A Race to Save the Orange by Altering Its DNA - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/science/a-race-to-save-the-orange-by-altering-its-dna.html

<comment><USER3> The real problem is that all oranges are clones - genetically identical. That means anything that can overcome one orange tree can overcome them all. Shuffling genes around will just delay the next killer. It will be interesting to see if they can come up with a way to cause sexual reproduction to happen again. The resulting genetic diversity will make oranges less of a target.

Somewhat related is how they and much other modern agriculture is done - <USER2> fields of exactly the same species only - a monoculture. This too makes it easy for invaders. The fix of multiple species being grown together is often shown to work, but makes the farming and harvesting considerably more complicated and expensive.

Recommended reading is Michael Pollan whose books and articles about food are great [http://michaelpollan.com/articles/](http://michaelpollan.com/articles/)

<comment><USER4> > Somewhat related is how they and much other modern agriculture is done - > huge fields of exactly the same species only - a monoculture. This too makes > it easy for invaders. The fix of multiple species being grown together is > often shown to work, but makes the farming and harvesting considerably more > complicated and expensive.

It's not necessarily optional. Humans have cultivated the food supply through cross breeding since we have been around and even common foods aren't "natural" anymore. A lot of what we like to eat doesn't like to reproduce itself so we end up reproducing what we like to eat.

<comment><USER3> The quoted bit was about growing conditions - ie instead of a field of only one species, combine multiple species. The species diversity helps control pests, and allows for a greater variety of birds etc. And is way harder to harvest.

Your point was about reproduction. Sexual reproduction doesn't have to be out in the wild - it is offspring combining DNA from parents producing something a little different. It is possible to try and introduce genes to make out in the field reproduction more likely to happen, and also to work out some lab based way of reproduction. Admittedly it is way harder than making cuttings, but does bring benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish them good luck in overcoming the anti-scientific hysteria. But I fear relying on scientific literacy is going to end in failure.

How many other advances in agriculture are we going to sacrifice to appease these superstitions? (Not to mention similar superstitions of anti-vaccine activists, who are probably the same people in many cases.)

<comment><USER6> you say anti-scientific hysteria, I say reasonable fears regularly ignored by industry and whitewashed by an industry captured fda. example 1: bpa

from the wiki article [1]:

       In 2006, the US Government sponsored an assessment of the scientific
       literature on BPA. Thirty-eight experts in fields involved with bisphenol A
       gathered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to review several hundred studies on
       BPA, many conducted by members of the group. At the end of the meeting, the
       group issued the Chapel Hill Consensus Statement,[100] which stated BPA at
       concentrations found in the human body is associated with organizational
       changes in the prostate, breast, testis, mammary glands, body size, brain
       structure and chemistry, and behavior of laboratory animals.[101]

       The Chapel Hill Consensus Statement found that average levels in people are
       above those that cause harm to many animals in laboratory experiments. They
       noted that while BPA is not persistent in the environment or in humans,
       biomonitoring surveys indicate that exposure is continuous, which is
       problematic because acute animal exposure studies are used to estimate daily
       human exposure to BPA, and no studies that had examined BPA pharmacokinetics
       in animal models had followed continuous low-level exposures. They added
       that measurement of BPA levels in serum and other body fluids suggests the
       possibilities that BPA intake is much higher than accounted for, and/or that
       BPA can bioaccumulate in some conditions (such as pregnancy).[100]

       A 2008 report by the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human
       Reproduction within the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is
       within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, reported the
       results of its exhaustive review of the literature. Its conclusions,
       expressed relative to current estimates of general population exposure
       levels in the U.S., were the following:

and yet bpa is still used. So when we hear that monsanto pinky-swears their experiments, even when they contaminate neighboring fields, are super duper safe, or orange growers promise up and down that, well, their genetic modifications they introduced to prevent their business from being destroyed are absolutely positively safe (we promise!)... forgive me for being skeptical.

Not to mention the freakout about labeling foods; if they weren't knowingly poisoning us, why exactly would corporations be so very afraid of properly labeling foods? Any reasonable adult should have his or her bullshit detector going off when they are told gmo is absolutely safe, but it's the end of the world if we tell people which foods have gmo ingredients so that they can choose what to eat.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A)

<comment><USER7> You cut off the quote just before it details the experts' estimate that, extrapolating from animal studies, the threat of BPA ranges from "some concern" for fetuses (the FDA banned the use of BPA in baby bottles) to "negligible concern" for adults. From a much more recent meta-analysis of existing data: _" The analysis showed that BPA levels were often so low that it was below the ability of current toxicological methods to detect it, raising the possibility that most instances of high BPA dose might have been the result of contamination from tubes and plastics in hospitals."_ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/15/no-toxic- effec...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/15/no-toxic-effects- chemical-experts)

Anyway, I agree it's hard to argue with "label the product and let the consumer decide." But I think the case could be made that it plays on people's unscientific views of what is and isn't healthy. As with "organic" or "locally sourced" there's nothing stopping companies that don't use GMOs from putting a "No GMO" label on their food. Some already do.

<comment><USER6> No I didn't and you misquoted the paragraph and accidentally (I hope ?) changed the meaning.

What was actually said was:

       For adults, the Expert Panel has negligible concern for adverse reproductive
       effects following exposures in the general population to Bisphenol A

you'll note that does _not_ say "negligible concern" for adults, it says "negligible concern _for adverse reproductive effects_ ".

And you know what was never studied? General safety for adults under actual dosing as experienced in reality. Further on down the same wiki article, just one of many concerns:

        The authors found that higher bisphenol A levels were significantly
       associated with heart disease, diabetes, and abnormally high levels of
       certain liver enzymes

<comment><USER7> I think this thread is increasingly unlikely to be productive, but I'm puzzled why you think I've changed the meaning. I think it is accurate to say that the expert panel concluded the threat of BPA ranges from "some concern" to the most vulnerable groups to "negligible concern" for most healthy adults. Are you suggesting the expert panel found that BPA posed more than a "minimal" threat to adults in regards to something besides reproductive harm? I don't see that in the report...

Anyway, I think you nail the exact point I was trying to make: no studies have shown BPA to be dangerous in adults at the levels that are actually encountered in the environment. (There's little doubt that BPA is bad for you at doses orders of magnitude higher than those normally encountered, but that's true of a great many things.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ...if people wouldn't be so freaked off of GMOs and they could just push on with the science instead of considering the public reaction to everything. Heck, I'd a take a glass of oj made from fruits with pig and monkey genes in it over a "natural and non-GMO" one made from plants that need tons of herbicides and pesticides to grow.

...and if I were a producer that discovered how to make a resistant orange by genetic engineering, I'd just do my best to spread the damn disease and wipe out natural oranges together with the competition, making more money to finance more genetic engineering research, hopefully doing more interesting stuff than pest resistance genes, like actually improving the flavor and nutrient profile of grown plants.

<comment><USER9> >...and if I were a producer that discovered how to make a resistant orange by genetic engineering, I'd just do my best to spread the damn disease and wipe out natural oranges together with the competition, making more money to finance more genetic engineering research...

No, you'd be thrown in jail for bioterrorism. What you propose is seriously unethical, even if it weren't criminal. Furthermore, your attitude would convince much of the populace that people who promote GMO food are completely insane and unethical.

<comment><USER10> I think a more reasonable threat would be that the company that discovers the resistant gene patents it, and then owns the entire orange market.

Throw in some Monsanto-style "you cannot plant the seeds" and you have a real problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Asked if tomatoes containing a gene from a fish would "taste fishy" in a question on a 2004 poll conducted by the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers University that referred to one company's efforts to forge a frost-resistant tomato with a gene from the winter flounder, fewer than half correctly answered "no."_

Genetic manipulation will define the next major shift in human progress. Computers transformed inanimate things, giving them function and pseudo-life. DNA hacking will transform living things, allowing us to customize ourselves, our pets, our food, our plants, and entirely new forms of life.

</comment><comment><USER12> Puffy piece?

Almost all fruits have problems, but solution is limiting non native plagues. Even if it's almost impossible. Like with bananas.

<comment><USER13> And how, exactly, do you propose to "limit" non-native plagues? Do you want to shut down the ports and airports?

<comment><USER12> It's all a trade of. They rather continue planting in a region infested with plagued but with cheap labor instead of moving to a clean area with expensive labor.

Remember that the puffy piece lay the facts so that you reach the conclusion that gene changes are the only way out. Earth is huge. Cheap exploitable manpower is diminishing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if eventually an immunity to the disease will start to occur within certain trees.

<comment><USER13> It might happen. Or oranges might go extinct. There's no way to tell, and, frankly, I enjoy my orange juice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> When did we all become so codependent? I can grow an orange if I want to.

As far as Im concerned, those folks who make their living growing oranges are responsible for their own outcomes.

I dont need oranges from them. And maybe I dont even want them at all. If the growers have become so incompetent as to not be able to grow them I wont miss them. (or the oranges).

<comment><USER16> What are you trying to say? Maybe you can grow an orange but I can't, I live in an apartment in New York even if I had access to the ground and room to grow an orange tree the climate is wrong. You might be able to grow your own oranges but can you make your own clothes, build your own furniture, manufacture your own car, fab your own chips, or drill your own oil? We have been codependent since whenever your ancestor stopped being subsistence farmers. This could be centuries ago if you come from an old money family, or weeks ago if you a recent immigrant from the poor rural China or India.

Next it sounds like the growers are actively working on fixing the problem of a plague killing their oranges. Do you think they should be working faster or just that their isn't a problem in the first place? In the end I don't really understand your comment.

<comment><USER15> Im sorry you cant grow an orange, and Im not sure why you need one.

Also Im saying Im not dependent in any way on citrus farms. If they fail, its their own fault, and someone, in fact anyone could do better.

I guess when I think about it, a corporate citrus farm isnt much more than a hedge fund to me. Their crops dying are just a stock going down. "Oh the oranges are dying!"

They will be replaced. Oranges will be here long after we are gone.

<comment><USER15> These downvotes are AWESOME - (hellban me I can change my IP in 30 seconds)

SO, the rules of VC and SV dont apply to oranges, I assume my posts were downvoted because oranges are a "precious" resource, even though no other country in the world has problems growing them, so Im being downvoted (and HOPEFULLY hellbanned) for calling out a corrupt, piece of shit US food cartel that is committing ritual suicide in its own crops.

Oh "boo fucking hoo". Fact: No one needs OJ. Fact: The idiots that have pissed on their own crops are complaining about the fact they cant do their jobs. FACT: no one in silicon valley would have the fucking balls to complain when they cant run their own business but they feel sorry for pussy farmers who CANT RUN THEIR BUSINESS.

In fact if these farmers were SV startups they would be taken out and shot by their own parents and pushed into the bay in front of hungry sharks.

<comment><USER17> You are being downvoted for being an idiot. What you write makes no sense at all. The US is one of the _last_ countries to be affected.

The entire worlds production of oranges is falling. And there is absolutely NOTHING the growers can do about it.

> and HOPEFULLY hellbanned

If you are an idiot only about oranges then fine (everyone has their sore spot). But if you are an idiot for other things too then don't come back.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Xor Filters: Faster and Smaller Than Bloom and Cuckoo Filters - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3376122 <comment><USER2> I have a requirement of checking group membership wherein a group may contain > 10K members. Each member is an 8byte ID. Do you think Xor filter would be a better fit compared to Bloom here? Or am I looking at it the wrong way? Thanks.

<comment><USER3> > Do you think Xor filter would be a better fit compared to Bloom here?

The 8byte key is the only scenario where you should consider XorPlus (i.e a 8 bytes mapped to a long).

The lookup properties of the Xor filter are better with that case, but the real question is whether you have an entire collection to start building the bitset or not.

The sketch production isn't incremental - there is no add(k) after building it once.

So you can't build add data once it is built, while the Bloom filters do support adding entries after the fact (in fact, it can add bloom filters into it, rather than sending all the new keys).

And both of those approaches are missing an unset operation.

<comment><USER2> Sorry.. Forgot to mention that.

Yes insertion/deletion is required and the frequency may be higher. The exact usecase is that group membership is dependent on some conditions. We schedule this check every 15 minutes and based on it, we are adding/deleting the members.

<comment><USER4> Xor filters require all the members of the set be provided up front.

Bloom filters allow adding members, but not removing them.

Cuckoo filters allow removing members: [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/papers/cuckoo- conext2014.pdf](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/papers/cuckoo-conext2014.pdf)

And just for completeness, storing everything losslessly in a btree, radix tree, or hash table would probably be under 300 kB. (80 kB just for the IDs plus, say, an additional ~2x overhead.)

<comment><USER5> Safe removal is only possible if you know it is already in filter. The 'you can delete from cuckoo filters' bit I feel is often oversold.

<comment><USER4> Oh wow, I only read the paper's abstract and was fooled. Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm trying to read through this and understand it, but I'm missing it- too little coffee probably.

Can someone succinctly explain the key idea for how this beats standard bloom/cuckoo filters?

<comment><USER7> The filters are more efficient in space and query time at the cost of being immutable after being constructed. There is no Add() operation as there is with the others.</comment></comment>


A group of techies is using data skills to alter Seattle's housing affordability - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/26/seattle-housing-what-works-next-218058 <comment><USER3> The YIMBY movement (Yes, in my back yard!) is starting to be visible. And about time. (And, I'm a boomer, fwiw.)

Check out this article. [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/04/where-yimbys- can-win/...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/04/where-yimbys-can- win/559001/)

The idea that the "tech industry" created this problem is just plain nonsense. Sure, the tech industry attracts young folks to creative urban centers and pays them a bit of money. But their parents (my generation) gave them birth and gave them expectations of prosperity.It's selfish to then blame them for wanting to live where the good jobs are.

This problem was created by restrictive zoning. And it will be solved by changing zoning laws.

And the restrictive zoning laws come from people who say, "Oh no, those people moving into new apartments will crowd our schools and our streets. We can't have that!" Whose schools are they? Whose streets are they?

The phrase "affordable housing" has come to mean "cheap housing for poor people." That's stupid. Affordable housing is good for everybody. The basic law of supply and demand teaches us that increasing the supply of housing will lower the price. To address homelessness, build homes.

Government (who exist to serve people) can start to approach this problem by partly assessing property based on nominal beds per square foot. Higher taxes on lower density housing will give an economic incentive to build more housing on existing land.

Powerful companies should unapologetically press politicians, hard, for changes to these NIMBY zoning rules.

<comment><USER4> "Affordable housing" is not good for everyone. If it was, we'd probably already have it.

Existing real property owners have a serious financial incentive to oppose policies that might decrease the value of their property by 25-40% (or more), especially when a plurality of their net worth is tied up in that property.

<comment><USER5> Yeah but "us" aka normal people who are not capitalists don't care. Every single person who is not a land owning capitalist wants affordable housing. If you can handle post-Marxist thought, a great manifesto called the Housing Monster addresses this. [http://prole.info/thm.html](http://prole.info/thm.html)

<comment><USER6> Please don't disparage capitalism, it has no opinion on affordable housing, only people do. I'm a self-proclaimed capitalist, and affordable housing for ~all should be one of the highest priorities of a functioning society, capitalist or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Since the end of the financial crisis, Lubarsky says, Seattle has added roughly 100,000 jobs, but barely 32,000 new homes and apartment units. "We've underbuilt every year since 2010,"_

Interesting how that lines up so nicely with this headline/factoid:

 _For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast, there are no more than 30 affordable homes_

[https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living- pove...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west- coast-no-30-affordable-homes/)

Also, no doubt purely coincidentally:

 _(The Seattle area, the nation's 22nd largest by population, has the third most homeless people, behind only Los Angeles and New York City.)_

I sarcastically say _purely coincidentally_ because of how often I get told that (a large portion of) homeless people are drug addicts, mentally ill etc, so lack of affordable housing is not why people are out on the street.

<comment><USER8> Are the people telling you that many homeless are drug addicts or mentally ill professionals on the subject? It's well regarded that both types of people are over-represented in the homeless population.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_and_mental_heal...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_and_mental_health)

[https://www.va.gov/homeless/nchav/research/population- based-...](https://www.va.gov/homeless/nchav/research/population-based- research/mental-illness.asp)

<comment><USER7> I don't believe they are. I've had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I spent 5.7 years homeless and got myself off the street a few months ago. I am author of the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide. Because of that site, I've been interviewed by reporters a few times. So I'm something of a SME on the topic of homelessness.

In a nutshell, there are housed people who drink heavily or have mental health issues. Simply having a substance abuse problem or a mental health issue does not per se _cause_ homelessness.

Homelessness occurs when an individual has too many problems and too few resources or options. The difference between a homeless person and a housed person can be one more problem or one less resource.

There is a longstanding and dire shortage of affordable housing in the US. Dismissing that as a contributing root cause of the homeless problem in this country sounds like crazy talk to me. It sounds to me like someone really reaching to wash their hands of the problem and chalk it up to personal failure rather than acknowledging the systemic issues that are causing enormous stress for a great many Americans of all kinds of income levels and demographics.

Saying that mental illness and substance abuse are _the_ cause of homelessness, so much so that we can totally ignore the issue of housing affordability whole cloth and dismiss it entirely as not pertinent to the subject of homelessness looks ludicrous on the face of it to me. But I keep hearing it over and over and over. The best guess I have is that it is a narrative that serves a desire to wash one's hands of the problem and pretend that well known systemic issues are not relevant as homeless people are "just a few losers with unsolvable personal problems and they would be homeless even if our country didn't have a dire shortage of affordable housing."

<comment><USER9> It doesn't help to downplay substance abuse and mental illness' roles in homelessness (especially chronic homelessness)... He linked two different sources, but there are countless others, that point to both substance abuse and mental illness being noticeably more common in the homeless population...

That isn't to say that this is an excuse for America's lacking response to the homelessness crisis. But, to say the scale of Seattle's homeless population isn't an indictment of America's substance abuse policy and the state of its (mental) healthcare system, just as it's an indictment of dysfunctional urban bureaucracy and housing policies strikes me as a disingenuous assignment of blame.

<comment><USER7> If Seattle's high rate of homelessness is due much more to substance abuse and mental health issues and is largely unrelated to the high cost of housing locally, I would be interested in knowing what about Seattle is either causing people to be crazy or addicted or drawing inordinate numbers of such people there. If the high levels of local homelessness are an indictment of America's mental health and substance abuse issues, why isn't it equally bad elsewhere?

I'm aware there are many factors that contribute to homelessness and nowhere have I said that personal problems aren't a factor. But I fail to comprehend why there is such strong push back against the idea that lack of affordable housing is a factor at all, why every time this cones up, multiple people feel some need to say "Nuh uh, homeless people are just crazies and addicts and the cost of housing has no bearing" in essence, granted in slightly more PC language.

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, my parents work in providing either free or below market rate housing. People provided eith such housing can have trouble keeping it due to their various personal problems.

I agree with you that there is a housing cost gradient which will cause people with moderate addiction or mental health issues to become homeless.

It's hard to keep any housing if you can't keep a job and your entitlements don't cover everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've recently wondered why cities don't tend to spring up on their own anymore. Either that's true or I just haven't heard about it. Has anyone looked into this?

I was going to bring this up as an anecdote but looking at this ([http://www.businessinsider.com/federal-government-land- map-o...](http://www.businessinsider.com/federal-government-land-map-oregon- militia-2016-1)) it seems to be true; a relative of mine lives in a small city in Utah and says he wants a couple acres but the land surrounding the city is federally owned, limiting his options. How was this land released to citizens previously and how has that changed since? Was it really just doling it out to farmers who have since sold it?

<comment><USER11> >Was it really just doling it out to farmers who have since sold it?

Yes. For much of America's history, you could literally get in a wagon, head out west somewhere, plant a flag, and the land was yours. This was true all the way to 1976.

"In all, more than 270 million acres of public land, or nearly 10% of the total area of the U.S., was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River."

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

But that's not the whole story. Another 10% of the entire US land mass (~200,000,000 acres) was granted free of charge to various railroad companies[0], many of which are still the largest private landowners in their respective states.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts)

<comment><USER12> > _For much of America 's history, you could literally get in a wagon, head > out west somewhere, plant a flag, and the land was yours._

You also had to band together with your fellow settlers into armed militias to kill the people whose land you were squatting.

Those are the same militias which are protected in the second amendment. Their original purpose was "killing indians". The secondary purpose was to catch escaped slaves.

It's always fun to remember where our real estate industry comes from. It's also interesting to see the hidden connections between America's passion for home ownership, its obsession with guns, and its racism.

<comment><USER13> _Those are the same militias which are protected in the second amendment. Their original purpose was "killing indians"._

False. The original purpose, predating even the government and the constitution, was to fight off armed oppression in the form of Hessian mercenaries and British soldiers.

 _It 's also interesting to see the hidden connections between America's passion for home ownership, its obsession with guns, and its racism._

Gun Control was partly started by racist southern politicians who were horrified by the thought that black citizens would have the right to own firearms.

[https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/10/gun- contr...](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/10/gun-control- racist-present-171006135904199.html)

<comment><USER12> > _False. The original purpose, predating even the government and the > constitution, was to fight off armed oppression in the form of Hessian > mercenaries and British soldiers._

You do realize that colonial militias existed for over a century before the war for independence with the British Empire? What "armed oppression" were they fighting exactly?

<comment> aaron-lebo You do realize that multiple native groups obtained their land through war and what at times could be called extermination?

The Comanche are but one example. There are very few groups in history that ended up where they were peacefully. That's unfortunate, but depicting the European settlers as land-hungry thieving murderers should take into account that's what everyone did.

Here's an account of the Fort Parker massacre, which wasn't uncommon on the frontier:

 _Benjamin Parker was killed, and before the fort 's gates could be closed, the raiders rushed inside. Silas Parker, who was outside with his brother, was killed before he was able to get back inside the gate. Samuel Frost and his son Robert were killed inside the gate, as they attempted to flee. John Parker's genitals were cut off and he was then scalped. His wife came out of the woods when she saw his torture and was captured.[5] Lucy Parker and her youngest two children were initially captured but were rescued by Luther Plummer as he ran up to the fort from the fields. Her two oldest children, however, along with Luther's wife (Rachel) and son, and Elizabeth Kellogg were successfully kidnapped._

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

Did those settlers deserve that? You can argue it, but this is a complex topic. Maybe some of those militias existed for good reasons, like if they didn't, people would get murdered by raiding parties, as they have in every locale in history.

<comment><USER12> Is there a point that you're trying to make? As a reminder you're responding to a message about the historical connection between gun ownership, home ownership and racism in the USA. I don't see anything in your message that's relevant to that, except maybe to confirm that colonial militias were created to "kill indians", and that the settlers were squatting on indigenous land.

<comment> aaron-lebo What I'm trying to say is you have a very one-sided view of history. You've already decided that the purpose of militias was to "kill Indians". You didn't back that up at all.

Militias had offensive/defensive use against other colonial powers, but they also could have (but didn't always have) purely defensive use against native raids, which were not uncommon (nor were they the other way around).

You've also decided that that all land was "indigenous" when nobody has ever owned land, it's always been what group takes it. The natives often took the land from each other. You've decided that's different from European settlers doing it purely based on race. You're making a racial distinction without admitting this is just what people do. The plains weren't Apache land in 1500, why was it their land 200 years later after they'd kicked out other natives? Why was Mexico City Aztec land when they killed off the groups which originally owned it? Much land was loosely populated anyway, both groups could have coexisted but they did not. Killing "squatters" is just justifying the same militarism you despise.

Do you see what I'm trying to say? I don't deny atrocities against the natives, those are well-documented, but if you're you're going to talk about history, talk about how it was, not about how a 21st century view of race/society sees it. It's dishonest to those people and who they were.

<comment><USER12> > _What I 'm trying to say is you have a very one-sided view of history._

What do you mean by "one-sided"? What are the "sides" involved here?

> _You 've already decided that the purpose of militias was to "kill Indians". > You didn't back that up at all._

Why would I have to back it up? It's a very basic fact which nobody is disputing, not even you. You feel that the killing of natives by militias was justified at least in part in self-defense, you have inferred from my choice of words that I disagree with you, and you're unhappy about that.

But you haven't proposed an alternative explanation to whom the militias were meant to kill (if not native americans, who? Other settlers? Bears?) or why (if not because the settlers were squatting on indigenous land, then why? Family feud? Religion? The color of their hats?) If you do have an alternative explanation for the existence of militias, now would be a good time to make your case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 20 years ago, Craftsman houses in Seattle were already unaffordable unless they were totally trashed, far north, or in a 'bad' neighborhood. They were, size for size, the most expensive form of housing on the market. Generally 1000sf, 2 bedroom, and 1 bath, I don't think I saw one under 225k. I wound up buying a skinny for 20% less money and 20% more space. (Observations from 1998-9, when I bought a house a mile or so from there).

Since then, prices have doubled at least twice. I could never afford to move back to my old neighborhood.

<comment><USER15> Moved out here last year. I actually commute from down south...I want so badly to feel comfortable planting roots here but staring down the barrel of this housing market makes me feel like a tourist simply enjoying the high pay and natural beauty until I decide I want to buy a home back east. I am glad I am here but there is definitely an internal conflict I have to tolerate to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, I live in Wallingford (the community mentioned here). In one of those Craftsman houses, no less.

Here's the thing: Wallingford will be valuable and therefore expensive no matter what kind of housing you build here. Literally anything. There are some crappy midcentury studio apartments that go for 2k a month not 10 blocks from here, because the location is great _even if you don 't have a house_.

That means that basically everybody who doesn't develop property professionally is misdiagnosing the situation.

The NIMBYs say that rezoning will cause property values to crash. That's just not in line with available evidence from Ballard and similar, and flies in the face of reason besides. When your lot can be a beloved home to another family or a pile of income to a developer, math says the developer will eventually win the bidding war.

Most of the YIMBYs are wrong because housing prices just aren't going to come down that much here, and much of what comes in will be rentals. Those rentals will be luxury units because they can be, and will therefore be 2500+ a month. That's within a few hundred dollars of an existing mortgage (on one of the cheaper houses-- not the million dollar 3000+ sqft thing down the road) but without the potential upside.

<comment><USER17> Housing prices not coming down from increased unit implies some sort of market-resistant magical mumbo jumbo in that area. That doesn't sound plausible. Everything reacts to changing supply and demand, and increasing supply will always drop prices, somewhere. Increasing luxury units will mean a vacating of those non-luxury units currently occupied by luxury dwellers.

<comment><USER18> I think what you and others don't understand is that, there is SO MUCH demand, and SO MUCH money that no matter how much you build, the prices simply won't go down.

From a developer's perspective, building a brand new apartment building is ludicrously expensive, you simply MUST charge very high rent, or your whole project is not feasible.

<comment><USER19> So for one there is no such thing as "infinite demand". We can talk about Seattle having an unmeetable housing demand when the whole city is hundred story condo buildings and the population density is twice that of Tokyo.

Of course in the short term, wherever you lift the crippling shroud of insane zoning policy, new housing will still be very expensive. It is _pent up_ demand. But by building density you exhaust said demand. And on top of that, the denser and larger you build, the most scale you apply, the cheaper it gets per unit to house people. Economies of scale plus a bunch of other scaling effects on construction.

One thing the first bastions of reasonable zoning policy will probably fail to do, though, is remove some fairly insane mandatory minimum square footage requirements, which puts a kink in any reasonable approach to housing - developers need profit, and the smaller you can make units the larger your market can be because you can fit more people into the same building footprint and thus afford to charge less per unit, and thus enabling poorer people to live there.

Without that you do just end up with the luxury 2000 sqft condos that are only better than the status quo because they reduce pollution and traffic. They also dramatically help the local economy by enabling high income earners to live there in greater numbers. But to actually help the poor, you need to unrestrict not just the outside building size but the inside as well.

<comment><USER18> Yeah spot on. I think the square footage thing, and the various zoning laws and requirements for permits are probably one of the biggest reasons housing is not affordable.

As it is now, if you build more housing, more wealthy people will move in to fill that housing, and more and more, and on and on until you hit a plateau. That plateau will never be affordable for a blue collar worker unfortunately.

My point is that building more houses is not the answer all by itself. Drastic changes to our understanding of property rights and landlording are required as well.

<comment><USER19> My whole point is that the plateau is only for the luxury first-wave large family condo type housing (at the highest denstiy, at least - if you aren't _there_ yet, you need more density until you get there, then you move on to phase 2) and that if you let builders build housing smaller you can avoid such plateaus because after exhausting the rich you build smaller and more affordable but still net only slightly less revenue per square foot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is one argument, perhaps the most powerful one, from NIMBY that I agree with and it's about traffic. The way we handle roads and transit simply can't absorb the increase from high density. Serious transit investment must follow density when density reaches a certain point. The progression should be

\- Suburb: Just roads are fine.

\- Midpoint: Give a lane and make it dedicated for BRT. That's the only way people will take the bus seriously. When they see that bus zoom by while they are stuck in traffic, many will take the bus.

\- City: Build rail and subway.

But high density development keeps happening without any of this. This just makes the NIMBY arguments stronger.

EDIT: Just thought of another possible solution for Midpoint: shutdown the bus system and use the funds to give everyone $X per month for Uber Pool/Lyft Line. Make using Pool/Line a requirement for using the money, since those provide the most benefit for increasing road capacity. Bus reputation is so bad in the US, something like this might be the only way.

<comment><USER21> > The way we handle roads and transit simply can't absorb the increase from > high density. Serious transit investment must follow density when density > reaches a certain point.

You're absolutely correct. This _must_ happen.

Realistically, it happens when the residents of a newly dense neighborhood push for it to happen. It's rarely politically workable to build transit first.

<comment><USER17> It's possible to build transit first, if the transit company can also buy the real estate at the terminus, and if the transit company is a private company (not sure if it's feasible in the US).

But for government owned transit, it's not possible to speculate or prospect transit lines, so it has to come after density is developed first.

<comment><USER21> In the US, transit lines are almost always government-owned.

<comment><USER17> There are private transportation vectors like the Ambassador bridge in Windsor/Detroit. I'm not sure why in our instances we end up with them trying lobby to block competing bridges from being put up while in Japan most of the transit lines are private and work spectacularly well. But the US has probably the biggest private Subway franchise in the world, if you count Subway restaurants ;).

It's probably something to do with the black and white view of free-market vs government regulation we have in the US. Everyone's gunning for all one or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm glad they're doing this, and I think there are more ways to use data to make this political argument for increasing housing supply. Specifically, I think one potential application of data to break up zoning limitations & NIMBY-ism is the use of energy and environmental simulation to argue against right-to-light/solar access rights get used to protect low-density housing.

I've worked to develop urban planning guidelines in my previous job, and in my experience environmental regulations like shading studies are heavily, heavily relied on as a quantitative way to post-rationalize NIMBY-ism's desire to stop construction. Why? Simply because there aren't a lot of other quantitative metrics to justify low-density development, and so the only real data-backed analysis that justifies building shorter buildings tends to be solar rights.

My current job is as a building energy researcher, and as I've gone about my job - which involves a lot of programming & calculating metrics for building energy (obviously), indoor/outdoor human comfort, daylighting thresholds - it's obvious that the urban argument that is made is a one-sided one that could be potentially undermined by demonstrating metrics that favor <i>less</i> solar access. Or, since the sun moves around the sky - <USER2> that give you equal solar access at different times, which can allow higher density. i.e what is the urban heat island consequence of exposed urban surfaces to sun, what is the comfort benefit of shade, the harm caused by direct UV, what is the building energy benefit of blocking direct solar gain etc.

This is not meant to (reductively) claim that less sun is a good thing - simply that there is more ambiguity then is captured by current zoning regulations or design standards, and as a result we are over-emphasizing solar access when in certain places it isn't benefiting us. At the very least, we shouldn't take the solar-access argument at face-value.

And I don't the planning officials and design professionals who are implementing this for the current state of environmental regulations. In my experience, given the impact their work has on the city, it's astonishing how little resources are expended to actually quantitatively study the effect of different typologies on the city, and as a result they tend to rely on community (NIMBY) feedback, and existing precedent for structuring cities. Better data-based tools could help them a lot make a progressive argument for higher-density.

</comment><comment><USER23> The closer I get to purchasing a house the more I find myself pushing against measures like this. NIMBY exists to protect most people's largest financial asset.

<comment><USER24> That's one of the main issues here. Houses should be about having a place to live, not your largest financial asset. The selfish protectionism that comes from treating housing as an investment is why so many cities are so broken.

<comment><USER25> How is it selfish?

People have got to save for retirement somehow. Company final salary pensions are a thing of the past. Investments in shares can go down as well as up. The government can't or won't help. What do you expect people to do? Sacrifice their own wellbeing for your unearned benefit?

<comment><USER26> > Investments in shares can go down as well as up.

So instead, homeowners vote for policies that make sure that they somehow get an asset that _is_ guaranteed to go up. _That 's_ an unearned benefit, it's one that comes at _our_ expense, and it's an expense that _they_ sure as hell didn't have to deal with when _they_ were getting established in the world.

<comment><USER25> _they sure as hell didn 't have to deal with when they were getting established in the world_

No. Those people built the communities you find so desirable to live in, sometimes from scratch, sometimes by regenerating a dilapidated area. The value you crave would not even exist if not for them. And now that the hard work is done, you expect to waltz in and have it for the taking?

Millennials think they are the first generation ever to live through hard times. While raking in fortunes their parents and grandparents could only dream of, working for tech unicorns.

<comment> chao- Most Millennials do not work for tech unicorns. Most Millennials do not even live in urban centers, most are living a very conventional suburban lifestyle.

Everyone else wants to think of Millennials as the first generation that is uniquely self-absorbed or whiney.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It never fails to boggle my mind that we have cities all over the Rust Belt with ample real estate, state investment funding, and all the incentives in the world to attract people away from Seattle, SF, SJ, etc. - and instead the response is "let's ruin Seattle."

Why not just ... move?

<comment><USER28> Same reason Y Combinator doesn't have a bigger presence in the "Rust Belt"? Network effects.

If all the people are already on the West Coast what incentive is there to encourage relocation away from the West Coast as opposed to the continual brain drain from the rest of the country out to the West Coast?

<comment><USER29> _> If all the people are already on the West Coast what incentive is there to encourage relocation away from the West Coast as opposed to the continual brain drain from the rest of the country out to the West Coast?_

Well, it's not true that "all the people are already on the West Coast", but even if it were, YC might awaken to the obvious truth that rapid population growth in west coast cities is not sustainable for much longer. Then, as a forward-looking, long-term thinking company, they might see fit to establish footprints in some of the less crowded, less expensive inland cities before someone else beats them to it.

Personally, I don't understand why people who have skills that are marketable in virtually any city in the first world choose to live with roommates in crappy century-old homes or tiny apartments in a handful of coastal cities. To each their own, I guess.

<comment><USER30> For career driven people, it's not enough that just some company will hire them for something. And there are very few cities where it's easy to find a job matching the skills and expertise of e.g. a Microsoft tech lead.

<comment><USER28> Much less cities where you have the opportunity at multiple such large companies. Seattle has Amazon's HQ as well as Microsoft's, and presences from Facebook and Google.

You can be a Microsoft tech lead in Raleigh-Durham, too, but you aren't going to have as many opportunities with Amazon/Facebook/Google/etc there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I met this young man from Stanford who was part of a project where people would buy a shipping container home, plant it in their backyard as a "Mother in Law Unit" and rent it out. That would be a way to show in action that you think, "Yes, in my Back Yard!"

</comment><comment><USER31> Seemingly missing from this entire discussion,

\- why do we spend like 60-70%+ of federal housing dollars on high income earners / rich people?

\- why is section 8 gutted to all hell?

I don't see why it's so shocking that there's no affordable housing, when some of the big old programs aimed at reducing that are a shadow of their former selves, and we spend most of our effort in housing just throwing cash at people who already make a lot of it.

Or maybe people like Zach mentioned in the article do think this stuff, but they're taking baby steps because the political capital necessary to actually stop the above points is probably huge.

</comment><comment><USER32> >When homeowners say they're fighting to protect neighborhood character, Lubarsky says, "it really feels to me like they just don't want young people in their neighborhood."

This is also almost always coded language for not wanting to live near racial minorities. This whole article is yet another example of baby boomers pulling up the ladder behind them. The millennials I know are angry and there's going to be a reckoning in the near future as it comes to a head.

<comment><USER33> I think people are going to get rid of Social Security at some point. I own my apartment in Manhattan, but my family is _very_ lucky in that we had an extremely motivated seller in a very underappreciated area, and that I have a good job. The traditional paths to adulthood have been broken by NIMBYs and a complete lack of investment in infrastructure after it was good enough for the Boomers.

Something is going to happen - you can't pull the ladder behind you, keep everyone you don't like out of your neighborhood, and reduce mobility to protect your assets without serious backlash.

<comment><USER34> extremely motivated seller = unfortunate person backed into a corner financially ?

<comment><USER33> He was a very wealthy person who worked for Microsoft, but thanks for assuming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The irony is all the people piling into the west coast complaining about the problem are causing the problem they then are complaining about.

Instead they should all move to the midwest, south, or NE, where cost of living is a small fraction of the west coast. They can pay off a very nice house in full for less than the cost of a downpayment in any trendy west coast city, and they can easily afford to live a stereotypical middle class lifestyle - house, cars, kids, vacations, a stay at home parent - on a reasonable income, something which is now increasingly difficult on the west coast where cost of living is extraordinarily high.

I sincerely hope that various companies start aggressively opening offices in middle America, the south, upstate NY, etc. Maybe someone should produce a few goofy TV shows about how 'quirky' and 'cool' and 'hip' those destinations are, turn them into the new cultural mecca for all the flighty trend chasers, and let the west coast housing mess take care of itself.

<comment><USER36> Six figures in the rust belt is the life. I live in a beautiful historic home for a tenth of the cost of the ones shown in the article. I can afford to have my wife stay home while our kids are small. I'm dumping close to a quarter of my income into retirement savings despite still having significant student debt. I'm close to family members to help with the kids (a problem for my childhood friends who fled to the coasts after college.) People talk about amenities being better on the coasts, but I'm an hour from downtown Chicago, which is easily the second-most spectacular urban center in North America. Plus I'm close to great weekend destinations like St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Nashville. As for outdoor amenities, I'll put the great lakes up against any other region of the country when it comes to natural beauty. Western Michigan has some of the nicest beaches in the country. It's one of the many hidden-gems of the flyover states. Yeah the winters suck in the upper midwest, but they also end and the summers are spectacular.

<comment><USER37> You don't even have to make six figures to have a good life in the mid-west. My first job was in a mid-sized Michigan town. Starter homes were 150% of my annual pre-tax salary. Schools were very good. Of course the town couldn't offer what a big city could, but it had enough.

My boss was making under $200,000/yr and he was living a similar life to someone making over $1M on the coasts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would like to see the bosses of these techies consider basing their headquarters and satellite offices not smack-dab in the middle of the hottest tech towns but rather in cities where there is lots of housing and room for commercial development, which are often former industrial areas.

In New England, it boggles the mind that startups and giants like GE throw millions into building offices in Kendall and Seaport when they could build elsewhere in the region for much cheaper (Worcester, southern New Hampshire, Rhode Island/Fall River/New Bedford) and allow many of their employers to get reasonably priced homes. Many are served by commuter rail or bus systems, have nearby universities, and are within reasonable driving distance of Boston/Cambridge.

And then there's telecommuting. Automattic, Zapier and a few others have embraced it but they are the exception.

<comment><USER39> Actually, I started to type "I don't know why a company is willing to pay twice as much for an engineer in Silicon Valley than for one in Houston," but as I was typing that I had an epiphany.

What they're REALLY paying for is knowledge from other companies. A person who has worked at Google and other innovative shops has (hopefully) learned a bunch of great processes, and will (hopefully) implement them at their new workplace.

So an area like the Bay Area is filled with _collective knowledge_ because there are great companies there, and all that talent is jostling around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Fourplex upzoning also proposed in Minneapolis

[https://streets.mn/2018/03/14/fourplexes-everywhere-bold- ref...](https://streets.mn/2018/03/14/fourplexes-everywhere-bold-reform- proposed-in-minneapolis/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Seattle was a dying city 30 years ago. Comparing historical housing prices would be highly misleading.

<comment><USER42> More like 47 years ago when Boring busts were still a thing. Real estate hasn't busted like that since then, with only a down tick in the 90s along with the rest of the west coast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Somebody from his generation _is_ going to have that one day. They'll be rich too.

It's striking how much the media is attempting to foment intergenerational strife over issues that are fundamentally about wealth inequality.

</comment><comment><USER44> The kicker is that the baby boomers also want the younger generation (who can't afford homes) to pay for their entitlements. It's like going to dinner with your rich uncle and he stiffs you on the bill. Housing is the biggest problem of this generation. Exorbitant rent seeking sucks up all marginal resources, leading to greater inequality and less of a means to fund entitlements. The irony.

</comment><comment><USER45> >>The Seattle area, the nation's 22nd largest by population, has the third most homeless people, behind only Los Angeles and New York City.

I knew it was bad, but didn't realize it's that bad. One Seattlite once told me there are a lot of homeless people because they refer to it as Freeattle, as they get lot of things for free - not sure if that is true. Anyone who is from Seattle know more?

<comment><USER46> For all useful purposes, it's false. A detailed in-person survey of homeless people in King County found that 10% of them said that homeless services were part of the reason they moved to Seattle, and it's more likely that they moved from other parts of Washington than from far away.

Homelessness rates in Seattle track rising (and falling! lol) rents very closely, which is a difficult-to-explain coincidence for anyone who really believes that the cause is actually random people from all over America catching a bus to Seattle to get into a shelter.

summary piece for reading \- [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/homeless/king-coun...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/homeless/king-countys-former-homeless-czar-on-homelessness-the-causes- are-far-more-complex-than-i-even-knew/)

the survey mentioned \- [https://thecisforcrank.com/tag/applied-survey- research/](https://thecisforcrank.com/tag/applied-survey-research/) \- [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3480319-City-of- Seat...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3480319-City-of-Seattle- Homeless-Needs-Assessment-March.html)

<comment><USER45> Thanks for the informative response. Appreciate the insights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I think the demand side for single family housing will increase in Seattle over the near future. There has been a recent boom in tech company positions and equity (especially Amazon and Microsoft, but others as well such as Tableau, Facebook, etc.). There is a relatively (compared to SF) nascent startup and VC scene developing, and more tech companies are opening or expanding branch offices here as they observe the talent pool that's now well above critical mass. And many employees of these companies are young (in their 20s), recent transplants from around the country, or on temporary work visas and in the process of getting green cards / citizenship. Seattle is also a place people tend to want to plant roots (for the great career options, the natural beauty, and the culture).

As the young recent transplants build their savings and seek to plant roots and start families when they get into their 30s, they'll look at single family housing. But the natural beauty includes water on two sides of the city and there is basically no undeveloped land to add more single family houses. Combining these employment, demographic and geographic factors, I expect demand to continue surging forward and supply to remain constrained. Building up and new apartments coming online is starting to reduce pressure on soaring condo/apartment rent costs, and building up to increase supply is a valve that can continue to reduce rent pressure for those without families. But I don't see a way forward to increase single family housing inside the city limits - in fact supply will go down as more townhomes and apartment buildings go up.

It seems, as the article hints at but doesn't much explore, that American Millenial coastal urban dwellers will need to develop a new conception of family housing (that is not single family housing with a private yard). I think there are options here, and the conception of the American dream replete with single family housing around an urban core seems like a relatively recent post-war phenomenon. What does family housing in Tokyo look like? In dense European cities? Historically before the 20th century? What new forms could it take, especially as we build up and think about modern amenities? With new transportation options (ride sharing, better bike infra, soon self driving cars) garages are less necessary, with new meal delivery options kitchens are less necessary, and with the sharing economy we can cut down on storage space. I'd like to see some new creative approaches to modern US family housing.

</comment><comment><USER48> One thing I never see come up in these discussions is the overall increasingly wealth disparity in the US.

In most of these discussions there is an implied moral stance that people have some level of "rights" about where they can live. I think all but the most stringent anarchists agree you don't have a moral right to live in a sprawling mansion on the coast, regardless of your contributions to society. And most agree that it's not right if someone working 40 hours a week can't afford a home anywhere in the United States.

But, between those two extremes is an interesting continuum. My belief is that most of us grew up in a culture that placed the "right" point on that continuum right between the city and neighborhood level of scale. Most people should have the right to live in the city of their choosing, regardless of your income level. But you don't have the right to pick your neighborhood. If you want to live in the most desireable neighborhood, then it's fair for you to have to pay for the luxury.

I think that's been a stable cultural point for a lot of cities in the US for many decades. New York is a good example of a city that supported people from the righest elites down to poverty-level working class.

But economic disparity has gotten so bad now that the affordability point on the continuum no longer aligns with our rightful point. If you are working class, there are no cities where the entire commutable region surrounding it is outside of your price point. San Francisco is one and Seattle is well on its way.

I think much of the anger we feel comes from those two points being out of alignment. We feel that people _should_ be able to live in the metro area of their choosing, but the economic reality is that for some cities now, they can't.

I don't believe any simple supply and demand model of housing will fix this. Seattle is a highly desireable area and the demand is elastic. I think you'd see:

        Increase housing supply ->
        Prices go down ->
        City becomes more appealing for businesses ->
        Business grow and need more employees ->
        Demand goes up ->
        Prices return

You'll end up with just as many $800k houses (or apartments), but now with comparatively worse infrastructure because it wasn't designed for higher density. There are plenty enough high paid tech employees in the US and the world at large to absorb any additional housing Seattle has to offer.

I think the fundamental problem is that when you combine increasing wealth disparity, high mobility, and people sorting themselves economically, you naturally end up with large regions of the country that are only affordable by certain economic levels. And that spatial fact conflicts with our moral belief that no large region of the US should be effectively off limits to someone based on their wealth.

</comment><comment><USER27> Quote:

___

And woe to the millennial who dares dream of starting a family, warns Myra Lara, a 30-year-old architect and affordability advocate. Of her Seattle friends who have become parents, all but one has been exiled to the suburbs. "It sucks—I never see them," says Lara. "But that's what they have to do."

__

Lol "woe" indeed. This is probably the ultimate first-world problem.

<comment><USER49> There are a couple of things mentioned in that sentence. Can you say which one you think is the "ultimate first-world problem?"

<comment><USER50> I mean, we would love to have affordable suburban houses within easy commuting distance of tech jobs in the Bay Area. So it certainly seems like a rather enviable "problem" that families in Seattle are able to move from the urban core to the suburbs...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > a housing market so expensive it's throttling one of America's biggest urban > success stories. Decades ago, these tidy homes were cheap enough for > schoolteachers and firefighters. Today, most cost at least a million > dollars, and what was once a proudly middle-class neighborhood has morphed > into a financially gated community

If you want a house like that, and you're not super wealthy, find a remote gig and move outside the big tech-boom cities. Here in the Rust Belt, houses like that are very affordably priced.

If enough people with tech-generated wealth start living and spending money here, it'll make progress solving the regional inequalities that are driving support for Donald Trump.

<comment><USER52> But I don't like that area. A house like that is not worth giving up the incredible outdoors lifestyle that the Seattle region offers.

I'm happy to live in a well-built, quiet condo that I pay a bit more for than "standard" condos or whatever. Don't really need a house. But even these are nearly impossible to come by. There's practically zero inventory.

<comment><USER53> FWIW if "incredible outdoors lifestyle" is what you seek and remote work is an option there are a number of better, cheaper places to live than Seattle.

<comment><USER52> What examples? I don't actually live in Seattle proper, as it's far too expensive. But the surrounding areas are also absurd in price.

<comment><USER53> It really depends what you are looking for but a short list of western cities which are superior outdoor destinations to Seattle at least in some ways (and are much cheaper) is Bozeman, Missoula, Salt Lake City, Rapid City, Reno, Boise, St George. If a city is not a requirement, the list is a lot longer.

Your mileage may vary depending on much or little you value things like remoteness, lack of traffic, mountains vs desert vs forest. Yes, if you're a hardcore mountaineer it might be tough to beat the north Cascades but for the rest of us there are a lot of good options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "We can't have it so you can't either"

</comment><comment><USER54> The solution to expensive neighborhoods isn't destroying those neighborhoods with high density housing. Most humans don't want to live in hives.

The problem to solve is distributing economic viability more widely across the country and then building more cities and towns in the density that supports family formation and doesn't dehumanize the occupants: single family homes on 5-12k square foot lots surrounding walkable commercial districts.

Allowing our population to naturally stabilize by restricting immigration would help too.

<comment><USER55> How do you propose distributing that opportunity?

<comment><USER54> Things like this:

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

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

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

<comment><USER55> Several of those refer to redistribution of wealth. A Georgian LVT applies to high-cost, high-employment metropolises which have underprovisioned housing and exacerbated sprawl, but not really to low-cost, underperforming failed cities such as Detroit or Pittsburg.

Clarifying my question: how do you propose to create economic opportunities where housing is cheap but prospects are few, particularly as economic activity seems to want to concentrate.

<comment><USER54> I would distribute sovereignty more broadly, allow the smaller units of sovereignty to practice mercantilism to protect internal industries (i.e. productive capacity) and remove usury as the basis of the money supply to avoid wealth concentration in money centers.

Wealth redistribution is inevitable at this point, ideally in the form of debt jubilee but, given the political power of the banking class, more likely via something more chaotic.

<comment><USER55> I'd prefer dropping wealth distribution from the discussion and focus _not_ because I disagree with it, but because 1. I'm already sold, 2. it's trivially implemented (technically if not politically), and 3. it tends, as evidenced here in another thread, to generate predictable and unproductive discussion.

Actually, I'll go a step or two further and suggest that a mix of rentier taxes (land _and other_ monopolistic elements) _and_ income supports (UBI, living minimum wage, additional targeted support as needed), workplace and labour protections, collective bargaining, are almost certainly required.

UBI without LVT merely pumps wages to landlords. Similar further arguments extend to otther elements above.

But that leaves us with the fundamental issue remaining: natural clustering tendencies of many economic activitties, particularly dematerialised ones ("informattion work") tend toward clusteering (where skills are scarce) or outsourcing to the lowest-wage centre (where skill is automated away). All other areas are effectively dead zones.

(In-person services, repair, and construction remain, but these are poorly- scaling, low-profit sectors.)

That's the dynamic I see as needing addressing. And UBI + LVT don't get you there, that I see.

Any insights there?

<comment><USER56> How could any of this work without post-scarcity? (which is at best a pipe- dream)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Build a fully functional web app without any code - <AUTHOR> https://bubble.is/?ref=hackernews <comment><USER2> > Bubble is designed to replace programming languages and frameworks > traditionally used for web development. It replaces back-end technologies > such as Ruby on Rails, Python / Django, and PHP, and it replaces front-end > technologies such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. [1]

[1] [https://bubble.is/faq](https://bubble.is/faq)</comment>


Steve Bannon Sought to Infiltrate Facebook Hiring - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/steve-bannon-sought-to-infiltrate-facebook-hiring <comment><USER2> This article names no sources, only purported emails. It doesn't show the full text of the emails, just short quotes. It doesn't provide message headers [1] or any other substantive indication that they are factual. How were these vetted? I'm going to guess that they weren't.

This article has all of the weight of a gossip column.

[1] Headers can be forged, of course, but it's at least enough that an external party might be able to corroborate or disprove this story.

<comment><USER3> Buzzfeed does have a general reputation for accuracy; their not a propaganda outlet.

I'm fine with raising questions, but we can question everything on that level - nothing is certain. Long, involved scientific studies still have enough flaws and uncertainties to fill many HN threads. Some uncertainty doesn't wipe out all credibility.

Anonymous sources are essential to critical public information; Woodward and Bernstein never revealed their source - should the Washington Post never have published the articles?

> I'm going to guess that they weren't.

That statement has less credibility than the article's, though at least it's acknowledged that it's a guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As always, the _why_ is the most important part.

>The secret attempt to find bias in Facebook's hiring process reflects longstanding conservative fears that Facebook and the other tech giants are run by liberals who suppress right-wing views both internally and on their dominant platforms.

As someone who considers themselves above the fray, I would say those fears are not unfounded.

<comment><USER5> 1\. Do you remember Trump badgered his supporters to be vigilant about voter fraud during his campaign? The only person caught voting twice was a Trump supporter. She wanted to "test the system." I suspect they encourage the paranoia on purpose.

2\. I've worked at tech companies for almost a decade. The only right wing view I've seen suppressed is "defense of traditional marriage." It's 2017. I think we all know what that means.

<comment><USER6> > "The only right wing view I've seen suppressed..."

Well if views are effectively suppressed then you won't hear them.

<comment><USER5> I've heard people talk about abortion is baby killing and Obama being a Muslim out loud. Weren't suppressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When clicking on the facebook links in the comment section, several profiles look like fake ones. Do you know if Buzzfeed use this strategy to fake activity in the comment section? Or is it a pro/anti-trump fight strategy?

</comment><comment><USER8> Were they successful? Maybe not in WhatsApp but in some other group?</comment>


Millennials overtake baby boomers; minority babies outnumber white – Census - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/269830-millenials-baby-boomers-population/

<comment><USER2> I have to remind myself that RT News is FOX News of Russia so I checked the stat and it is indeed accurate but it was stated in 2012.

From Bloomberg:

"...The percentage of nonwhite newborns rose to 50.4 percent of children younger than a year old from April 2010 to July 2011, while non-Hispanic whites fell to 49.6 percent, the U.S. Census Bureau said today. ..."

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-17/non- white-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-17/non-white-u-s- births-become-the-majority-for-first-time)

Possibly race bating since this was raison d'être of the AME shooting?</comment>


Vegetarian robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science-technology/technology-monitor/displayStory.cfm?story_id=16095401

<comment><USER2> Somehow this doesn't feel right, unless scavengers and carnivores can feed off it. It's like a hole or block in the food-chain.</comment>


FirefoxOS GSM factory unlocked Fx0 for ~$60 - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UULNTHK?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=od_aui_detailpages00 <comment><USER2> Not sure how I feel about Amazon referral links being on the front page of HN.

<comment><USER3> Amazon adds its own tracking info depending on how you clicked into their site. There's no referral details included. If you prefer the pure link:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UULNTHK](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UULNTHK)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like there was a silver lining to Mozilla refocusing on IoT :D</comment>


Ask YC: Trying to find interns/casual workers in the USA. Any suggestions? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I'd recommend you post more about what you are looking for at the moment. HN can be a great place in itself to find someone.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is a casual worker?

<comment><USER4> "Hey, can you work today?" - "Nah, I'm going out, how about next Monday?"</comment></comment>


Lifetimes of cryptographic hash functions - <AUTHOR> http://valerieaurora.org/hash.html <comment><USER2> This has been discussed before, about 9 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6123720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6123720)

And this page was largely written in 2007, although it's been updated a few times since.

I'll also note that Val's "Compare by hash considered harmful" is not a conclusion which is widely shared. One can also worry about two people randomly (assuming quality random number generators) choosing the same RSA public key. Or we can worry about all of the oxygen molecules in the room simultaneously randomly deciding to concentrate into a corner of the room such that you die of asphyxiation. Sure, these things are _possible_; but whether you should therefore say that "life on earth is clearly broken because we are only probablistically correct and not provably correct" might be considered by some to be a somewhat insane conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't miss the table at the bottom: "Reactions to stages in the life cycle of cryptographic hash functions". Reach each row. Be entertained.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised SHA2 is labelled as "weakened" since there's no real reason to believe so.

<comment><USER5> I agree. There was some concern around 2005-2009 about whether the attacks which broke earlier hashes could be extended to SHA256, but at this point it looks like those fears aren't coming to pass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A very naive question by a non crypto expert: where is scrypt and bcrypt? is that because they are simply iterating another hash function or something? this is why I don't see PBKDF?

<comment><USER7> They are different things. I think the proper term for scrypt, bcrypt, etc. is a key derivation function. They take a password, add a salt, and produce a key that can be used for authentication.

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

The hash functions in the OP are cryptographic hash functions.

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

The 'cryptographic' part of the name means that it is hard to find two files that produce a collision (hash to the same value).

I believe that key derivation functions will include cryptographic hash functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please notice Valerie, she is absolutely brilliant.

[http://valerieaurora.org/](http://valerieaurora.org/)

This is my personal favorite: [http://valerieaurora.org/tcpip.html](http://valerieaurora.org/tcpip.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> What about Whirlpool?

<comment><USER10> There are lots and lots of hash functions lacking widespread adoption or standardization. I don't remember the exact timeframe, but djb once told me he came up with CubeHash in some number of days.

<comment><USER9> Whirlpool though is standardized (as ISO/IEC 10118-3) and it is one of the three available hash functions (along with SHA-512 and RIPEMD-160) for use in TrueCrypt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The "Breakout" chart would be awesome if the color/stage change cell linked to the relevant result. Does anyone know o a resource like this?

</comment><comment><USER12> According to the chart, RIPEMD-160 is deprecated. Does anyone know of a citation?</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone here work at Twitter? - <AUTHOR> I'm with a profitable social media startup and we're trying to understand the Twitter platform better. If you work at Twitter I would love to connect with you and of course compensate you for your time! We're willing to pay a few thousand just to get some questions answered over the phone :)<p>First come first serve, please email brianshred [at] fastmail.com <comment><USER2> smooooth

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol, I edited the post so it reads less fishy and mysterious. We're just looking for someone to explain things like rate limits and rules to abide by so accounts don't get locked. Twitters official support is pretty bad.

<comment><USER3> Tweepy API documentation might have some info on the topic too.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Combine hacking and skiing in SiliconChalet - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconchalet.eu/

<comment><USER2> Love this idea!

I would love to be able to spend a few seasons in the Alps skiing from first lift till lunch then hacking in the afternoon. In fact i think that is in my life plan somewhere....

The only danger is you get spoilt by the nice days and decide not to ski when the conditions aren't perfect.

<comment><USER3> I'm a front end developer, and is just finishing my first season snowboarding in the alps (Val Thorens, France). My employee in Oslo gave me a leave of absence for 5 months (shameless plug; thanks Making Waves!), and let me work ~1 day a week (some weeks more, some weeks less). I gotta say, it's been a great experience.

Living with 4 other strangers in a 28 square metres apartment in a foreign country without knowing the language (french) sounded intimidating, but now I don't regret it for a second. My room mates turned out to be great, and (most) frenchies actually speak english up here!

Getting good internet connection up here isn't always easy, so I've mostly been working from different restaurants and pubs with wifi, or used the (shitty, overpriced) shared wifi. Guess I could have tried harder to get an internet connection to my flat, but its been fun having a "office" at different places.

You will get spoilt by the nice days, but hey, the body needs rest :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Not Ready.  Now what? - <AUTHOR>

To make a very long story as short as I can, we were targeting November 'launch an app' month to get Plum out the door, but it looks like if we really really push for that, we'll be pushing out some crap.
What we have is great.  Awe-inspiring.  The tech behind Plum is amazing.  But, it's still another few days off, at least, and we're boostrapping it on nights and weekends.
What would you do, if you were about to potentially miss a deadline?  Ship anyway?  Ship in a very limited beta?  Just let the deadline slip quietly and release as soon as we're comfortable?  Something else? <comment><USER2> Don't ship something that's not ready. If you have a subset of the product that makes sense to release, release it, but most likely releasing a subset that's not designed to be used standalone will leave you with a product that has some glaring holes and inconsistencies.

If it's going to have bugs, frustrate customers, or worse yet, lose their data, sit tight and polish it until it's ready. If people are waiting for it, send them a clear update saying that you know that they are waiting, that you are working on the final updates, and that you expect it to be ready at such and such date. Your customers will appreciate the transparency, and won't mind waiting a bit longer if it means they get a product that's a joy to use.

This doesn't apply if the customers are waiting for a beta release - in that case, go ahead and release, just make sure to remind them that the product is in beta, and therefore bugs are to be expected.

</comment><comment><USER3> So what you have is already "great," "awe-inspiring," and "amazing" yet if you ship it now instead of a few days from now it will somehow be "crap?"

I doubt that what you have is crap. I also doubt that what you have inspires awe. You're putting too much pressure on this "launch." It's just the first of hopefully many public or semi-public iterations. No one is going to care anywhere near as much as you do about this. Just get it out there, consider it a success if you pick up a few early adopters, and iterate.

<comment><AUTHOR> The tech is awesome. A lot of what the user can't see is just plain sweet. This is mostly leveraging a lot of other people's elegant tools (CeleryQ, RabbitMQ, Mongo, etc.)

The front end is missing a lot of obvious pieces which have placeholders. It looks like Franken-App (or Franke-App's monster, if you prefer).

You're 100% right, to be sure. Nobody else will care the way that we do, but I know that I personally find it hard to revisit something later if it's really bad at first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm in the same position you are in... except was hoping to get word out and invites out at an event on the 1st. Just going to have to bite the bullet and let it slip. The tech is good but still has bugs. Not every hole has been plugged. Forgetting that code hasn't been optimized and speed is suffering, I just don't feel comfortable releasing a private beta yet. Next BIG launch target is in January and I'll open up an extremely limited private alpha/guinea pig site in the meantime.

I'm of the opinion that it doesn't mater how many (or how few) features you have, or even if what you have works, but what is paramount is that the UX is perfect. Not a single thing can be wrong with what you release. Anything that is will just scare away potential customers and give yoyu a rep for building crap.

<comment><AUTHOR> I put up a landing page, which probably hasn't generated any buzz, but has allowed me to capture a very healthy amount of emails.

I don't necessarily share your 'perfect or nothing' mindset for launch, but there are a lot of features that we're looking to throw out for launch, and can safely push back to a later date.

Most of what I'm calling 'crap' is just incomplete though, and some of these things can be pulled together quickly... others, not so much.

Good luck on yours as well. I look forward to seeing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm in the same boat, ish. My problem is that I haven't put as much effort into my november project as I'd like. On the plus side I've learned loads:

Why being a single founder is hard (2 people means you both have to be demotivated in order to fail, which is twice as unlikely as just one person)

Why audience is more important than product (I've still not written a line of code, but I'm getting relevant traffic to my "product"'s homepage through some blog posts. I see a half-popular website as more valuable than a half-written app)

That these things are _hard_ to keep focused on. I've not worked on my project for about a week and a half and that's put a huge dent in my deadline-hitting ability.

And a load of other stuff which I'll probably blog about this week.

</comment><comment><USER6> As long as you have one core feature ready, I think you should launch it! I really doubt anybody else care that much about the product other than yourself. Launch it! If it is good, feedback will start coming in.

</comment><comment><USER7> a half baked cake is not delicious. might as well finished it fully before shipping it..

</comment><comment><USER8> take the middle road. Jumping to launch a broken product isn't good, but waiting for perfecting isn't either. If it is workable, you hit a minimum feature set or anything, launch!

Also, do you get a prize for launching in Nov?

<3</comment>


The Army Is Developing a Mobile Arm Exoskeleton for Firearm Aim Stabilization - <AUTHOR> http://www.thelatestnews.com/the-army-is-developing-a-mobile-arm-exoskeleton-for-firearm-aim-stabilization/

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, the 'stable spoon' developed by Lift Labs (now part of Google X) for folks with Parkinson's and essential tremor was inspired by work on this same problem.

Source: [http://engineering.berkeley.edu/2014/04/control-design- lift-...](http://engineering.berkeley.edu/2014/04/control-design-lift-labs)</comment>