Rent prices rose 12% in 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/rent-prices-rose-12-last-year-report-says-2011-01-07

<comment><USER2> This is very surprising to me. When the home sales market drops, more people rent out their old home instead of selling it at a loss, hoping that the prices will rise soon. This causes the rent prices to drop. This is what I saw a few months ago when I considered renting out my house. Perhaps I need to check the prices again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rising rents mean that the gap between rents and mortgage payments is narrowing. That will tend to slow the decline of home prices.

</comment><comment> space-monkey "Rents hit a national average of $1,319 by December, up from $1,181 in January 2010, according to HotPads.com. The figures were calculated from a sample of one million active rental prices on the website."

Someone generated a statistic based on an arbitrary data source and posted it on the internet. It must be true!

<comment><USER4> The stats were aggregated from every rental listed on hotpads during 2010. At any given time there are half a million rentals listed, some of which have multiple vacancies (large buildings), thus the million prices.

original: <http://hotpads.com/pages/housing-report-2011-01.htm></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the most effective growth hack you used to promote your app? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I don't know if it was most effective because it was the only thing I tried and it worked beautifully. Earlier this year there was Cricket World Cup and most of the world cup schedules I checked were in the form of a long table, nothing interactive. It was a pain to find matches happening on particular day/team/venue in one glance.

So me and another friend set out to create a schedule viewer that will give us match info within 1~2 secs and wrote a simple but interactive schedule viewer[1] with AngularJS over a weekend. We posted it to r/cricket subreddit but didn't get more than couple hundred views. I also tried tweeting other former cricketers,cricket writers but my tweet got buried in no time because these people had fans ranging from 100k to 2mil.

Then I noticed espencricinfo.com website had a twitter section that listed tweets from all these prominent cricket figures in real-time as they were tweeted.

So during the match when everybody was watching and tweeting, I started tweeting these folks link to our interactive dashboard. This increased chance of them seeing my tweet and we got RTs from a lot of them this way. Of course for that our dashboard had to be the best out there and it was (it worked on mobile browser too).

With just few tweet to celebrity cricketers/sports writers we went from hundreds to over 30k page view and 7k recurring viewers over the course of world cup. The key I think was to get noticed when they were most active and also have a nice app/content to convince them to RT.

[1] [http://www.itinora.com/worldcup2015](http://www.itinora.com/worldcup2015)

<comment><USER3> Quite amazing that was overlooked in CMS the first place.

Kudos for pushing it during the match.

I've also seen that in the middle of an event people often get social, especially if it is a bit slower moving (cricket game to military parade) and sociability is a major part of being there in the first place. To talk cricket.

<comment><USER2> "in the middle of an event people often get social" absolutely. This was the case. A lot of them were tweeting about how the matches were progressing, predicting, analyzing match situations and having good old banter with the opposing team fans :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At Startup School NY, Chase Adam talked about winning a contest with Watsi by paying bar bouncers to not let people in if they didn't vote for them first.

This could probably be abstracted to app promotion.</comment>


A Reloadable Visa Debit Card That You Fund With BTC - <AUTHOR> https://coincashcard.com

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have any questions feel free to ask!</comment>


Quiet - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/24/quiet/ <comment><USER2> Meditate as much as you can. Being in the present moment lets you notice your thought patterns and impulses that you act on and puts you back in control. Art of letting go. You don't loose anything if you are not on a Facebook for a week. You don't loose anything by leaving your phone home for a day. Water still flows and birds still sing. When was the last time you saw the sun setting or felt the wind in your face, mind empty, being the sun and wind? When was the last time you really tasted your food? I am speaking to you! Just relax for a while, world will continue spinning without you thinking about it. We all are just a drops of water falling from the heron's beak.

<comment><USER3> The main problem with, and reason why I don't leave my phone at home, is fear of missing an emergency call.

<comment><USER4> A few months ago I bought a Nokia 105. It was $25 on Amazon.

It makes phone calls and text messages. The battery lasts almost a month. My wife can call me in an emergency. I wired up a few work outage alerts with IFTTT. That's about it.

The best part about it is that it leaves me alone. When I turn my smartphone back on, it's incredible to see the barrage of worthless notifications that would have distracted me throughout the day. I no longer check my phone aimlessly because there's nothing to do.

I wrote about it here: [https://medium.com/@LastZactionHero/quitting-the- smartphone-...](https://medium.com/@LastZactionHero/quitting-the-smartphone- or-a-review-of-the-nokia-105-292d9f1aba1b)

<comment><USER5> I agree with this suggestion. I have not regretted having both a smart phone a dumb phone I can use when I want to untether but also still be contactable in emergencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting to compare this to the wave of nostalgia for our agrarian past that hit during the 1930s and 40s, leading to novels like Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, and The Grapes of Wrath. The past that the author yearns for was the future of those writers.

That nostalgia didn't stop the clock from moving forward or life from getting ever more hectic and complicated. But there seems to be something deep inside our psyches that yearns for "the village": a place where the rules are known, the people can be trusted, and time can be spent rather than hoarded.

<comment><USER7> I think we have a tendency to see our past, and our childhood, in more positive light than it actually was. We tend to remember the good moments while easily forget the troubles. That explains why we find these nostalgic write-ups so relatable. What is bombardment of content is also assortment of people's experiences to learn from. The service that make you lazy also help you avoid chores to focus on other things.

Thinking retrospectively, I think I more happy today than I was in the past. The Internet noise that we deplore has helped me immensely to discover what I like doing. Sure, it's stressful at times, but given a choice between then and now, I think my choice would always be the latter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article brought on more sadness than I thought it would. As I have grown older and remember times like the one the author described I miss the quiet and peace of an unconnected world. It is a pity that younger generations will never know the this feeling unless it is forced. The freedom of being quiet is sadly lost to the past.

<comment><USER9> I think that in the future there may be a distinct division between people who have control of their own attention and connectedness and those who don't. I already see a division between some people I work with - noses buried in their phones all day, and those who tune it out and get real, deep thinking work done.

<comment><USER10> I have a sneaking suspicion that in the not-too-distant future there will be a very significant cultural backlash against all of this noise, all of this hyper-connectedness.

<comment><USER11> Could you elaborate on your thinking here?

My prediction would be gradually the hyper connectedness becomes the norm while the last generations who remember "quiet" die. Of course there would likely always be small fractions of the population who look to the past and practice mindfulness, almost like how people re-enact the civil war battles. But I would guess largely highly saturated connectedness becomes who we are, in spite of a vocal minority who long for a different way of living.

<comment><USER12> Can't speak for the OP, but on my part, it's less thinking, and more a feeling. The unthinking and uncritical wonder is gone. We're looking at all things technological with a more and more critical eye. More and more people are publicly speaking out about the idea that social media and hyperconnectivity are actively harming us.

It feels different than most old ideas that I've seen die before. Yes, of course there's always an inevitable "good old times" moment, but this one... There's something lurking behind it. It's not just nostalgia, it has the roots of a fight seeded in it.

We'll see. Maybe I'm now just old enough that this time, it feels different. But it does not feel like what happened to VHS, or the CD, or land lines, or any number of things that we've declared outdated in the last few decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A truly masterfully written article that makes us yearn for the days now past when everything, both inside and outside of ourselves, was much quieter.

The amount of noise today is unprecedented. I am reminded of the movie _Her_ in which one sees a world where technology can move into the background and augment human relationships. Granted, there are moments in that film when the tech hurts instead of hinders, but compare that to today's world where everything has the "in your face" mentality.

<comment><USER14> If you want to read a really scary prescient fiction book in this vein, check out Feed by M.T. Anderson.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_(Anderson_novel)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_\(Anderson_novel\))

Just chilling.

<comment><USER15> I highly recommend this book to anyone because it creates a framework for understanding the world from someone who is addicted to social media. It takes the current state of affairs to their conclusions in a rather well made way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I loved this piece. It took me back to a day when I was about eight or so and my friends were all playing 'bases' in this local wooded area with a ravine. Some of us would hide for what felt like ages in hopes of catching a clean route to 'free our prisoners' from the other team's base.

About twelve years ago or so I was living in this condo that had really noisy neighbors. One screaming baby on the left, and an enthusiastic Pantera fan on the right. The folks on the right, when not listening to Pantera, were constantly yelling right near the wall... or so it felt.

This was the first time I really discovered the joy of earplugs. A year or so later I got my first pair of industrial ear protection. They cut out about 20 - 30db (or something like that), and it was just enough to allow myself to be alone in an otherwise busy space.

Years later I still value regular periods of silence. These days I still have a pair of industrial ear protection, but I mostly use decent earplugs [1].

Another aspect of seeking silence is to completely (or almost completely) eliminate notifications.

For those of us with ADHD, meditation is fantastic, but it does take time. The love for silence didn't happen right away. It took me quite a while to be able to shut my mind up.

In the early 00s I went through these psychoneurophysiology sessions to help learn to focus, in hopes of eliminating the negative aspects of ADHD. One part of the 'training' was to have sensors on my ears and one on my head. While I tried to focus, the machine would measure my brainwaves... anyway, once I hit 'the zone', the cute hot air balloon would float up and over the silo. Tapping into this 'zone' really helped me break away from the constant chatter of my surroundings and my brain.

Like some, I do love the romance that comes with a lo-fi world. Silence, space, and peace are special. In the same, I really appreciate some aspects of the technology we've been blessed with. it all comes down to finding your off switch so these things can become special again.

[1] the earplugs I'm using - [https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00RM6Q9XW](https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00RM6Q9XW)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is fine, but I tire of the obscure titles and needlessly leading writing styles. I often spend the first few paragraphs desperate for an abstract or any hint as to what I'm reading. Only in the end for it to be more exposition than idea. Click bait by another name.

My kingdom for an abstract.

<comment><USER18> I often see this from writers trying to mimic much better ones. If they had the skill to pull off this writing style, you probably wouldn't be complaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A very nice read.

I found it ironic that the corner of the last paragraph was obscured by an "Up Next" pop-open, ready to push me on to the next thing before I'd even had a moment to digest it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ah, nostalgia. Its amazing how one can simultaneously forget the downsides, while amplifying the upsides. (Not to take away from the authors fond memories of course)

I was just thinking recently about how great it was to be in high school. Few responsibilities, spent lots of time with friends, homework and work were easy. Of course, then I remember I couldnt live alone, had little money, homework and work seemed hard because I had nothing to compare it to, drama at school, etc. And try meeting up with flaky teenagers without a cell phone :P

Of course, if you find yourself feeling stressed out by the connectedness, by all means take a break. You don't need to check email or be on slack all day. But at the same time, don't get too stressed out thinking we've lost something without gaining anything. You have the option to turn your phone off, you haven't lost anything. But it is now easier than ever to keep in touch, geography is even less relevant.

Obligatory xkcd: "It is, unfortunately, one of the chief characteristics of modern business to always be in a hurry. In olden times it was different. - The Medical Record, 1884"

[https://xkcd.com/1227/](https://xkcd.com/1227/)

<comment><USER21> That xkcd affirms that our sense of time and attention, and of quality and quantity, has been messed up like this since the Industrial Revolution. I can't safely presume what Randall's point is, but if it's to show that this is a foolish thing men have been saying without cause since time immemorial, he needs to go back further. Show me someone from 1600 complaining about the fast pace of life and I might buy it. But showing quotes about industrialization, that were written after industrialization, doesn't exactly blow my mind.

<comment><USER22> [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/social- netw...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/social-networking- in-the-1600s.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) (about quantity over quality, but not about speed, I think, but too good a quote to skip; from 1677):

 _"Why doth solid and serious learning decline, and few or none follow it now in the University?" he asked. "Answer: Because of Coffea Houses, where they spend all their time."_

There's also [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4306016/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4306016/), which doesn't go further back then 1860. It doesn't mention complaints about the printing press (too much too read; won't learn from copying books) or from the ancient Greeks, so it corroborates the theory that this started with automation (although I can imagine seeing the first complaints when artificial lighting of almost any form was introduced. Maybe even, people did complain when the bow and arrow sped up hunting)

<comment><USER21> "Yea even this now where those who use the Bowe compleat the Hunt with undue Haiste..."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any hackers on the Central Coast (CA) - <AUTHOR>

Are there any hacker meet ups on the Central Coast between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara? <comment><USER2> It's not a HN meetup group but there is the SB Hackerspace: <http://sbhackerspace.posterous.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this I will definitely get a hold of these guys and see what kind of stuff their up to.

Do you attend any of these meetings?

<comment><USER2> I have. Their meetings are on Saturdays and I usually have plans on Saturdays

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, same here, I would be driving down from Santa Maria and my Saturdays are pretty busy.

Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is it right to jail someone for being offensive on Facebook or Twitter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jun/13/jail-someone-for-being-offensive-twitter-facebook <comment><USER2> What about situations in which someone deliberately tries to cause misery to those suffering a loss? A prime example would be a family losing a child and someone just deliberately mocking and teasing them over it. What can you do? How can you prevent this? How should society act and take a stance about this? Obviously the "But free speech!"-camp doesn't even try to solve the problem at an individual level. What other options are there, apart from punishment of the perpetrator?

<comment> k-mcgrady Harassment. If you are directing the negative comments at someone in particular I think you would be charged with harassing that person.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, or at least in the US we have laws to deal with harassment, although they'll vary from state to state.

However the "directing" part is as I understand it critical. I.e. saying something in isolation, that won't through some mechanism come to the attention of the targeted party, doesn't qualify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady If you post something offensive and direct it at someone I'd say it's harassment and you could be taken to court.

Just saying something offensive though, undirected, should not be an offence. Or at least it should be a new category of offences not deserving of jail time.

I seriously doubt it the people who got jailed for certain tweets walked up to a policeman in the street and made the same comment they would get the same punishment.

<comment><USER4> > I seriously doubt it the people who got jailed for certain tweets walked up > to a policeman in the street and made the same comment they would get the > same punishment.

That's true, but there's a difference between being offensive to the government and being offensive to people. The government is supposed to be able to take that kind of punishment (which is, after all, why these related rights are enshrined in the very first Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights).

So I'd caution about focusing attention on offensive speech only on how it applies when that speech is directed against government and its agents, or society as a whole, since the possible kinds of damage would be different if directed against individuals.

<comment> k-mcgrady I agree, I should have made my point clearer. I suppose a better analogy would be the person shouting the tweet in a public place where a police officer was present to witness it. They aren't directing the offensive comment at anyone. In that situation I doubt an arrest would be made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Harassment laws should be enforced on twitter as much as anywhere else.

"Generally, criminal harassment entails intentionally targeting someone else with behavior that is meant to alarm, annoy, torment or terrorize them. Not all petty annoyances constitute harassment. Instead, most state laws require that the behavior cause a credible threat to the person's safety or their family's safety. - See more at: [http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal- charges/harassment.html...](http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal- charges/harassment.html#sthash.pMyFFct5.dpuf")

"I'm going to rape/kill/etc you" should probably end up with you in front of a prosecutor in many states.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well... Is it right to jail someone due to bullying? what if it's only verbal bullying? What if the bullying caused the victim to hurt him or herself? What if you threaten to kill somebody?

I don't know. I want to answer "no" to the title's question, but it seems more nuanced than that. I think the distinction of a targeted comment vs a "general" one is an important one to make.

I'm curious on what the law is for similar actions outside of social media..

</comment><comment><USER7> in a dictatorship, perhaps so.

</comment><comment><USER8> A really easy one: no.

</comment><comment><USER9> No. Next question?</comment>


Key Words for Use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119 <comment><USER2> It's recursive</comment>


The FDA Announces Two More Antacid Recalls Due to Cancer Risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/the-fda-announces-two-more-antacid-recalls-due-to-cancer-risk/ <comment><USER2> This whole thing seems overblown. The conditions required to induce NDMA accumulation are so far outside the normal bounds as to be farcical. Every drug I've ever seen advises you to keep it in a controlled temperature environment.

<comment><USER3> I can see people keeping some Zantac in their car and that gets quite hot (140+) in the summer.

I don't think the penalty for not storing your medicine quite right should be ingesting a carcinogen.

<comment><USER4> It was 130C / 260F that is considerably higher than the inside of a car.

Still, this suggests that ranitidine may not be stable and its breakdown products may be risky. If mixing it with nitrite produces NDMA under condition found in the stomach that is another risk case. I wonder if there is any breakdown over time just sitting on the shelf?

<comment><USER3> Oh I didn't notice that. Then I agree this is silly. No you should not heat your Zantac to 266 F haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you add nitrite to ranitidine and heat it to 140 the levels of NDMA produced become carcinogenic. The person who made the discovery has a business built around consumer fear about contaminated pharmaceuticals.

<comment><USER6> > Valisure also conducted tests with simulated gastric fluid (at body > temperature, 37 degrees Celsius) and added sodium nitrite, simulating a diet > with high levels of the common preservative found in processed meats, and > found high levels of NDMA

<comment><USER7> See page 7: [https://www.valisure.com/wp-content/uploads/Valisure- Ranitid...](https://www.valisure.com/wp-content/uploads/Valisure-Ranitidine- FDA-Citizen-Petition-v4.12.pdf)

They did _NOT_ simulate a normal diet with common levels of sodium nitrate. At 10 mM there is no NDMA found. Sodium nitrate concentrations for meat are much lower than 10 mM. The FDA puts a strict upper limit of sodium nitrate concentrations in meat at 100mg/kg, so around a concentration of .015mM (!)

I don't need to do any further math to tell you no one is eating that much cured meat in a single sitting (it's simply not possible).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Traveling in South Korea and went to pharmacy to get rantidine but it was told it was no longer available bc, thought I heard "it is now used for cancer" which seemed weird but guess it was language issue and it was "it can cause cancer".

</comment><comment><USER9> IANAD, but antacids are the wrong approach to solving digestive dysfunction. IME, pancreatin and ox bile have eliminated the vast majority of my digestive issues.

It's debatable how effective antacids are anyway; for example, if you have an H. Pylori infection, antibiotics would be way more effective.

<comment><USER10> I think physicians already understand the difference between H. Pylori-induced reflux and general GERD and have some experience on which treatments to recommend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wired has started doing something strange.

This URL doesn't load in my version of Firefox (old and heavily tweaked, I admit). And it crashes Midori.

But this works fine:

$ w3m -dump [https://www.wired.com/story/the-fda-announces-two-more- antac...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-fda-announces-two-more-antacid- recalls-due-to-cancer-risk/)

Edit: OK, it works in my Firefox if I hit escape as soon as the page has loaded. So maybe there's some non-content module that loads more slowly, and triggers the problem. It could be a "turn off ad blocker" popup. Given that I block popups.

<comment><USER12> I'm constantly amazed by comments like this one posted by highly technical people who manage to become unable to view a simple website by making the endeavor vastly over-complicated.

Meanwhile, Grandma can read the article just fine when she double clicks on the blue e.

<comment><USER13> I'd like to find out more about what kind of setup Grandma has, in that case. I'm sitting here on an unmodified Safari installation, and the top of the window is obscured by a giant floating banner ad, while the bottom is obscured by a "subscribe" banner, which is _itself_ obscured by an oversized cookie notice. All of which leaves less than 80px of height to read the actual article content. Given the nice large font size, that means I can see three lines of text at any given moment. I didn't have the same issue that GP did, but it's definitely true that Wired has been adopting some awful web development practices for a while now.

(Side note: My kids' grandma is a retired software developer. So I guess maybe it's just that the average grandma is more sophisticated than we are?)

<comment><USER11> Huh. So maybe my problem _is_ some mix of blocking ads and popups.

<comment><USER14> I've noticed certain sites, like government websites (my local healthcare.gov site), banking sites, insurance sites, only work if you disable tracking protection entirely in safari/firefox, and one of them (I think the healthcare site) only worked in chrome with no ad blocker.

Folks, this is not a good sign.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it's an arms race.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Molecule – Streaming, zero-allocation protobuf decoding in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/richardartoul/molecule <comment><USER2> I've come across a fair share of zero-alloc implementations of various things, like u/poitrus' zerolog [0] and u/jorangreef's cuckoo-hashtable [1], for instance.

Given that JavaScript runs on restrictive clients, it must have libraries in spades for this kind of a thing, but I couldn't find many. I'm really interested in techniques that are generally employed in languages like Java, Golang, Rust, C/++ that are worth translating over to JavaScript, especially now that TypedArrays are a reality. I'm pretty sure there's more to zero-alloc than just _Buffers_ , _Object pools_ , and _Recyclables_ , but I can't seem to find good resources to get started with this.

[0] [https://github.com/rs/zerolog](https://github.com/rs/zerolog)

[1] [https://github.com/ronomon/hash- table/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/ronomon/hash- table/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><USER3> Giving different views and projections on underlying memory is really the key tactic to processing data without allocations. A slice (ie a view onto an array) is a pointer to underlying memory (or another slice), along with the length (+ capacity in Go, but that's not often needed). Underneath the bytes don't move. You simply pass around the views (or views of views) of what you want your code to actually see.

Don't know about Rust, but Go has slices built into the language, and C++ has it in the standard library. Learning idiomatic slice-handling makes working with data sans allocation much, much easier.

<comment><USER4> > Don't know about Rust, but Go has slices built into the language, and C++ > has it in the standard library.

Rust also is very big into slices as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can beat the pants off this, even though it beats the standard proto library. Most of the time here is being spent calling out-of-line functions through Go's stack calling convention because the Go compiler hates inlining. For example, DecodeTagAndWireType is CALLing DecodeVarint, even though that's really where you want it to have been inlined.

If your use case is really simple, and you want the fastest possible proto decoding, you can hand-roll it pretty easy.

      message point { fixed32 x = 1; fixed32 y = 2; }

Then your code is structured such as

      var x uint32
      var y uint32
      for len(buf) > 0 {
        switch buf[0] {
        case (1<<3) & 5: // Field 1, type fixed32
          x=binary.LittleEndian.Uint32(buf[1:])
          buf = buf[5:]
        case (2<<3) & 5: // Field 2, type fixed32
          y=binary.LittleEndian.Uint32(buf[1:])
          buf = buf[5:]
        default:
          // Freak out somehow
      }

Improve the exception hardness of this code to the extent that it suits your use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah thats a good point. The use-case I wrote this for involved decoding a protobuf message that has only 3 fields, but where the total size is several MiB. For my workload this optimization is meaningless, the most important thing is to avoid allocating huge slices, but for lots of small protobufs like the one you defined a hand-rolled solution will definitely be faster.

Do you think I could just manually inline the decoding code as much as possible in the molecule library, or does it need a different API?

Also if you open a P.R I'll merge it :)

<comment><USER5> Heh OK, see my other post for the simplest possible improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks great to reuse protobuf definitions in a high performance situation. I would be curious how the performance of this compares to flatbuffers given a reader or byte slice as the use cases seem similar.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're using Go and need to optimize to get rid of allocations. Why are you using go?

<comment><USER8> Realistically if you're able to serve 10k requests/s and you want to get to 20k and you have the option of:

a) rewriting in C++

b) pooling some objects

Which one is the right call?

<comment><USER9> Both</comment></comment></comment>


IcoMoon - Custom Built and Crisp Icon Fonts - <AUTHOR> http://icomoon.io

<comment><USER2> @lemieux Thanks for posting this. I found about it via my live google analytics. It went crazy! [https://dl.dropbox.com/u/38300086/img/live- analytics-screens...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/38300086/img/live-analytics- screenshot.png)

@ncarroll Thanks for the suggestions. I updated the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem! Your app is awesome and deserves this kind of exposure!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks nice! I have two comments on your homepage copy: 1) "Various Different Formats" is redundant. That which varies is different by definition. You could choose one or the other - or an even more descriptive/specific word and be better off. "Files in three formats" or maybe better: "Three formats: svg, png, csh" as that tells me exactly what you are offering. 2.) "Starting at $1.6/month" honestly confused me for a moment and I heard my inner-smartalec wondering 1.6 million? billion?. While I know what you mean, I imagine that it is in your interest not to awaken your visitor's inner-smartalec if you can get out of it. He's a terrible critic and you're looking for (paying) supporters. In my opinion using the more expected 1.60/month" would be better.

In any case I've bookmarked your site for exploration and I wish you the very best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> From your developer friendly license:

 _Including a large portion of the icons in your product could potentially harm IcoMoon's sales. An additional permission must be granted for such use cases._

When I buy a license to use fonts or graphics, I expect that I'll be permitted to use all of the assets licensed to me. I suppose there is room for licenses that grant me permission to use up to a specified number of assets, but if that is your intention I really do think you should be specific about it. That statement makes me worry that I'm going to trip some arbitrary, invisible limit and get dinged for it after I've already shipped. It also makes me think that it won't be enforced unilaterally, and that factors other than purely "number of assets included" will be considered for enforcement.

<comment><USER2> I agree, I'll specify the number. Do you think 400 would be good/enough? My only intention is to make it fair for both sides. I doubt any project would need more than 400 icons. Unless its purpose is to distribute icons!

<comment><USER4> I suppose it depends on how complex a model you're willing to support. There might be some pricing opportunities available to you here, where a sliding scale can accomodate projects of various size. Of course, I could be overthinking the whole thing too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just awesome. Crisp icon set with a great app for creating custom builds. Even the downloaded builds are very intuitive to use.

One of the best product experiences I had in a while.

</comment><comment><USER6> Icomoon is awesome. I've been using it with the current product design cycle I'm in, and the ability to build a custom font subset and _persist the settings in my Git repo so I can track how the font has changed over time_ is wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm confused. Is this like FontAwesome but with ability to cherry pick the icons? How come the free package contains 1500+ icons while the paid one only has 925+?

<comment><USER2> Well, as its creator, I would say it's much better than FontAwesome in many different ways. But yea you can choose the icons you need, instead of loading one font with all the icons that you may never need.

If you look at the library tab (<http://icomoon.io/app/#library>) you'll see the free icon sets. There are also two premium sets available right now. These are different sets.

<comment><USER8> Could you elaborate on why yours is much better? I'm willing to make the switch... However how is your method any better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lots of iconic material this weekend---enough to make me start thinking about how to use them in my apps. Particularly with the addition of color! Might have to give it a go just to test things out. Currently I use Unicode as though it were a series of icons (chess pieces in particular) and this might be a better go at it. No dependency on anything I don't bring to the party!! :)

\--hsm

</comment><comment><USER10> Thank you for putting a big thing about accessibility on the page. That's a nice touch!

I always feel a bit stupid when I see these kind of fonts used, because I can never quite match the icon to the desired action.

(?) and (i) are confusing until I've used them the first time.

</comment><comment><USER11> @Keyamoon you know what would be very awesome? a checkbox that automatically add @2x .png version for iOS! so when you download your icons in let say 16x16, it also create a 32x32 version with @2x in the filename. (i.e cog.png 16x16 and email@example.com 32x32)

<comment><USER2> Hmm, the "images" button can do this. It can generate CSS sprites too. With any color or size you decide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really like the app -- just tried it out on a project and was able to very easily create a custom icon and use it at multiple sizes via the app.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is IcoMoon based on <http://fontello.com/> by any chance?

<comment><USER2> It's actually the other way around: <http://icomoon.io/#about>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks! This is awesome stuff. I'm definitely going to use these icon fonts in my iOS apps. :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> Where or when can we find the source code for this amazing app?</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use a silent coworking space? - <AUTHOR> I live in San Francisco. Back when I was studying on my own/unemployed etc, it was impossible to find a place in downtown to study that had quiet. The only place is the SF Public Library but it's full of poop and crazy people. I just wanted a quiet place to study that isn't my house, that's downtown and feels like a work space, not my own house.
I've been thinking starting a quiet coworking space as a business idea.
I would charge $2 an hour, much like Workshop Cafe SF.
Would you use it? Why or why not? <comment><USER2> What you a describing is basically a private university's library, and hell yes. Though I retain access to my university's library, I don't live in that city anymore, and I have been unable to find anything like it.

Huge rooms. Reasonably nice interior decor. Fast wifi, reasonable printing, comfortable chairs at long tables with lots of outlets, rooms scattered throughout that can be reserved in half hour increments for collaborative work, expectation of silence in the main reading rooms.

I have often wished that companies wanting open plan offices would adopt this model (really all that's missing from most of them is silence).

<comment><AUTHOR> Universities have the luxury of collecting huge tuition, tax money, and endowments to support these facilities.

Being one person with minimal investment, I doubt I'll be able to start out at that level..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am not from your region but for me is also important have quiet environment for thinking. I hate open-office and crowded workplace. So I would prefer some like this: [http://assets.inhabitat.com/files/2010/04/pod1.jpg](http://assets.inhabitat.com/files/2010/04/pod1.jpg)

Personally....i definitely would use your service. $2/h is reasonable price.

</comment><comment><USER4> If I were a freelancer or starting my own business then yes. I'd probably want a decent desk / monitor setup. Quite ergonomic, and some kind of visual privacy too. I'd pay more for that though than $2/hr.

</comment><comment><USER5> I liked a co-working space SociLabo in Sendai, Japan that was like what you are describing. Most people quietly worked on their laptop or studied. Super cheap 100 Yen a day. Just a room with few chairs and tables and 50Mbps Wireless Internet. Looks exactly like cover photo on its Facebook page.

[https://www.facebook.com/socilabo/](https://www.facebook.com/socilabo/) [http://socilabo.com](http://socilabo.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a big fan of [http://Deskpass.com](http://Deskpass.com) in Chicago. It's access to tons of coworking spaces and has really affordable monthly pricing. For me, I got desk pass because I like a combo of different days between vibrant and quiet. As far as pricing, I would probably be more comfortable with monthly pricing vs hourly.

Just a .02 from a guy who works remotely and has different preferences at times.

</comment><comment><USER7> Working on a similar idea that uses underused spaces throughout cities. Starting with yoga/meditation classes abd letting space be bookable as well. Check out pre- launch site at 2b-infinite.com and drop me a line at email@example.com... Would love to talk some things I have been finding out related to your idea..

</comment><comment><USER8> I've used spaces with monthly rates, but I like the idea of hourly, since I'm not in SF most days. In this case, I'd recommend an online scheduling and payment system to avoid showing up with no vacancies. Let me know if you start your business. I'll definitely use it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes. I need quiet. And I slack off too much when I wfh. I however live in NYC.

</comment><comment><USER10> There Are places like this in NYC for writers.

Paragraphny.com

Writersroom.org

They have a specific focus, which is what makes it so nice.

I think having one for Devs could be interesting, and I would pay more than $2/hr for the privilege.

</comment><comment><USER11> Personally, probably not. I live really close to UCB, so I'd just go there if I were interested in silence. I do, however, see some merit in the idea.

<comment><USER2> I seem to recall being turned away from the gate at UCB's main library. Did you go to school there, or how do you get in?</comment></comment>


Using Gmail auto-complete emails on your friends is just wrong, sorry - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-12-20/google-smart-compose-gmail-is-it-bad/10628260 <comment> cbm-vic-20 > , sorry

I forgive you.</comment>


Jaguar recalls 18,000 cars over major software fault - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/applications/3312860/jaguar-recalls-18000-cars-over-cruise-control-software-fault/

<comment><USER2> It's frightening how cars' software is bloating up. I would've thought that a product that very easily kills people if things go wrong would have been under more scrutiny.

<comment><USER3> This is nothing. I work for an aircraft maintenance software company. Last week I fixed a bug where the system would silently delete a maintenance task if you clicked the X button on a confirmation dialog instead of "no". This had not been fixed for three years.

<comment><USER4> Wow, I thought programs for critical systems went through stringent testing. Was this bug not fixed earlier because they figured that the probability of it being responsible for a fatal error was low ?

<comment><USER3> The actual on-board software of an aircraft is definitely given a lot of attention as far as testing is concerned, but unfortunately more indirect systems, such as maintenance tracking software, is treated pretty much the same as any other piece of software; which puts it down to the company that made it to judge how much testing they perform.

In my company, the management puts a higher priority on putting all available hands on rolling out new functionality than fixing bugs, in order to try and win new contracts from potential customers. Or at least that's their excuse, in my opinion there is no such thing as a low priority bug, no matter what industry you're in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Automotive producers in general have pretty high standard of the source code creation and maintenance. However - the set of guidelines that govern the code - MISRA (Motor Industry Software Reliability Association), while better than nothing, are pretty poor. Most of MISRA rules look like they were designed to be easily checked by automated tools - not to check for real defects. That situation may have been acceptable 15 years ago, but modern static and dynamic analysis tools are capable of much more than that.

</comment><comment><USER6> My car wouldn't drive without software telling it what to do. I find it very disturbing that I can't it. I think life-critical software should be open source by law ..

<comment><USER7> Though nothing would delight me more than to be able to hack my cars open- source firmware, I can't see that happening by a long shot.

Security-by-obscurity is still a - supposedly - valid claim nowadays.

<comment><USER8> Even with open source, I'd be doubtful (and concerned) were that an option. There's no reason you can't have open source code (available for public scrutiny/liability purposes), but require that on-road, cars require a particular signed variant. Sort of the anti-GPL3.

Some sort of public bugtracker/remote update mechanism (again, given suitably authenticated binaries) would also be nice.

Actually, it occurs to me from watching far too much Top-Gear, that a fair number of high-end cars have a "Sport" button that does all sorts of things to your ECU, brakes/suspension/steering controls, and (afaik) is strictly speaking only legal for off-public-road/private racetrack usage. Having something similar (and with a log of entry/exit times into each mode for use in crash investigation)[1] might make it possible to experiment.

Still strikes me as pretty scary though.

[1] And a flashing bright yellow tail-light. To make sure everyone else knows it as well :)

<comment><USER9> The Nissan GT-R (in Japan at least) knows from the GPS where you are and only lets you engage sports mode at registered race tracks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, I guess that's one aspect of software systems that doesn't come to my mind right away. With the increase in the amount of microprocessors in each car and as the code behind all that processing becomes more intelligent, I wonder if these complexities will make cases like this more prevalent.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure it's so much the quantity of controllers/code, but the quantity and quality of the interfaces between them.

If I were writing something like this, there'd be a very clear demarcation of "safety critical throttle/brakes/steering stuff" | "blinky lights and radio"

I suspect that it starts out that way when the engineers are arguing about the liability issues of going full-throttle at random, but then it becomes standard, everyone gets a bit blasé, and before you know it the assistant vice-chairhorse of marketing is talking about how cool it'd be if your radio gets louder as you speed up.

Even then, I'd be arguing in favour of something like a data diode[1]. I can't think of any non-critical system that should have input to the cruise control[2]

[1] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Unidirectiona...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Unidirectional_network)

[2] Of course, if it did, I'd claim it was by definition now a critical system. :)

<comment><USER11> > If I were writing something like this, there'd be a very clear demarcation > of "safety critical throttle/brakes/steering stuff" | "blinky lights and > radio"

As an ex-blinky-lights-and-radio tech, I can assure you that they are clearly separated.

Admittedly, my experience is limited to BMWs, but there's enough shared knowledge across the industry about the Right Way to do this stuff that I'd be surprised if Jaguar had made that mistake.

<comment><USER12> I have heard that there are separate buses for these things, but how does information propagate between them? For example, if my ABS fails, how does it pop up into the service menu on iDrive?

<comment><USER11> The instrument pack in the dashboard is connected to both buses. It needs real-time data from the drive systems to display speed and so on, so it's used as a hub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In next five years could we see cars updating their system software over WiFI?

<comment><USER14> BMW already does this (others too I guess, I don't know), although not over WiFi, but over a GPRS connection. You pay a yearly fee for data costs, it also transmits data on car health back to your dealer so that they know when to call you to make an appointment for maintenance.

<comment><USER12> I recently had a problem with the turbocharger unit in my car. The local techs couldn't figure it out so they just patched in a remote engineer in Germany. I was impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stupid question time. Why couldn't the driver put the car into neutral and coast to a safe halt to restart the system?

(Obviously though it's an issue that needs fixing!)

<comment><USER14> Much of the shifting is done in software also; for example on my car I can't go from 'drive' to 'reverse' if I'm driving too fast, and I'm not sure if moving the shift stick into neutral has any mechanical effects or if that too is just a signal to the controller who then (electronically) drives the gear box. Which makes sense I guess from the point of preventing damage, but it does cause the software to become a single point of failure.</comment></comment>


Confessions of a Watch Geek - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/confessions-of-a-watch-geek <comment><USER3> _If you want a watch that looks like a Russian oligarch just curled up around your wrist and died, you might be interested in the latest model of Rolex's Sky-Dweller._

Beautifully written.

<comment><USER4> Very smooth writing, like a luxury watch.

I can't believe I've now opened a few tabs of watch manufacturers, looking at their goodies. Haven't worn a watch in years, but curious to see if any designs take my fancy.

I'm not a fan of classic, I'd prefer something sci-fi, dark, modern, hi-tech, unexpectedly cool with a comically over-the-top product video... [https://youtu.be/R5aj53a1wQE](https://youtu.be/R5aj53a1wQE)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link, I think it's a step in the right direction. I've stopped wearing Pebble Steel because it's too ugly, though the functionality is perfect: you can see what's happening with your phone to decide whether you want to take it out of the bag to respond to a call or a message.

What would be perfect, is a classic timepiece design with really high-contrast and high-resolution display as a watch face, which would display something only in case of incoming notification. I.e. a smart watch should have a mode where it looks totally "dumb" and classy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Watches have become a bit like horses or combustion cars might become in a few years -- items that have lost most of their practical value attached to industries that need to focus on higher and higher prices in order to inflate their veblen good status.

I enjoy watches, especially mechanical ones, and a bit of the marketing and story behind them, but even as a upper income individual, I find their prices to be completely unabsorbable.

Rolexes and Omegas start at 8000 and their second hand market has become just as artificially inflated. An Audemars steel watch starts at 13k! These are impractical prices for all but the very wealthy and betray the working class value that their origin stories rely on.

But what I find really fascinating is the Chinese replica market, which now can make nearly identical watches at almost 1/100 the cost. Does the fact that you can own a completely identical Rolex for just 500 dollars not call into question the swiss market veblen good strategy?

I predict a significant crash in sales forcing some of the brands out of business and maybe inspiring a few to make a real middle class watch. But it's a powerful lesson that China can now manufacture even the most "hallowed" quality to practically the same degree.

<comment><USER6> For better or worse the cost of skilled human labor, particularly someone trained as a watchmaker, is damned expensive. Supply and demand.

Can you get a similar, and perhaps even better constructed (machines are, after all, more precise than humans) watch from China? Sure. Is it the same watch? No.

These watches are luxury items - a status symbol. They are the Rolls Royce of watches: built by hand, damned expensive, and worth every penny to those who buy them.

Of course, if you prefer the watch from China, then more power to you. I prefer my Dodge car over a Rolls Royce as well; I don't need or want a symbol, just a good car.

<comment><USER7> > Can you get a similar, and perhaps even better constructed (machines are, > after all, more precise than humans) watch from China? Sure. Is it the same > watch? No.

As far as I can tell, the manual labor is roughly the same in both cases. Chinese mechanical movements are not assembled entirely by machines--in fact, in many cases the machining may be quite similar. (Many of the popular Seagull calibers are basically clones of ETA or Miyota designs, and I would guess use the same manufacturing process.)

The main price difference is (obviously) some combination of a) quality control and tolerances (do you ship a marginal unit or do you throw it out?), b) conditions from the factory (do you adjust the movement to n positions before shipping it, or just ship it?), and c) brand, as you note.

(a) and (b) have real economic costs. How much of a watch's cost comes down to those versus (c) is hard to say.

I have an unbranded Rolex "homage" from China with a Seagull clone of an ETA 2824. The case is a bit rough around the edges--quite noticeably if you look-- and the timekeeping is (from the factory) about +6s/day. (I don't have a timegrapher, so I can't tell you the positional variation.)

So, definitely not a Rolex. But for about 3% the price I'm not complaining. ;)

Edit: To add to this point, I am reminded of the similarity between ETA's different grades of movements (which are sold at different price points depending on precision/adjustment/quality) and the practice of computer chip makers to do similar (i.e. to sell CPUs at a lower clockspeed if they don't pass QC at the higher speed).

This isn't _exactly_ what ETA does; some of the grades use different material for the hairsprings. But Standard and Elabore are apparently the same material just adjusted to different tolerances, which sounds awfully similar.

<comment><USER8> Are there any Chinese brands that aren't replicas? Just selling their own designs I mean for a cheaper hand crafted watch?

<comment><USER7> Yes, certainly!

I was highly tempted by the Seagull "1963", which is a replica of a model made for the Chinese air force in 1963 (powered by a Seagull ST19 movement, supposedly a clone of a Swiss Venus column-wheel chrono movement!).

But there are quite a number of other Seagull and similar around--some made for the Chinese domestic market, and a (seemingly increasing) number made for export inspired by various classic designs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not a watch geek, but I do love them.

The thing I love the most is they are quite unique in the sense they can be passed through the generations and become more than an object.

The watch my grandfather gave to me before he passed away is, and will always be one of my most prized material possessions, which I also hope to pass down to my children one day too.

It's why a fitbit, apple watch or the like will never do for me.

<comment><USER10> I still remember getting my first paycheck after graduating and buying a Breitling 15 years ago because I liked the logo. And got a cheaper Rolex when I started my first company.

We were watching a TV show where someone gets a Patek as a gift and told my significant other that's a really expensive watch. She had no idea. Then I went onto explain how cool different mechanical watches are because you can hear the different movements tick. She didn't think so.

I wore a fitbit for the last week.

<comment><USER11> This was a sad story :(

<comment><USER9> This is a sad story! Don't give up on the dream! Enjoy it because you enjoy it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > receipt for $4,137.25 [...] by my own standards I had just thrown away a > small chunk, roughly 4.3 writing days, of my independence

Wow, this person earns a lot by writing o.O

<comment><USER13> No kidding. That's a few months (or more) worth of wages for a typical journalist, especially in more competitive industries.

The author seems to be a novelist though, so perhaps that money comes from the royalties on their books or something.

<comment><USER7> 0_o

Gary Shteyngart is a quite famous novelist. So, yes. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The reddit/r/watches community is pretty active with a wide range of watches (automatic and fashion). Good resources to find quality watches and avoid marketing hype.

I admit, I love the smooth movement of the second hand on an automatic watch. My sister-in-law got me my first automatic and I thought it was broken....until I put it on.

They are tiny feats of precision engineering, even the cheap ones. I'm partial to a Seiko Men's SNK807 Seiko 5.

<comment><USER15> Agreed on Reddit as a good resource for watches. For opportunities to purchase, I'd recommend /r/watchexchange ... I've spent way more money there than I'd like to admit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love watches in the same way I love classic British sports cars.

I love the designs and the decisions behind them, the stories of the designers and manufacturers, reading about how to dismantle and maintain them. If someone has an interesting one I am asking them all about it, appreciating it as a mechanical object and as an aesthetic piece. I would never ever own one - there's too many things in pieces in my house and garage already.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice article! I really enjoyed the smooth writing style of the author. He really made me engage with the story. To be honest, I also love watches but I find myself not using it when I wear it, making it practically useless. It might be because I'm always working with my laptop and thus I can watch the time at the screen.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love that Nomos was featured heavily. I don't own one yet, but they are for sure my favorite manufacturer.

<comment> gingerbread-man You might like Habring2 as well. The founder invented a novel mechanism now used in split-second chronographs. Their watches are mechanically amazing, and (relatively) cheap, because they focus more on mechanical refinement than aesthetic perfection of the internals.

<comment><USER19> Habring2 are likable, but not what I'd call 'relatively' cheap, as none of their models are less than $4000 USD. For people who are interested in modestly-priced mechanical watches, I would suggest Seiko, especially some of their models intended for the Japanese Domestic Market, many of which are less than $500 USD. They have very good quality throughout, though the aesthetics vary (I like some of their divers quite a bit).

<comment> gingerbread-man I agree 100% on Seiko. (For what it's worth, I wear a quartz seiko my parents gave me as a high school graduation gift.) Habring2's "relative" affordability is relative to other manufacturers of similar mechanical note, like Lange or Patek.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Excellent article. I've always loved watches, but not as much as tech. I've got several beautiful watches, and one of them I'll wear at my wedding probably. Every other day of my life it's currently the Garmin Vivoactiv HR.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm a big fan of mechanical watches, but I think the market nowadays is too much about limited editions and unnecessary flamboyance. How many different "limited" Omegan Moon Watches are there, for example?

<comment><USER22> The mid-to-high-end watch market (in the $1K-50K range) is going through a _major_ crisis right now.

For past several years they've been aggressively raising prices due to steady Chinese demand, which now has been all but extinguished by a combination of several factors. So the watchmakers are now is a pickle of situation - <USER2> are massively over-priced, their "normal" customers are well aware of that, but they can't lower prices without damaging their "lux" image and upsetting those who bought at a current price level. Some try and introduce cheapened models (like steel Pateks), but it doesn't seem to be working well for them. Fun times.

[http://wornandwound.com/bloomberg-reports-swiss-watch- export...](http://wornandwound.com/bloomberg-reports-swiss-watch-exports- poised-worst-year-since-1984/)

<comment><USER21> Interesting. It seems that the luxury image is more a burden than an advantage to many manufacturers. But the brand ownership is concentrated and the owners might not care about those kind of difficulties.

I'm more of a fan of utilitarian watches anyways. Sinn for example makes very affordable tool watches that are also technologically on par with many luxury brands.

<comment><USER23> You say Sinn, I say Damasko :)

[http://www.damasko-watches.com/](http://www.damasko-watches.com/)

Very impressive line-up of in-house technologies for watches that retail for a couple of grand or less.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, Damasko is another good example. Their metallurgy tech is really impressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I collect, and repair watches. I usually like stories about watches, and the people who cherish them, but not today. I'm just in a weird mood? This popped out, and made me cringe:

"Mechanical watches are far less accurate than quartz watches, but often far more expensive, because their bearings are more intricate. All contemporary Rolex watches, for example, are mechanical."

1\. They are not more expensive because of the synthetic rubies that are called jewels. They are more expensive because of the name, and marketing.

2\. I've noticed a lot of guys under 35 just arn't into mechanical watches. I do get it. And women--just arn't into watches at all. I don't know why, but sometimes I think it's because we die so early.

3\. As it stands now, a guy could go out and spend 10 grand on a watch. The second it goes out of warranty, and needs a service, or a part; it has to go back to the factory, and is repaired at factory prices. Prices like $800 for a mainspring, and service.

4\. See the watch comapnies decided to not sell parts to Watch Repair people(like myself), or even a customer.

5\. It's like buying a vechicle, and when it breaks down; you need to take it to the dealership.

6\. They claim it's for quality assurance, but it's a money grab. In my American eyes it violates The Sherman Anti-trust Act. Yes--a federal lawyer/Investigator agreed, but didn't feel it wasn't worth doing much about. She said someting like, 'It's a wealthy person's problem, and not on my todo list." All the while, those politicians are wearing Rolexes?

7\. The bigger watch houses have consolidated. Swatch owns many of the high end watches you see out there. Rolex is separate. I believe Rolex even own the company that provides the oil to those fancy watches. It's called Moebius oil. And they want it used on all their watches.

8\. If you get into watches that's fine. It can be addicting. Would I ever buy a new watch I could not work on, nor buy parts for--hell no!

9\. If the Watch Industry reads this, your customer base has changed. Lower your prices, and enough to with the games. Customers are tired of the maximum 20% discount you require your boutiques to stick to. They are tired of being told a grey market watch bought at Costco is not really a Rolex, and you won't even honor the warranty. They are not the uninformed Dongle heads of the past. Don't insult their intelligence--they are all carring around a smart phone that tells the time.

10\. My parting words are this. I still love my old watches. I hope more young people get into the industry and Shake things up. There something very gratifying about resurrecting an old watch found on eBay. I went from collecting to repairing, and there's definetly a shift of attitude when you know what's under the hood. My everyday watch is a watch I found in a thrift store. Years ago, the lady behind the counrt said the old Timex is $2.00. I took it home and it set on my desk for 5 years. One night I noticed a little fish on the crown. I thought, why would Times brand the crown? I opened it up, and it was a IWC 853. All the markings on the dial were gone. I served it, and wear it proudly. People think it's a cheap watch, and I don't care. I can wear it to the worst parts of the city, and never worry about theft. I look at that chalky dial, and it just makes me feel good. Knowing how to repair it feels better. Sorry about the lenght of this post--depressed, or something?

<comment><USER25> Speaking as a long-term collector of mechanicals, I dunno how true a lot of this is for the broad market.

First, an ENORMOUS chunk of the middle-high end are watches with ETA (or other well-understood mass market) movements in them, and not just models from the Swatch Group[1]. Any reasonable-sized city has a watchmaker who can repair one of those. Sure, if you bought a super-fancy watch festooned with complications for tens of thousands of dollars, you probably need to go to a dealer who may ship it back to Switzerland, but that's the exception.

Second, even the in-house movements used by some makes (Rolex especially) are well-understood by non-dealer/non-manufacturer watchmakers. The mainspring on my 1977 Rolex broke a couple years ago; a local fellow I trust replaced it for $200, and that included a thorough cleaning.

[1]: The Swatch Group owns ETA, who make movements, but also LOTS of watch brands you know, like Omega, Breguet, Blancpain, Longines, Hamilton, Tissot, and others. My "Bond" Seamaster has an ETA movement in it, for example.

The tl;dr is that for most watches, you don't really need "factory" parts for repair.</comment></comment>


Show HN: JavaScript typed arrays data structures for memory intensive tasks - <AUTHOR> http://chethiya.github.io/lds.html

<comment><USER2> Could also be useful for passing messages across web workers, typed arrays can be passed between boundaries without cloning.

</comment><comment><USER3> FYI, "Structures" and "intensive" are misspelled in the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a vendor-agnostic self-hosted cloud provider? - <AUTHOR> Is it yet possible to create a single "self-hosted" personal cloud platform?
It should be capable of:
1. migrating between vendors like AWS and GCP, or using multiple vendors at the same time 2. provisioning compute and storage for basic web app needs 3. running its main services on the same infrastructure, not relying on an external SaaS <comment><USER2> Multi-cluster kubernetes federation could be the answer (where a "cluster" could be as tiny as a k3s instance running on your Raspberry Pi).

However could mean you need one vendor to provide the control-plane software for your vendor-agnostic solution.

Nobody has nailed it yet though, AFAIK, but both Rancher and Gloo Federation look promising.

Related reading:

[https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kubefed](https://github.com/kubernetes- sigs/kubefed)

[https://rancher.com/products/rancher/multi-cluster- managemen...](https://rancher.com/products/rancher/multi-cluster-management/)

[https://www.solo.io/blog/introducing-gloo-federation-for- mul...](https://www.solo.io/blog/introducing-gloo-federation-for-multi- cluster-management/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out widemesh.com. It does a lot of what you described.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do you want to do this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to make it easy for myself to deploy small projects and not think about infrastructure.</comment></comment>


CSS Positioning 101 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mwmnj/CSS-Positioning-101

<comment><USER2> Like it! Maybe some more explenation against what absolute elements position and how to change that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Needs to say how 'position:relative' affects 'position:absolute' on child elements.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps negative margins should be mentioned?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is great. Very nice resource.</comment>


Selectize.js - feature-rich select box library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brianreavis/selectize.js

<comment><USER2> Awesome library. For sure going to use this.</comment>


Eugene Mirman 2009 LHS Commencement Speech - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZlQd2Eg-9w

<comment><USER2> That was great! But imagine hearing some of the sad truths _before_ starting high school. Not so funny anymore, is it?</comment>


Wall St. bling soon to hurt VC profits? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2168650/nav/tap3/ <comment><AUTHOR> The 2nd-to-last paragraph is what caught my attention ... _if_ the legislation discussed passed, and _if_ it were extended to other private partnerships, that seems like it would eat into the mgmt. fees of most VCs.

And that would seem likely to reduce the number of VC firms, at least. (Less profit = less motivation to enter the business.) It's very speculative, but interesting.</comment>


How to spot a psychopath - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/spot-psychopath/ <comment><USER3> I'm a diagnosed borderline-psychopath. (Some non-complex emotions, in contexts where strong emotions would be expected).

The article does get caught up in it's continual comparisons to killers.

But for those with no criminal history? I'd still call it a disorder.

I find it exceptionally difficult to interact with the average person on a daily basis. Well, more tiring than overly difficult.

I'm not normally interested in how your day is, so why should I ask?

Fantastic, you had a child. I've accepted that, no need to keep talking, I'm sure you're proud. I feel something akin to pride in my own daughter as she learns to clap and walk. But I don't know why you'd care to listen to me saying that.

To be part of society though, I've developed rules, and they help me fit in. Smiling, laughing, being quiet and sympathetic.

Unfortunately, I also need to regulate some heavy self-control.

I should attempt to convince someone of the right choice. They're a human being, they deserve their independence.

But it's so much simpler to manipulate them into doing what I want.

It can short-circuit days of discussion with clients.

But, the system of rules I made myself don't allow it. I had to include morality in these rules, because if I have worth, then others must, from a rational view.

I'm not free of morality - but it does require active effort to abide by it.

<comment><USER4> It's funny, I agree 100% on being totally uninterested in those topics (i.e. small talk), yet I think I'm on the other side of the spectrum -- an empath.

I don't care about your child or your day, but if something's bothering you, I'll most probably notice it and.. empathise with it.

<comment><USER3> I wish I could be you. Life would be much simpler.

I can't empathise, I can only sympathise.

It becomes a bit obvious and somewhat awkward when trying to reassure friends and family.

I can usually tell what's bothering a person before they can, but it's difficult to "cheer up" someone (without ignoring their right to feel) when you can only vaguely understand the pressures of their emotion.

Though I guess you might not always enjoy being able to feel what others can.

<comment><USER4> (edit: not sure who downvoted you)

Life's complicated whatever's the emotional spectrum.. Being an "empath" helps making friends, putting people at ease and being a good listener. Although being aloof doesn't help at all :)

I think I might've known a couple people I could bet they're borderline psycho/sociopath, but they definitely didn't seem to understand other people, and they just steamrolled through them and life, lying, manipulating, without ever noticing. So seems to me you're quite functioning compared to them.

After all, being unable to totally and completely understand other people is part of the human experience.

<comment><USER3> It's always good to hear about others, and the way we all seem to move through life haphazardly, and create this wonderful thing called society. Maybe even make it better, with all our variations.

> So seems to me you're quite functioning compared to them.

Good to hear it. I was lucky, diagnosed at a young age, and people around me to help teach me how to fit in, and the patience to keep trying.

\---

Always nice to hear stories from another perspective.

> After all, being unable to totally and completely understand other people is > part of the human experience.

I couldn't agree more.

> (edit: not sure who downvoted you)

Shrug. This kinda stuff tends to be sensitive to people. Internet points aren't important enough to get in the way of a good conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" If someone's brain lacks the moral niceties the rest of us take for granted, they obviously can't do anything about that, any more than a colour- blind person can start seeing colour."_

That might be "obvious", but isn't necessarily true.

Many people these days believe that the brain is the mind, or the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain, and that psychology and brain function are intimately connected, or even the very same thing. On this view, to the extent anyone has free will and is able to change anything about themselves, they are changing their brain.

One method of change that would be interesting to explore is seeing what effect "empathogenic" drugs like MDMA (or perhaps other psychedelics) have on so-called psychopaths. It might just be possible that they are in fact capable of feeling empathy, but those feelings aren't consciously acknowledged or easily accessible to them -- but some powerful psychoactive substances like MDMA or psychedelics might be able to grant them access to their subconscious and to learn to be aware of emotions they've either been unaware of before or have denied.

Of course, such attempts should be tried only under the supervision of an experienced therapist trained in psychedelic therapy.

<comment><USER6> In case anyone else is wondering, this isn't generally available as an option. Yet.

MAPS has a goal of 2021 for prescription.

>MAPS is undertaking a roughly $25 million plan to make MDMA into a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved prescription medicine by 2021.

[http://www.maps.org/research/mdma](http://www.maps.org/research/mdma)

<comment><USER5> It might not be legal or sanctioned by the mainstream psychological community yet, but it's definitely an option (if you can track down a therapist willing to do it).

Psychedelic therapy has been practiced virtually since psychedelics started to be widely used in the mid-20th century. In the 1950's and 60's, LSD and other psychedelics were used therapeutically. In the 1980's, efore MDMA became known as a party drug, it was used therapeutically. Indigenous people have traditionally used psychedlics in a sacramental context in which goals and results could arguably be seen as therapeutic.

When these drugs were made illegal, the above-ground therapy stopped, but some therapists dared to continue their work despite great risk to themselves. To give just one example, a book called *"The Secret Chief Revealed"[1] chronicles the work of one such underground psychedlic therapist, Leo Zeff, who led hundreds of therapy sessions with MDMA.

Today the practice of psychedelic therapy continues, and there are even university programs that teach it. It's still mostly underground, but is starting to rise aboveground and becoming a real option as research in to psychedelic therapy gets positive results and positive media coverage, as more doctors and patients become aware of it, and as the so-called Psychedlic Renaissance grows.

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Chief-Revealed-Myron- Stolaroff...](https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Chief-Revealed-Myron- Stolaroff/dp/0966001966/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always find these articles interesting, especially the idea that most psychopaths aren't particularly dangerous. If we look at mental illnesses as a whole, I feel like untreated depression and bipolar disorder are FAR more costly for American society.

Also, I think it's somewhat dreadful that the tech industry seems to elevate/celebrate psychopathic traits such as ignoring rules, impulsiveness, and lack of empathy. I'm pretty sure that are people with psychopathic tendencies at the top of the ladder of some of the giants.

<comment><USER8> > If we look at mental illnesses as a whole, I feel like untreated depression > and bipolar disorder are FAR more costly for American society.

Yes, of course, reportedly psychopath % is 4% of society, but the number of serial killers is a mere fraction of that 4%. Psychopaths or not, the number of serial killers is also very small compared to the number of depressed Americans, or obese Americans for that matter. What matters is: 'can a person function in society?' If no, that's a loss for that individual as well as for society. The victims of the serial killers are just [often] innocent to the victim which clouds our judgement on severity. Compare terrorism victims with traffic accident victims.

> it's somewhat dreadful that the tech industry seems to elevate/celebrate > psychopathic traits such as ignoring rules, impulsiveness, and lack of > empathy.

3/3 match with antisocial personality disorder. Quoting Wikipedia:

"Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), also known as sociopathy, is a personality disorder characterized by a long term pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others. An impoverished moral sense or conscience is often apparent, as well as a history of crime, legal problems, or impulsive and aggressive behavior." [1]

It also doesn't help Hare mixes up sociopathy and psychopathy in his works.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Article is a book plug.

I recommend The Psychopath Code by the late Pieter Hintjens [1]. It is frighteningly analytical & accurate with many analogies, examples and references to work with. Bonus points for using security terminology (he refers to the psychopath as Mallory). The book is freely available as PDF, and a physical copy can be bought as well. Changes can be suggested at gitbook [2], though the author (a long-term member of the open source community) passed away oct 2016.

Although anecdotal I also enjoy reading posts from self-proclaimed psychopath "Athena Walker" on Quora on the subject.

[1] [http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths](http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths)

[2] [https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details](https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details)

<comment><USER9> The Psychopath Code is a fantastic reference for how to deal with toxic people, but Hintjens (as he readily admits) had no knowledge of modern psychology or psychological research and no training in that field aside from self-teaching and "in the wild" experience. His definitions for who a psychopath is and how they behave are thus completely out of sync with how the rest of the world identifies such persons. He does not distinguish, for instance, between different kinds of personality disorders - <USER2> Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, etc. - and psychopathy, even though they are quite distinct. It is not accurate to call the people Hintjens describes "psychopaths," but simply "toxic" or "pathological."

That doesn't mean the Code is not valuable - it is extremely useful. But it is not a good reference for learning about psychopathy in particular.

(Full disclosure: I personally had some brief communication with Pieter Hintjens a few months before his passing, where we discussed precisely this issue in the context of some family members of mine diagnosed by professionals with certain disorders, none of them psychopathy. While the conversation was fascinating, it ended when I suggested that it was valuable to ask not only "what does this person do that harms people?" but also "what motivates them to do this?"; a psychopath does not share motivations with a narcissist or someone with BPD, for instance, and it didn't seem he was willing to accept that distinction.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Psychopathic individuals do have boundries. Most want to avoid prison and have friends.

My mother was severely ill with schizophrenia and thought Nazi's lived in our attic and were going to kill us. They talked to her about how they were going to do so.

Living in this situation I find myself different then others. No desire to kill or go to prison though.

</comment><comment><USER11> Of course to make sure, you have to tie them up and throw them into a pond. If they float, they're a psychopath. If they drown, then they weren't.

</comment><comment><USER12> M</comment>


Problems with GPA and a Possible Solution - <AUTHOR> http://nbalblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/problems-with-gpa-and-possible-solution.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting. But GPA also acts as a comparator across schools - if I understood correctly, ranking students in a total ordering wouldn't be the same, right? E.g. the tenth person at one school could be much worse at stuff (by some arbitrary measure) than the fifteenth at another.</comment>


MD Anderson Cancer Research Abandons Collaboration with IBM Watson - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2017/02/19/md-anderson-benches-ibm-watson-in-setback-for-artificial-intelligence-in-medicine/#55c442383774 <comment><USER2> This doesn't at all surprise me. I used to work at Anderson in the Leukemia department, brought on to analyze their "big data." They wanted to know which cells were indicative of relapse but were only able to provide data on two patients who each received different treatments. Despite my best efforts, I could not convince the MDs who run the show to obtain more (and better) data to even begin to apply machine learning. They had this intrenched opinion that math was something that got sprinkled over your data and turned rubbish into Science papers. I wouldn't be surprised if IBM encountered the same problem.

Moreover, this whole story is in line with my sense of the institutional culture. There is a lot of me-too science that goes on there, repeating better work at more prestigious universities. I bet when my bosses heard the pitch from IBM, they thought "this is my chance to compete with Stanford." However, no thought was given to the data that would feed into this system as evidenced by the changes of scope and infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> As an MD, and therefore looking at that from the other side of the fence, I totally agree. Medical research as a field has become profoundly dishonest since the "publish or perish" principle has become the rule also applied to clinical hierarchical advancement.

People with no scientific education (and clinical medicine is definitely not science) should be forbidden to lead scientific projects!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >It seems "very strange" that the IT department was bypassed, and "very unusual" that payments were not based on measurable deliverables, says John Halamka, the chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston. He also notes that payments seem to have been made from donations that had not yet been received.

...

But inside the University of Texas, the project was apparently seen as one that missed deadlines and didn't deliver. The audit notes that the focus of the project was changed several times, first focusing on one type of leukemia, then another, then lung cancer. The initial plan was to test out the product out in pilots at two other hospitals. That never happened.

MD Anderson changed the software it uses for managing electronic medical records, switching to a system made by Epic Systems of Madison, Wis. It has blamed this new system for a $405 million drop in its net income. According to the audit report, the Watson product doesn't work with the new Epic System, and must be revamped in order to be re-tested. The information in the MD- Anderson/Watson product is also now out of date.

\---

1\. Requirements changes kill projects.

2\. Key stakeholders not being on board kill projects.

3\. Big system changes kill projects.

\---

IBM has issues for sure, but I wouldn't expect a favorable outcome for anyone given these headwinds.

Caveat, we don't know how many of these issues were exacerbated/caused by IBM.

</comment><comment><USER5> People in the AI community have spoken out against Watson because it's more marketing than tech. Some feared that it was setting machine learning / AI up on a pedestal that would give false hopes. It looks like those fears are now realized. I hope this doesn't further entrench naysayers against machine learning in medicine. Watson was a rules-based system from the get go and (to my knowledge) only recently started adding deep learning.

<comment><USER6> IBM bought Merge Healthcare for $1B, presumably to gain access to vast amounts of their imaging data. Would love to see some developments on the deep learning front from them, but sadly I doubt it'll ever break through the fog of marketing/PR BS that always seems to surround Watson.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> TL;DR: the oncology part of the Watson project appeared to be working fine. The integration with MD Anderson BSS/OSS systems was the killer, especially since MD Anderson changed horses mid stream.

Integration with Business Support Systems and Operational Support Systems is the part where the customers make their raw data available to Watson, and Watson provides analyses/diagnoses in return. This data will usually arrive in proprietary formats and need to be delivered in proprietary formats, meaning integration is a bespoke operation for each customer, and will need to be done from scratch if the customer changes BSS in the meantime.

<comment><USER8> Not being able to integrate with Epic well is, at this point in healthcare IT, a pretty big problem IBM will need to fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The disclosure comes at an uncomfortable moment for IBM. Tomorrow, the company's chief executive, Ginni Rometty, will make a presentation to a giant health information technology conference detailing the progress Watson has made in health care, and announcing the launch of new products for managing medical images and making sure hospitals deliver value for the money, as well as new partnerships with healthcare systems. The end of the MD Anderson collaboration looks bad."

About 18 months ago IBM acquired a massive amount of medical imaging. [http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/ibm- completes-1b-ac...](http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/ibm- completes-1b-acquisition-of-merge-healthcare)

MD Anderson is in a bit of controversy regarding how they order imaging (and other treatments) and insurance companies are deciding not to reimburse care at MDA. [http://blog.takecommandhealth.com/md-anderson-health- insuran...](http://blog.takecommandhealth.com/md-anderson-health-insurance/)

Perhaps this has not been a total research failure but a political move. Watson Healthcare may increase the efficiency of imagine analysis among competitors of MDA. Imaging is one of the biggest revenue generators for a hospital.

</comment><comment><USER10> Given that a mismanaged IT project was blamed for a 400+ million earnings drop, it's not a stretch to see other technology initiatives failing.

[http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/md-anderson- poi...](http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/md-anderson-points-to- epic-implementation-for-77-drop-in-adjusted-income.html)</comment>


404 Gender not found - <AUTHOR> http://ktewelde.co.uk/2016/06/05/gender-can%27t-be-found.html <comment><USER2> Yeah no. This whole gender thing is a parody of itself.

Government identification has gender/sex along with other bits of information as a means of verification--just as the tags we give our pets. Sparky was born dec 5, 2012 and is a male of the Labrador breed.

The vet finds this information helpful when diagnosing or treating a health issue.

Stop with these gender politics. You are a very vocal minority who has made mountains out of molehills, cry-bullied anyone who is not onboard with your worldview, and you see insult everywhere your views are not represented.

404 rationality not found.</comment>


Women make up only 13% of Wikipedia contributors - <AUTHOR> http://stuckk.net/post/177530403/why-so-few-women-contributing-to-wikipedia

<comment><USER2> That's hardly surprising. Actual people make up only 26% of Wikipedia editors, the rest are rabid deletionist AIs.

<comment><USER3> According to the WSJ article: [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/31/only-13-of- wikipedia-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/31/only-13-of-wikipedia- contributors-are-women-study-says/)

This was a survey, so this is 13% of people, not AIs.

<comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke>

<comment><USER3> Blah, sorry. Thats the result of not having enough caffeine.

I'll leave my comment though so people can laugh at me if they so desire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me, it would be more interesting to see what % of Wikipedia's _content_ was created by women since not everyone contributes equally.

According to this post, 50% of Wikipedia's edits are done by just 0.7% of users:

<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia>

<comment><USER3> I'd also be interested in hours spent. E.g. are women spending more time in order to create a better article (better written, more research, etc..)?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's gotta just be that weird social mores make men feel more comfortable than women spending time and participating actively on the internet...

</comment><comment><USER6> Yet another thing women are just too smart to get into.

</comment><comment><USER7> The two proposed causes ("men spend more time on the Internet"; "men are more aggressive") are plausible, but perhaps there are also fewer women who feel capable of editing the average Wikipedia page.

</comment><comment><USER8> How much do they make up of programmers?

<comment><USER9> Someone said there's more transsexual programmers than female ones.

<comment><USER10> I believe that was in someone's list of the top 100 programmers, not programmers in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> onreact-com That's a shame. Wikipedia has to take some steps to counteract the male dominance. The average "women don't do tech" excuse doesn't work here as women are often even better or more prolific writers.

<comment><USER11> In what way do you feel that it is Wikipedia's fault that women do not edit it as often as men? I don't think Wikipedia needs to take steps to counteract anything in this regard because it's not doing anything to hamper women from participating.

Also, the %'s don't really matter as long as the content is good. It's not like women are at a disadvantage because they don't have enough Wikipedia editors.

<comment> onreact-com Wow, I'm speechless. You sound like the archetypal defender of male dominance. It's actually time travel. 100 years ago men were saying using the same arguments about the right to vote for women..

Contributing to Wikipedia is a constant fight, that's why women don't participate. You contribute something and almost immediately your stuff gets deleted unless you engage in some tedious "discussion" why it shouldn't get deleted.

No wonder women don't contribute in such a hostile atmosphere.

Are you a regular Wikipedia contributor? Why do I ask? You sound like one. It's exactly this type of hostility I mean.

<comment><USER11> I wasn't confrontational, I just asked in what way you felt that Wikipedia was preventing women from contributing. I also pointed out that Wikipedia editors are not people of large influence and not having enough women editors is unlikely to have a societal impact. And now suddenly we're talking about male dominance, women's suffrage, and archetypes. That's a pretty big leap.

I'm actually a feminist. But people like you are just as problematic as misogynistic males. Let me just give you a brief list of things to think about.

* We don't need a 50/50 split of women and men in everything.

* Men and women are different and not inherently equal in every which way (this goes both directions).

* Making ridiculous claims and accusations just hurts the cause. Note how quick you were to accuse me.

* Picking your battles is important and Wikipedia editing is probably not an important battle.

I have a hard enough time arguing for women without irrational behavior making it harder. If my comment made you "speechless" you're probably going more harm to feminism than good. You're making it hard for the average person to take seriously.

And no, for the record I have never made an edit on Wikipedia.

<comment> onreact-com "I wasn't confrontational, I just asked in what way you felt that Wikipedia was preventing women from contributing."

No, you flatly denied there is a problem.

"I also pointed out that Wikipedia editors are not people of large influence and not having enough women editors is unlikely to have a societal impact."

Wikiepdia is the #1 educational resource right now for most people. When did you check your Google results the last time? No if this isn't societal impact what elese is?

"And now suddenly we're talking about male dominance, women's suffrage, and archetypes. That's a pretty big leap."

It's a small step for you but indeed it's a big issue for at least half of humanity.

"I'm actually a feminist."

LOL. How that? Let me know.

"* We don't need a 50/50 split of women and men in everything."

Who is we? We "men"?

"* Men and women are different and not inherently equal in every which way (this goes both directions)."

At least they should have the choice to determine themselves in what way they want to be equal.

"* Making ridiculous claims and accusations just hurts the cause. Note how quick you were to accuse me."

Now because I don't agree with you and you don't see a problem with women being marginal on Wikipedia my point is ridiculous? Well, you're a great feminist it seems.

"* Picking your battles is important and Wikipedia editing is probably not an important battle."

See above, tell me another single Website on the Web beside Google that has more impact than Wikipedia right now.

"And no, for the record I have never made an edit on Wikipedia."

So maybe you should try that to determine why it's actually a problem for women.

"...irrational behavior..."

Again, just because I'm disagreeing and you make me angry with your ignorance while pretending to be a feminist doesn't mean I'm irrational.

You said you're a feminist. Try reading this about self proclaimed male feminists:

""Feminist Men": Oxymorons, or Simply Morons?" [http://girlbomb.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/feminist_men_ox.htm...](http://girlbomb.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/feminist_men_ox.html)

<comment><USER11> I read the article you linked to. A choice quote:

 _As a matter of fact, it's caused me to realize that most of the men I've personally known who have made a huge hairy point of identifying as feminists have been either date rapists, mom fetishists, porn addicts, or bear daddies inflicting their frustrated pseudopaternal tendencies on women._

You sir, are quite simply a joke. I don't know what kind of bubble you live in, but it must be a lonely place. If you really are passionate about the rights of women I'd advise you to reeducate yourself about the important issues in feminism today and collect a set of sources that are educated and reasoned. Based on how you've presented yourself, I'd be willing to bet the hour I spent in the classroom last month teaching middle school girls math accomplished more for the advancement of women than everything you've done in your life time. I hope that's not true, but it probably is. _Sigh_. People like you are the true price we pay for our liberties.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>