Why 'Net Neutrality' Drives the Left Crazy - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-net-neutrality-stirs-such-passion-1495230726 <comment><USER2> Us hippies have weird ideas like "I paid the ISP to ship me the bits so fucking ship them to me without shaking down the source for some extra cash".

<comment><USER3> Or wanting to start a new company without having yet another disadvantage against incumbents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> To me the comments to the article are the most shocking thing. It's obvious that Pai is a shill for the ISPs. Yet 90% of the commenters are so mindlessly pro-market that they cannot see that deregulating the ISP market that's currently a awful market that in many areas sees only a single provider will lead to stifling innovation in the much more important market of services provided via the Internet. And the people spout shit like "The internet is a privilege and not a right" as an argument against it being a utility. What reality to people live in? The internet is arguably the most important invention in human history and probably the most important utility we have. I'd rather give up roads or running water than Internet access.

<comment><USER4> > The internet is arguably the most important invention in human history and > probably the most important utility we have.

Are you ready to forego your water and sewer installation? I'm not. I think you should revisit the importance of internet access down a few notches.

<comment><USER3> Yes that's what I said and I stand by it. It would be incredibly inconvenient to lose water or sewer. I would have to walk down to the creek multiple times a day, purify the water, etc. Showers would be a thing of the past. I'd have to have a septic which comes with it's own issues. However, without Internet access I cannot work, I would have a much harder time acquiring new knowledge. If the entire Internet were gone for everybody that would be a huge killer for much of our economy, but since we would have to deal with it collectively infrastructure to get stuff done without it would likely come back. However, if it was just me who had no Internet that would be a massive disaster for myself. Without Internet I would immediately be left behind.

<comment><USER4> Oh, I see. You just don't underestand how absolutely vital water is to keep our civilization running.

No water or sewer installations wouldn't just mean you have to endure some inconveniences. It would mean hygienic catastrophe, with all the diseases eradicated just by making everybody wash their hands come back. And no easy access to water would literally kill almost all industry. Industry nowadays consumes twice as much water as households, mind you. Take that away and you don't have no production of anything at all. (Agriculture takes twice as industry and households combined, but I'm not sure if I can pull it under the same argument here.)

On the other hand, if we make internet disappear, we would go to where we were just twenty years ago, thirty at best. Most of the information produced and processed through internet is only useful for working with internet, so it's not as big deal as you want to paint it.

> However, without Internet access I cannot work, I would have a much harder > time acquiring new knowledge.

You'd just land in some other industry. And new knowledge you would just get from somebody else. People didn't magically become more knowledgable once internet became common. It's not like an average person today knows more than average person three decades ago (and it seems it's actually the opposite).

> If the entire Internet were gone for everybody that would be a huge killer > for much of our economy,

For our _industry_ , IT+web, not _economy_. For _economy_ it would be a big inconvenience, because IT is so big nowadays, but nothing more. Lack of water, on the other hand, would make impossible most of the production processes, including agricultural chemistry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Absolutely no in depth analysis of the problem. More of a biopic of Ajit Pai making him look like some kind of hero of resistance.

The central theme is net neutrality is making investment in internet infrastructure difficult. Yet there is no mention of the oligarchy in the ISP business.

</comment><comment><USER6> To work around paywall, click through Real Clear Politics stub: [http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2017/05/20/why_039net_neutr...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2017/05/20/why_039net_neutrality039_drives_the_left_crazy_410788.html)</comment>


Apple Resorts to Promo Deals, Trade-Ins to Boost iPhone Sales - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-04/apple-is-said-to-reassign-marketing-staff-to-boost-iphone-sales <comment><USER2> Apple needs another category defining product. Heck it needed one 6 years ago. Here are a few suggestions. Apple Car. Apple HomeBot ( Home Robot / Automation with a really powerful Siri ). Some version of Apple Cloud that enables one to build web and iOS apps easily on Apple backend. Apple Privacy Based Apps Suite for Business. Call me Tim :) I got ideas! One more thing. Please bring back fun innovations like MagSafe adapter and glowing Mac icon.</comment>


VC Investments Rise to Six-Year High - <AUTHOR> http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/V/VENTURE_INVESTMENTS

<comment> daniel-cussen I got linked to an associated press link which looks gross.

<comment><USER2> <http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080119/venture_investments.html?.v=4>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> can you hear the seams of the bubble straining?</comment>


JuliaCon 2020 Conference Agenda - <AUTHOR> https://live.juliacon.org/agenda/2020-07-31 <comment><AUTHOR> JuliaCon 2020 concluded yesterday, but the talks are all posted on YouTube, and the conference agenda page remains accessible for the near future.</comment>


My Bitcoin wallet is released.Your feedback appreciated with my free Bitcoins - <AUTHOR>

I developed a bitcoin wallet and just got Apple approved. It's a decentralized wallet. It's a HD wallet and supports multiSig. The unique feature is that you can choose send/request coins being anonymous or real. Users can send/receive coins through address or email.Please go to apple store and search YardWallet. After installed, post here your registration email, I will send you free bitcoins. Thanks.<p>http://www.yardwallet.com/ <comment><USER2> Is it open source?

<comment><AUTHOR> if you have installed, let me know your registration email. I will offer free bitcoin to get feedback.

<comment><USER2> I installed it, - my hn nick at gmail

My feedback is

\- Hard to trust any app for btc that isn't open source

\- Requiring a photo is pretty severe, scale factor is wrong mode in the uiimageview

\- The security is pretty crazy, unlock pattern + password - make it easy to get started

\- Seed value should require repeating back to the app

\- Multisig looks complicated, I'd like it to work with Electrum

\- Seed should give me some idea of its standard, can I restore it with another app

\- It's missing press states on a lot of stuff

\- Would be cool to integrate with trustedcoin api

The gold standard is breadwallet, have to beat that. I like the multisig angle, but it has to be done correctly

<comment><AUTHOR> I could send coins to nick at gmail. please correct? -point taken; -any suggestions to make more secure with good user experience? -input 12 english words for opening app every time? -Is Electrum simpler? -Seed is BIP standard -point taken; -If there is a standard, we will follow;But if it's another 3rd party, then we hesitate; BreadWallet is cool. But it doesn't support email and multiSig. And the UI is not very good.

<comment><USER2> my email is alexbosworth at gmail dot com

\- I'd incorporate touchID, I've used it in iOS and it's easy to add.

\- One feature I'm thinking about for my iOS apps is using the Apple Watch as a 2nd factor auth mechanism. I haven't looked into the feasibility of it yet though and probably not many people have smartwatches

\- After the user writes down the seed when setting up the wallet, challenge them to verify their written seed. I think this is how Electrum works, try that out

\- BIP standard is a good idea for the seed, but try and mention other wallets that the seed can be used in, for reference purposes

\- Multisig is definitely the winner here, but I'd go farther, really look into trustedcoin API

<comment><AUTHOR> Please check your wallet for 1mbtc as my appreciation. -TouchID is in the plan; -AppleWatch as well; -challenge with seed? Users already complain the current process why to write down the seed. Very hard to balance security and usability; Electrum is for pro; -Good suggestion; -Our multisig has some specific security design. Not sure if bitGo or Trustedcoin supports. We will certainly support more 3-rd parties once we have bandwidth; thank you again.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the 1mbit :) The absolute killer feature for me is multisig with a second party, based on a standard BIP backup seed - so 2 of 3, I hold 2 keys on a paper wallet, the mobile app holds 1 key, the trusted other party holds 1 key, 2 keys are needed to send transactions.

Basically my preference for bitcoin software is like this:

1\. If there is a bad update to the software, I feel safe that it doesn't matter too much because there is a secondary signature needed to approve a transfer

2\. If the software is discontinued or I want to stop using it, I feel safe it doesn't matter because I can restore from a seed elsewhere

I appreciate safeguards to the device like the touchId etc, however there's a tricky balance there of security vs usability. I think using the touch movement pattern is a great idea for a backup method and touchId can be the primary method.

<comment><AUTHOR> alex, we will add trusted 3rd party in the future.

Currently, you can always fully recover all your coins from the seed values you back up during the wallet creation.

Our wallet is built on BIP standards.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook rolls out trial of 'dislike' button for downvoting comments - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/01/facebook-rolls-out-trial-of-dislike-button-for-downvoting-comments <comment><USER2> Disheartening to see that Facebook is unabashedly aping the cornerstones of various sites (reddit) and apps (Snap).

That said, a downvote, or a "dislike" button, is almost always a double-edged sword - although it can be used to tune out hateful comments, it can also turn potentially meaningful comment sections into echo chambers extremely fast.

I do _not_ see this turning out well.

<comment><USER3> I always thought the only way downvotes buttons should be implemented is that they're non-functional, in that they do nothing other than let a user take an action; you could perhaps then influence what that specific user sees in the future, to help get an idea of their tastes, or instead not actually affecting where a comment or post shows up in an order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is the purpose? What will downvoting enable aside from downvoting itself?

I have a sense it will only worsen the mob mentality on Facebook and make it more like Reddit.

<comment><USER5> Sorry to break it to you but HN is exactly the same. The difference is that the hive mind here doesn't like memes.

Groupthink still exists.

<comment><USER4> Hive mind exists everywhere, the goal is to not encourage it.

<comment><USER5> Voting on comments encourages it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't use facebook, what is the purpose of like and dislike?

Is like meant to signify I agree with this comment. And dislike means I disagree with this comment or does dislike mean I think this comment is bad, O/T, abusive. Or does dislike mean something else.

What if you disagreed with the comment, but felt it was a good comment, well argued, well presented and fair etc. would you like it or dislike it?

I feel "like" would make it look like you align yourself with the poster, which you may not want but dislike seems wrong too.

Maybe overall like / dislike is an indicator of quality of comment, regardless of your personal alignment with the content?

I don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is good because without a dislike button and karma score you can spew out any old unsubstantiated bullocks and people have to "accept your opinion maaaannn".

Say what you will about echo-chambers and stuff associated with comment voting, but IMO reddit/hn are orders of magnitude better than fb.

</comment><comment><USER8> Will they have those dislike buttons on the Ads too which FB throws to our timeline?

</comment><comment><USER9> So there's an upvoting button and like button as well. Do they go hand in hand?

</comment><comment> jim-jim-jim Surely there's enough proof out there at this point that ranked comments do nothing to improve discussion, and that downvoting is always used as a "I disagree" button?

<comment><USER10> Are there any popular systems in which there are separate downvotes for "I disagree" and "I think this is a low-quality, inappropriate, or abusive comment"? Or separate upvotes for "I agree" and "I think this is a useful, interesting, or high-quality comment"?

<comment><USER11> Yeah, some sites have proper reaction systems that let you rate a post on multiple basises. Slashdot's an obvious example, but quite a few forums have such systems too, with the XenForo version having options for:

Like Dislike Agree Disagree Happy Funny Surprised Sad Angry Winner Friendly Informative Creative Useful Optimistic Boring Old Bad Spelling

As well as whatever other options the site owner may have added. So there are systems out there which differentiate between a post someone disagrees with and one that's low quality, and they do make sure 'disagree' is not counted as a like or dislike on the database level too.

<comment><USER12> > So there are systems out there which differentiate between a post someone > disagrees with and one that's low quality,

...which don't actually mean anything in practice because (1) disagreement effects perception of quality, so even honest voters in a system which distinguished the two will still be likely to mark a post that they disagree with as low wuality, and (2) people in practice, given the option, will mark a comment or post in the way that produces the effect they wish to happen to it, so if they want a post demoted because they disagree with it, and the forum offers marks for disagree which don't demote and some other mark which does demote, they choose the latter.

<comment><USER11> Dunno, never seen this happen myself on most sites with reaction/rating systems. Okay, the list of examples I can remember off the top of my head is only two (Wario Forums, The Admin Zone), but neither seems to have issues with people abusing the ratings system to dislike posts they merely disagree with.

Maybe it stops holding up on Reddit scale though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> a new Reddit was born</comment>


BBC Reporter Breaks "World's Safest Drone" [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35240062 <comment><USER2> Surely that's only news if they got hurt or hurt someone else.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it didn't do anything particularly unsafe did it? And they didn't claim it was unbreakable, did they?

<comment><USER4> Exactly, perhaps it sacrifices itself in order to not hurt/damage other things (hence being 'safe').</comment></comment></comment>


Top 20 Wireframe Tools - <AUTHOR> http://garmahis.com/reviews/wireframe-tools/ <comment><USER2> Google Docs Drawings is pretty good too for real simple wireframes. Easy to use and share, can see changes made to it by others.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone utilized any of these tools to create clickable HTML prototypes that can be hosted?

Pidoco has this functionality. Wondering if any of the other tools do as well.

<comment><USER4> It's not built into the product, but Napkee (<http://www.napkee.com/>) can make both HTML/CSS/JS and Adobe Flex 3 versions of Balsamiq Mockups BMML files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> OmniGraffle, Balsamiq, AxureRP and Visio are pretty much the industry standards. Mostly OmniGraffle and Visio. The fact he doesn't even mention Visio just goes to show.

</comment><comment><USER6> Mockflow for the win.</comment>


WhatsApp to raise minimum age limit to 16 in EU - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43888647 <comment><USER2> When it's launching this feature in India.</comment>


New blog by Gary Taubes - <AUTHOR> http://www.garytaubes.com/blog/

<comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974312>

What's more, that link is direct to the article in question, whereas this link is to the main blog, whose front page will no doubt change over time, invalidating any discussion here.</comment>


California net neutrality bill gutted as lawmakers cave to AT&T lobbyists - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/california-net-neutrality-bill-gutted-as-lawmakers-cave-to-att-lobbyists/ <comment><USER2> The ever-present, and simply accepted from constant impression, bias in political reporting and maneuvering is remarkable. The headline reads "lawmakers", and the net-neutrality group complains ""California Democrats work[ed] with Republicans to gut [the] net neutrality bill."

Yet, if you read the article all the way through then you clearly see that the committee is composed of 7 Democrats and 3 Republicans. Any bill desired can be passed by a simple majority - all it takes is 6 of those Democrats to agree.

This kind of slanted reporting results in misplaced conclusion, and this kind of trying to hold the "opposition's" feet to the fire for the deficiencies of the majority party to live up to their espoused mantra is why nothing good ever gets done - only that (I'm looking at you, "high speed" train) which scratches all the backs, expense be damned , is what makes it through the political system that exists in the (once) Golden State.

<comment><USER3> I agree, it's not about Democrats vs. Republicans. It's about corruption.

How did the amendment get passed with the secret vote? My take: AT&T greased a LOT of wheels to get this legislation stopped.

It happens at the Federal level with GOP in power, it happens in many states with Dems or GOP in power. It's purely corruption.

<comment><USER4> Is there any recourse (at any level) for litigation in this situation, on grounds of corruption? I mean does anyone have the ability to sue the California legislature? I know essentially nothing about these things...</comment></comment></comment>


Regular Expression Matching: the Virtual Machine Approach - <AUTHOR> http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp2.html <comment><USER2> This virtual machine approach works great for Parsing Expression Grammars, because of restricted backtracking:

<http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/docs/peg.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> For reference: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466845> -> <http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html>

(HN's discussion of a prequel to this article)</comment>


Creator of TempleOS, Terry Davis, has passed away - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/30710/Creator_of_TempleOS_Terry_Davis_has_passed_away <comment><USER2> Previous discussions of similar post:

"Terry Davis has died" (templeos.org) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17912618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17912618) (634 points, 38 days ago, 207 comments)

"Terry Davis Confirmation: Man killed by train had tech following" (thedalleschronicle.com) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938835) (177 points, 35 days ago, 42 comments)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Other link: [http://templeos.org/](http://templeos.org/)

This has been posted before, but I don't think this got the attention he deserves as a well-known figure of our time in "our" subculture.

Rest in peace, Terry. I wish you got a heavenly development environment up there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh, my. I'm surprised and thankful I saw this on /new, which I basically never click. Terry was an unusual personality because of his illness, abrasive but no doubt gifted. Farewell to an unfortunate soul.

</comment><comment><USER4> According to Wikipedia he died two months ago:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS)</comment>


How to Splunk with Heroku - <AUTHOR> http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/43803022282/how-to-splunk-with-heroku

<comment><USER2> What happens when you scale up your dynos and you end up with multiple servers all coming from different IP addresses?

<comment><USER3> Heroku logs are labeled with the ID of the dyno.

<comment><USER2> I know the heroku logs are labeled with the process (web.1, web.2, etc) but if you authorize a set of IPs to splunk and then add 10 more instances with heroku, I would imagine splunk would reject the new IPs. I'm curious if the heroku log drain always comes from the same set of IPs regardless of the dyno.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been exploring different logging options recently, papertrail, loggly, logevents and now splunk. Papertrail was definitely winning for simplicity but I felt the first three really fell short when trying to filter the returned information. I'm using scrolls to generate the logs so they're in key=value format. I've just tried splunk and it blows the others away for analysis. The big difference is in the way you can filter the information, it understands the key=value format and lets you search and then filter based on those. With the charting and dashboards I can build views that really allow me to see what's going on at a glance.

</comment><comment><USER3> We've been using PaperTrailApp successfully, same thing. <https://papertrailapp.com/>

<comment><USER5> I actually prefer PaperTrail for most tasks - the main difference being that you start off with the log and can scroll through easily (instead of having to fiddle with filters).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been using Logentries addon with Heroku (<https://addons.heroku.com/logentries>) and it does all the things you mentioned namely,

Real-time or very-near-real-time data discovery. Wildcard search. Timespan dragging.

I would still like to explore splunk as an offline analysis tool for syslog drains.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm in love with papertrail as i don't need more than they offer. Nice write up, however. I'll have ro look into them.</comment>


Applying to Toptal: My Retrospective - <AUTHOR> I recently applied to Toptal while also applying to remote-friendly full time software engineering positions.  I gave up in the 4th step, which I'll come back later.  This whole process took 2 months, partly because I started before a 2 week period of travel, and partly because of the Christmas/New Years.
Step 1: A Skype call.
- Listen to some marketing about Toptal taking top tier developers and pairing them with prestigious companies.
- Evaluate my English.  I talked about my experiences briefly.
- I was asked for my rate.  I read some stories about people who were told to lower their rates, so I lowballed myself.
Step 2: Codility challenge.
- 30 minute example to understand the format.
---  caught me off guard with tests around run time and memory complexity.
--- passed the correctness tests on first try
--- ran out of time working on the performance tests
- The sandboxed environment didn't show the tests, just test results.
- I had the option to repeat this example.  This was useful.  I did the example twice to have some more practice coding for time and space constraints.
- Real challenge: 3 problems, 30 minutes each.
- I correctly answered one.
- I was stumped on a "base 10 to base negative 2" converter
Step 3: Live coding challenge.
- 2 problems, 15 minutes each.
- Hangouts screensharing to monitor my activity.
- Google was allowed.  StackOverflow was expressly not.
- I joined our Hangout with my camera on.  His first words were "You can turn your camera off, you won't need it for this."  I'm not sure if he ever said hello.
- After I passed, the reviewer asked me for my rate.
--- I saw in my notes that I talked about it before.  I casually mentioned that I talked about my rate already.  He said there was nothing in the system about that.
- The interviewer let me defer Step 4 until after the holidays. That was nice. <comment><AUTHOR> Step 4: A demo app with a hard 2 week deadline

\- First step: evaluate requirements, make an estimation, and make a promise of its completion to the next evaluator

\- The app spec was a dozen bullet points in an email. They included:

\--- "REST API. Make it possible to perform all user actions via the API, including authentication"

\--- "All actions need to be done client side using AJAX, refreshing the page is not acceptable."

\- I budgeted a week for this.

\- I gave up when I saw that I didn't give myself enough time.

\- They said that I could apply again in 3 months.

Looking back

\- The repeated prompting about rates was suspicious.

\- The hard deadline and "make an estimation and promise" part of Step 4 was strange.

\- My time was not valued with the project in Step 4. No other company has ever asked me for a 1+ week unpaid work sample.

\- By the end of step 3, I knew I didn't want to work with them. Step 4 was described as "a simple CRUD app". I considered doing it for an excuse to build something in a Clojure.

\--- When I saw the Single Page App requirement, I felt it was out of my league. I decided to go with Rails and Backbone, since they were familiar.

\- I don't regret applying and going as far as I did. However, I would try to stop any friend from applying.

\- I only regret not trying to do the Step 4 project in Clojure, so that I could have learned something more useful out of all of this.

Overall, 3/10, would not recommend.

<comment><USER2> Check out 10X Management.</comment></comment>


The Changing Frontier of Science - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lux_capital/the-changing-frontier-of-science-6ad4ce229935#.mg064qk51 <comment><USER2> I'm glad I read the whole article, as it's great to see a lot of familiar faces highlighted in the logo slide towards the end - I'm immensely proud of what we've achieved at Overleaf[1] (although with still a long way to go), and it's great to see Sparrho[2] and Impact Story[3] also included in this piece.

There's a huge amount of innovation happening in science tech right now, and it's amazing how far it's come in just a few years.

For anyone in London interested in new developments in science and publishing tech, were hosting an event on May 10th you're welcome to attend - would love to see new faces there: [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/futurepub-7-new- developments-in...](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/futurepub-7-new-developments- in-scientific-collaboration-tech-tickets-24489046397)

[1] [https://www.overleaf.com](https://www.overleaf.com)

[2] [https://www.sparrho.com](https://www.sparrho.com)

[3] [https://impactstory.org](https://impactstory.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> How many researchers are going to give people the honest truth and say "well the initial effect of 2.5 sigma just vanished after $500k of upgrades, sorry folks". The corresponding backlash will be swift and brutal, and science as a whole will suffer.

Is the world better off because of this? I don't think so. I'm not particularly interested in being part of the crowd-funded, gig-economy version of science.</comment>


Alphabet is within a hair of dethroning Apple as world's most valuable company - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/606535/alphabet-is-within-a-hair-of-dethroning-apple-as-the-worlds-most-valuable-company/ <comment><USER2> Does it really matter? I would think that over time different companies would have the top spot.

A better measure is which company will be the most relevant in 10, 20, or 30 years. When I worked as a contractor at Google, I was very impressed by the company but wondered privately what would happen if their ad revenue was seriously disrupted.

Same with Apple. They make great gear but they might be disrupted by incredible cheap gear in the future from China and South Korea.

<comment><USER3>
      This is what's Alphabet quarter earnings is about. They are going to show separately how Google and all their other bets will do. Elon Musk is the most celebrated visionary of our time but Larry Page is not far behind and now that he has passed of Google for someone else to run. It will be interesting to see what he does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ugh, I was just thinking about this. Alphabet isn't so much doing the dethroning here. They aren't growing. They aren't adding value. Apple is simply losing value. It's the the same. That doesn't make Alphabet "better" and in no way justifies all these articles coming out right now about "how alphabet is doing amazing and brin and page have it figured out!"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> When will it be time to officially dethrone New York and coronate San Francisco as the capital of the US Economy?

<comment><USER5> Not for a while. NYC has a Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP) of $1,574 billion as of 2015.[0] That's almost 1/10 of US GDP.

San Francisco / Oakland / Hayward comes in at $427 billion. San Jose / Sunnyvale / Santa Clara comes in at $220 billion.

[0] [http://www.statista.com/statistics/183808/gmp-of- the-20-bigg...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/183808/gmp-of- the-20-biggest-metro-areas/)

Further reading: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_area...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_areas_by_GDP)

<comment><USER6> Interesting to see that SF trails both Dallas and Houston. (which in turn trail LA and Chicago significantly)

Add to the fact that Austin is the fastest growing, and you can buy a nice house for under $200K, yee-haw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, but take a look at their 10 year charts. AAPL would have made you 3.5x better return, even after the recent slump: [https://goo.gl/XvWK4S](https://goo.gl/XvWK4S)</comment>


Pandoc LaTeX Boilerplate to publish Academic Books - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/qualiacode/arabica <comment><USER2> My concern with using a package like this is that it's built on top of so much other stuff. You'll still be able to read the text forever, which is a big plus, but Pandoc, at least a couple of years ago, was tweaking its template formats so frequently that my attemts to extend them for my own purposes were continually breaking. Maybe things have stabilized now? I'd be worried that a project started using this package would need continual maintenance to keep it in a state where it could actually build PDFs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your doubts are well-founded if you intend to use the project as a further dependency for other projects. Arabica is intended to provide a kind of early interim solution to bundle the necessary technology stack for publishing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hacking your way into SF? - <AUTHOR>

Getting extremely bored and frustrated with my current job. More responsibility, less compensation, etc, we all know the drill.
I set a goal to be in SF before the end of the year but I'm looking to expedite the process a bit. Unfortunately due to the aforementioned compensation issue I'm not able to just pick up and move just yet and I haven't lined up a job yet.
I'd appreciate some help from you guys. What options are out there for something like this?
I've stepped up my job searching activities and started cutting more expenses to save even more money, but my patience here is quickly waning.
I'd appreciate any tips or ideas you guys might have. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I don't think this is called "hacking." It's called job-hunting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Send me an email with your resumé / portfolio.

</comment><comment><USER4> have an email?

</comment><comment><USER5> Just because places aren't hiring doesn't mean you don't send them a portfolio of work anyways. Find a place you want to work at and harass them gently for a job.

If you need extra money troll the bitcoin forums for posts of people looking for small store software to be built or other forums. Troll local craigslist in the 'gigs: computer' section, write and sell ebooks, write android or ios apps for the thousands of entrepreneurs looking to get into the game for enough change to buy a ticket and flee</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone used newer (2019-2020) Xamarin.Forms for cross platform desktop? - <AUTHOR> What the title says. We are looking at desktop app development that is cross platform but as native as possible and looking at Xamarin.Forms, Qt, and React Native.<p>We're pretty much down to Xamarin and React Native, with the latter looking decent due to Microsoft's recent efforts on react native for desktop and even for Mac desktop. Qt isn't totally out but its not truly native controls and if we are going to do the not truly native route we might as well go with some HTML5/CSS UI option. <comment><USER2> > Qt isn't totally out but its not truly native controls and if we are going > to do the not truly native route we might as well go with some HTML5/CSS UI > option

Are any of the others you mentioned truly native controls?

Qt is the best for speed and support. If you want HTML/CSS go with React Native or Electron.

</comment><comment><USER3> why not QT. we are using python3 + qt and it is ok. documentation lacks for some places, but qt devs are active on irc.

</comment><comment><USER4> XF is for mobile apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Recent versions have Windows and Mac.</comment></comment>


Why C Is Not Assembly - <AUTHOR> http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2010/09/moron-why-c-is-not-assembly.html <comment><USER2> I suspect this guy never compiled the code he posted. Not that his claim was completely wrong, but gcc-4.4.4, gcc-4.5.1, and clang-1.1 (LLVM-2.7) all fail to vectorize that snippet, with `gcc-4.5.1 -O3 -ftree-vectorize -ftree- vectorizer-verbose=9`, I get

        note: not vectorized: number of iterations cannot be computed.
        note: bad loop form.
        note: vectorized 0 loops in function.

However, gcc-4.5.1 and gcc-4.4.4 vectorize it when the operation is written as a standard `for` loop. Clang never vectorizes it.

<comment><USER3> Try -march=<cpu>

<comment><USER2> Makes no difference because it's not the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author is not a moron but he is also not correct. Whether or not he thinks this is the best practice, ANSI C is not what is written in most of the important C systems applications. GCC intrinsics, Intel intrinsics and extensions, Nvidia extensions, inline assembler -- these are all things which you will find in most (if not all) of the very performant and useful C systems programs. Non-ANSI C is almost the _de facto_ implementation in systems development and is mostly what people think of when they say "C is high level assembly." Moreover, people have to realize that this will never change unless intrinsics fall out of favor. For example, how would you begin to define a VMENTER intrinsic in the ANSI C standard? The author spends a lot of time railing against undefined behavior, but there is a very big difference between undefined behavior and implementation defined behavior. Simply because someone whips out GCC and says "see? GCC does it correctly" doesn't mean they're wrong unless they're only talking about undefined behavior.

So I guess my perspective is that there are two different types of people using C: people who are writing systems applications and people using ANSI C. Personally, I would guess that the first group is much, much larger.

<comment><USER5> Sigh...pedantry at its finest. From TFA:

> Most real C implementations will go some distance beyond the standard(s), of > course, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

You missed the guy's point, which was essentially that C code is munged and transformed by a good optimizing compiler, whereas assembly is left untouched by a good assembler.

<comment><USER4> No I don't think I did. I helped to write an optimized operating system kernel and virtual machine monitor for high performance computing. We absolutely treated C as high-level assembly. C provided a cost-saving measure in that we didn't have to run off customized asm blocks to do trivial one-liners that would be the same in the VMM implementation but slightly different in object code (two different opcodes). Not only is this common practice in academic and production systems development, but it also the recommended practice from most of my colleagues that added the intrinsics for their subsystems (Intel and Microsoft being my personal experiences).

 _You missed the guy's point, which was essentially that C code is munged and transformed by a good optimizing compiler, whereas assembly is left untouched by a good assembler._

That's irrelevant. They are both restricted on the basis of being functionally equivalent to the input code.

<comment><USER6> > They are both restricted on the basis of being functionally equivalent to > the input code.

But that goes for any compiled language, unless the compiler contains a bug.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I think the difference is that C allows for close interaction to the machine architecture. Normally I don't care what exact opcodes the compiler turns X language into, however C allows me to wrap direct hardware access into the syntax of the language itself. In essence, it mostly doesn't matter what exact opcodes the preceding for loop is turned into, it matters that in the next block I can take that result, move it to rax and rcx and use an intrinsic to execute a CPUID instruction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the author misses the point of the phrase "C is just portable assembly". It does't _literally_ mean that C is just like assembly, it's usually a shorthand for saying the following things:

1\. C is used in most contexts where you previously had to use assembly, and would use assembly if C didn't exist.

2\. C is the language with the "lowest level" code imaginable.

3\. What this means is, you can map almost _any_ command in C into a specific command or a few specific commands in assembly.

That last line is the important part. C is optimized in the sense that every command in C will give you a deterministic amount of commands in assembly. When reading C code, someone who knows assembly can usually tell you what will happen in the compiled code. You won't see an operator which doesn't have a deterministic runtime or memory footprint. In fact, most of the questions on "Why C has this"/"Why C doesn't have that" can be answered exactly like that: you can't implement it with a deterministic set of commands.

In those senses, C is just like Assembly, at least more so than any other language around.

<comment><USER8> _"every command in C will give you a deterministic amount of commands in assembly"_

This is most definitely not true on any modern compiler. The generated assembly depends on the program as a whole and may not correspond fragment to fragment in any readily comprehensible way.

One example is a variable in C may correspond to a number of different storage locations at different points in the program graph, owing to SSA form (or individual optimizations that transform the program in a similar manner).

Another example is how pointer aliasing affects generated code: copying arguments into temporaries before arithmetic can actually result in fewer assembly instructions as the compiler can determine no aliasing is possible.

Add to this the more mundane and well understood optimizations like inlining, constant propagation, later passes of optimizations over the results of the prior and the result is that it's very hard to know exactly what assembly will correspond to any arbitrary part of a c program. Mapping memory locations to variables or assembly instructions to c program lines is not trivial.

I know this seems like nitpicking, but programmers using the mistaken mental model of c being textual macros for assembly leads to poorly performing code at best, and a variety of security vulnerabilities at worst. I think if you actually need to know what's going on at the machine level it's very important to know that the c abstract machine is most definitely NOT what the real machine on your desk is doing.

<comment><USER9> Also, like the article mentions, it has abstractions that you can't get rid of, like the stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice article; short, sweet and enough to pique my curiosity about modern assembly.

Some aphorisms like "C has the efficiency and speed of assembler, with the portability and readability of assembler" come to mind, but those are from ancient history in programming years, and usually said by people proficient in both.

There are other assertions (like jwz in the 'Java Sucks' rant), that refer to C as "a PDP-11 assembler that thinks its a language", but again an exaggerated statement made by someone who knows.

I have not met anyone who primarily codes in an interpreted language who think that C is just syntactic sugar for assembly. Maybe because most of them don't program in C.

I can certainly see some amateur programming pundits (or maybe just forum dickheads) regurgitating the lines without understanding them, but there is a world of difference between the examples touched on, and the actual syntactic sugar of recent java releases (generics, unboxing).

<comment><USER6> It's not too much of a stretch to look at just 'C' as a very sophisticated macro assembler.

And probably you should strip out the 'macro' bit there because in reality that's the pre-processor doing it's work and even though there isn't a C compiler without a pre-processor technically speaking it is not part of the compiler since all it does is output more C.

<comment><USER11> "And probably you should strip out the 'macro' bit there because in reality that's the pre-processor"

I disagree. Looping constructs that typically would be macros in an assembler such as 'while' and 'for' are C constructs. Also, C itself has automatic field offset computations.

<comment><USER12> >>automatic field offset computations

A macro for subroutine entry could reserve stack space and define offset constants. A macro for subroutine returning releases the extra space.

It could be neat to use, if the processor architecture has sane addressing modes. (I might have seen/done something similar... doesn't feel like a new idea to me. :-) )

(The entry macro might need a simple preprocessor.)

Disclaimer: C and lower was another life, dimly remembered. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have only written a small amount of assembly code, but I cannot imagine how someone who has written even a tiny bit of either could make such a mistake.

<comment><USER14> The statement "C is portable assembler" makes sense in exactly one case: writing a UNIX kernel in the 1970s. Both the assembler and C versions of the kernel would be single-threaded, both would have a standard stack-usage convention (where cdecl is just a codification of the particular assembler stack convention K&R agreed upon), and neither would be run through an optimizer (as an optimizing C compiler didn't exist until quite a while later.)

<comment><USER6> Even today, when you look at the core routines of for instance X windows C is still used in exactly that way, you don't have to but you definitely can and even though C compilers have advances tremendously the fact that there is a _direct_ 1:1 correspondence between input and output is exactly why C is used in those situations.

C supports multiple stacks if you tweak setjmp and longjmp just right, and using co-operative multi-threading is possible without any OS support. Not very useful if you really have to do two things at the same time but a lot nicer than interleaving a bunch of code.

And an optimizing compiler is still a transformation of the input according to a given ruleset, you could not get the same level of optimization by just processing the output of the code generation stage of the compiler because you would lose a bunch of higher level information that is invaluable when optimizing the code but you could see it as just another stage in 'transforming' from one language to another without losing any functional bits along the way.

<comment><USER15> There simply isn't a 1:1 correspondence between C and its machine code; not in size, and not in functionality.

Any half-decent compiler is going to perform a non-trivial transformation of a big switch statement to make it efficient. The expected performance semantics of a switch (something better than O(n) in the number of cases) rules out simplistic iterated jumps in big cases. The programmer expects O(1), or at worst, O(log n).

But more importantly, CPUs generally have many more capabilities than are exposed by C, and this is where the "1:1 correspondence" really falls down. Assemblers generally have disassemblers that you can transparently round-trip through. That's a little harder in C.

Perhaps you meant a injective relation, rather than bijective? But that's a long way short of an assembler.

<comment><USER11> "But more importantly, CPUs generally have many more capabilities than are exposed by C."

Hear, hear! Moreover, that has always been the case. As an example, try implementing multiple-word addition in C. On most architectures, you will learn that not having access to a carry bit makes that harder than it could be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have to argue against most of the comments here though: I think, after a very short time with C, you get a clear sense of what will happen in the assembly. It's also pretty trivial to reach that stage with C++ - really, all the basic control structures are implemented in a pretty standard way. Sure, sometimes it throws a curveball, but you know what? It was the exception rather than the rule.

I'm fully convinced that I could sit down with the average C++ program and accurately predict the majority of the generated assembly. It's really not that hard - the compiler doesn't have THAT many instructions, and it only uses them in a limited set of occasions!

\-- Ayjay on Fedang #coding

</comment><comment><USER17> >For example, C won't implement the "raise to nth power" >operator (in Python, 210 means 2 to the power of 10, for >example), because it can't be done with one assembly >instruction, only with a loop.

Not a great example of your point. Here is Analog devices Assembly for the ADSP-2100 Family. Assuming Ar is loaded with 2:

sr=LSHIFT ar by 10;

Even without the assumption, no loop is needed for raising 2 to some power.

<comment><USER18> What you are doing there is multiplying something by a power of two, and 'ar' should have the value 1 for 'sr' to be set to two to the power of 10.

Multiplying by a power of 2 is easily done in C using the shift operator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I support the idea of labeling the 'sophistication level' of blog posts in their titles, but a bit of punctuation would be nice.

<comment><USER20> The author was trying to play on "more on...".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reading only the comments, perhaps C is just a low level language very well suited for many applications that don't require class and objects. Is there something more in the original post?

<comment><USER22> and incidentaly C tends to be better object oriented language than C++ :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just like C is not Assembly, Digging in the Ruby/Python/etc source code is not a hacking.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's why: if you are not programming on mnemonic-level for the implied processor, you are not writing assembly. Period. Saying anything else is just romanticizing and paraphrasing (which in my opinion there is no room for in technics on this level).

<comment><USER25> +1 from me. It appears that not many among the HN crowd are willing to accept this, and I'm curious why this matter needs to be overanalyzed, in true geek fashion.</comment></comment>


Is Al Jazeera America Going to Change the Way Networks Cover Climate Change? - <AUTHOR> http://m.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/08/al-jazeera-america-climate-change

<comment><USER2> I don't really like Mother Jones, but the answer here seems pretty obvious -- unless Al Jazeera America takes a significant amount of viewership from big networks, they're not going to induce much change.

And my limited experience with today's admittedly complex media environment leads me to the assumption that, no, spending thirty minutes covering climate change is not going to woo away a typical CNN watcher.

<comment><USER3> But it my bring in someone fed up with and unengaged from The News. Some non- watchers may become watchers of Al Jazeera if they think there's finally something to watch.

<comment><USER4> Yes I think its a pretty smart strategy actually. Maybe they can capture some of us who get all our news from the Daily Show and Reddit.

I mean, not really. But I can see why they would want to try that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why focus on climate change? Al Jazeera should be concerned about changing the way news networks discuss topics entirely, not just this isolated story.

There is too much forced drama in television news, like the typical "Watch ---- news at 9 to see if your child will die from a toy you might have in your house". I haven't seen any of the new Al Jazeera programming but I did see their four minute promo trailer for the network and it looked to me like the same kind of stuff. The narrator to that teaser sounded like he was doing a michael bay trailer and the news anchors had plastic smiles like all the other news channels.

That isn't to say I don't have hope though. Anything that is better than the methods which current networks employ is a step forward.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's called 'Al Jazeera America'. No one who makes a point of watching it disagrees with them one iota on climate change - or for that matter, much of anything else.

</comment><comment><USER7> No.

</comment><comment><USER8> there should be a filter against submissions that are questions but don't include "Ask HN" in the title

I'm tired of all these [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

<comment><USER9> I'm inclined to disagree with you, purely because 'Ask HN', in my opinion, should be reserved for text-based submissions where the generation of discussion is predicated more greatly on their purpose.</comment></comment>


How much Linux kernel code has survived the past five years? - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/374574

<comment><AUTHOR> Also see <http://lwn.net/Articles/375550/> from the comments and its associated thread.

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder if this article will motivate hackers to change/complete some of the particularly old untouched or unfinished code mentioned.

Such a technique might be a good way to find older code which could be improved upon or upgraded.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if most projects would have a similar curve, and if parts of the curve had different properties (bug count, difficulty to change, etc.)

<comment><USER4> I think projects of that age (18 years?) and size (~10M LOC?) which are still so much in flux are rare. Of course, Linux has a gigantic number of people working on it, and a large part of the codebase is hardware drivers - and a lot of new hardware is released all the time. In that light, the graphs aren't overly surprising, but I can't think of a comparable project.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do founders handle their company's snail mail? - <AUTHOR> I'm a founder and find it annoying to deal with this communication channel. I imagine a service that would scan my corporate mail and send it to me digitally. Would others find this useful? <comment><USER2> Many of these services exist. I have been using Virtual Post Office for 6 years now and am very happy.

The USPS even has a form you can file to automatically redirect any regular mail sent to your address to your PO box.

One of the original such services, Earth Class Mail, even had a documentary TV show made about it -- with a focus on the startup world.</comment>


World's Richest Man Tries to Defend Wealth Inequality - <AUTHOR> http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/worlds-richest-man-tries-to-defend-wealth-inequality <comment><USER2> Wow this was actually painful to read it's so biased. To disagree with Gates' views is one thing. You might not even think he is a very good person. That's completely fair given some of his past actions. But to make the argument that what he did wasn't innovation? For better Microsoft change the world. The author is just taking shots at people and barely addresses the issues Gates or Picketty bring up</comment>


Why I'm Leaving the Senate - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/opinion/21bayh.html?hp <comment><USER2> I can't shake the feeling that these are just talking points. He certainly sounds nice, but ultimately his proposals come down to new restrictions on free speech regarding campaign finance (any 'reform' short of a constitutional amendment would most probably be useless anyway, as there are always ways around, as witnessed before) and why is it filibusters are only impeding progress when your own party is in power?

Edit: Just back in Nov 09, he was still in favor of the filibuster. [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra- klein/2009/11/evan_bay...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra- klein/2009/11/evan_bayh_no_difference_betwee.html)

<comment><USER3> _They [congress] are patriotic, hard-working and devoted to the public good as they see it, but the institutional and cultural impediments to change frustrate the intentions of these well-meaning people as rarely before. It was not always thus._

Yes, as we all know, the US was designed to be run top down by a rapidly moving federal government. We didn't create checks and balances and a government limited by a constitution, because we wanted to make sure that our well meaning overlords could change things on a dime!

 _Currently, the decision to begin debate on a bill can be filibustered, followed by another filibuster on each amendment, followed by yet another filibuster before a final vote. This leads to multiple legislative delays and effectively grinds the Senate to a halt._

Sure, one filibuster per law, provided the Senate stops completely rewriting laws during the debate process.

True story: there was once a law called _To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes_. Somewhere along the line, the Senate decided to completely replace the text of that bill with a $700 billion giveaway to the financial services industry.

Under Baye's proposed rule, this nonsense couldn't even be filibustered. Great plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And once again the overriding impression I get is that "bipartisanship" means the other guys should do what I want and not make such a big fuss. A pox on both your houses.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish our founding fathers had inserted a sunset clause into the constitution that would require each new congress to read every previously passed bill and re-vote on them.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_clause>

<comment><USER2> God, no! How on earth is Congress supposed to re-read tens of thousands of statutes? It's a nice sentiment and certainly a principle that should get adopted for "temporary legislation/measures" but, generally speaking, it's hugely impractical.

How are you suppoed to enter into contracts if you don't know what the law of the land is going to be in four years time? Transaction costs would increase enormously.

<comment><USER6> "How on earth is Congress supposed to re-read tens of thousands of statutes? It's a nice sentiment and certainly a principle that should get adopted for "temporary legislation/measures" but, generally speaking, it's hugely impractical.

How are you supposed to enter into contracts if you don't know what the law of the land is going to be in four years time? Transaction costs would increase enormously."

Contracts are mostly based on Sate law. Also,some states have Sunset provisions and have a standard package of laws they pass at the beginning of each year.

As for the impracticality of so many thousands of statutes, that's rather the point.

<comment><USER2> As for passing a standard package of laws at the beginning of each year: Then why use sunset clauses at all, if legislators don't even think about it but just pass it along in one sweep every year?

I wholeheartedly agree that nearly every developed country is over-regulated, especially the US, having a different approach to regulating (narrowly worded, long statutes vs short, general principles) than some European legal traditions. Alas, the majority of people don't want to get strangled by regulations but at the same time want to have lots of industries regulated. I think the best shot is to inform them about the consequences of over- regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with Congress is not that they don't do enough. It's that they try to do too much.

</comment><comment><USER8> The senate was different, more united, in the past, but so too was the country.

<comment><USER9> _Really?!?!!???_ That doesn't agree with my knowledge of US political history at all. Perhaps you could be more specific with dates?</comment></comment>


TerrAvion (YC W14) Launches Aerial Imagery As A Service For Farmers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/04/yc-backed-terravion-launches-aerial-imagery-as-a-service-for-farmers/

<comment><USER2> The biggest surprise for me in starting this business was how expensive drones are. I used them in the Army and I love them, but when we did the math about using them in the business they do not come close to an old Cessna with a pilot looking for hours.

<comment><USER3> Congratulations. Just yesterday I told a friend about Terravion but I thought you guys were using drones.

Are there any drone platforms with >1 hr flight time and >1 mile range available for non-defense use?

By the way, the TechCrunch article mentions a per-pass price for other services, but doesn't clarify whether Terravion's price is per-pass, so it actually makes it sound like you are more expensive by comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> Something like the Insitu ScanEagle is probably the drone closest to being effective for our application: [http://www.insitu.com/systems/scaneagle/capabilities](http://www.insitu.com/systems/scaneagle/capabilities)

However, they're still quite expensive and not really cheaper to operate than a Cessna, and then there are the legal issues. I personally think that once of the things that will drive the cost of drones down quite a bit will be when an autopilot maker comes out with a way to retrofit Cessnas and other proven, GA airframes into OPVs (optionally piloted vehicles).

<comment><USER3> "Each ScanEagle system costs US$3.2 million (2006)" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Insitu_ScanEagle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Insitu_ScanEagle))

Indeed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those interested, here is a paper that explains the importance of ariel imaging for crops. [http://www.lighthillrisknetwork.org/uploads/Crop- Insurance-A...](http://www.lighthillrisknetwork.org/uploads/Crop-Insurance-A- Briefing-paper-Nov-2013-\(FS-KTN\).pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd be interested in seeing the cost analysis/breakdown of hiring Cessna pilots to take pictures vs. renting Parrot AR Drones with GoPros to farmers, teaching them to survey their own land and provide them with a software built by TerrAvion.

Give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish

<comment><AUTHOR> We looked into this quite extensively. It's actually surprisingly cheaper to fly a Cessna vs use a small drone. We can cover 100,000 acres in a day with a Cessna, compared to maybe 400 (not including time for battery charging) with a small hand launched drone. Along with that farmers are really busy and not very interested in operating another new tool.

We intend to move to drones whenever they are legal, cheaper and more effective, but in the meantime Cessnas are the answer.

<comment><USER5> That's interesting. Congrats on the launch and best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know a number of aerial photo companies who have done this type of work for decades - what's new here?

My knowledge from local farmers is that they already pay for experts who amalgamate a variety of data sources (soil testing, aerial, satellite, etc) to assess & treat their crops. I mean, does a farmer even know what is NDVI or how to interpret it?

<comment><AUTHOR> What's different is doing it as a subscription and at a high revisit rate. Farmers can interpret NDVI and what's actually more amazing is the amount a grower can tell about her fields from just a visual photo. By providing a time series of 30 weekly images it makes changes readily apparent and doesn't require expert consulting (beyond the extensive expertise that farmers already have) to make better decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps ranking on this site is an important metric for up-and-coming startups, but it seems silly get mad about it. As long as you keep your customers happy, and putting out a solid product, people will notice. Congratulations on the launch.

</comment><comment><USER8> ASK PG: Just to be clear, is this a thread where we're supposed to be supportive?

Or will you kill this thread too because it is about a YC company?

If you have showdead set to off, this is in reference to:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7179063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7179063)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178341)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178004)

<comment><USER9> As you know, I didn't kill those posts because they're about a YC company. I killed them because HN is a news site, not a support forum for YC companies. And the reason we don't want that sort of post is not to conceal problems with YC cos, but because (as we saw) this sort of indignation-inducing fluff is so easy to upvote that it will take over a site if you allow it.

It is a super lame move to try to hijack a thread about a newly launched startup to get attention for some unrelated grievance. You wouldn't like if it someone did that to you.

<comment><USER8> Your first argument would hold more water if you consistently did this, rather than willy-nilly as observed so far.

As for hijacking this thread, there was another thread that was perfectly suited for the purpose, you killed it, besides you've removed my ability to post so I had this left as a means of last resort. Think of it as a hack, this is 'hacker news' after all, isn't it?

<comment><USER10> The hack you just described has a name. It's called "trolling".

<comment><USER11> _It 's called "trolling"._

Not really. Or rather, the question of whether or not it was trolling is the subject of [current] debate. (It depends on whether it was off-topic or not-- clearly 'pg thinks it was, and some people think that since he is the owner/creator/BDFL he is right, but lots of other intelligent people disagree, which is the whole reason this thread exists. I'm not really sure it matters, but calling 'jaquesm a troll is pretty strong.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats on the launch guys, best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER13> Congrats on the launch guys!</comment>


Cashing In: How to Make Negative Interest Rates Work - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.imf.org/2019/02/05/cashing-in-how-to-make-negative-interest-rates-work/ <comment><USER2> Bitcoin has an inflation rate of 4% at the moment, dropping to 2% at the next halving in 2020.

Similarly, gold has a vault storage cost of up to 1%, and a mining inflation rate of about 2% (3 kt/yr on a total stock of ~150 kt), more if you just count tradable coins and bullion, without including jewelry.

I would also expect a cash warehouse to cost ~1% for storage, security and insurance.

Bank charges, such as ATM fees, can take the spread and transaction cost for cash up to 1%.

So NIRP can easily go to -1%, and maybe even -2% before the alternatives make sense.

However, I would expect a speculative rise in price for BTC and gold in the initial stages of a globally coordinated policy of NIRP and a War on Cash.

<comment><USER3> This bitcoin/gold fantasy is cute but most people choose real estate. For millenia the only store of value with positive long term return wasn't gold but landholding (with it's terrible side effects like unpredictability of returns, correlation with population growth and the need to tend to the land). I guess real estate is modern version of landholding.

It seems like XIX/XX century which made the landholding class bancrupt due to emergence of bonds, rents and industrial investment were just a short term abberation.

<comment><USER2> You may be correct, but rent-seeking is neither just nor fair. Some might argue that gold and BTC are easier to hide from scavenging authoritarian authorities - don't worry, they will all be authoritarian and scavenging soon.

The US has confiscated gold within living memory. The US taxes everything earned by its citizens, and forces then to FATCA(T) and F(U)BAR their wealth, ready for the day. Watch out for capital controls. One could say that the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror" are actually fake initiatives designed to track individual activities and assets - a "War on Cash" for the purpose of NIRP.

In many countries the benefit of property is only true because of the tax treatment, such as tax-exempt mortgage interest relief, including interest- only mortgages which take interest as a business expense (i.e. speculative BTL landlords), and exempting capital gains tax on residential property. It is highly likely that the only tax-exempt capital asset sees speculative demand.

The US still has a tax deduction on debts, for private individuals and companies. Obviously debt should not be subsidized! In the UK, the mortgage interest tax relief (MIRAS) was abolished 30 years ago, but only now are they tightening the rules for BTL landlords. However, they have introduced various other subsidies (e.g. Help To Buy) and even an exemption of Inheritance Tax just for property - this is corruption of democracy on behalf of the rent- seekers.

It also depends on the planning laws and the demographics. Planning laws are always and everywhere corrupt in favor of existing NIMBY property owners (often including a select group of mafiosi & oligarchs).

Many western populations are declining as indigenous fertility rates plunge and the Boomers die off (e.g. Italy, Japan). Only some accommodate immigrants to make up for the loss, and only some of those actually have public acceptance for that immigration (let me guess - globalists, employers and ... property owners).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Central bankers will keep reducing borrowing costs to extend-and-pretend forever - they built their own trap over the past 40 years by asymmetrically lowering rates over and over again. There seems to be no escape from this global credit bubble.

German 10 year bonds are yielding -0.20%

[https://www.investing.com/rates-bonds/germany-10-year- bond-y...](https://www.investing.com/rates-bonds/germany-10-year-bond-yield)

</comment><comment><USER5> I find the glib tone taken at what is essentially a nuclear-weapons grade policy plan with nearly unbounded power for the central bank very, very disturbing. Probably more disturbing than the proposal is the idea that some staffer at the imf wrote this up believing it should have a section labeled 'pros and cons'.

Maybe the best thing I could say about it is that if it is to be tried, ideally it will be on a small scale so that the inevitable centralization and then destruction of the test region's economy can be absorbed by the rest of the world.

On a more positive note, I can report that some crypto companies have experimented with policy like this. It shouldn't be surprising to learn that almost nobody likes it, and in general chooses to transact elsewhere.

I think we can safely assume rational actors in this test region will spend at least rational and probably irrational energy to avoid such a system; nobody anywhere in the world wants money removed from their accounts by a central banker. The corollary is that this will be done only at the point of a gun.

Upshot: venezuela and Zimbabwe would be envious at the speed and richness of black market economies created in the wake of implementing such a plan.

</comment><comment><USER6> We really need to stop this insanity and just take our medicine before the credit bubble gets even more extreme.

<comment><USER7> Be careful what you wish for. Most government programs are built on nothing but growth predictions that are... maybe not possible and probably dishonest.

<comment><USER6> I know it will be painful, but it's going to get more and more painful when it does crash if we keep pumping more cheap credit into the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I read stuff like this I can't help thinking something about the world economy and financial system has got to be horribly broken. How have we reached the point that banning traditional currency so that we can drive interest rates negative can be seen as a rational response to our problems?

At risk of stating the obvious, the entire point of such interest rates would be to strongly prod the market (mostly the very wealthy) to spend and/or invest their cash rather than sit on it.

But the same thing could be accomplished by a much more conventional means: taxation and public spending.

If you're a government seeking to stimulate the economy, why wouldn't that be a saner option?

<comment><USER9> Because monetary policy is more effective than fiscal policy?

<comment><USER10> When interest rates are negative, monetary policy has literally zero effectiveness. That's the whole problem being discussed.

<comment> radford-neal No. The central bank can stilll create money. Create enough money and inflation will result. There is no doubt about this. None at all.

<comment><USER10> Sort of misses the point. Despite the name, printing money isn't normally something one considers as "monentary policy", which is about interest rate setting and bank balance regulation. Yes, you can print your way out of a negative interest rate trap, because at its core printing money is exactly the same thing as deficit spending in the immediate term. So I don't see that's responsive: this is isomorphic to "just spend your way out".

<comment> radford-neal I think common terminology would say that printing money is about as core a function of "monetary policy" as is imaginable. If the government has outstanding bonds, "printing money" by having the central bank buy them does not seem like "deficit spending". If the government has no outstanding bonds, and isn't running a deficit, it would be necessary to cut taxes to create a deficit (and hence bonds for the central bank to buy), or for the central bank to buy non-government assests. But this hypothetical is entirely unrealistic in present circumstances anyway.

But what you call things doesn't really matter. You don't offer any argument for why printing money wouldn't solve the problem, assuming there is one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Playing with video game economies tells me that any tax on owning money/e-money would simply lead people to deal with an alternative, unpenalized store of wealth. I don't know how plausible that move is for the real world, since we can't all suddenly start pricing things in terms of potions and scrolls, but what's stopping this from making Bitcoin, or any coin as the people's de facto currency?

<comment><USER12> Unstable countries use USD as a stable currency.

<comment><USER13> And in the US the CHF (and Gold) was popular for the same purpose at times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Without cash, depositors would have to pay the negative interest rate to > keep their money with the bank, making consumption and investment more > attractive. This would jolt lending, boost demand, and stimulate the > economy.

Or... it would spawn the mother of all asset bubbles in Bitcoin and to a lesser extent gold. Watch for anti-Bitcoin legislation as a canary in the coal mine signaling that the exits are about to slam shut.

<comment><USER15> Pretty much... bitcoin/gold are not particularly productive assets either (verses investing in businesses) so I don't see how that helps the economy recover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow. Just wow. Having already penalized savings (by way of inflation) for so long, now they want to actively penalize savings? They're coming up with strategies to prevent a bank run for taking people's money?

Have your cake and eat it too? If this is ever announced, US dollar will just have to collapse. There's no way any country will accept this.

<comment><USER17> European bond rates have recently turned negative again, and they were negative for large chunks of the last decade: [https://europe.pimco.com/en- eu/insights/viewpoints/why-the-b...](https://europe.pimco.com/en- eu/insights/viewpoints/why-the-bond-market-is-yielding-negative-and-what- negative-yields-mean-for-you)

<comment><USER16> No prize for guessing why European capital has been flowing into the US for a decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think a significant portion of America is not going to like a cashless society.

It's also sort of mind boggling to imagine interest being _charged_ on deposits. Completely non-intuitive.

<comment><USER19> It would be crazy. As for intuition, I actually thought it was counterintuitive as a kid that banks would safeguard your money for free. I had the naive intuition that banks were providing a service of keeping money safe and accessible via debit cards, so you should be paying them.

Of course my intuition is now totally different, especially after a college degree in economics, but there is some sort of intuition to be had in negative interest rates. I wonder if there are historical precedents -- maybe in the dark ages, or in historical places without moneylending/investment ecosystems.

<comment><USER20> > safeguard your money for free.

I'm stating the obvious here, but they never did keep the money for free. They used deposits as leverage for loans and received 100% of the interest as payment for keeping that money. Even then, for the longest time a lot of banks didn't have a "free" tier account like they do today so they were double dipping so to say.

Negative interest rates aren't a new thing though. I'm more interested in where modern monetary theory will end up taking us and if that will make negative interest rates more common. It seems like a lot of people want to go in that direction. I don't know enough about it yet to know if that's good or bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You truly would need a totally cashless economy, Bitcoin would skyrocket if negative rates became the normal. Credit cards would beg you to carry a balance.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand the need for negative interest rate. Having the rate set at zero is already bad (it means that your savings erode at the maximum rate). People who are in a position to borrow would do so, and make gains when there is a recovery, while people who can't will be left behind (but i guess this is where the crux of the inequality comes from in the world).

</comment><comment> radford-neal This proposal is ridiculous, if honest, or it is instead a dishonest attempt to add to the power of governments.

To deal with a recession, it's plausible that the central bank might want to produce some inflation - if you think that "sticky wages" are an issue (ie, that people don't want their pay cut even if deflation means that its purchasing power would be maintained, making it difficult for employers to address unemployment by cutting wages and then hiring more people).

But a central bank can easily (very easily) cause inflation without needing to impose any particular interest rate. The central bank simply needs to buy assets using money it creates. This is standard practice. The assests are typically government debt, but they can be anything, if necessary. There is no doubt whatsoever that buying sufficient assets with newly-created money will cause inflation.

</comment><comment><USER23> >The proposal is for a central bank to divide the monetary base into two separate local currencies—cash and electronic money (e-money).

Wouldn't printing money (ie. quantitative easing ), accomplish the same thing, without the hassle of having cash dollars and e-dollars?

<comment><USER24> QE is just buying bonds. With that approach rates do have a floor at zero.

<comment><USER25> QE has a nominal rate of zero, but it has an arbitrarily large negative delta in terms of real rate of return lost when holding cash.

Both heavily advertised QE and negative interest rates are the same thing: the central authority is stealing your future money in hopes you will realize this and spend money in the present to raise "demand."

As an aside, the fact that anyone could possibly confuse this immediate, poorly thought-out consumption (eating your seed crop) with actual capital investment (under-consumption of your seed corn to grow more in the future) is beyond me.

<comment><USER26> We'll I for one find this as a great opportunity to speculate where its cheapest to do so with max payoff on this not ending well :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sam Altman has written about a US Digital Currency ([http://blog.samaltman.com/us-digital-currency](http://blog.samaltman.com/us- digital-currency)), and considers the idea that it's issued as a "second" legal tender. This IMF article also considers the idea of a "second" currency, but for other practical reasons (negative rates). I think it's actually somewhat inevitable that this happens. Whether or not it would have any cryptographic properties is up for debate, but there is certainly exists enough existing experimentation in this area for the Fed to study such an approach.</comment>


Ask HN: Quitting in a month, what to do next? - <AUTHOR> hey folks, I'm going to quit my current job end of this month and I'm not sure what to do next?
I have a couple of options:
1.Full-time Open Source Developer - I've been following projects like Moby (Docker), Kubernetes & CNCF friends, Redox, Blender for a while now and am familiar with their codebase but haven't had the chance to contribute. I am not sure how this'll pay me though.
2. Join one of the big software companies. - I have a few offers at hand but am not sure if I'd  enjoy any of those. The pay is really good but the work probably isn't going to be satisfactory. I cannot discuss the offers here because of NDAs.
3. Wild Projects - Twitch streaming my programming experiences, tech podcasts, etc. I'm again not sure how this is going to turn out. I think this'll go well with Developer Advocate / Tech Evangelist roles and I've been wanting to do this for a while but I'm not sure how to start and if they pay as much as a pure software engineering role.
Hope the HN community will help me out. <comment><USER2> Not to be a jerk, but shouldn't you know what you're going to do if you're leaving on your own terms?

It seems like you're independently wealthy, so do whatever you want to - that's what I'd do. If you want to hack around on some OSS while making pottery and raising llamas, go for it. I think #3 might be the least "productive" but hey go for it if you want.</comment>


Cost of living adjusted, NYC poorest city in America? - <AUTHOR> http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0806em.html

<comment><USER2> For all sorts of reasons, multipliers like the CoL adjustment in this article don't work for New York. (And really, they don't work in general.) To be "equally well off," there are a lot more factors than living in an equally- sized apartment with an identical car ... after all, living in a place that doesn't suck counts for something. As does not needing that car. Or having an immense amount of stuff to do (much of which is free or close) that keeps you out of that apartment.

On a personal level as a NYC resident, I live in a nice apartment in a nice (though not ritzy) neighborhood for $600/month, my transportation costs are $100/month and everything else is just about the same as it would be elsewhere. Every time I think about moving somewhere else, I have a hard time figuring out how I could come close to my current level of expenses without sacrificing quality of life.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. While apartments are smaller and more expensive per square foot in NYC, the city itself calls you out. You spend time in a park; at a sidewalk cafe; on a friend's (or your own) roof-deck. I guestimate that I spend 50% more time outdoors living here in the city than I did living in a suburb down in NC. I also spend a lot less in transportation costs, and go to a lot more concerts.

While, according to this guy's statistics, NYC is the poorest.. well, that's not taking into account the culture, the convenience, and so forth.

(I'm in a share with a couple friends; My monthly bills - including rent [utilities included], phone, and transportation - are about $900. If you consider that a job that would pay $30k elsewhere will pay $40 or $50k here, and that if you're smart you can live on the cheap - you'll be able to retire a lot sooner if you plan on retiring out of the city, because the money that doesn't go far here goes very far elsewhere..)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think costs in New York can be crazy if you live a certain kind of lifestyle. But I think we're just used to living with less of certain things (mostly due to our space restrictions) that don't necessarily translate well across other cities (We rented a whole house in Cambridge when we were there for YC last summer for about what you'd spend on an apartment 1/3 the size in New York).

There are certain things that augment the high cost of living though: * We don't drive cars and most of us take mass transit most of the time. * We buy fewer possessions (no place to put them). A side benefit is that when you do buy something, you tend to buy better quality. * When we do buy something, it usually involves recycling or selling what we had before. * We don't see our living space as our own private paradise. We don't tend to duplicate resources the public already has. We have parks instead of lawns. We'll use taxis and zipcar when we need them instead of owning cars. * We tend to live very close to where we work and could walk there if necessary. * Restaurants face a large amount of competition. You can get excellent food with excellent ambiance for less money than I was used to paying for a comparable experience elsewhere. * Lots of free or nearly free experiences. Art, museums, concerts, performances, groups, and lectures.

The way I feel about (or rationalize) New York City is that I get to live in a place that offers so much more for only a slight premium on what I'd pay to live in San Francisco.

The big down side is that you miss out on the tech community in SF, although others argue that this can be a net positive.

</comment><comment><USER5> CoLA figures for New York are B.S. They're all based on buying an identical basket of goods. New Yorkers don't buy the same goods. 54% of New Yorkers don't have cars, because we have good mass transit. New Yorkers live in smaller apartments and don't have gardens, because we usually opt for walkability and nearby culture and entertainment instead of square footage. If you want the square footage instead of the walkability, you move to the suburbs of New York... problem solved.

<comment><USER6> 54%? I don't know anyone here who owns a car!

It is damn expensive to rent, but once you subtract out car payments, car insurance, car maintenance, and gas you can save $1000 a month easily that goes towards rent.

Getting around NYC costs $89 a month.

<comment><USER5> Don't forget that includes queens, staten island, etc, where people actually have a car or two.

$1000/month in car payments = $2000/month in pretax salary. That means a $60,000 salary in NY goes as far as an $84,000 salary - car costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just read "The Corner", about life on the drug dealing corners in West Baltimore. (It was the basis for the show "The Wire".) When they quote a cost of living for "Baltimore", do they average over all parts, even the ones where no one wants to live unless you really are using all your cash for drugs and can't afford the hundred bucks a month it would cost you extra to live one block away from the drug dealers?? Because that average would seem to indicate an unfairly low cost of living then...

</comment><comment><USER8> How have they accounted for purchasing residences in New York? Which, unlike almost everywhere else, has not seen a precipitous decline in property value?

</comment><comment><USER9> quality of life != standard of living</comment>