YouTube restricts access to conservative radio host's videos - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/warning-this-article-is-educational-1476918851 <comment><USER2> This shouldn't be surprising to anyone envolved with social media. This type of thing has been going on for the last couple of years. The most recent high profile event was when Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos for bigoted comments which his followers posted. [1] But it is often the case that this type of thing occurs because of a flagging algorithm.

However, I would still defend Youtube's right as a company to act as it chooses. If people dislike Youtube's behaviour they can leave the platform, and if enough so choose Youtube will feel the free market forces acting just like any other company would.

This does highlight an overal issue I've noticed recently, namely, a growing tendency for people to not be capable of rational discussion. And if someone presents a differing viewpoint, many people and companies alike respond in an outraged and overblown PC manner.

To see something along these lines that is actually going on in Canada right now check out Jordan B Petersons videos on youtube. [2] I really could not believe what's happening to this very intelligent man is real until I saw it for myself.

Anyway, I wish people could just calm down with the emotional outbursts and have rational debate to come to conclusions about specific issues or even agreements to disagree.

1\. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/twitter-just- permanen...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/twitter-just-permanently- suspended-conservative-writer-milo?utm_term=.hsMagAK9v#.kyR2MmNLg)

2\. [https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos/videos)

<comment><USER3> > ... Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos for bigoted comments which his > followers posted.

This is an incredibly weird way of characterizing what happened.

Milo's account was permanently suspended after he made a series of racist, sexist comments targeting Leslie Jones (a black actress who had recently starred in _Ghostbusters_ ), and directed his followers to make similar comments. This was not a first offense, either; Milo's account had been suspended on multiple previous occasions for similar harassment campaigns.

<comment><USER4> > Milo's account was permanently suspended after he made a series of racist, > sexist comments targeting Leslie Jones

Show me one.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, it was she who incited violence.

Edit: downvotes yet this is patently true. She ordered her followers to "get him" in reference to Milo.

Edit 2: I was mistaken about the individual she directed her followers to "get", it was a user by the handle of @whitebecky1776.

Edit3: I stand by my claim of her incitement to violence.

<comment><USER2> Upvote for correcting yourself. I always respect people who can do this. Too few can and too many should.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I doubt anyone at Youtube is explicitly seeking out conservative views to censor. But they have created a system whereby flagging videos you disagree with is rewarded, and an effective way to ensure others don't see them. That won't end well.

<comment><USER7> YouTube is an advertising supported media outlet ope my seeking to become a megaTV channel. Marginalizing controversial content so that users who haven't affirmatively opted out of filtering don't encounter is not something that is likely to work out badly for them.

<comment><USER8> A free democracy has a natural way to handle the development of a culture of hate and censorship against a minority. The minority develops its own video sharing sites and its own advertising networks and its own publishing houses. Since we're talking about a free democracy, those new explicitly minority outlets cannot be censored.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Abolitionists, anarchists, communists, pornographers, homosexuals, and others have had to do what conservatives now have to do in the face of a majority culture that chooses to hate and censor them. They'll be fine, maybe even stronger for the experience.

And it has a cool Hacker News perspective. It's certainly good for the startups that will be serving the new market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I believe freedom of speech is sacrosanct, but in the end, if you own the means of delivery, it in the end can be construed as your speech.

So, The one who controls the press, also controls the speech - if you want absolute freedom, you need to build your own press.

I just wish the social media companies didnt keep trying to present themselves and neutral players in this - as if they were just a 'platform'.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is obviously just some people flagging it, I think a conversation about the algorithm might be interesting but this obviously isn't some purposeful censorship.

<comment><USER11> Appears to have started with 21 videos and then YT reexamined them and cleared 6 and kept 15 restricted so maybe more than just the algorithm.

<comment><USER10> That makes more sense. The article doesn't mention that at all and makes it sound just algorithmic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > But more than 15 videos are "restricted" on YouTube, a development PragerU > announced this month. This means the clips don't show up for those who have > turned on filtering—say, a parent shielding their children from explicit > videos.

They've just been classified as 'restricted'. Only parents of young children use this. This is completely fine.

<comment><USER13> No it's not fine, I've watched a few of those videos and there is nothing there that should be restricted for young children, there wasn't anything even that controversial just a different political view.

Since restricted videos can be managed as part of the G-Suite (can be either done via account or more commonly network level blocking) organizations such as workplaces and schools can and often do block them this isn't some parental control that is rarely used.

This type of restriction where YouTube is redirected to restrict.youtube.com ([https://support.google.com/a/answer/6214622](https://support.google.com/a/answer/6214622)) is actually fairly common in many places, and it can be done transparently so you don't even notice it.

So yeah this is not fine, and this is a big problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Big business and big politics will always have each others' backs. Otherwise they wouldn't have been allowed to get this big in the first place.

Follow the money!

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not so much disturbed by the "censoring" of Youtube as I am the inability for people to create suitable alternatives. (By "inability" I don't mean lack of skill or frameworks, mind you.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Algorithm justice is mob justice, plain and simple.

<comment><USER17> Is it really so simple? What is algorithm justice, really?

<comment><USER16> A form of justice concerned only with the aggregate, and ignorant to its own ignorance of anything beyond the scope of its immediate vision / data scrappers.</comment></comment></comment>


At Long Last, a Glimpse of a Black Hole - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/opinion/black-hole.html <comment><USER2> I _love_ getting to finally see honest-to-god real images of astronomical phenomenons like this. After so many artist renderings, there's something riveting about seeing the real thing, even a blurry picture. Very exciting.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://youtu.be/hMsNd1W_lmE](https://youtu.be/hMsNd1W_lmE)

YouTube video that generally summarizes what's of special interest about this.</comment>


Caching Antipatterns - <AUTHOR> https://www.hidefsoftware.co.uk/2016/12/25/the-caching-antipattern/ <comment><USER2> The key problem with caching, not alluded to in this article, isn't that it hides performance problems or is hard to invalidate or causes slow startups. It's that it entangles state in a global way.

Responses to a request are usually dependent on a wide variety of different internal states: properties of the user, cookies, state in one or more databases often across multiple tables, or state in multiple dependent services.

A cached value is a snapshot of a calculation over this internal state: but it needs to be invalidated when any of the states that it is composed from changes. What used to be a simple local calculation now becomes a global concern; anything that modifies any of the underlying states needs to be aware of the global state in the cache, and evict or invalidate cached items that were dependent on the underlying state.

No longer is local reasoning enough. You need to have a global understanding, possibly across multiple subsystems.

Caching worthy of the name - caching things that are complex to calculate in time or space - inflicts serious architectural harm on a software system. It impairs maintenance and understanding of the system, and will cause bugs when people who don't have sufficient global understanding make local changes.

It's not all bad. Caching static assets, or a small well-understood layer (like a disk cache), or designing calculations in such a way that dependencies have immutable mappings from identifiers to values - there are ways to make caching work. But it needs to be done very carefully in a large system or you risk long-term damage.

<comment><USER3> > _isn 't that it hides performance problems or is hard to invalidate ..._

> _... it needs to be invalidated when any of the states that it is composed > from change ... need to have a global understanding, possibly across > multiple subsystems_

:)

<comment><USER2> "hard to invalidate" doesn't really capture the nature of the architectural harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not listed: temporal locality. A lot of naive caches inflate in size to satisfy a high hit ratio but end up with low accesses per item. Etsy's mctop is useful here although not possible if you're using e.g. Elasticache.

Not listed: persistent caches. A friend of mine ran a cache for a CDN. Their caching solution mushroomed in complexity to satisfy the legal obligation of taking down illegal content because their cache persisted to disk, so when servers came back up from maintenance they had to check in with a master revocation list. This made operations somewhat complicated because the system was failsafe - an old server would refuse to startup if it detected that it was older than the size of the revocation list (a 1 week KAFKA queue). Lots of horror stories about zombie resurrected content being served before this was implemented.

Somewhat alluded to: over reliance on cache. My former job on a high traffic website was behind a fantastically fast high hit rate cache for almost the entire site, necessary for the scale they were operating at. The trouble was the cache shielded the system from so many requests it became a single point of failure, so if the cache was flushed then the system would become quickly overloaded and wouldn't recover the hit rate for an hour or so. We had to invest a lot of time and energy in cache replication systems, consistent hashing, and related systems - mostly careful choice of existing systems. Shoutout to mcrouter by Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER5> Article seems to be about (but fails to mention) web backends. Whether or not caching things on startup is s good or bad idea is probably different between a client and a server app.

<comment><USER6> I think the article holds equally well for clients and servers of all kind (web or otherwise).

I guess you are alluding to the special case of single-page web applications prefetching resources at startup? Here the article also holds true: if you can you make your dependencies fit for purpose - making all resources small enough to be fetched as necessary - or maybe you have to admit defeat to a dependency you don't control: the user's internet connection.

Or were you thinking about a different scenario where clients are justified in caching on startup?

<comment><USER5> I think it depends on what "caching" includes. But any time you can accept zero UI delays later but can afford an initial delay of almost any length, then caching as much as possible is usually the right decision.

In e.g a game scenario we might call this "precomputing" or "preloading" but it's really equivalent to memoization and caching of any other kind (you load the whole level rather than a part, you precompute trig tables rather than wait for the first access of sin(123) and so on).

I make a thick (non-game) desktop app where quite a lot of data is computed on startup because 500ms spent during a splash screen is ok, but a 500ms delay to a user input is not.

Web or database requests - probably not - so I can't imagine any scenario involving the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first (incorrect) thought when reading the headline was that they were building a library of anti-patterns. Not sure how to do that, seems like a challenge to data mine, but it would be very cool to have. Anyone know of such a thing?

<comment><USER8> From the granddaddy of all wikis: [http://wiki.c2.com/?AntiPatternsCatalog](http://wiki.c2.com/?AntiPatternsCatalog)

<comment><USER9> Somebody should add their new JS-based design to this list

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Every time I've seen a cache in web applications it's because the underlying system is poorly designed.

We have frameworks that can handle 1000s of requests per second on regular hardware, that enough for a single machine to run 99.9% of the sites in the internet.

Take WordPress for example. It's so dog slow that caching is basically required, since even powerful servers can only manage 10-20 pages per second.

If WordPress was running Java or Go instead of PHP caching would be totally unnecessary

<comment><USER11> Wordpress typically requires caching not simply because the PHP response time is so, but because it puts out so many SQL queries that it'll overburden the database. If instead of caching, you go to horizontal scaling on wordpress, you'll quickly find that the database becomes the bottleneck.

<comment><USER10> Wordpress is its own beast with horizontal scaling too. It's quite difficult to run a load balanced ep instance simply because it was never designed for that. We used to runs ton of wp sites at my last place, and if the cache wasn't enough the usual course of action was to throw it on a server/database combo that was practically a supercomputer. PHP takes up way too much RAM per thread and it's just slow and terrible to work with on popular sites :(

<comment><USER11> Was using PHP7 helpful? It has reportedly lower memory consumption.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Steady Rise of Bike Ridership in New York - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/04/the-steady-rise-of-bike-ridership-in-new-york/390717/ <comment><USER2> One thing the article mentions but the headline misses is the need for more and better bike lanes all over the city. De Blasio hasn't been emphasizing this nearly as strongly as Bloomberg did. But the numbers show that replacing one lane of traffic with a protected bike lane can actually ease congestion and increase average car speeds and total throughput (Lafayette St. in Soho is apparently an excellent example of this.)

It's also worth noting that the counting is done only at the river crossings, one park, and one crosstown street in Midtown. A lot of bike trips within Manhattan are missed by the count, as are any trips taken within an outer borough. I don't know that that affects the growth rate numbers but it certainly underestimates the total percentage of trips in the city that are made via bicycle.

<comment><USER3> Protected bike lanes would help; unprotected ones just turn into parking spots for UPS, Fedex, police cars and other random vehicles.

<comment><USER4> I'm a SF resident who was visiting NYC last week, and saw those protected bike lanes for the first time (I lived in NJ a decade ago). Frankly, drivers' attitudes towards bicyclists will be slow to change, and thus the only reasonable course forward seems to be this kind of infrastructure improvement.

As infrastructure improves, more people will consider bicycles as a reasonable transportation alternative, and hopefully increased numbers of cyclists may help driver attitudes change as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've made the switch 4 years ago and never looked back. I thought it'd be struggle to take the bike when (good) public transport is available (Berlin, Germany) but I've found that it doesn't require any willpower: I prefer the independence and that I get to see the city, and not just the subway walls.

Anything within a 10km radius is absolutely no problem. During the day I'm faster than a car, and at night it's just fun. Rain is a still problem, even though I noticed I don't actually mind getting wet that much. Once inside, you dry within half an hour.

<comment><USER6> How does your commute look like, if you don't mind asking?

I commute north-south, alongside S1 train. I noticed it recently got a lot harder though. It seems like there's construction work everywhere (even on the riverbanks and channels). I need to to add extra kilometres just to cut through Mitte.

Also my route is very "hilly", both ways (northern Mitte to Schöneberg). I guess going east-west may be a lot easier.

I have to agree though, cycling is usually faster than U-Bahns and buses. Trams are not even worth discussing. I still found S-Bahns to be the fastest.

<comment><USER5> Kreuzberg to Prenzlauer Berg, about 8km.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bike to work in New York, and I've biked around Berlin, and I would say New York still has a way to go before it catches up with Berlin.

The problem that New York faces is that it is embedded in USA society, so it has to face some issues that are not about bikes, but effect bikes. An example would be the reasons people use bike helmets. No one uses bike helmets in Berlin, because Berlin is safe for bicycles, and that is partly due to the respect that cars and trucks show to bikers. In the USA, car culture is stronger, and car drivers are much more aggressive. I've gotten into the equivalent of tug-of-war situations with taxis, trying to exercise my right to turn, when they want to turn in the opposite direction: the taxi drivers are willing to use the vast bulk of their car in a threatening manner. You never see that in Berlin. In New York City, one is justified wearing a helment, and one would be justified wearing elbow and knee pads (but I never had). It's an aggressive environment.

Also, in New York, the roads are often chaotic. In Berlin, I only saw chaos around construction sites, otherwise the roads were safe and orderly.

Also, I could rent a bicycle in Berlin, very cheaply, and then keep it for days. There is nothing exactly so convenient in New York.

All the same, I am pleased that the situation is getting better in New York.

<comment><USER8> > No one uses bike helmets in Berlin, because Berlin is safe for bicycles

That's not why people don't wear helmets there, and that's not a reason to not wear one.

I would have been in a world of hurt if I didn't have a helmet on when I fell. No cars, people, or other moving object were anywhere near me. My tire hit a slippery patch as I was turning, and I went over sideways. I broke my shoulder and my hand, and my head hit the ground so hard that my glasses flattened out on the pavement. I considered myself lucky that I didn't have a head injury, aside from my bell being rung - hard.

Wear a helmet. They not only save you from dangerous environmental situations, but they save you from yourself.

<comment><USER9> > Wear a helmet. They not only save you from dangerous environmental > situations, but they save you from yourself.

Given the CPSC test procedure for bicycle helmets, I seriously doubt it:

[http://www.helmets.org/cpscstd.htm](http://www.helmets.org/cpscstd.htm)

>> 1203.15 Positional stability test

Test that the helmet doesn't roll off when a 8.8 lb weight in a guided free fall from a distance of 2 feet strikes the helmet.

>> 1203.16 Dynamic strength of retention system test

Uses the same weight and guided free fall distance.

>> 1203.17 Impact attenuation test

>> (b)(3) A guided free fall of the helmet on a weighted headform from a minimum height of 6.56 ft onto a flat anvil and a guided free fall of the helmet on a weighted headform from a minumum height of 3.94 ft onto a hemispherical and curbstone anvils

Regarding the last test procedure, that would be like testing the helmet on an adult male of average height, where, while standing, suddenly suffered a stroke and fell over. It certainly wouldn't protect you in a crash at speed or with a motor vehicle.

If you want real head protection while riding a bicycle, then you need to wear a motorcycle helmet (preferably one that meets the Snell standard).

<comment><USER4> > _Regarding the last test procedure, that would be like testing the helmet on > an adult male of average height, where, while standing, suddenly suffered a > stroke and fell over_

With all due respect, do you ride a bike extensively? Because these exact sort of accidents happen all the time. I've fallen sideways from a stationary position several times over the last 5 years as an avid cyclist when I've had lapses in judgment or focus when declipping from my pedals.

Further, I was struck by a car from behind 2 years ago and lost consciousness, propelled forward several meters, broke several ribs, suffered large abrasions on my back. My helmet suffered dents and scratches, but my head and face were 100% fine. If not for the helmet, I would have 100% suffered from cuts and abrasions to my face (given that my back has permanent scars, this could have easily happened to my face), even without taking into consideration impact protection.

The fact that bicycle helmets don't protect you from every type of accident situation is a ridiculous reason to not wear one.

<comment><USER9> > With all due respect, do you ride a bike extensively?

In the last 10 years, I've ridden about 10,000 miles give or take.

> Because these exact sort of accidents happen all the time. I've fallen > sideways from a stationary position several times over the last 5 years as > an avid cyclist when I've had lapses in judgment or focus when declipping > from my pedals.

I've never used pedal clips. I do ride in traffic, but I doubt I average more than 15 miles per hour.

> Further, I was struck by a car from behind 2 years ago and lost > consciousness, propelled forward several meters, broke several ribs, > suffered large abrasions on my back. My helmet suffered dents and scratches, > but my head and face were 100% fine. If not for the helmet, I would have > 100% suffered from cuts and abrasions to my face

That last sentence doesn't really make sense. Bicycle helmets do not cover one's face. Also, getting hit from behind by a vehicle is the least common type of crash from what I've read.

> The fact that bicycle helmets don't protect you from every type of accident > situation is a ridiculous reason to not wear one.

If they were designed in a way that would protect me in most crashes, then I certainly would wear one while riding, but given the standard I referenced, I seriously doubt it.

If FMVSS 209 stated that seat belts in cars were only tested in frontal collisions at speeds of 20 mph or less, then I wouldn't bother wearing them because I know that they wouldn't protect me while I'm driving at highway speeds. Fortunately, that's not the case and I always wear my seat belt while riding in or driving a car.

In the end, the way one rides is far more effective in mitigating the risk of getting involved in a crash (like following the rules of the road, having appropriate equipment, etc.)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the detailed clarification.

> _That last sentence doesn 't really make sense. Bicycle helmets do not cover > one's face._

When you're propelled off your bike, some part of your head is likely to make contact with the ground (particularly if you're unconscious), along with your torso. The line formed by the outermost part of the helmet and whatever part of your torso that hits the ground is often outside of your face/head and thus helps avoid cuts/abrasions when grating against the ground.

I personally support others' right to not wear a helmet. In fact, I didn't wear one either when I lived and worked in Japan and bike commuted to the train station. I also believe the evidence and studies that show the relative ineffectiveness of current helmet designs. However, I also believe that the decision of others in wearing the helmets available for a marginal improvement in safety should be respected as well [1].

[1] The counterargument to this is if by not purchasing the current helmets and protesting for better designs, we can help spur companies to develop more robust products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I work in Brooklyn, in a building that houses Etsy, Amplify Education (my company), Tough Mudder (until recently), and others.

In the annual bike commuting challenge put on by Transportation Alternatives, our building is overflowing with bikes -- all of those companies achieved double-digit participation rates. Granted, these are tech and lifestyle companies that draw a young and idealistic workforce, but it's pretty cool to see.

<comment><USER11> It also helps that it's awful to use a train to commute to Dumbo unless you live along the F or A.

<comment><USER12> Or the 2/3\. Or you could, uh, transfer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I commute using New York's bike share program Citi Bike. It's about a 20 minute ride each way. I can't over-state how much access to a bike share and a (relatively) safe bike path has improved my every day life. It's faster than most modes of transportation (including even cabs), allows for exercise and most importantly, is actually pretty fun and engaging.

I'm glad that more people are picking up the habit, but I do know that as more people start biking regularly for the first time, there will be a period in which those new riders aren't acclimated to the proper etiquette and law. As a result, I have noticed more and more police at stops pulling over bikers that run red lights. I'm afraid good-will from non-cyclists is declining due to overly aggressive or careless bikers. Hopefully as responsible cyclists, we can help set a positive example and help those new to the road ride responsibly.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is happening all over the nation. Here in small Durham, NC, we've seen biking more than double over the last 6 years. Most of the increase is young creative workers who've come for Durham's growing tech and advertising scene. It's also causing some growing pains -- we had three cyclists killed last year by cars.

<comment><USER15> I passed a car v. cyclist crash this morning on way to work. Cyclist had evidently been riding in the pedistrian crosswalk, against the flow of traffic. Couldn't tell if he had hit a car turning across the walkway, or the car had hit him. Looked like no injuries, though the bicycle was pretty mangled.

<comment><USER16> That's something that annoys me about bikes in the US vs. Europe: People in Europe are generally taught to obey the same laws as everybody else, whereas US bicyclists, in NYC in particular, just completely wing it. When I first moved here I didn't understand why everybody hated on bicyclists; now, after nearly being hit by a bicycle slamming through a crowded crosswalk at least 10 times, I do.

Yes, red lights apply to you too, bicyclists.

<comment><USER17> When I bought my first "nice" bike a few years ago, the guy wheeled it out to me and said, "This is a vehicle, so ride it like a vehicle. Yes, even at stop signs." Then he warned me about Escalades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel like this is happening in Toronto too. At least south of Bloor where most of my friends live. Once I read the study that cyclists actually live longer (even without a helmet) on average than motorists due to better heart function I was convinced to just make the switch. It actually gets you around faster too since you can go between the stopped cars at lights, although the street car tracks really suck.

<comment><USER19> I have cycled extensively in Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. I have had the worst experiences in Toronto.

Yesterday, I attached a camera to my bicycle and had 0 incidents where I felt a driver was putting my life at risk.

The camera is very visible.

<comment><USER20> > _Yesterday ..._

I like your comment and I'm keenly interested in seeing a picture of your camera setup (what do the driver's see). Please post it somewhere.

However, keep in mind that you don't have enough data from a practice you just put into effect _yesterday_. This is probably confirmation bias kicking in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not too surprised by this since car ownership is quite expensive over the life of the car. Combine that with the rapidly increasing costs of living, high rents, stagnate wages, etc and things start to give. Not to mention the overwhelming feelings of depression, rage and frustration that comes with sitting in traffic congestion common to East Coast cities for hours on end everyday. I just wish a good, reliable rail network between cities also existed in the US.

<comment><USER20> You can get a very good bike for less than the cost of yearly car insurance. Even very-discounted-for-years-of-good-driving car insurance.

<comment><USER22> You can get an ok single speed bike for the price of one month of parking in NYC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> While it's great to see NYC bike ridership up to 21K per weekday, and touted as growing "faster than other modes of transportation", it's misleading when you compare that the MTA has a ridership of 8.6 million daily. Currently that Bike Ridership number is a paltry 0.2% of the overall ridership.

So, kudos - and I hope they improve it dramatically, but it has a long way to go, and I'm skeptical of de Blasio's goal of getting it up to 6% in the near future.

[http://web.mta.info/mta/network.htm](http://web.mta.info/mta/network.htm)

<comment><USER2> At the very least, they'd have to quadruple both the bike lane mileage and the Citibike coverage.

<comment><USER24> I don't see how NYC gets to 1% let alone 6% without pulling out car lanes and converting them into two lane bike lanes which are immutable: no parking, no blocking. Now, they get blocked the instant someone opens a car door or double parks. With higher biking density comes different speed cycling so single lane biking doesn't scale.

Denver has this crazy idea also that catering to bikes is easy and cheap, the mentality is that it's mainly just a matter of paint and "share the road" signage. Meanwhile there's no driver or cyclist education program on exactly how to share the road, so it's still adversarial "hey asshole YOU aren't sharing the road!"

<comment><USER2> That's one of the reasons protected lanes have been so successful. They also help car traffic move faster by making double parking less tenable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I live in DC and just moved into the city about a year and a half ago, changing my 60 min+ car commute to a 20-30 minute bike commute. It is absolutely the best decision I've ever made in my life.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is great news! I was one of the people who painted the first bike lane down 5th Avenue back in the late 1970's. I see that Transportation Alternatives is still alive and well.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd love to ride my bike to work but don't really have a place to put it during they day; ideally, the building would have a large, relatively secure space with bike racks in the basement or something (which it doesn't; nor do most buildings, as far as I can tell). I doubt my bike would make it more than a couple of weeks with seat and wheels intact if I locked it on the street.

<comment><USER28> You need a Brompton folding bicycle.

<comment><USER29> Folders are great. I started commuting with a full-size Dahon that I put under the seat, but now I think it's better to have a small folder and a fixed full- size bike rather than making a trade-off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Bike infrastructure is being built. Bike ridership is up, all great news.

However, there remains a fundamental problem. As packed in as NYC is, it is still a huge city designed for automobiles. Many people lives 10, 20 miles away from their jobs.

It is obvious from the picture in the article that many cyclists gear themselves up for a long arduous ride. Unless one is into biking or exercise most people is just not up to that kind of ride. I do not think a 20 mile ride is what the average cyclist in Amesterdam or Berlin imagine their commute to be.

<comment><USER31> >a huge city designed for automobiles. Many people live 10, 20 miles away from their jobs

I think a majority of workers in New York commute using public transit. It might be a minority of people living 10 or 20 miles out, but if so, it's still pretty close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Seattle's a beautiful place to bike but we still have a long way to go. We need to cut fatalities and accidents among bike commuters and get more bike lanes in.

Luckily there are major bike paths connecting parts of the city but these themselves are too disconnected (e.g. in Bellevue). The safe route from Seattle into Redmond (and Microsoft) is 29 miles north along the lake; fortuitously, the new bridge across Lake Washington will include a bike lane and cut this in half.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wish this were an option in more places. My daily commute is too dangerous for a bike (narrow 55mph road with bridge crossings).

</comment><comment><USER34> Bike Lanes

[https://youtu.be/bzE-IMaegzQ](https://youtu.be/bzE-IMaegzQ)

</comment><comment><USER35> This is great to see, however it is frustrating to not see a graph relative to population growth in NYC.</comment>


Climate Change Will Not Be Dangerous for a Long Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-will-not-be-dangerous-for-a-long-time/ <comment><USER2> Suppose that the paper is correct. We could even go farther than it does by assuming twice as much time before warming becomes 'dangerous' and that it is (or becomes) sufficiently a commonly held knowledge or belief. Is it dangerous in the short term? Yes. States and state-like actors will begin preparing for the projected shifts in climate, water availability, etc. They will shift alliances, exert influence in new places, perhaps abandon old allies. Even countries that are projected to be spared will need to take steps if they have neighbors who will not be. And they will start as soon as possible. When states all shuffle the cards, it is always dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article has two major flaws: first, it does not consider climate change caused by the meat industry: in the documentary COWSPIRACY it is shown that 54% of CO2 production is from the meat industry. The second flaw is the fact that our planet has multiple waves of more or less natural temperature changes; see for example Gregg Braden's site: [http://www.greggbraden.com/blog/time-climate- extremes/](http://www.greggbraden.com/blog/time-climate-extremes/)

<comment><USER4> The actual flaw is that he never makes the argument that he baits the user with.

He argues over the projected change in a very amateurish way but that is besides the point because he never considers what it means to have a 1 degree global temperature rise.

He just sort of says, it's not 2 degrees, it is 1. So what? We are not even there yet and there is already evidence that there is a increase in the frequency of hurricanes. A 1 degree rise could be still very devastating for many regions worldwide.

<comment><USER5> "There is already evidence that there is a increase in the frequency of hurricanes"

There is no such evidence, certainly not for major hurricanes.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/05/dont- beli...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/05/dont-believe-the- global-warmists-major-hurricanes-are-less-frequent/)

<comment><USER5> If you prefer a peer-reviewed journal, see:

[http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00719....](http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00719.1?journalCode=clim&)

From the abstract:

"The analysis does not indicate significant long-period global or individual basin trends in the frequency or intensity of landfalling [tropical cyclones] of minor or major hurricane strength. The evidence in this study provides strong support for the conclusion that increasing damage around the world during the past several decades can be explained entirely by increasing wealth in locations prone to TC landfalls..."

<comment><USER4> This more recent article contradicts the findings in the one you linked.

[http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n11/abs/ngeo2560.html](http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n11/abs/ngeo2560.html)

I won't take any strong stances as this as it is not my field of research but I was under the impression that the affects of climate change on extreme weather phenomena has already been observed. It's not just hurricanes. There's also articles about drought and wildfires.

<comment><USER5> Your original claim was that the number of hurricanes has increased. This paper is talking about economic losses (i.e., something a lot fuzzier and less quantifiable than the raw number of hurricanes).

Do you have any actual evidence that the number of hurricanes has increased? If not, you should probably retract your original claim, rather than trying to change the subject to drought and wildfires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"self-described global warming skeptic at the Cato Institute"

Yeah, just the kind of data point that you want to use to get your point across about climate change.

>Matt Ridley, is a British journalist who has written several popular science books. He is also a businessman and a Conservative member of the House of Lords.[1]

This must be a joke. The guy could not be more compromised. I thought more highly of the Scientific American. I know it is just an opinion piece but still.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley)</comment>


This Isn't Capitalism, It's Growthism, and It's Bad for Us - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/this-isnt-capitalism-its-growthism-and-its-bad-for-us/ <comment><USER2> This is so bad it makes my brain hurt trying to respond to it. We should be _upset_ that our society has managed to put in our pockets supercomputers connected wirelessly to the world's knowledge? Ah, I see, they'll turn us into "fat miserable drooling zombies".

Luckily, in this world of "skyrocketing" poverty, surely only the top 1% can afford such indulgences, right? It's not as if innovation and a growing economy have put them in the hands of more than a hundred million Americans. Oh dear, I guess the zombie apocalypse is nigh.

This guy's Twitter feed[1] is more or less a constant stream of invective directed at "billionaires", like this:

 _The billionaires believe the greatest threat to freedom is society. But a free society 's great threat is billionaires._

 _Let 's say you had THREE BILLION DOLLARS in the bank. Would you really give a fuck if it was...2.75? That's like counting toilet paper!_

He's a clown, and it's embarrassing that HBR thinks he's valuable as a contributor.

[1] [https://twitter.com/umairh](https://twitter.com/umairh)

EDIT: And in case there was any question about where he _actually_ stands on capitalism, from a whole three days ago:

 _So now the fashion establishment calls designers with real vision, like Westwood, "eccentric". Ah, capitalism. Fuck you so much._

<comment><USER3> Wow, was that a nerve he hit?

<comment><USER4> The nerve Umair Haque's writing touches in me is that it is handwavy ranting and raving. A lot of his arguments, when looked at closely, seem kind of hollow. They're ... intellectual junk food - they have some flavor when you're chewing them, but there's not much substance, and there are a lot of additives that aren't that good.

<comment><USER5> The thoughtful comments here by participants I trust prompted me to flag the article. That's about all I have to say about it.

<comment><USER6> That seem quite hypocritical since you write quite long rambling text yourself. At least show other people, who did upvote it, the respect of reading the article before you flag it.

<comment><USER7> Rambling? Perhaps. But I would _hardly_ say that tokenadult is known for "handwaving". Quite the opposite actually, his long posts are typically the best researched and cited posts on this site.

<comment><USER6> It's not about "handwaving" per se, there are numerous reasons I don't enjoy tokenadults posts. All of which are irrelevant since many other people do. I simply ignore most of them and expect the same respect in return.

But if you're a five year member, I'm in the mood and you're breaking basic rules of HN like "don't comment that you flagged" I reserve the right to call you out. Even if I wasn't technically correct about not reading the article this time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _So maybe, then, it's time for you and I to leave this cult...The cheap, > plastic junk that surrounds us probably isn't worth what we paid – not just > in cash (or, more likely, credit) to get it, but in freedom, time, and > tears._

This strikes a chord with me at a very deep level.

A few years back I was completely disillusioned with living and working in a big city, basically just to buy more stuff. It still boggles my mind we all go to work 40 hours a week then come up with more and more creative ways to waste that excess of money, rather than just work less and have more time.

I sold everything, quit my job, and spent 2 years driving from Alaska to Argentina, living in my tent and cooking on my little travel stove.

My perspective on the world has changed immensely, and I now live in the very far north, grow and hunt/fish my own food, and only go to work enough to have the quality of life I want. That's usually around 2-3 days a week, depending if I want a new toy that month (rifle/camera/etc.)

I highly, highly recommend people take a break from consumerism for an extended period of time and see how fulfilling your life can be without all that stuff. Some of the happiest people I've ever met in my life have nothing by North American standards.

<comment><USER9> Looks like you don't have wife and children.

<comment><USER10> In your mind, how would that be a limiting factor?

Your partner becomes your working companion; this is a mutual relationship at it's very essence.

Your children learn practical skills, grow stronger, and aren't shaped entirely by a failing education system.

<comment><USER11> How do you account for illnesses / Old age / injuries / a reasonable setup for your children etc. on this forest living?

The main problem with romanticizing the unabomber life style is what it misses: All the benefits of regular society. I would rather be inclined to a good pitch for smaller footprint living (Make X money - live on it for the rest of your life doing OSS / charity).

<comment><USER10> How do you account for old age in your current plan? Sock away some money to pay for hospice care at ~$4000/mo./ea. and hope you time your death accordingly?

Or, create an environment that will support your family indefinitely. Give your children space that they own. (I'd be ecstatic if my teenager wanted to build their own house on the property.) It is, of course, possible that they'll all move away, too.

Thinking about my parents, it's very likely that they end up on my property, living in their own space, with family close-by to care for them. I'm not going to abandon them to caretakers, but I do realize that it's unrealistic to expect that lifestyle to work in a suburban tract home setting; everybody needs their space.

You're welcome to keep waiting for that one big gig that sets you free financially. I've got my own hopes for that, too, but I'm not about to let it stagnate my life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Think about what happens to the stock price of a company once it stops growing. It falls through the floor. It could be making enough money to pay all of its employees, and making the world a better place, but if it doesn't grow, then if it has already gone public, the stock price sinks, and all of the employees who hold stock lose a lot of money. If it hasn't gone public, then the VC's get really upset. An example of such a company was Cygnus Support, which was in no danger of going out of business, and it was supporting a hundred or so engineers and their families, which were producing high quality open source code (such as GCC, gdb, etc.) so it was certainly making the world a better place. But it was considered a failure because it didn't give the VC's a lucrative exit. That's growthism. Fortunately for Cygnus's VC's, finally Cygnus got bought by Red Hat many years later.

But Red Hat is going to end up in a similar boat; as a public company, if it can't figure out a way to sustain an significant growth every year, forever, the stock price will get punished. And of course, the problem is that companies can't produce a sustained compounded growth forever, because sooner or later compounded growth will cause the company's required revenues to exceed the world's GDP. So the trick is to stay on the rocket ship as long as you can, and then sell the stock to a greater fool before it tips back towards earth. And that's growthism, too....

<comment><USER13> > Think about what happens to the stock price of a company once it stops > growing. It falls through the floor.

I don't entirely agree. Companies which can earn stable profits and distribute those as dividends remain healthy stocks. Their stock prices might remain flat, but with dividend payments there's always a natural floor at which a stock will fall to, and no one's really holding them to make a profit on the sale of the stock (the stock price is more of a safeguard in case the companies cut dividends or you decide to liquidate to move your money). The key is finding companies which can sustain profits and those are often businesses with pricing power to keep up with inflation and competition. Here's a great blog:

[http://www.dividendgrowthinvestor.com/](http://www.dividendgrowthinvestor.com/)

His posts go back for years, and he's very focused on researching companies which have paid strong dividends for years/decades. It's an enlightening blog, especially after being surrounded by tech companies which rarely pay dividends and have stock prices based on growth potential (but Oracle, Intel, MS, etc. have transitioned to dividend paying companies).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am endlessly amused by people pointing to features that the socialists who came up with the word "capitalism" to name the system they were criticizing criticized capitalism _for_ and saying "this isn't capitalism".

But, no, the features that are being complained about as "growthism" \-- the idea of being "willing to sacrifice everything for more growth" \-- is _exactly_ a feature of capitalism that those 19th Century socialists who coined the term "capitalism" were criticizing.

See, _inter alia_ , Karl Marx. "Effect of Capitalist Competition on the Capitalist Class[,] the Middle Class[,] and the Working Class", in _Wage Labour and Capital_ at [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage- labour/...](http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage- labour/ch09.htm)

<comment><USER15> One could make the argument that free marketism inevitably brings about capitalism which inevitably turns into growthism. Much like Benjamin Tucker's argument that Marxism inevitably ends in Stalinism (he made this argument as a contemporary of Marx, so this wasn't hindsight). I happen to actually believe Schumpeter's model better (that capitalism turns to gas and water socialism turns to growthism).

It is, however, telling, that there are plenty of free-marketers who espouse essentially the same argument as Mr. Haque, for example the Austrian school of economics (which is full of kooks for other reasons). Chris Martenson (who called the 2008 crash) is another.

<comment><USER14> > One could make the argument that free marketism inevitably brings about > capitalism which inevitably turns into growthism.

I wouldn't make the first part of that argument, because I'm not convinced that "free marketism" is even a real thing, much less a precursor of capitalism. It seems to be position presented as a rhetorical _defense_ of capitalism, but doesn't seem to exist independently.

But what this article calls "growthism" is one of the core features of capitalism called out by the people who _named_ it. Capitalism doesn't _inevitably turn into_ growthism, it _is_ (or, at least, _includes as an essential feature_ ) growthism.

> Much like Benjamin Tucker's argument that Marxism inevitably ends in > Stalinism (he made this argument as a contemporary of Marx, so this wasn't > hindsight).

Stalinism -- or, more to the point, Leninism -- requires _both_ Marxism and an environment that is unlike the ones described by the descriptive elements of Marxism in a particular way into which one attempts to translate the prescriptive elements. Given those ingredients, I'd agree that its pretty much inevitable that something like Leninism will at least be attempted.

Marxism _itself_ doesn't inevitably become Leninism/Stalinism, but its existence makes the existence of such a system quite likely.

> I happen to actually believe Schumpeter's model better (that capitalism > turns to gas and water socialism turns to growthism).

I would argue more that the empirical evidence is that capitalism _plus_ the existence of socialist ideas leads fairly usually (even if not inevitably) to a variety of mixed systems that feature a basically capitalist structure with socialist elements ( _including_ growthism), of which "gas and water socialism" is an example.

<comment><USER15> Again, Tucker made his argument from first principles, in a non-hindsight fashion (he was writing when Lenin was a teen). So it would be hard to argue that it's not inevitable, because it was empirically shown and in a prior fashion mechanistically predicted (this is the minimum bar for creating a _law_ in the physical sciences), unless you can point out exactly what needs to happen differently from how Tucker envisioned it.

<comment><USER14> > Again, Tucker made his argument from first principles, in a non-hindsight > fashion (he was writing when Lenin was a teen). So it would be hard to argue > that it's not inevitable

The conclusion does not follow from the premise. That an argument was made "from first principles" doesn't make it hard to argue against.

> because it was empirically shown

I would disagree with the claim that what Tucker actually predicted was empirically shown, but this whole discussion is widely afield from the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a rather incoherent rant. Growth = Bad.

What's bad is if growth is achieved by irrevocable destruction of the environment, or deterioration of the human condition. It's not growth itself that is the problem, for there are many kinds of growth.

Growth in physical inputs? Energy use? Labor? Outputs? Value (GDP)? Some of these counter-balance the other.

If efficiency goes up (productivity), there is less need for labor, but it could also mean less physical inputs required, less energy, etc, so good for the environment. Also, the increased surplus means that labor can enjoy more fruits of its produce (in theory).

And growth in value is another thing entirely, because it is a human value assigned by our minds, not an objective physical quantity. Just take virtual/digital goods, someone can make one awesome piece of software, or a game, that the whole of humanity values tremendously high, but which has O(1) marginal costs to produce for each person, and which took relatively few inputs. If I suddenly uploaded the entirety of humanity into the Matrix, all of a sudden, value can continue to increase, without continued use of environmental resources beyond the energy needed to run it. Today, if I make a piano, I have to cut down trees and use tons of energy, so for everyone on the planet to own a piano would be very bad. But if I make a virtual piano, everyone on the planet can have one at relatively low cost, and then the question simply falls to how good the simulation can be.

I'd analogize Capitalism to evolution in an ecosystem. The entities within the system can grow, change form, multiply, and die. If they grow too much too fast, they can deplete their resources too quickly to sustain their population. They must have wild swings between mass die-offs and mass growth, or they might have a relatively stable pattern with low volatility, but while growth is slowed, they still have competition, they have not "switched off" evolution.

I don't think growth is bad if it comes from increasing efficiency, or an increase in value because of completely new inventions. Perhaps same physical inputs that could produce a device in 1950, produces something in 2010 that I value a lot more. It is the organization of matter, it's pattern, the information content of it, that can grow with infinite variation and which we can continue to demand.

<comment><USER17> > What's bad is if growth is achieved by irrevocable destruction of the > environment, or deterioration of the human condition. It's not growth itself > that is the problem, for there are many kinds of growth.

Non sequitur. The notion of _economic growth_ is tied to environmental and human labor exploitation, at fundamental levels.

A large portion of any nation's GDP comes from mining, pumping oil, cutting forests for crops, and activities that produce a lot of waste, on which the rest of the economy relies on. Another large portion comes from the financial sector, which profits on the disparity of income by providing credit. These activities are only profitable because the _environmental_ and _social_ costs are externalized. Without that, other endeavors wouldn't even make sense cost- wise, making economic growth grind to a halt.

> I'd analogize Capitalism to evolution in an ecosystem.

I realize many people think like that, and it's a fallacy. Capitalism is not some sort of natural law, it's entirely arbitrary human invention, and in practice it's _nothing_ like this pure, theoretical meritocracy that allows the best solutions to strive. Quite the contrary: it fails to address many concrete, contemporary problems, like ever increasing economic disparity, social welfare, research funding and environmental destruction. And don't come tell me it's because we don't have _enough_ capitalism, that markets are not free enough... this is the same argument used to explain why communism failed (it wasn't _pure_ enough). If we keep looking at it as some theoretical ideal, we will never tackle it's shortcomings in practice.

<comment><USER18> > Capitalism is not some sort of natural law

Capitalism is based on trade, which IS a natural law. It seems pretty natural to me that people want to trade what they have for other things they need (for example, a musician trades their music for food&shelter).

<comment><USER14> > Capitalism is based on trade, which IS a natural law.

All economic systems are "based on trade", since they are all mechanisms of arranging trade.

That doesn't make capitalism at all special among the universe of all actual (or possible) economic systems.

<comment><USER16> A better way to phrase this is that natural law (of rivalrous goods) is based on possession, not ownership. "Ownership" or property is a human invention.

When a lion possesses a carcass, the hyena's don't respect it's property rights, they respect it's possession (unless they can over take the possessor), but the lion cannot leave dozens of killed carcasses stored around for future use.

Our notions of capitalism are based on concepts of property rights which are human inventions. One could reasonably be expected to defend one's own immediate possessions, home, or farm, but the invention of property allows an individual to control a vast amount of possessions, backed up by the power of the state.

When free marketers say "capitalism is natural", I think what they're really saying, is that market forces are natural, and by that they mean, individuals have demands, and are willing to trade possessions for them, and do not need a state or other framework for this 'bottom up' system to work. But that's a gross simplification, by taking a huge mental leap from a barter economy on the small scale to a modern capitalist economy. The modern market of trade bears little resemblance to the small scale microcosm thought experiments.

Reality is, our modern system is based of hundreds of years of evolved civil institutions, common law, political structures. It's the reason why a 'free market' in some countries is a "failed state" of misery, and not a paradise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Capitalism is itself based on constant growth. There is a fundamental misunderstanding with this article (and most of our society) and that is the conflation of capitalism and a free market. A truly free market is not necessarily capitalist, and actually capitalism doesn't lead to free markets. This confusion is messing up everyone's thoughts. What we like is the free market, the natural bottom-up interactions that help determine prices and such. Free markets have nice features.

Capitalism is about profit and growth and the instant you think it isn't going to fail, everyone might as well speculate like crazy (why not? if it isn't going to fail…). The only way for capitalism to work is for everyone to realize that it is inherently unstable and likely to fail. And that realization is true also.

We can still advocate for market freedom without advocating capitalism.

<comment><USER20>
        "Capitalism is itself based on constant growth."

No, constantly increasing profits or shareholder value are based upon constant growth. Capitalism does not require constantly increasing growth of profits to be "capitalism".

This "corporations must constantly grow" is, along with "corporations must, by law, sociopathically seek profit", the major reason that American style capitalism isn't viable. It eats it's young.

<comment><USER15> There's other structural issues beyond just legal obligations of corporations (which are a problem). A debt-based economy, especially a debt-based currency, requires a constant level of growth to stave off economic catastrophe.

Of course, these are really one and the same: The unifying principle is that if inflation is to be maintained, we must provide an easy avenue for average joe to feel secure against the rolling treadmill, so we create legal entities like 401ks and mutual funds and IRAs and the like - which, in order to maintain a return, require the government to create legal obligations on the corporations, and when they DO fail, pump up the corporations whose stocks, and so on and so forth (and this pumping is financed through inflation), and so we have unsustainable spirals and the periodic retrenchments which, of course, hurt the poor harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I see this type of thinking a lot, sometimes even within myself. I don't think the problem is Capitalism (or "Growthism") - it's that we don't do much as we could to counter act the negative effects. Instead of worrying about the rich/poor divide, we could instead try to improve conditions for those on the bottom (food/shelter/health are all good starting points).

<comment><USER15> But the point is that "trying to improve conditions for those on the bottom" will never pan out, because the effects of growthism on the poor are compounding, i.e. exponential, and at best those things you are trying to improve the lot of others, scale linearly. Things get really bad when you do things like government welfare, which provides a linear benefit to the less fortunate while enriching the rich and polticially connected far more (indirectly, through deficit spending).

<comment><USER16> That's false. In the limit, you could have 100% of the population unemployed, robots manufacturing everything and have the robots and robot factory owners taxed at 99.9% FICA, paying social security to everyone at birth.

This scenario has been covered by quite a few "post-work" authors, who look at humans returning to a hunter-gather society. See Hans Moravec in _Mind Children_ for example.

We used to walk around and these marvelous automated machines produced everything for us: nuts and fruits from trees, free for the picking. In the future, we'll walk around, and robots will be churning out the equivalent of fruits and nuts from factories.

The modern concern of labor arises from the industrial revolution.

<comment><USER15> It's not a growthist system, though, if previously accrued tax receipts are used to pay out the welfare you're describing.

What would make it growthist, is if the welfare is paid for by borrowing, which would require compounding interest to pay it off. That the payback requires interest (which compounds, i.e. grows) implies growth in the overall productivity of the system to continue functioning.

Moreover, if you consider these post-work humans to be "poor" something strange is going on in your head. It's easy to conflate "unemployed" with "poor" because that's generally the case in our society. But I wouldn't consider the humans in your "limit case" (with my growthist modification) to be the poor people being screwed over by the growthism. It's the robots.

<comment><USER14> > What would make it growthist, is if the welfare is paid for by borrowing, > which would require compounding interest to pay it off. That the payback > requires interest (which compounds, i.e. grows) implies growth in the > overall productivity of the system to continue functioning.

Strictly speaking, it requires growth in the overall rate of _production_ , which is not the same as growth in productivity (which is production per unit of some input consumed, usually labor-hours.) If, for instance, the rate of population growth were greater than the interest rate on the debt, you could have constant productivity with employment levels without a problem.

<comment><USER15> _> Strictly speaking, it requires growth in the overall rate of production_

Fair point. I'm writing too quickly for my own good, it seems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The beautiful part of CapitalismStan is that no one becomes rich unless they in turn enrich the lives of others. Aka they produce a good/service that consumers want to freely purchase.

He can rant about twisted incentives that government imposes on the free market but I can never understand why anyone can lambast capitalism when only people who produce value for everyone else make money. Billionaires would be celebrated as national heroes in CapitalismStan.

Lastly, this author lambasts our current capitalists for producing goods that make us "zombies" well they should look in the mirror because capitalism only are delivering the goods that the consumers want to buy.

</comment><comment><USER23> I agree with most of this article except for the main point; I think that "Growthism" and capitalism are synonymous. Growthism seems to be a scapegoat for the very real short comings of capitalism. Fact is that capitalism requires constant growth or it will fail. The real issue is valuing private property over the sacred right of life and that is what CAPITALism means.

<comment><USER15> no, captialism is valuing the accrual of property as a virtue in and of itself, not necessarily above or even competing with valuing human life. That growth is required as a part of the economic model is actually a rather modern concept that post-dates the development of capitalist philosophy, and accompanies the emergence of secular inflation as a matter of public policy.

If you would like to understand how growth is "built in" to the economic system as a matter of policy and structure (and has nothing to do with capitalism _per se_ ), I would strongly recommed three resources:

1) Zeitgeist takes a left-ish perspective, and unfortunately is diluted by a lot of conspiratorial nonsense, but importantly its description of the money system is more or less correct.

2) Chris Martenson's "crash-course" is centrist, and very very good, but also very long and tedious.

3) Hidden Secrets of Money (video 4 in particular) takes a more right-leaning approach, and is tainted by the fact that the guy is obviously trying to sell you gold and silver, but the description of the money system is spot on and he strongly makes the point that growth is required. It's also the most concise and well-produced of the three.

<comment><USER24> > captialism is valuing the accrual of property as a virtue in and of itself

 _Accrual: The act or process of accumulating; an increase._

Am I missing something? How is that not "growth"? If someone has more and more, the number of things they own has to keep growing. [I put growth in quotes because I think there is a world of difference between a tree or a person growing, and bank accounts or "places to put stuff" (see Carlin et al.) growing.]

> not necessarily above or even competing with valuing human life

I would argue that even the focus on property - owning things just for the sake of owning them, as opposed to making, using and sustaining things (not just objects, but also ideas and living beings) for the sake of furthering life - goes against the humanity and aliveness of the person subscribing to that view.

Moreover, since we're nowhere near being able to turn energy into matter, to conjure property out of, say, the energy that gets hurled around space by suns and such, property often has to come from somewhere. Not strictly necessarily, but quite often in practice, it means taking things that someone else owned, or could potentially own; wherever we're dealing with finite resources, amassing property must make the rest poorer. Sure, that's not an objective in itself, "just" an unavoidable side-effect. Kinda like alcoholism is "just" wanting to be happy/drunk, not wanting to feel miserable or making others miserable. 10 for noble intentions, 0 for intellectual honesty.

Yes, it is theoretically possible for such an addiction (to own more for the sake of owning more) to at least harm no other beings than the ones suffering from it. We may get there some day. We're not there, at all.

<comment><USER15> _> Am I missing something? How is that not "growth"?_

Because it's an individual value; there is no imposition that society as an aggregate MUST do so. That imposition is "growthism".

 _goes against the humanity and aliveness of the person_

This smacks of the naturalistic fallacy. What constitutes "humanity"? One could argue, that being the only species that appears to have conjured up property rights, propertization is _quintessentially_ human. When animals fight over scarce resources, they get bloody. When humans fight over scarce resources, they shout words at each other and ultimately go to court (in most cases). Occasionally blood is shed, but it's much rarer.

 _> the focus on property - owning things just for the sake of owning them_

That's not the typical capitalist property rights model - most capitalists justify property rights via the Lockean model; that something comes to be your property so that you can transform it into something else, ideally useful to others for future trade. This is exactly opposed to the growthism model, where the investments are less made to promote the product being made (and score a bit of a profit in the meantimes), and more made for the purposes of securing your future against the treadmill of inflation.

I'm sorry, but it appears your views on what constitutes capitalism are exactly the caricature of capitalism that have come about because of growthism.

Just to clarify: I don't personally subscribe to any of these views, I take more of the free market position, which takes no position on property and has a weaker value associated with profit - by weak, non-profits are not to be stigmatized, and in fact I'm running a non-profit myself. Futhermore, my personal philosophy on property is that propertization is a social right (not an individual one) that is justified pragmatically as a means to avoid the tragedy of the commons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Irregardless of your political ideologies there are two roots to this issue which the author of this blog post seems unaware of:

1 - Government policy 2 - Central bank policy

Your 401k, pension fund, home, are all dependent on prices increasing in order for you to retire or be financial secure. It just happens that if you did really well with your investments someone who has more investments than you did even better.

If leverage is involved, not only do you fail to get a positive return on your investment you not only lose that asset but potentially everything else you have.

Some of this policy extends beyond government subsidized lending toward things that are very looked down upon by modern Western society such as colonialism and genocide.

As a civilized individual imagine yourself playing a computer game like Civilization. What strategies are you going to implement to grow bigger, get a better score, and continue playing the game?

</comment><comment><USER26> The author asks an honest and important question:

      Is capitalism failing at being the best possible means
      of organizing human work, life, and play?

We've seen so many examples of market failure that it should be obvious that the market system is not a good answer to every problem.

And when other nations chart a different course and deliver better outcomes for their citizens, that should trigger some critical questions.

Failing to examine the beliefs and assumptions that public policy is built on, in the face of overwhelming evidence that those beliefs are false, really is magical thinking and cultish.

</comment><comment><USER27> This mostly makes two points:

1\. America is screwed up. But we know that.

2\. Arguments from My Opponent Believes Something:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/13/arguments-from-my- oppon...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/13/arguments-from-my-opponent- believes-something/)

Eg.:

"1\. Argument From My Opponent Believes Something, Which Is Kinda Like Believing It On Faith, Which Is Kinda Like Them Being A Religion:

"The high priests of the economic orthodoxy take it on faith that anyone who doubts the market is a heretic who must be punished.""

</comment><comment><USER28> This is something I've been wondering about for a while: To what extent are our economy and stock market merely ponzi schemes that require continued population expansion? If growth slows down/reverses/stops, is the era of easy profits finished?

Or in other words, what will happen to my total-market ETF shares if population growth slows/stops? Is this an argument for investment in the developing world?

</comment><comment><USER29> My first thought when I saw the article title was "I bet this is by Umair Haque," and I was right. This is sort of what he does. How to fix the world is interesting, though [http://howtofixtheworld.org/](http://howtofixtheworld.org/)

</comment><comment><USER30> It's not Growthism per se but the lack of acknowledgment that growth needs to be taxed in a way that it still benefits society without taking the incentives away.

That balance is lost in the US and people gets rich way beyond their risk.

It can be fixed but it will require different taxation system IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER31> Interestingly, the article appears behind a registration-required modal window, but you can read the whole article by scrolling down and leaving the window in place.

</comment><comment><USER32> you guys are poisoned with a lot of thrash that make no sense. and here is your receipt:

1\. Go to Bulgaria. 2\. Get a bike. 3\. Bike to Barcelona by following the Danube River.

And see what the fuck capitalism is.

It's the root of evil that turns villagers to slaves of companies that makes profit by filling everywhere with corn fields.

</comment><comment><USER33> Anything that grows infinitely is cancer.

<comment><USER34> Cancers don't grow infinitely. They stop when the host dies.

Entropy, on the other hand...

<comment><USER35> Goddamnit, entropy.</comment></comment></comment>


Success & Motivation - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2009/05/13/success-motivation/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a great set of articles - the undercurrent I saw was that in his early days, Cuban was disciplined as a matter of course. If I had been as disciplined at 24, I think I'd be pursuing my own ideas full time right now. The one big difference for me is I don't drive by big houses and want to be in one - I talk to my friends with trust funds and envy them the free time they have. I want to make a big win so that I can write my own software, full time. I think we are in the midst of a cultural sea change and that writing software is as valid a form of artistic expression as any. It's amazing the impact individuals and small groups can have today. My hope in making a big win early in life is to spend the next 50 years writing the software I want to write - and exploring the research topics I want to explore.</comment>


Creating Objective-C and C++ Packages Using Swift Package Manager - <AUTHOR> http://ankit.im/swift/2016/05/21/creating-objc-cpp-packages-with-swift-package-manager/ <comment><USER2> Can the package contains no swift code? Then I can retrofit it as my C++ package manager.

<comment><USER3> I think it'd need at very minimum the Swift code in the Package.swift file, but that's probably it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious about how this can integrate with other build systems like CMake, ninja and GYP. Also, I wonder if this could be the groundwork for a clang (obj-c, c++) build system

</comment><comment><USER5> Substack did a similar thing with NPM, but for C.

[https://github.com/substack/dotc](https://github.com/substack/dotc)</comment>


AMD Is on Fire - <AUTHOR> https://seekingalpha.com/article/4195761 <comment><USER2> So this is the good form of "on Fire" right?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, like "killing it".

I mean, the good form of "killing it".

<comment><USER4> Thankfully it's not "Killing IT".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am secretly hoping that at least for Desktop Mac, Apple could switch to AMD. They could leave the Mac Pro and iMac Pro for Xeon ( Or they could choose AMD and that will be EPYC ) But right now it is very hard to argue for purchasing Intel when AMD offer many more cores for lower price at the expense of ~20% peak single threaded performance.

Unless Intel offer Apple very good deal but I thought part of the Intel / AMD agreement was Intel can not use any tactics to undercut AMD with incentives or rebate or something similar.

At the same time Intel is like assembling old Apple alumni from CPU to GPU.

<comment><USER3> My ideal would be if AMD gives an HDL license to Apple, and they make semi custom chips with the ex-Intrinsity guys going to town with power micro optimizations making a nice AMD mobile chip. It'd be kind of the best of both worlds for Apple with an x86 mobile chip that they control. And it'd be a nice way for AMD to differentiate itself as I'm sure that Intel would never in a million years give full HDL to Apple.

<comment><USER6> What's RTL stand for?

<comment><USER3> Meant to say HDL. I shouldn't HN before I drink my coffee. But to answer your question, RTL is Register Transfer Language, so the EDIF or equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Glad to see this. Used AMD back about 10 years ago, but last two builds I've done were intel given they couldn't keep up with performance or price of intel. I have stuck with ATI/AMD cards though since they have seemed to stay competitive with nvidia and timing wise they seems to be the best bang for the buck.

</comment><comment><USER8> If they can use their boost from Ryzen sales to bolster their graphics division, they'll be in a great position.

Yesterday I was talking with some coworkers about a new computer build and one of them had recently purchased Ryzen and the other was thinking about it.

So at least anecdotally, AMD does indeed appear to be on fire.

<comment><USER9> My next build probably will be Ryzen based, but... my i7-3770 is still handling all I throw at it.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you, however I want to add a second graphics card since my monitor is 4k and my motherboard only has one full speed PCI express slot.

The only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger is the obscene memory pricing right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> AMD has been undervalued for years due to short sellers. They release a better than expected earnings report and the stock goes down 10 percent. It's always been the whipping boy on Wall Street. But a great stock to profit from on a very cyclical basis when those shorts go nowhere.

</comment><comment><USER11> How are their mobile offerings? Would be nice for Intel to get some competition in that space!

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a great example of capitalism working properly:

Intel has been 'phoning it in' for nearly a decade now, because their products had a significant lead over AMD, particularly in performance-per-watt.

Now AMD has taken the lead, and it's going to take years for Intel to catch up. (Because CPU innovation moves at a glacial pace.)

The winners are the consumers.

<comment><USER13> AMD has taken the lead in performance per watt??? Do you have a source? Everything I've seen shows Intel is either matched or better. If you also take capitol cost into account, maybe AMD is in the lead; I don't really know.

Either way, Intel is soon to release the first 10nm process product, which should provide a significant boost, as long as the architecture can take advantage of it.

<comment><USER14> You mean the 10nm that has been delayed for 6 years now? That has so bad yields Intel has internally just renamed 12nm to 10nm and use that? The 10nm that has 50% yields while being 12nm _THAT_ 10nm?

For Performance per Watt you can check this article: [http://www.pcgameshardware.de/CPU-CPU-154106/Tests/CPU- Test-...](http://www.pcgameshardware.de/CPU-CPU-154106/Tests/CPU-Test- Benchmark-AMD-Intel-675663/)

The current Intel top dog against AMD in terms of perf per watt is the Core i3 8300.

<comment><USER13> Not sure where you heard that Intel renamed 12nm to 10nm, but you're probably thinking of another fab. Intel's 10nm cell density is comparable to Global Foundry's 7nm [1]. And yes, Intel's 10nm process is _very late_ ; that doesn't mean it's not coming.

As far as yields go, they're constantly improving, and they depend on the processor, so your claim that the yield is 50% is either ignorant or intentionally misleading.

I checked out your link, but all I saw was price per performance numbers, not performance per watt. Price per performance is an important metric for gamers, but not so much for servers, which is Intel's bread and butter. In the server space, performance per watt is what matters. If you have some evidence that AMD has taken the lead in performance per watt, I would love to see it.

[1] [https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7191-iedm-2017-intel-...](https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7191-iedm-2017-intel- versus-globalfoundries-leading-edge.html)

<comment><USER14> >Intel's 10nm cell density is comparable to Global Foundry's 7nm [1]. And yes, Intel's 10nm process is very late; that doesn't mean it's not coming.

That was Q4/17\. Latest information: [https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/08/02/intel-guts-10nm- to-g...](https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/08/02/intel-guts-10nm-to-get-it- out-the-door/)

The 10nm parts due for Q4/19 (!) are 12nm more than 10nm.

The report also mentions the real 10nm yields, 8-10%, targets at 50-60%. I admit that I'm not sure what the current yield on their 12nm is but I would guess it would have to be the target.

<comment><USER13> That article is completely devoid of any technical information supporting the claim that Intel nerfed the 10nm scaling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They're hiring like mad in Markham, Canada..</comment>


Street View of 1980s New York - <AUTHOR> http://80s.nyc/#show/40.6218/-73.9900 <comment><USER3> For anyone that was as curious as I was:

WHERE DO THESE PHOTOS COME FROM?

During the mid-1980s, the City of New York photographed every property in the five boroughs. The project had a bureaucratic origin: the photos were used by the Department of Finance to estimate real property values for taxation purposes. Buildings as well as vacant lots were photographed because both are taxed. Because it was difficult to distinguish while shooting between taxable and tax-exempt buildings, like religious institutions or government offices, the photographers just shot everything. The result is a remarkable body of imagery – over 800,000 color 35mm photos in both negative and print formats.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately what's presented here was taken from NTSC video; likely U-matic tape.

Checkout this uncropped frame: [http://files.80s.nyc/photos/3/05338/0023.jpg](http://files.80s.nyc/photos/3/05338/0023.jpg)

<comment><USER5> How does this work exactly? Did they have some kind of device that allowed them to record a single frame to video tape at a time?

<comment><USER3> Actually from the site it looks like the digitized copies were saved as - <USER2> this - LaserDisc! Kudos to NYC, they decided to go full-on 80's mode for sure.

<comment><USER4> The final storage medium was LD, but these images were definitely stored and edited on a tape format prior to LD mastering.

<comment><USER6> LD video is analog format anyway.

<comment><USER4> Indeed it is, but each frame presented here shows distortion consistent with being stored on a tape format at some point in time, definitely prior to LD mastering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Incredible. I pulled up my neighborhood, a vibrant lovely neighborhood in Brooklyn. I moved here when I arrived in NYC four years ago.

The first thing I notice is all the trees are not there in the 1980s. Amazing how much more bleak things are without the big leafy trees. The building where I live now is boarded up and much shorter (three stories were added c.2003 for housing and the retail levels were renovated). The avenue where I do most of my shopping, filled with restaurants and cafes and pocket gyms and salons and bars and real estate offices and corner stores, is just desolate. There is a church and a butcher and a salon but there are also lots of empty storefronts and whole vacant multi-story buildings with windows boarded up or just missing.

What's interesting is most of the structures have not changed. They are lovely old buildings now, as they were in the 1980s. But the context could not be more different. Today they are full — the buildings full of tenants and businesses, the streets full of shoppers and locals, bikes and buses and cars. The neighborhood in the pictures looks so much more stark and empty.

<comment><USER8> Some of the bleakest and surprising photography I have ever seen has been Jacob Holdt's photo of the American underclass in the 80s. I never imagined that a city like new york was at this level of decay. It gives me hope that we can always turn these kinds of conditions around. I don't know who deserves the credit in the case of NY.

[http://www.american- pictures.com/gallery/usa/pages/usa-00524...](http://www.american- pictures.com/gallery/usa/pages/usa-00524.htm)

Note: Some of these images are NSFW.

That link contains photos from various states - I'm not sure how to link to just the NY/NJ albums.

<comment><USER9> Poor people don't use wood stoves as much anymore. A lot of the more rural areas look about the same. The cars are 30yr newer but still 30yr old.

The captions remind me all the stories you accumulate when you hang around with poor people that are completely unbelievable and unrelatable to more well off people.

A lot of this has to be earlier than the 80s. There's a lot of pictures of blacks with guns in public and semi-public places sprinkled in there. After they passed all sorts of gun control nobody was gonna stand around and let a white man, from Denmark or not, take pictures of them with their piece. There's a lot of pictures that look like they might be from late 60s anti-war protests as well.

I think the photographer didn't like the cold. None of his pictures are in poor areas in northern states in the winter.

Edit: I think most of these pics are late 60s to early 70s but some definitely go up to the late 80s and early 90s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apparently VHS came out with an HD format in the early 1990's.

Here's a sample clip from 1993 of NYC: [https://youtu.be/fT4lDU- QLUY](https://youtu.be/fT4lDU-QLUY)

It's amazing. It so...looks like today, but it's not. I don't know how to describe the realness of image quality that looks like it was filmed earlier this afternoon but is in fact over 20 years ago. Unsettling yet beautiful.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing this, it's very uncanny to watch, brings back memories of seeing the world when it actually looked this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks to be a much better interface to a data set the city has and makes available but with a horrible UI.

There's also a 1940's dataset that isn't available online but you can order prints. Got a 1940's one yesterday for my new place and has a kid looking out the neighbor's window. Crazy to think what's transpired out that window in the intervening time.

Would love to see the 1940's one online and wrapped up in street view!

<comment><USER13> Can you please share how you ordered it?

<comment><USER14> > The Archives will be digitizing the 1940s photos in 2018. You can buy high- > quality prints of the 1940s and 1980s photos via the "Order Online" link on > the Municipal Archives website.

[https://www1.nyc.gov/dorforms/photoform.htm](https://www1.nyc.gov/dorforms/photoform.htm)

<comment><USER15> I wonder if I could FOIA the archives and get the digital corpus into the Internet Archive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://files.80s.nyc/photos/1/00189/0035.jpg](http://files.80s.nyc/photos/1/00189/0035.jpg)

Ghostbusters!

<comment><USER17> Whoa!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know they aren't photo spheres, but I wonder how hard it would be to patch all these locations into 360 images and plug them into a custom Google Street View.

[https://maps.googleblog.com/2013/12/create-your-own- street-v...](https://maps.googleblog.com/2013/12/create-your-own-street- view.html)

Extrapolating a bit further, I would really want to play the next GTA installment in 80s New York... you'se guys.

<comment><USER19> GTA 3 was basically late 80s/early 90s mafioso themed, but I think they were talking more about Philly than Nyc.

I too think it would be really cool to map everything directly to how the city is in the real world. Think of all the shady shit happening in Canarsie and Hoboken XD

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I grew up in Brooklyn in the late 90s, early 2000s. It wasn't the safest neighborhood in the 90s but over time crime dropped significantly. Our neighborhood had/has a huge West Indian population. Growing up I rarely saw white people in the neighborhood. The only other race was Asian folks who owned restaurants and other businesses nearby on Flatbush Ave.

I moved from NYC in 2013 and every time I go back I'm amazed at how much the neighborhood has changed. There is a million dollar condo down the block from my childhood apartment with an art gallery in the bottom floor, an art gallery!

It's good to see the neighborhood grow but its disheartening to see how many people have been pushed out. I have family members who are in rent controlled apartments and developers / landlords are doing everything in their power to kick them out. My mom's apartment needs frequent repair which the landlord drags his feet on but just down the hall there is a yuppie with a newly renovated apartment (and the rental bill to show for it). NY has changed so much.

</comment><comment><USER21> Photos of the birthplace of hiphop: [http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8340/-73.8763](http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8340/-73.8763)

</comment><comment><USER22> Warning: Opening the link freezes up my machine reproducibility. I need to hard reset.

I believe that the problem is swapping as I see the disk light on. This is on an eight-core i7 Dell Latitude with 8 GiB RAM, using Firefox 62.0 on Kubuntu 18.04.

<comment><USER23> If a website crashes your computer, your browser is broken.

<comment><USER22> I agree.

Considering that Firefox 62.x seems to be a popular web browser I thought it prudent to warn others before they open the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Am I going crazy or do these images look like NTSC video?

They are very low resolution, but it's not only that I don't think - there's something more done to them... like being sent through some kind of baroque video signal chain.

<comment><USER4> It's definitely sourced from NTSC video. Checkout: [http://files.80s.nyc/photos/3/05338/0023.jpg](http://files.80s.nyc/photos/3/05338/0023.jpg)

We've got crosstalk typical of NTSC video being passed through a 2D adaptive comb filter during decoding: cross-chrominance and cross-luminance are both visible in this sample.

Based on the appearance I'm assuming these images were stored sequentially on U-matic tape.

If they had chosen to repeat each image twice they would have enabled perfect 3D comb filtering (SNR issues aside). Unfortunately, they didn't.

<comment><USER21> Where Can I learn more about cross-chrominance and cross-luminance?

<comment><USER25> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_video#Demodulation_l...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_video#Demodulation_loss)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I bicycled there in winter of 1988 with dynamo-powered video camera. [https://youtu.be/8D-S8nYCwjA?t=4m28s](https://youtu.be/8D-S8nYCwjA?t=4m28s)

</comment><comment><USER27> Its very interesting to see the city change so much through the year. Lived in NYC for so many years, they will never stop rebuilding it. You think skyscrapers on 7th Avenue will be there 70 years from now? Once a new stronger materials will be invented with technology of faster elevators, these sky scrapers will be rebuild from new, most likely reaching 3x of current heights. So if you happen to be alive in 2099, check 2018s.nyc to see how New York City looked "before" :)

<comment><USER28> Whats remarkable to me is how this stands in contrast to some historical European cities like in Greece, Italy and Spain where some of the buildings and cities have remained essentially the same for hundreds of years! (In many cases, longer than America has been a country!)

<comment><USER29> And in other parts of Europe, entire cities were razed during WWII and rebuilt more or less from scratch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I believe there is something awry here.

I lived in Brooklyn in the 80s.

Most of these buildings had (and have) bars on the windows.

I am not seeing the window bars in these photos.

Unless there was like a year, say, 1982, when all the bars were nearly simultaneously put on, and these pictures were taken directly before that ... something is fishy.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why are there no shots of Columbia? The rest of Mo Heights looks exactly the same as it did in the 80s, though (I think the building I lived in a couple years ago still had the same scaffolding up, ha).

Also, I can't believe that McDonald's on 125th and Broadway has been there since the 80s!

<comment><USER32> They're from tax records, so non-profits didn't need to be recorded. In some cases the Churches and other were photographed "just because" but Columbia is big enough I'm sure they skipped it on purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> People always wonder why I'm reluctant to talk about what it was like growing up as a poor kid in nyc. Now I can tell them to take a walk down the same street I lived on, when I was a kid, and tell me if this is something you would want to chit chat about... [http://80s.nyc/#show/40.6931/-73.9412](http://80s.nyc/#show/40.6931/-73.9412) these empty lots often contained dead animals and people.

Living in nyc in the 80's was tough on children.

</comment><comment><USER34> Good ol' CBGB, [http://80s.nyc/#show/40.7250/-73.9919](http://80s.nyc/#show/40.7250/-73.9919)

<comment><USER35> managed to get a broken nose there my first week in NYC. way to go me. cool to see some good shows there before it became condos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is really amazing. Did any other cities do this in the 20th century as a way to assess properties or keep a record of construction within a municipality?

<comment><USER37> In 1943 a large chunk of Sydney, Australia was photographed from the sky. It's now available on the NSW Government website here: [http://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/](http://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/) You can flick between the aerial photography and the modern satellite imagery, or overlay the maps and fade between them. Fantastic stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wow, Williamsburg was _bleak_ back then.

<comment><USER39> navigate up to the bronx

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I lived in NYC for five years, and got to know the city quite well by bike.

Things I noticed:

\- Brooklyn has undergone an incredible amount of change

\- 14th & 6th midtown area maintains a lot of its image

\- The amount of change on the west side is uncanny. The Hudson Yards etc.

\- Save the Pearl st. area, the financial district still looks like it did

</comment><comment><USER41> Be a helluva undertaking, but I imagine there exists overhead photos of New York during the same period which could - with current tech - recreate a pretty effective 3D street view where the missing bits are extrapolated.

Probably not a whole lot of value, but a damn interesting exercise!

<comment><USER42> The USGS has historical high resolution aerial photographs for large portions of the country, some places going back to the 1930s:

[https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/](https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/)

The interface is really clunky but some of the data is amazing.

On the first tab on the right, select "Search Criteria", select "Coordinates" which allows you to put the points of a polygon on the map.

Next, select the "Data Sets" tab. Select "Aerial Photography | "Aerial Photo Single Frames"

The "Results". If there are any, thumbnails show up. You can then download the actual images which can be huge.

Once you get used to the interface, you can narrow the results down by date, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> [2017] comments from a year ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332171)

</comment><comment><USER44> Or you can watch old episodes of Kojak for a late 70's perspective.

But a nice undertaking.

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER45> I just see all black... Anyone else have the same problem?

<comment><USER46> Dev here, what browser are you on?

<comment><USER45> Chrome / Mac. It worked okay on my other computer, also Chrome / Mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Feels weird about the amount of data and nostalgia today.

</comment><comment><USER48> Very cool! Is there anything similar for other cities?

</comment><comment><USER35> just had a lot of fun with this. thanks for making it.</comment>