain, relationship, bible, etc], and so on.

Now, if you actually need to hack something together, that's generally frowned upon. If I duct tape my bumper back onto my car, people will not be terribly impressed. If I replace a damaged wall in my house with a tarp, my roommates will move out.

But oh lord, if I hack my headache by taking a cold shower, if I hack my plants by draining my air conditioner into the garden, hack my notebook by labeling it with tags, or if I hack on a multi-billion dollar startup that gets sold to Facebok due to the massive amount of money, talent, and polish I've put into it... now _that 's_ a sexy hack.

<comment><USER5> While I am given to argument for the sake of argument, especially with friends whilst consuming beverages hot or cold, I don't write this either to take issue or to initiate an argument (though I do have a 48IBU bevvie close at hand and am optimistic enough to believe your worldview and mine overlap sufficiently)....

I don't think I've ever thought of hacking as sexy. It has for me always been about a blend of intellectual curiosity and pragmatic delivery: I need to do <aThing>, how can I reasonably balance timely delivery, goal-appropriate level of effort, sense of accomplishment, and intellectual curiosity and fascination?

Or how I can so exaggerate one of those (usually the last) so as to justify the result as a truly great hack?

A duct taped bumper isn't a hack, it's a fugly kludge, no elegance or creativity at all. A bumper held in place by super powerful magnets? yeah, that's a hack. (Not a good one, that sucker's fallin' at a bump, but, dude, magnets!)

Your examples are all sexy hacks, this is true. But to me sexiness never entered into the input parameters of the hack, but was only ever an indicator of the hack's true elegance.

(Perhaps had I incorporated design thinking into my approach long before I would be violently in agreement with you on all points.... Hmm, cogitative nutrition.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Home in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://marizmelo.com/HomeJS/ Simple implementation of Facebook Home in JavaScript using a jQuery plugin for slideshow, and UI for some effects. Done today just for fun :) (tested on latest chrome).<p>https://github.com/marizmelo/HomeJS <comment><USER2> Cool implementation, curious though that FB Home is an Android app I thought?

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, it is... was the first thing my Wife told me :), well was just for fun anyways. I will leave as a Joke.</comment></comment>


HP: Free 5x7 photo printing on the Tango Printer - <AUTHOR> https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/tango <comment><AUTHOR> I'm struggling to find a real catch here. In a Nutshell:

* Only for the new Tango Smart Home Printer,

* when you sign up for an ink subscription (starting at $3/month for 50 prints that rollover up to 100),

* photos up to 5x7 printed from a phone or tablet do NOT count against the monthly plan pages.

Really fascinating marketing move. The printer costs $150. Definitely a higher price than the average simple color printer. But it has interesting features and design. I don't really see the downside. Am I missing something?

Sure, you can't print from a Linux computer (although Android is 100% supported), etc. etc. But even for me, a techie, this seems like a cheap way to print small photos. And then, the ones that I like best I'll print at a larger size, up to 50 per month.

<comment><USER2> >I'm struggling to find a real catch here

Images depicted belong to HP. Images will be data mined.

More seriously. Maybe they hope to make it back with the glossy photo paper? $3 / 50 prints already seems quite expensive, the marginal cost of some ink is minimal, so for them it's better to give 'value' by giving more things, rather than lowering the cost (just like that ever larger cup of coffee shop coffee).</comment></comment>


Symfony2: 2.0 RC1 released - <AUTHOR> http://symfony.com/blog/symfony2-2-0-rc1-released <comment><USER3> I tried out Symfony (1.x) and I'm thankful for it. It's madness drove me to Rails, where I built some amazing stuff with! It was the entry drug that brought me over from php to the great (but at first sight scary) land of Ruby.

<comment><USER4> I agree with your stance on Symfony, but it's important to realize that not every PHP framework is like that. Symfony adds a lot of complexity that doesn't necessarily mean lower development time or later flexibility - <USER2> many other PHP frameworks take a much simpler approach.

TL;DR: The problem is with Symfony, not PHP as a whole.

<comment><USER5> Is there another PHP framework you would recommend? I'm about to start looking at Symfony as a replacement for our aging, home-grown PHP framework. I'm partial to Django, but since PHP is a requirement I could use thoughts on PHP alternatives.

<comment><USER6> i prefer CodeIgniter, myself, when doing PHP development. i like it because it doesn't force you into anything, but if you want to use its helpful features, you can.

<comment><USER7> Also examine Kohana - originally an offshoot of CodeIgniter, the 3.1 branch is an entirely different animal.

Kohana is more of a "toolkit" kind of framework, where most of the components only rely on a few base classes, but are otherwise surprisingly decoupled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like both codeigniter & cakephp.

codeigniter is super easy and joy to work with. 1> simple 2> great documentation (most amazing docs i have seen so far) + forum 3> you can not go wrong , its so easy to write apps using it

cakephp because of 1> "bake" utility to generate code from looking at table 2> easy to access database using models classes 3> built in auth component (and few other components at cake bakery)

never needed to look at anywhere else ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> HTTP cache seems to be an important part of Symfony2. Does anyone have experience with that? (either in Symfony or another framework)

Is that the preferred caching method these days?

<comment><USER10> It's more than important in Symfony2, it's actually the only way to cache data (beside of course memcache etc). And even if you don't have a reverse proxy like Varnish to fully leverage HTTP caching, there is a built-in reverse proxy.</comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs Says It May Sell, Hedge Facebook Stake  - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-05/goldman-sachs-says-it-may-sell-hedge-facebook-stake.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure Mr.Zuckerberg understands just who he's getting into bed with here.

Good luck sir, you are far braver than I.

</comment><comment><USER3> and how convenient, they'll have a bunch of wealthy investors in a vehicle they've set up to get around SEC regulation to sell it to!</comment>


A Savings App Designed by a Behavioral Economist - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/savings-app-behavioral-economist/414522/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> YNAB (and surely other apps) works that way. Your money is affected to the budget you want, not "free to spend". They have a nice 9 day course about managing your budget (Email: [https://www.youneedabudget.com/method/nine-day- course](https://www.youneedabudget.com/method/nine-day-course), PDF: [http://www.youneedabudget.com/downloads/9DayCourse.pdf](http://www.youneedabudget.com/downloads/9DayCourse.pdf))

I may be a bit biased because I really love this app, but it helped me a lot to stop throwing money on useless things.

<comment><USER3> Side note: Jesse (founder of YNAB) is an amazing speaker with a great sense of humor. His story about bootstrapping YNAB is hugely inspiring to me. I highly recommend his 2014 Microconf talk ([https://vimeo.com/95653848](https://vimeo.com/95653848)) if anyone is interested.</comment></comment>


How to Tell a Mother Her Child Is Dead (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/how-to-tell-a-mother-her-child-is-dead.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> Wow. Incredibly well-written and important read. Even for those of us lucky enough to never have to share such news.

The "don't answer questions the mother didn't ask" is the hardest part for me. Awkward silences are so hard and so important.</comment>


Molyneux's problem - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molyneux%27s_problem <comment><USER3> >In 2003, Pawan Sinha, a professor at MIT in Boston, set up a program in India as a part of which he treated 5 patients that almost instantly took them from total congenital blindness to fully seeing.[8][9] This provided a unique opportunity or answer the Molyneux's problem experimentally. Based on this study, on April 10, 2011, he concluded that the answer, in short, to Molyneux's problem was "no". Although after restoration of sight, the subjects could distinguish between objects visually as effectively as they would do by touch alone, they were unable to form the connection between object perceived using the two different senses.

That is a really counterintuitive result for me. I always assumed that one could construct a spatial model of something by touching it, without that directly being related to vision.

<comment><USER4> You absolutely can, and there's even been recent research into the computational mechanisms that are behind this kind of inference [1]. They build a computational model that learns spatial/visual representation from (simulated) haptic stimuli with performance similar to human subjects.

I think the reason Sinha's experiment had a negative result was, as other commenters have mentioned, that this ability is a learned behavior. Those who are blind from birth simply never developed the ability to form abstract representations from visual stimuli, therefore haptic information cannot be translated into these visual representations. The other commenters who are saying there is no pathway between the two modalities are wrong, and it's easy to set up an experiment to show it. Just blindfold someone and hand them an unfamiliar object, then, without showing it to them, have them draw it. It's clear that we can do this to some extent.

[1] [http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/robbie/jacobslab/abstrac...](http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/robbie/jacobslab/abstracts.html#Yildirim13)

<comment><USER5> Right, there is a physical difference between the brain of a person who has been blind from birth and someone who has not. This also means that if you restore sight to someone who once had it and then lost it, they should have no trouble picking out an object they hadn't seen (only felt), even if it was an object they had neither seen nor felt prior to losing their vision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem is fascinating in itself, but I don't see why it is classified as an unsolved problem in _philosophy_.

From the article:

"The resolution of this problem is _in some sense_ provided by the study of human subjects who gain vision after extended congenital blindness."

The solution is _purely_ empirical, not philosophical.

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

<comment><USER7> Philosophical problems tend to turn into empirical problems with time. That's completely normal. At some point in time you can't actually investigate something empirically, so it's a philosophical problem. As soon as you can, the philosophical problem turns into an empirical one.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand how it's a philosophical question. It's a question about the state of reality. Even before anyone tried to actually test it, it was still a question about the way things are. It's like asking what's inside a room, and calling it a philosophical question. Then you open the door and actually _look_ and suddenly it's not?

<comment><USER9> Aren't all (interesting) philosophical questions about reality, or at least some extended or modified version of reality as we know it?

"What can be known?" "Do we have free will?" "Does God exist?"

(hint, any question that starts "Do we..." or references questions of existence is asking about the state of reality)

<comment><USER8> Possibly, though questions about morality or free-will, or the nature of knowledge or whatever, are not.

But what I meant was that almost any question can be considered philosophical under that definition. Until you actually test it scientifically at least. And if that's the case, then the meaning of "philosophical questions" becomes worthless. A word that can describe anything is useless. The value of a word is that it can be used to differentiate between things.

<comment><USER7> No, that's not all! Philosophical questions also have to be relevant. That's a squishy condition but I would really say it's that simple. There is nothing special about philosophical questions per se, it's whatever humans find intensely interesting and cannot (yet or ever) be investigated empirically.

(I'm pretty sure I agree with you that something like morality can, at its core, not be empirically investigated, though empirical investigation can help create clarity in arguments about morality, though I'm not sure whether that's an absolute truth that cannot ever be changed. Free will? Nature of knowledge? Those obviously are ripe for empirical investigation. I don't see why we should never be able to answer those questions conclusively and empirically.)

<comment><USER8> I don't know about free will because it depends how you define it and it's not something I've ever understood, though it doesn't seem like a concept that is dependent on how the universe actually is in a physical sense.

The nature of knowledge is pretty vague too, but if you mean the concept of how we can ever know things, that also doesn't depend on how the universe physically is. In another universe with different laws of physics, it would still apply.

The same is true of mathematics, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> With respect to Molyneux and Locke, while I believe they get the general idea right, I believe they get the actual answer wrong. The answer to Molyneux's problem should be "yes" --- the newly sighted can correctly associate the shapes.

A sufficiently educated and intelligent person with congenital blindness would be able to correctly differentiate the shapes. Say, for instance, had Locke been born blind and still educated as rigorously. Of the many deductions that could be performed, the motion of the head with eyes fixed looking around the border of an object in space approximates the motion of the hand tracing the same object. Many other deductions are possible. All you need are reasonable assumptions about the acclimatization process, e.g., the patient can have a suitable amount of time to adjust to being sighted but cannot touch anything during the process.

It is fascinating to think about the idea of disconnected senses, but as so commonly happens, fascination with an idea leads to sloppy thinking, especially among the educated.

The reason why the empirical studies of the patients from India are wrong, despite being interpreted as giving a concurring answer, is that the blind have traditionally been given feeble educations, lacking in the type of rigorous thinking necessary to solve the problem. Historically it was challenging to teach abstract reasoning to the blind, and for this reason many were not taught. See Herzog's documentary "Handicapped Future" for tragic examples in relatively wealthy 1960s West Germany. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicapped_Future>

The five patients in India who could not afford simple but life-altering surgery were sure to be poor in addition to being blind, and so surely must have received awful educations. Compounding this are their young ages.

A sufficiently motivated, newly-sighted Locke would've gotten the answer correct.

<comment><USER11> Education here is not an overriding factor. The way a congenitally blind person "imagines" abstract representations of shapes is substantially different, primarily because the physical wiring of the visual cortex and indeed a lot of the brain would be very different when compared to a person who could see. The dimensionality of their world, despite being the same as that of the sighted ones, may not involve the same descriptive system - <USER2> maybe "polar" (just an example) coordinates would be more "natural" to them than a Cartesian system.

It's simply a problem of what gets mapped to what in the absence of mapping channels we take for granted.

Education is probably not a significant variable here.

<comment><USER10> Calculus in Chinese is still calculus. The sphere is smooth, the cube is non- smooth. That's all it takes.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but what is a non-differentiable curve if you and I don't even have the same definition of a curve? What about a curve which is differentiable in one coordinate system but not so in another?

EDIT: My point is - mathematics is axiomatic in its very basis - the axioms have to be agreed upon by people who agree upon a conclusion derived from those axioms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, that's really cool.

Now I have an additional question. Assume at one point you were able to see and touch things, then lost your sight, then regained it. I'd think that while blind, you'd still try to form images of things you touched, and then be able to recognize them after your sight was recovered.

If that's true, then the connection between the senses would not be fundamentally impossible, but rather a learned behavior.

</comment><comment><USER13> I expected to read about Peter Molyneux's problem of producing and selling games he dreams up around strange concepts, which I thought became so well known that it got an official name and put in Wikipedia.

But this was more interesting !

</comment><comment><USER14> I think that if the previously blind person analyses the shapes in the right way, they'd be able to tell which one is the sphere and which one is the cube:

The only things the person would be able to gain from just touching the objects is that the sphere is "the same all over" and the cube is "not the same all over", to dumb it down considerably. If the newly unblind man looks at the objects in a similar way and considers symmetry, I think he would be able to tell that one is infinitely more symmetrical than the other and would be able to deduce that the shape that looks the same all over would be the sphere.

Does that make sense?

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminded me of a feature of Esref Armagan, a blind Turkish painter, who was never sighted.

Skip to 7 minutes to see him paint a building he's never been to before, with 100% correct perspective.

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9ig6p_esref-armagan- blind-...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9ig6p_esref-armagan-blind- painter_creation#.UXxhv0BDuzA)

<comment><USER16> I wonder if he was given sight and at the same given two paintings of a scene, one his and another by someone else if he would be able to tell the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Surely this is not a hypothetical anymore or one with merely one test case - see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthesis> for example.

It seems obvious to me that it takes some time for people to get used to using a new sense - particularly for higher-order abilities. Differentiating 'round' from 'hard edged' is probably a fairly simplistic function which your brain should be able to quickly figure out, but I don't see how it can just be instant.

<comment><USER18> I think this is exactly right. Tactile visual substitution systems provide a sensory modality that we may as well call sight, just not via the eyeballs, and it takes time for the blind to become capable with them. Why wouldn't it take time for them to become capable with a sensory modality that is causally associated with the eyeballs? And in fact, it does take time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/molyneux-problem/>

</comment><comment><USER19> I say yes.

If you asked a blind person to draw a sphere they would draw a circle, if you asked them to draw a cube they would draw a square.</comment>


Show HN: Book-like content publishing platform as an eBook alternative - <AUTHOR> https://bookl.it <comment><USER2> Neat. First impression; how do I turn pages on this thing? Hmmm...arrow keys? no. spacebar? no. Page Up/Page Down? No. Ah...click and drag by mouse.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, definitely - need to make that more straightforward! Really appreciate your time and feedback.</comment></comment>


Why learn git - <AUTHOR> https://games.greggman.com/game/why-learn-git/ <comment><USER2> Isn't this mostly nomenclature?

That is, mercurial bookmarks are like git branches, yes?

[http://stevelosh.com/blog/2009/08/a-guide-to-branching-in- me...](http://stevelosh.com/blog/2009/08/a-guide-to-branching-in- mercurial/#branching-with-bookmarks) says:

"Branching with bookmarks is very close to the way git usually handles branching. Mercurial bookmarks are like git refs: named pointers to changesets that move on commit. The biggest difference is that git refs are transferred when pushing/pulling and Mercurial bookmarks are not."</comment>


Webdriver Torso YouTube mystery clips' French connection - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27238332

<comment><USER2> A clone with HTML5 dynamic SVG and Web Audio API:

[https://googledrive.com/host/0Bwx2OOXEfCSgejJnZnpnei02QWs/re...](https://googledrive.com/host/0Bwx2OOXEfCSgejJnZnpnei02QWs/rectangles.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Shades of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.</comment>


We Know Everything Worth Knowing About Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-18/mark-zuckerberg-profile-reveals-origins-of-facebook-fb-problems <comment><USER2> He is a glorified (ex) 20-something that built a social profile app for his university in PHP.

Despite the whole cult of personality the man isn't Musk, Gates, Jobs, or anything like it.

Most of what followed were a couple of good obvious moves and connections. VC money flowed in and the whole thing got in autopilot because it was something that filled a gap in the market.

Zero of the success, in my opinion, was due to some special guidance from Zuckerberg. He doesn't have any special technical savvy, he doesn't have any special business savvy, he is not much of a people's motivator, and so on. He is not some hustler type CEO either.

Just a kid which accidentally hit on something, and was in the right place to make billions.

The same is true for Google IMHO (only in its case the original founders had real technical chops). It mostly went on autopilot on the strength of the search engine algorithm, and when it was time to monetize things the big guys (Eric Schmidt and co) came in. Heck, Brin and Page wanted to sell Google to Excite for $1 million in 1999.

<comment><AUTHOR> Determination, mono-mania, and a willingness to meet goals by any means seems to be the true means to 'success'.

I hope I'm wrong and Ray Dalio is right: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9XGUpQZY38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9XGUpQZY38)</comment></comment>


Make Dinner: A Home Cooking Manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/dining/just-make-dinner-a-manifesto-for-home-cooking.html <comment><USER2> "The mission: to make each one of us a better cook."

I'm sure this website will help some people, but definitely not me. When I first started cooking, I wanted to start at step 1. But sites like these simply throw recipes at you without teaching you the techniques first. There's a tips section, but it's not connected to the recipes at all.

Luckily, I found Rouxbe.com a couple of years ago. I liked it so much I bought a lifetime membership (no longer offered). If your personality is like mine and you want to know explicitly how and why things should be done, I definitely recommend Rouxbe. For example, when learning how to pan fry, you're first taught how to properly heat a pan, what sounds to listen to when pan frying, how to adjust the temperature, what type and size pan to buy, etc. And of course there's a user forum with professionals to answer any dumb questions you might have.

</comment><comment><USER3> A pan-roasted spatchcocked chicken is one of my favourite easy meals, it's rewarding to see it glorified in the NY Times. However, I'm a bit disappointed they'd use it to sell us on a 16,000 recipe database.

Is it really helpful to have 44 years worth of different dinners on your iPad? Isn't a simple and malleable classic like the chicken dish proof that all you need to get by are a handful of recipes and the skill to play with them?

(disclosure: I'm the founder of a home cooking tech startup, and biased against the recipe-library approach)

<comment><USER4> Personally, I like having the NYT equivalent of Epicurious on my iPad. But I don't necessarily disagree with your basic point. The 16K NYT recipe database is somewhat at odds with a KISS philosophy around cooking quick tasty weekday meals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >It is a habit as easy to form as a bad one, and more beneficial by far.

>...

>Demonstrably it is more pleasant than a microwaved stew or takeout curry or a pizza delivered from miles away. Cheaper, too.

It's not "easy" or "more pleasant" if you're stressed for time.

Most of the article's paragaphs focus on _techniques_ or _process_. It's as if they assume the reader is afraid of pots & pans. Or they think the complexity of combining ingredients paralyzes the reader with PTSD from high school chemistry exams.

The main roadblock isn't ignorance of techniques or lack of recipes. (Those are available with a few clicks of youtube or google.) The issue is _available time_.

We can read these cooking manifestos and all nod in agreement because the benefits make logical sense but the real issue is that the cookbooks and essays don't magically conjure up a nanny to pick up our kid from daycare so we can multitask the chopping of veggies and stir the tomato sauce. Or we're young unmarried 20-something and we're working 60+ hours a week to meet a deadline with no time slot to cook from scratch. (Sounds like those google catered meals makes a lot of sense for programmer productivity.)

By my personal estimates, home cooking requires 4x to 5x more time than ordering prepared meals (fast food or Whole Foods deli takeout.) It takes a significant amount of time to home cook even if you stick to those simple "cook in 30 minutes" type of meals. (Those 30 minute estimates never include shopping, meal planning, prep, and cleanup.)

One strategy to compromise between time and convenience is to cook a bulk supply of a meal (say big pot of quinoa) on Sunday and then eat it as leftovers for the rest of the week. It's a great idea to batch the prep & cleanup on Sunday and leave Monday-Saturday simply as microwave reheating days. The problem with that is many folks are turned off by eating the same thing every day.

Perhaps with all this trend around "sharing economy" like Uber, a web service can bring together the folks who have time to cook with the folks who don't that all live within very close proximity to each other. A web 2.0 manifestation of comparative advantage in economics. A handful of "home chefs" in the apt or condo complex shops and makes the meals while others pay for their portion. This may not work for suburban neighborhoods because getting in a car or walking 10 blocks can be too much friction (distance, raining, etc).

<comment><USER6> Put pasta in a pan, fill it with water, put it on the stove on high heat. Put pasta sauce in a pot, put it on the stove on low-medium heat. Take out some ground meat and throw it in a second pan, put it on the stove on high heat. Put salt and pepper in the meat pan and stir it around with a wooden stick. When the meat is cooked, put it in the pot. When the pasta water boils, drain it and put the pasta in the sauce pot. Stir. Done.

You can replace ingredients in dishes like that for variety, like tofu for meat, cream of mushroom soup for tomato sauce, rice for pasta ('Minute' rice cooks in 5). But like you say, it's not about recipes, as you can find thousands of these online.

Time is an excuse. You have the time. Everybody has the time. Everybody has 10 minutes they can spend to make some food to eat. I don't care how many responsibilities you have, how long you work, how little you sleep, what you do with your free time, none of that. You have 10 minutes. Cook something.

<comment><USER7> That's absurd. I heard somewhere that Obama doesn't choose what he eats. He makes incredibly important decisions all day, every day. He can't be bothered to worry about what he's going to eat. Not many of us can make meaningful comparisons between our day-to-day and that of the POTUS, but I certainly envy the convenience of having my meals chosen for me. Cooking requires making a number of additional decisions. You suggest finding a recipe online. OK, well it will probably require ingredients that I don't have. Finding a satisfactory solution to the problem of choosing a recipe that maximizes tastiness and health, while minimizing grocery shopping and cooking hassle takes at least ten minutes for me. Inevitably, I need to buy four or five ingredients. Using up the leftover ingredients will further complicate future meal choices. Furthermore, cooking requires planning ahead of time unless you want to make a (10 minute minimum) trip to the store every day. So now I have to set aside 2-3 hours every week to make a meal plan, write a shopping list, and buy ingredients? Add an hour or more if you are not lucky enough to have a grocery store near your daily commute. And now I need cabinet and refrigerator space for all this and counter space to prepare the meal on.

Cooking's easy for you. Congratulations! It's not for me. You are out of touch with what day-to-day life is like for a huge swath of folks.

<comment><USER6> You are intimidated by something you don't understand, which is normal. But nothing is easy until you learn how to do it. You're intelligent, and just as capable of doing these things as anyone else. Are you going to walk around your whole life tripping over your shoelaces because learning how to tie them seems hard?

<comment><USER7> How condescending. I can cook. You vastly understate the tangible and intangible costs of home cooking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Happy to see a cooking thing instead of a Soylent thing on HN (but to each their own). An article in similar spirit, but more focused on _why_ you should consider cooking at home, rather than how you would go about doing so:

[https://medium.com/lucky-peach/the-end-of-the-world-as-we- kn...](https://medium.com/lucky-peach/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know- it-c9a0c05b243d)

</comment><comment><USER9> The problem with any of these things is that they're just recipes. What we really need is something that deconstructs cooking skills into easily learnt, repeatable practices.

It's like with the very recipe here - it's supposed to be for novice cooks, or those that never cook at home, to encourage them into home cooking, but at one point the recipe says:

"When the chicken has cooked through, take it out of the pan and pour off all but a couple of tablespoons of the fat in the pan, and make a quick gravy."

Novice cook thinks:

\- how do I know when the chicken has cooked through?

\- which bit is the fat?

\- how do I make a "quick gravy"?

Instead, they should have created a "beginner's spatchcocked chicken" where you learn all of the principles of just that one thing, maybe you also learn how to make mash potato out of a packet or oven fries. Then "level 2" would go on to the gravy. And so on...

It's frustrating, as someone who is interested in cooking and is trying to learn, that there are a million and one recipes out there, but very few things that teach first principles. For example:

\- how to properly season something (how do you know how much salt and pepper to put on)

\- knife handling and care

\- classic flavour combinations

\- preperation of all meats, veg, fruits

\- what you should always have in your kitchen (stock, garlic, chilli, etc.)

This is to name just a few. These million and one recipes just end up with you buying a bunch of herbs and spices you use once, then taking ages over preparing and washing up after; and some of them are basically the same with minor variations.

<comment><USER10> I agree completely. The article's principle is great, but the specific recipe they describe is a disaster waiting for happen for a newcomer.

I found chicken to be the hardest meat to learn to cook: underdo it and you have salmonella, overdo it and it's cardboard. A well-cooked chicken is a delight, but it's a pretty narrow range. I found beef and fish to be much less scary meats as a novice since undercooking them is less of a risk. You can't undercook salmon, you can just end up with surprise sushi.

Likewise, I _love_ making rouxs, but it took a number of tries before I had an intuition of the cook time/temp before and after adding the fat.

> \- how to properly season something (how do you know how much salt and > pepper to put on)

It's hard to have precise rules for that because every piece of food is different. Chickens aren't made in a factory (yet), so each bird will be a bit bigger or smaller. You kind of just have to learn it by taste and practice.

> \- knife handling and care

I find youtube videos are really great for technique. Just search for "how to chop/prepare <ingredient>". I can cut a bunch of fruits, vegetables, and animals now with confidence.

Taking care of knives is harder. Video doesn't do a good job of showing tactile details like how much force to use on a honing rod.

> \- classic flavour combinations

What I do whenever I'm in the mood for something is look up a bunch of recipes for it. If you compare them all, you can kind of get a feel for the ur-recipe that underlies them. Look at a few of those and you'll quickly get a feel for what things go together.

> \- what you should always have in your kitchen (stock, garlic, chilli, etc.)

This depends a lot on what cuisines you favor. I think the absolute basics are salt, pepper, oil, butter, flour, and a few aliums (garlic, onion, green onion, etc.). If you have those, you can take damn near any vegetable, throw it in a skillet, and sauté up something tasty.

I'm always surprised by how far "add to pan on medium heat with butter, salt, pepper, and garlic" gets you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like the idea. It seemed an odd recipe to start with though. "Ask the butcher to take out the backbone if you're nervous about doing that yourself." No it's not hard; it would take me a minute or two with my _poultry shears_. The NYT has a great back-catalog of recipes but I thought this intro did a poor job of persuading non-cooks that this is almost as easy as getting takeout. (And, truth be told, a lot of cooking will take more time than takeout when you factor in planning, shopping, and cleaning--even if you keep things relatively simple.)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think this is great! My only comment is I wish that the first example was something where meat wasn't the centerpiece. As a culture, we already consume so much more meat than is sustainable, maybe a good home cooked meal where a grain and some vegetables are the centerpiece might encourage fixing that problem, as well as being all around easier to cook!

</comment><comment><USER12> I sort of like the idea but it still seems too complicated for the mere mortal.

How about the 100 best, simplest ingredients, easiest to cook?

<comment><USER13> What do you see as complicated about this dish?

<comment><USER12> I guess it's not that complicated but the whole chicken and large (preferably cast iron) pan threw me off. Serving a whole chicken strikes me as a rare occasion at most US dining tables (vs boneless breast, etc).

<comment><USER13> It really shouldn't be. Whole chickens are one of the most cost effective proteins you can work with, and they're not at all difficult. They're a much better option than packaged boneless chicken breasts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Regarding meal planning: this one calculates the nutritional information and provides an estimated price for each day, helps put everything in perspective [https://spoonacular.com/weekly-meal-planner](https://spoonacular.com/weekly- meal-planner)

</comment><comment><USER15> Flagged for spam. I don't care if it's the New York Times or not. What does this have to do with anything?

<comment><USER13> I upvoted this. It's not spam; it's a recipe and a call to action.

<comment><USER15> It's a fluff piece.

<comment><USER13> That's a much more subjective judgement than "spam". Meanwhile: I took a note to go cook a spatchcocked chicken under a weighted plate this week, so it didn't set my "fluff" detector off at all. And I cook 5 nights a week.

Here, though: if you though that piece was fluffy, I'll give you an antidote. The single best cooking video on the Internet:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAekQ5fzfGM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAekQ5fzfGM)

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure about the 'best' qualification. That's way too complicated, not many people have the patience to learn and the time to do all of that. Just buy the chicken from the store cut up (and, I don't know about you guys, but where I shop, I can get the meat guy to cut anything up for me for free...). A lot of times machines are doing this stuff anyway, so cut up meat is pretty affordable. I particularly don't like cutting up my own meat because my hands up smelling weird, I have to clean up and wash the cutting boards, knives, etc. quickly (or else they start stinking up very soon), etc.

<comment><USER13> This video isn't "how to cut up a chicken".

<comment><USER16> Here's a video on how to cup up a chicken: [http://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/100000002155362/cutting-...](http://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/100000002155362/cutting- up-a-whole-chicken.html)

The great thing is you can make chicken stock with it. Add the chicken stock to the pilaf rice you're making, which goes great with the chicken!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A friend asked me for advice: startup or big company - <AUTHOR> http://bijansabet.com/post/200164887/a-friend-asked-me-for-advice-startup-or-big-company

<comment><USER2> This may not be quite what you're looking for, but bear with me...

There is an unwritten tradition in Judaism that a non-Jew will not be considered for conversion until after his first 3 requests have been turned down. Why? The thinking is that it is so hard to be Jewish that only those who want it badly enough will succeed. They must show that desire by continuing to come back until they get a yes.

That same thinking probably applies to starting a business. It's hard. Unless you're fiercely determined to succeed, you probably won't.

Tell your friend to go with the big company. A startup is just too hard. (You'll be telling him the truth.) His reaction may tell you a lot about his desire.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems pretty sensible. Good listening resulted in good advice.

Most of the time when people come to me for advice I just ask them a lot of questions and let them tell me the answer. It's usually obvious that they really want one answer rather than the other but just find it difficult to choose between two good choices because they might lose out.</comment>


Scala for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://tommorris.org/wiki/Scala_for_Hackers

<comment><USER2> Nice article, very practical. Didn't realize you could do duck typing in scala like that. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER3> And -that's- why scala is unsuited for quick hacks.

<comment><USER4> Didn't come off that way to me. Care to explain?</comment></comment>


The Age of the Essay - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html <comment><USER2> > When I give a draft of an essay to friends, there are two things I want to > know: which parts bore them, and which seem unconvincing.

Ironically this article is somewhat boring. The general impression I take away it is that the author thinks that he's much more intelligent than other people. That might be true, but still it is rather tedious to keep making that assertion.

</comment><comment><USER3> 2004</comment>


3D printing tiny human livers - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23419-3d-printer-makes-tiniest-human-liver-ever.html#.UgUWjGTXhcQa

<comment><USER2> There are three main ways of doing this in lab now 1) letting live cells recolonize a structure that mimics a whole tissue 2) with 'many hundred cell' resolution printing cells in 'close to the right structure' and letting them use their own systems to resort themselves out (what was done here), and 3) single-cell resolution of very fine structures that make up the individual units of an organ. Each have their own difficulties. And once they converge (single cell->rapid->entire organ) you will see some pretty cool stuff.

One major impediment is similar to the 3D printing world - we need and rapid access at single micron levels. Right now most 3D printers get down to about 100microns. We need better.

We also need creative ways to mix cell types - your organs use many (but a finite number) of cell types dispersed in an organized way. Coming up with a clever way to use different 'inks' of cells in an organized way would be extraordinarily useful. As others have said - a primary reason is vascularization, but there are a number of cell types you'd need to worry about.

Definitely moving quickly though - we've seen pretty fast progress in lab keeping cells alive and starting to use different cell types for small structures. We can do any given manipulation. We now need to combine them to make the entire process fast, micron resolution, high viability, natural scaffoldings, with many cell types.

Futher - as this article points out, there's a LOT we can learn simply from being able to recreate and experiment on small portions of tissues and organs properly. The first results won't need to come from 'make a new liver' \- but 'what does this thing in the liver do', or 'can we fix a liver just by doing this to it?'.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting coverage in Popular Science as well [1]. They point out (as does the newscientist article) that the key to organ printing is vascularization (creating a blood supply for the organ). Once you have that conquered you should be good to go on Kidney's, Liver's, Spleen's, Heart Tissue, Etc.

[1] [http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/how-3-d-printi...](http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/how-3-d-printing- body-parts-will-revolutionize-medicine)

<comment><USER4> >Once you have that conquered you should be good to go on Kidney's, Liver's, Spleen's, Heart Tissue, Etc.

and after that onto better kidney, better liver, better spleen ... like printing a cat-eye-style reflection layer into new human eye to increase night vision :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How goes plans for manufacturing a full-size liver? A friend needs one.

</comment><comment><USER6> I didn't have associated the idea of "printing" to a "human organ" yet. Very interesting. I wonder if, in the future, printing an organ would be easier than making it grow somehow until it gets functional for transplant.

<comment><USER7> It would be more of a hybrid of those two methods. You print the large parts (even a micron is "large") into place, then let the cells grow the small connections we cannot reliably engineer, like planting a garden. All this reminds me of that classic statement about human longevity and the lack of spare parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So yesterday I thought 3d printers were just for making blocks of shaped plastic. How has this suddenly moved on to making biological parts?

<comment><USER9> This has been going on for a long time:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=3d+print+body+parts](https://www.google.com/search?q=3d+print+body+parts)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=3d+printing](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=3d+printing)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidn...](http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Man, the distant future is going to be an interesting place.</comment>


Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd - <AUTHOR> https://www.techrepublic.com/article/knoppix-8-6-first-wide-public-release-to-abandon-systemd/ <comment><USER2> I see a lot of hate about systems and I used to loathe it too.

Then I took a course on systemd specifically and it opened my eyes, and now I'm quite fond about it.

Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. It has quirks and bugs like all software, but I think it works very well, all things considered.

To those who say that it's complex and does a lot of things: it's complex because it does a complex work.

<comment><USER3> I think you are missing the point: Something like systemd has a good reason to exist. But the devil is in the creating team. We've seen pulseaudio, a good system in theory, but an untrustworthy unstable system in practice. And if it wont work, it is so complicated and non-transparent that you need a specialist. Taking a step backward from Alsa is hard, and they managed to do it.

Now that same team is messing with system critical stuff. We know from the kernel command line debug debacle they rather see the world burn down than admit they did something wrong. They are again creating a super-complicated incomprehensible half- documented mess, that puts it tentacles everywhere. But the stakes are a lot higher.

I am not saying they are incompetent. At a low level, the code works. But at a high level, something is very wrong. Bugs can be fixed, but arrogant architecture astronauts not listening to their users, messing with core infrastructure, that's where systemd keeps failing.

<comment><USER4> The amount of features and stuff they add to systemd is seriously impressive. They have bugs sometimes, but I have been running it in production for years and years and never had a real issue. Its an incredibly stable system. Sometimes a new version has a bug because systemd has to work in so many context, those get fixed very quickly generally.

I would challange anybody, to introduce a totally new system layer on linux with less issues.

And Pulse Audio was started by Pottering but he quickly moved on and since then it literally has nothing to do with the people who work on systemd. Blaiming him for the persistence of issues with Pulse is simply unfair and would be done if he was not called Lennart Poettering.

<comment><USER5> I think Poettering deserved his fair share of the blame for the problems in Pulse Audio. However, a guy writes an over ambitious project, has a lot of problems, has problems with interfacing with users, etc, etc, etc. This is the internet! Pick a random project an Github and you'll probably find similar issues. The _real_ problem here was Red Hat -- and it was literally the same problem with systemd. They tied it so closely with the rest Gnome that you couldn't reasonably use Gnome without it. And since all of the distros were essentially riding on Red Hat's tail, everybody got strong armed into using this stuff before it was ready (to be fair, it was years and years and years before Pulse was stable at all).

I am not a fan of Poettering's code or his attitude, but people have treated him exceptionally badly. He's just doing his job. If these projects were allowed to compete for mind share fairly there would be no problem. If Red Hat had made sure that Gnome could work with alternatives then there would be no problem. Pulse audio would have died a rightful death. Systemd? I suspect that it would still have succeeded.

<comment><USER6> > The real problem here was Red Hat...

Agreed. This is Red Hat's mentality with a lot of it's product base. Poettering and Dan Walsh come to mind with regard to the elitist attitude in their respective corners. But just wait, this is going to get worse. Now that IBM owns them they will push this agenda even harder. The new game is controlling a majority of devs in well-known or strategic projects so the overarching enterprise can push an agenda. I don't think we're seeing the teeth quite yet, but give IBM a few years and my guess is it becomes very obvious.

<comment><USER7> > Poettering and Dan Walsh come to mind with regard to the elitist attitude in > their respective corners

Don't forget Drapper

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a bit surprised that they (seemingly? not clear in the article) went back to sysv init rather than exploring other options. I assume they just wanted to go back to something with which they were very familiar (and for which they probably already had scripts). But after going to void linux, I've found runit [1] to be an excellent init system. I was able to sit down and read the documentation in under an hour and understand exactly how it works _and_ how to add my own services (which is fairly trivial). The programs also seem very thoughtfully developed, taking into account specific circumstances and signals. I encourage others to take a look if you're interested; I believe a number of modern distros have support for using it rather than systemd (I know at least Arch does).

[1]: [http://smarden.org/runit/](http://smarden.org/runit/)

<comment><USER9> Knopper wrote his own init system called "knoppix-autoconfig" according to DistroWatch. [0] That information is not included in the release notes, though.

[0] [https://distrowatch.com/index- mobile.php?distribution=knoppi...](https://distrowatch.com/index- mobile.php?distribution=knoppix&release=all&month=all&year=2019)

<comment><USER10> Not really.

From this German article[0]:

> Knoppix' Startvorgang läuft nach wie vor per Sys-V-Init mit wenigen Bash- > Skripten, welche die Systemdienste effizient sequenziell oder parallel > starten.

> Knoppix' boot sequence still uses Sys-V-Ini, with some bash scripts which > start the system services efficiently sequential or in parallel.

So it has still all the downsides of sysvinit, except that might start sevices in a more efficient order or some in parallel.

[0]: [https://www.golem.de/news/live-linux-knoppix-8-0-bringt- mode...](https://www.golem.de/news/live-linux-knoppix-8-0-bringt-moderne- technik-fuer-neue-hardware-1703-126811-3.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a write once read many system, the abandonment of systemd isn't a big deal I suspect. You don't write to the system area and expect it to persist, and so making modifications to the init system basically isn't going to happen. The modularity doesn't really make as much of an impact then. So any backlash from unhappy users who can't install xyz with one click and have init work properly, not a big deal. Anyone who uses something more complex like an overlay system with it likely has more of an interest in the internals anyway, particularly given the nicheness and age of the distribution.

</comment><comment><USER12> > If you want to start your own services at startup, you do not need to create > any systemd units, but simply enter them in the text file /etc/rc.local, > which contains explanatory examples.

Okay, but doesn't that remove a lot of functionality that is available with systemd units? In this whole systemd debate, I've never seen a really clear outline of how much complexity systemd covers, and whether the older alternatives were actually simpler or not. Granted, I haven't looked very hard. I use systemd with Arch and have no known issues with it.

</comment><comment><USER13> The fact that we're still having _this_ conversation, after after a decade since being released and years after mass adoption, should say a lot. I can't think of any other software I have to use on a daily basis that gets so much heat, every time it comes up. One can make all the arguments for it they want but the continued public comtempt means something.

<comment><USER14> > One can make all the arguments for it they want but the continued public > comtempt means something.

It means that Linux community is full of people that refuse to give up on their gripes even after years. Those also tend to be the people who refuse to understand that "the old way" might not be the best way to do something and also fail to produce a viable alternative.

Linux audio was not usable for end users until PulseAudio stabilised. Init based on scripts was a trash fire. And yet, although SystemD and PulseAudio aren't perfect, noone managed to produce anything comparable except pages and pages and pages of whining.

These people need to let it go. This toxicity is unhealthy and it's just damn software.

<comment><USER15> The inability to let is why we also have an insane number of distros that continue to fragment Linux. While diversity of ideas is good, it kills user adoption by anything other than techies.

<comment><USER16> On the other hand it indirectly educates people as to how modular a Linux distribution can be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Been using systemd since whenever it became the default on Arch. I love it. It just works and I've never had any problems with it. I'd rather use it over any arcane bash-based system any day.

</comment><comment><USER18> Has anyone here used knoppix (or any other dedicated Live CD) recently?

In the early 2000's, distros didn't have live environments bundled. All debian used to have was a TUI installer and that's it. Ubuntu 4.10+ introduced a live sessions.

From 2004-now driver support and hardware detection has gotten much better. There are live session CD's that include "nonfree" drivers that further improve hardware support. You can pop in most popular distros and easily connect to WiFi and mount drives, often just as easily as knoppix did.

This complaint about systemd isn't a user-related, but the perspective of the live cd creator. Maybe it's true systemd doesn't help that case, but would systemd get in the way of a live cd user though? They're likely not going to be adding/removing/starting/stopping services, setting up users/groups, or anything else that'd be done in a permanent environment.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wish voidlinux gained more attention from the community and got adapted to serious production stuff. It has all the good elements on paper except the maturity and user base.

<comment><USER20> What are the benefits of void in production compared to Alpine?

<comment><USER10> If production is servers, then alpine is the better choice as it provides stable releases. Void Linux is a nice desktop system and you can run it on single servers you personally take care of. But I would rather not use it at scale for servers as updating rolling release can always lead to issues and not updating will leave security issues unfixed.

The one benefit would probably providing a glibc version if you require it.

(I'm a Void Linux contributor.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good - but I wish that change would have been coordinated with Devuan instead of duplicating the effort.

And by the way - if you're doing something Debian-based - make it Devuan- based, it's pretty straightforward. [http://www.devuan.org/](http://www.devuan.org/)

<comment><USER22> >if you're doing something Debian-based - make it Devuan-based, it's pretty straightforward.

It's also pretty straightforward to switch Debian systems back to sysvinit.

<comment><USER21> No, actually it isn't straightforward. There a lot of artificial dependencies that you can't break. I mean, conceptually it's not difficult, but in practice it is.

See also: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/433346/34868](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/433346/34868)

<comment><USER22> >There a lot of artificial dependencies that you can't break.

You still need libsystemd0 which is a compatibility library. It's actually unfortunately named, as it isn't part of systemd itself.

I've been using sysvinit on my Debian workstations since systemd became the default. It takes me about 5 minutes to switch a new system over (admittedly I don't use Gnome or KDE). The stackexchange thread you linked is out of date and switching is getting easier. I recommend following the debian-init- diversity mailing list for further info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> systemd is good for desktop and server systems.

But i was seeing that in Embedding Linux or IoT distributions that doesn't make sense since they're run on limited resources.

<comment><USER24> Well, systemd is great for responding to events (like devices and networks going up/down) so it seems like a good fit for embedded/IoT. If anything it'd be bad for servers since those are (usually) basically a couple of services and daemons brought up at boot and not changed during runtime, with a few interfaces that never change.

Systemd is not that heavy to run when configured correctly (which is what the distro should do).

<comment><USER23> Well - Debian with systemd consume ~90MB ram. Debian w/o systemd consume ~40MB ram.

Device have 256MB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Everything I know about systemd is bad.

When I want to write a script that runs on startup, I expect that I can just put (or link) it in some directory where the scripts are that get started on startup. Or that there is one main script that calls all scripts that are intended to be startet on startup.

I do _not_ want to write a "service" that has some "only run once and then discard" flag or whatever.

When I want to look at logs, I want to use the tools I like. less, grep, tail etc. I do _not_ want to dabble with some binary format and its tooling.

When I want to start or stop a service, I want to call a script that does that. A script which I can look at and see what it does. Like /etc/init.d/apache2. I do _not_ want to execute some magic command like "service apache start" which I have to guess or look up and which gives me no clue about what it does.

<comment><USER26> That's just saying "I want things to be the way I first learnt them and don't want them to change."

This is fine, but you do have to accept that things are going to move on without you.

<comment><USER25> By that logic, no mistakes can ever be criticized.

I explained, why systemd is a step in the wrong direction in mutiple ways. That has nothing to do with habbits.

<comment><USER27> > I explained, why systemd is a step in the wrong direction

I see a bunch of "I want X", but I don't see any "why"

<comment><USER28> But there have been reasons given. They want to use standard tools to deal with the log. They want to see the scripts that manage the system and poke around in it, which has the implicit reason to learn about the system and being able to easily modify it.

<comment><USER29> > They want to use standard tools to deal with the log.

I have a little sympathy for this one as an old habit if you don't know any better. It's also an extremely inefficient way to work with logs. If you've used a system like Splunk seriously, the idea of going back and grepping through logs on a host with the shell is just frustrating.

> They want to see the scripts that manage the system and poke around in it, > which has the implicit reason to learn about the system and being able to > easily modify it.

I have no sympathy for this one. Scripts are a terrible place to define policy. They are nigh impossible to audit. They are brittle. They multiply complexity by making everything a special case. They make integration of different parts of the system nearly impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have grown accustomed to systemd by now, however... is journalctl really needed?

<comment><USER13> It's needed as an argument to justify additional scope creep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Has anyone used Knoppix lately? It has so much pointless junk in it, I do not see the argument against systemd.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wish systemd would just die a fiery death. Every two years I replace my environment - by design, to force growth. I've been doing this on Linux since 1993. In my most recent go-around, I hunted for a Unix distribution that could meet my needs, and played with: Void, Solus, Manjaro, Fedora, Tumbleweed, TridentBSD, and GhostBSD. Heck were there docker support on *BSD I'd be back there happily for the first time since 2001.

SystemD needs to die because it violates Unix principles, not because of it's new key combinations. Unix is built on the notion that everything is a file, and that purpose built binaries make sense. SystemD breaks the latter - meaning it's now significantly more work to do the same things when it comes to log investigation, service analysis, and related events.

Perhaps the worst part is the extension of a subsystem for service initialization to everything other than that. The folks at suckless ([https://suckless.org/sucks/systemd/](https://suckless.org/sucks/systemd/)) did the argument significantly more justice than I ever could.

</comment><comment><USER33> I did a small ask around the room in the office, no one heard about Knoppix. Good for them, I guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's okay to flaunt your ignorance if you can claim that your peers are ignorant as well, I guess. Knoppix was one of the first, if not the first, popular live CD distributions.

<comment><USER34> The other day at the office, I was the only one that had heard of, let alone used, Slackware. I am also the oldest in the team, this is probably no coincidence.

<comment><USER35> I have worked at more than one place where I was the only one who had heard of Linux. I skip paraphrasing the 'let alone used' part, for of course everyone was using it in their routers and phones and proverbial toasters.

It is my clear impression that many Windows users would be hard pressed to explain what 'Windows' is and does.

<comment><USER36> Oh God. I've embarked on a project to try to relearn how Windows works again, and I'm actually having a terrifying time of it.

I"m starting to realize where so many holes in my understanding exist, and abhor how for so long I was just content to accept most things in Windows just happened.

Then I started actually digging into log files and various software distro's and tried to connect all the dots.

Long story short, nothing scares me more now than a computer program that I can't explain why it's doing what it's doing. SystemD falls into that trap for me. It may just be a case of sitting down and reverse engineering it until it clicks, but until then, I'd rather not trust anything important to it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


University of Washington CS Lecturer Explains Why Women Don't Code; Chaos Ensues - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/26/28210971/university-of-washington-computer-science-lecturer-explains-why-why-women-dont-code-chaos-ensues <comment><USER2> Read the article here:

[https://quillette.com/2018/06/19/why-women-dont- code/](https://quillette.com/2018/06/19/why-women-dont-code/)

I studied CS at Stanford for a few years in the late '80s and '90s. My first course was taught by Stuart Reges, who was a popular lecturer and author of a textbook on Pascal programming. As I recall, Reges was a super talented teacher -- intelligent, articulate, and also very outspoken. Stanford fired Reges after he publicly endorsed marijuana use and admitted sharing it with students.

<comment><USER3> This seems like a positive contribution to the debate. Reges lays out the argument very calmly, with no trace of the us-against-them tone that, I seem to recall, poisoned the Damore memo. (I should re-read it to check this impression.) Particularly, there's this near the end: _It's time for everyone to be honest, and my honest view is that having 20 percent women in tech is probably the best we are likely to achieve. Accepting that idea doesn't mean that women should feel unwelcome. Recognizing that women will be in the minority makes me even more appreciative of the women who choose to join us._ That's not the feeling I took away from Damore at all.</comment></comment>


Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive - <AUTHOR> https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/koos-jansen/guest-post-5-chinese-ghost-cities-came-alive/ <comment><USER2> My hometown is Wujin, Changzhou, the second city this post described. I lived there for almost 20 years. It has never been a ghost city as I known. It is always flourishing. If this place will be called ghost city, I don't know how you describe most United States cities.

<comment><USER3> That is the point of the article.

The article is a list of places that are not ghost cities, even though they have been described as such by idiots in the press.

<comment><USER4> Actually he claims they used to be ghost cities: "Below are five new cities in China that have advanced through the ghost city phase and have come to life."

<comment><USER3> The preceding paragraphs before that line all attack the press concept of the Chinese ghost city though, so in the context of that line, ghost city is meaning 'normal city still under construction' rather than 'giant Potemkin village never to be filled'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently living about 5km away from Zhujiang in Guangzhou, numbered two in the article.

I'm actually surprised to hear that it was previously a ghost city, it's been a very busy spot since I was first over here around 5 years ago. It's also a little strange to hear it called a "city", it's more of a district in the centre in what was already a very large city.

</comment><comment><USER6> Location is the key. The places listed in the article are all "new districts" of growing major cities, so they will be filled as planed. But not all major cities are actually growing, or growing as fast as planners hoped. And no official will admit their city is not growing, so as new districts are being build, some of them are going to be ghost ones.

However, the real ghost cities are mostly not going to be the ones you see in the media, for the reason of not shiny enough. If a project is on the failing trail, both the government and the developer will try to back off, to cut loses. So if you see the buildings are properly finished and streets well maintained, just lacking people, then it means the government and developers have not lost hope, and usually they have some good reasons.

</comment><comment><USER7> I feel like the idea of the Chinese "ghost city" is just plain false. You can label any new development this way. A typical housing development could have the title "Crazy Americans Build Ghost Houses". This is just urban planning and development being implemented.

<comment><USER8> > This is just urban planning and development being implemented.

I feel like this is the origin of it. In the US, we seem to take a much more short term view of "urban planning" \- rather than being laid out up front to support high density, cities more typically grow via low density sprawl on demand.

The idea of having a city (or district) constructed from the ground up to efficiently meet the needs of citizens 15 years in the future is alien to most of us. The context in which we typically encounter large groups of vacant buildings and empty streets is one in which something has gone wrong, which I think is why we find the "ghost city" narrative compelling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pudong was never a ghost city either. A more complete sample would be desirable. How about South China Mall? That was one of the prime examples, wasn't it?

<comment><USER10> [http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass- cnt.aspx?id=2014...](http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass- cnt.aspx?id=20140706000009&cid=1202)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The "ghost city" phenomenon always seemed like a good headline, ignoring the real building tragedy going on: poor quality housing, poor city planning, poor urban facilities. I see massive developments going on around me and yes, for a long time they are empty and ghostlike. they slowly fill up, and the urban centers become that bit more unliveable, that bit more crowded etc.

<comment><USER12> Some of them were (and are) definitely real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _"The ghost city of Dantu has been mostly empty for over a decade," Business Insider reported. "In most neighborhoods of Dantu, there are no cars, no signs of life," reported the Daily Mail. Both of these claims were made from looking at dated satellite images that showed the new district while it was still a construction site, not from reporters who actually went there._

Business as usual in the world of journalism.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hmmm still doesn't counter the fact that there is overdevelopment in China, just this year CNN ran a story on a ghost district in Tiajin....

[http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/gallery/china-tianjin- gh...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/gallery/china-tianjin-ghost- city/index.html)

Also Vice had an episode featuring ghost towns: [http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/explore-chinese-ghost- towns...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/explore-chinese-ghost-towns-in- tonights-episode-of-vice-on-hbo)

Yes our news media likes to hype up anything China these days. The problem with overdevelopment is not that the cities remain empty, it is the debts that come with them ([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-04/china-s- ci...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-04/china-s-cities-face- judgment-day-on-debts-as-costs-soar)). I can imagine many Chinese cities with flashy buildings are deep in debt, American style.

</comment><comment><USER14> currently in Shenzhen - my reaction has been that there are these beutiful malls and buildings that are being built but som feel empty. Sure you could chock it up to an overzelous goverment pouring money into development but you might also take a look at malls in the US that are now empty. The counter examples though are numerous. There are many areas that feel incredibly vibrant, full of buzz and people. The amount of consumerism in China shocked me, even as an American...

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks like even the most famous "ghost city" of them all, Ordos, isn't pining for the fjords just yet.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/ordos-a- gho...](http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/ordos-a-ghost-town- that-isnt/274776/)

<comment><USER16> 2013 article... You fall right into the posts topic.

Latest maps show beginnings of a bustling city... Wiki show 2m pop.

Chinese really believe in build it.. They will come...... Eventually in hordes.

<comment><USER17> Here is one from yesterday:

[http://gizmodo.com/4-instant-cities-that-are-still- completel...](http://gizmodo.com/4-instant-cities-that-are-still-completely- empty-1693270774)

Quote:

>Today, the real-estate situation in Ordos has turned macabre. Video billboards along the city's major roadways display mug shots of fugitive developers who have skipped town, fleeing their debts. There are rumors about the dynamiting of buildings in Kangbashi: about owners of unoccupied apartment towers who hope to create value through destruction, reselling freshly cleared land to new investors.

<comment><USER10> Yeah but if you read on you will find that that piece is actually based on an NYT story: [http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordos-china- to...](http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordos-china-tourist- city/?_r=2)

The NYT piece itself is much more carefully hedged. The TL;DR by the reporter: "IN SHORT, ORDOS is not empty, but it is odd"

A real estate bust implies that investors lost money but not necessarily a ghost town. Anyway the Ordos story was a lot more market driven than the other ones: for a while when coal price was dear Ordos boasted the highest per capita income in all of China. Also land is a lot cheaper in this unpopulated area.

<comment><USER17> Developers in China that focus on 2nd and 3rd tier cities are doing very poorly right now. The problem is that property became a speculative investment and an inflation hedge, but true demand has yet to materialize. The people who need housing can't afford these apartments, those that can afford them don't need to live there. Ugh.

<comment><USER10> Yeah they need the property tax real bad so at least investors will be incentivized to rent out their property instead of keeping their apartments vacant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Building an empty city from scratch and then populating it sounds utopian, and people are pretty skeptical of utopian thinking these days. But I guess it makes sense under China's combination of rapid urbanization and central planning.

</comment><comment><USER19> This was covered by 60 Minutes awhile back. See the youtube link [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei0FpwI1dqg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei0FpwI1dqg)

</comment><comment><USER20> Quite literally 'Built It, and They Will Come'.

</comment><comment><USER21> The current narrative in the u.s. press, including the tech press, is that china is somewhat backward and uncompetitive. Some people even still call them communist. When the reality is quite different, with cutting edge research, products, technology coming out every day.

There are cities in china you've never even heard of that have populations bigger than most major u.s. cities. In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world, pulling over 500 million people out of poverty and into the middle class.

The u.s. view is stuck in the 1960s-80s view of China. Even the chinese food in the u.s. is old-fashioned and not modern compared to what's in China now.

<comment><USER22> > Some people even still call them communist.

Such as the PRC government.

[http://english1.english.gov.cn/links/cpc.htm](http://english1.english.gov.cn/links/cpc.htm)

It's Socialist, too

[http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/09/09/content...](http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/09/09/content_281474986284659.htm)

> In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to > 1st world, pulling over 500 million people out of poverty and into the > middle class.

So did the Soviet Union. The thing is, you can only have an Industrial Revolution once.

> Even the chinese food in the u.s. is old-fashioned and not modern compared > to what's in China now.

Chinese-American cuisine is completely separate from what's eaten in China and must be understood as its own cultural entity.

<comment><USER23> The Soviet Union was, by definition, a "second world" country. First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor". They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR (second), or unaligned (third world).

<comment><USER22> > First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor".

They do now, in this post-1991 world.

> They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR > (second), or unaligned (third world).

So China was Third World in 1990? That's not going to be very defensible, except in terms of the definition you just gave, which lost all relevance in 1991.

My point is, the meanings of the words have changed, and trying to use them in their original sense now is just perverse. The original sense was predicated on a political reality which is now gone.

<comment><USER23> If you mean rich, say rich. If you mean poor, say poor. There are already perfectly good words for those exact concepts, and they're not "first" and "third world". Popular ignorance of the actual meanings of those terms does not change anything.

What is perverse is the widespread abuse of long-established academic terms with precise and well known meanings as co-opted euphemisms because one is too embarassed to simply say "rich" or "poor" when that is what one in fact means.

<comment><USER22> > Popular ignorance of the actual meanings of those terms does not change > anything.

How do you think words get meanings in the first place? Do you think they're handed down from on high?

<comment><USER23> Of course not, they evolve over time according to decentralized usage (not necessarily from ignorance.) However, this does not imply that anything anyone says is just as valid as any other, nor that any proposed meaning shift enacted by any small group ought to be immediately and unquestioningly accepted by everyone else. Others are also perfectly free to reject the proposal and continue to use the old meaning -- and to advocate for this, too. Only time will tell which group wins.

Just as words sometimes change meaning, there are many more cases where some people provisionally use a word with a new meaning, but this new meaning fails to take hold and vanishes. This happens when enough other people fail to adopt the proposed new meaning, and stick to the old meaning.

In this case, I am one of those people, and I am encouraging others to do the same. I believe I have very good reasons, and I am sharing them.

Redefining first and third world to mean "rich" and "poor" is unnecessary since we already have words for those meanings, and we have no other convenient words for what "first world" and "third world" conventionally mean in their original usage.

The desire to redefine them is in my opinion solely motivated by the desire for a euphemism to say something "nicer" sounding than "poor." Well, "poor" is not a nice thing; it's never going to sound nice. That desire is merely the euphemism treadmill at work. if you are going to call a group "poor," at least have the decency to say so directly rather than trying to hide behind a euphemism.

Besides, we have no other convenient words to say "aligned with capitalism during the Cold War" and "unaligned with either capitalism or Communism."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't see any "ghost city" here. That's hard working people building a new prosperous city from scratch. IMO a "ghost city" would be cities that is not as popular as before, not some place that had never become a city.</comment>


Show HN: React Planner – Draw a 2D floor plan and visualize it in 3D mode - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cvdlab/react-planner <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, this project shows the result that I and my working group have obtained about a study of 2D/3D graphic with React + Redux + Immutable + ThreeJS. This is a React Component that can be used to draw floor plan and visualize it in 3D mode. I hope that our experience will be useful to the community.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks fantastic, you might want to add an example to the demo, so guys looking at it for the first time have something to visualise/examine without having to learn to create diagrams first. Really looks good.</comment>