It's Going to Be Okay - <AUTHOR> http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/11/its-going-to-be-okay.html <comment><USER2> The author is delusional. This isn't a re-run of Bush 2000 for liberals or Obama 2008 for conservatives.

At a time of greatest institutional weakness, a demagogue with authoritarian tendencies that considers the norms of a liberal democracy to be a inconvenience and subordinate to the needs of order has just been elected on a wave of hate, lies, racism, and bigotry with the promise of locking up his political opponents and abandoning international allies and obligations.

This is potentially a game changer from which there is no return and everyone is a loser.

<comment><USER3> The most apt analysis I've read was that from a historical standpoint Clinton was trying to do something even very strong candidates have trouble doing - keeping a party three terms in a row for the White House. There's only one president that's done it to date and it was George Bush, Sr following Reagan. It implies that Americans' desire for party change may be among the strongest of predictors. On the other hand, this party streak breaking is completely irrelevant for any other elected branch of the government as seen by the unending cycle of easy defense for incumbents in office.

<comment><USER4> >The most apt analysis I've read was that from a historical standpoint Clinton was trying to do something even very strong candidates have trouble doing - keeping a party three terms in a row for the White House. There's only one president that's done it to date and it was George Bush, Sr following Reagan.

The Democrats actually managed it back after the Great Depression. Three terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt followed by one of Harry Truman.

<comment><USER5> Yep, and the Republicans did it 3 more times before that. And then there's Jackson/Van Buren three terms Dem which immediately follows the first big run of Thomas Jefferson and co running 7 terms as the Democratic-Republican party.

So really, it's just uncommon in the last sixty-odd years.

<comment><USER3> So when the 22nd amendment was passed to limit the president to two terms in 1951 that seems to have changed the dynamics considerably.

<comment><USER6> Maybe. Maybe not. We don't have a good control group to be able to know for certain. I think there is some psychological effect the term limit has on voters. For many the end of a second terms appeals to them as an opportunity of a fresh start (for better or worse), which may translate into electing a leader from a different party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In 2008, McCain voters were very disappointed but didn't experience the total loss of emotional control I've witnessed last night and this morning.

This article is a rare expression of maturity.

<comment><USER8> Yes it's almost as if McCain voters were mostly straight white people with very little to lose with an Obama presidency. Almost as if, say, major portions of the left today are marginalized groups who are now at risk of a Klan backed president....

Funny how that works out

<comment><USER9> [http://www.snopes.com/clinton-byrd-photo- klan/](http://www.snopes.com/clinton-byrd-photo-klan/)

<comment><USER10> Robert Byrd left the KKK in the 1940s. Then he spent decades apologising for it, saying he had been wrong, and fighting FOR Civil Rights. THe NAACP said this of Byrd when he died:

"Senator Byrd went from being an active member of the KKK to a being a stalwart supporter of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and many other pieces of seminal legislation that advanced the civil rights and liberties of our country."[1]

Does this really compare to Trump's support from the KKK and his resistance to rejecting them?

1: [https://donate.naacp.org/press/entry/naacp-mourns-the- passin...](https://donate.naacp.org/press/entry/naacp-mourns-the-passing- of-u.s.-senator-robert-byrd/)

<comment><USER7> It doesn't compare.

A Republican who was once in the KKK would never be forgiven no matter how many decades went by.

And you aren't responsible for who endorses you. Trump doesn't actually believe in white supremacy, so a KKK endorsement is meaningless and it's a logical fallacy to say otherwise. If the KKK endorsed carrot cake, carrot cake would not suddenly be bad.

Unless it's the kind with the overly sweetened frosting they serve in cafeterias. With the little orange and green frosting carrot on top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _But Trump can still do a huge amount of damage."_

> _Yes he can. And that sucks. But every president can do a lot of damage, and > many of them do, and we're still standing. And remember, the president is > seriously limited in what he can do without the approval of other parts of > the government, so he's unlikely to be able to carry out anything that > crazy._

Not every one is in the situation to sit back and take this with stride. I'm happy that the author is, and all things considered, I'm probably in that position, too. But if I were in a group that faced potential disenfranchisement, I wouldn't be laid back at the prospect of Republicans controlling all 3 branches of government.

<comment><USER12> You're correct - I am directly negatively affected by Supreme Court nominations that favour the removal of Roe v Wade, legal same-sex marriage, and the Affordable Care act. I will not be laid back.

<comment><USER13>
      that favour the removal of Roe v Wade

You seem to be totally unfamiliar with the actual case and the justices' opinions.

 _Five_ of the seven who supported the plaintiff (e.g. to uphold abortion rights) were _Republican appointees_.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't say totally unfamiliar, but I suppose I'm biased to my own understanding.

Correct, Republican appointees did support and continue to reaffirm constitutional protections for abortion rights. However, it is not clear to me that the Republicans making those appointments made a clear statement vowing that they would appoint those who would be in favor of removing Roe v Wade [0]. The seat currently open will be unlikely to overturn Roe v Wade regardless of who was appointed. However, should Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Kennedy, or Stephen Breyer leave the court (All >=78yrs) [1] and be replaced by Trump's appointees. I understand it's not an immediate ability with the appointment of one justice in that favour, but there's still reason for concern.

[0] [http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/19/trump-ill-appoint-supreme- cou...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/19/trump-ill-appoint-supreme-court- justices-to-overturn-roe-v-wade-abortion-case.html)

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-trump-supreme- court-2016...](http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-trump-supreme- court-20161109-story.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > it turns out that there are just as many people who are thrilled by last > night's election as there are people who are devastated by it. For every > single American who voted for Hillary yesterday and who watched last night's > events unfold in horror, there's another American out there who rejoiced. > It's a 1-to-1 ratio.

This has never been more incorrect than in this election. Many people who voted for Trump only because they didn't want Hillary to be president. And many who voted for Hillary because they didn't want Trump to be president.

When you get to pick your poison, that doesn't imply you're going to like the poison you pick. It's still poison.

<comment><USER15> Ehh, Trump lost the popular vote by a significant margin.

Trump won due to 64,252 voters in Florida. Alternatively, Hillary lost due to 8,693 voters in Michigan and 34,006 voters in Pennsylvania.

PS: It really was a tight race, but thinking in national terms is completely misleading. And no I did not vote for Hillary or Trump or more importantly live in a state that mattered.

<comment><USER16> > Trump lost the popular vote by a significant margin

I'm not sure the facts support that statement. As of this comment:

Trump: 59,341,446 Clinton: 59,578,989

That's a difference of just 237,543 votes, out of about 125 million votes. Or, less than 1/5th of a percent difference.

<comment><USER15> He got 47.5% of the popular vote. Which is slightly lower than 47.7% for Hillary, but a long way from 50.001%.

Calling 47.5:52.5 a 1:1 ratio is rather far off it's 1:1.105.

<comment><USER16> I suppose what you're saying is that Johnson (3%), Stein (1%) and other (0.7%) means that not everyone in the country voted for one of the two. While true, the relative difference between the two main contenders is what matters.

According to Wikipedia's chart, this is the 3rd closest popular vote elections in history.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "Easy for you to say, white male blogger. I'm brown and I don't feel safe > here anymore."

> Here's what I'll say to that:

> This country had your back yesterday and it'll have your back tomorrow.

The whole point of not feeling safe is that the country doesn't have their back.

</comment><comment><USER18> Articles like this are sadly mostly useless because people who need to read them the most are not going to.

Hardcore liberals who blame Trump and his supporters for "bigotry" usually refuse to accept or even take a look at any other points of view, which is, ironically, the definition of bigotry.

<comment><USER19> Don't blame people for not being able to see other people's perspectives. That takes very hard physical work, and when you perhaps write down the kinds of things that would be required to explore even a few divergent perspectives, most people are simply not cut out for the task.

Additionally, most people are not even cut out for the task of coming up with a credible narrative of what selfish rationality means to them. They have difficulty describing even their own interests.

Heaven forbid they have to model the rationality of others! Heaven forbid a model should have more than 3 factors in interaction!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's not going to be okay. A lot of marginalized people are going to be hurt even more, and yes, the people that voted for Trump _are_ racists, sexists, etc., or at the very least they are _fine_ with a president who is all of those things.

<comment><USER21> > and yes, the people that voted for Trump are racists, sexists, etc.,

Not a Trump supporter, I don't like him and I live on another continent, but I do not like the way some of you want to paint everyone who doesn't agree with you as morally corrupt and divide USA even more.

Please guys, for your own good, stop, take a step back and think about why this happened.

I argue that if the reason was that 50% of the voters are stupid haters then you would had an real problem long before this election.

<comment><USER22> We have had real problems, and continue to have them. It's not implausible at all, given the US's (recent!) history, to suggest that 50+% of Americans are racist or sexist. In some ways, it would be more surprising if the number was less than 50%.

<comment><USER23> ...... please, stop.

This kind of absurd social justice rampage is exactly why people stayed quiet in public, but privately voted for Trump at the ballot box.

<comment><USER21> Agreed.

I notice you have been downvoted. This post election shaming campaign is really making certain "democrats" look bad.

I won't attribute it to all democrats but a few people here have been behaving in what I see as a very undemocratic way over the last 24 hours.

That said, here is a protip: don't mention SJ, it just fuels the fire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this is missing the part where Pence claimed, yesterday, that Trump will be repealing many LGBT rights. That's not a political opinion, that's a threat.

<comment> norea-armozel Well let's see what he thinks of Minnesota or California basically tell him to fly a kite.

<comment><USER25> If Minnesota or California can protect the rights of their citizens, then good for them, but it does not protect LGBT individuals in Texas or the Midwest.

<comment> norea-armozel No doubt and I'm open to helping them anyway I can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> On another note, I find it really interesting that people are up in arms about the "social damage" implications, as if that was the only thing at stake. What about the damage potential of Hilary's desire to enforce a no-fly-zone over Syria, unambiguously escalating tensions with Russia and moving us closer to a potential WWIII? Acceptable for the sake of the former? A minor detail?

</comment><comment><USER27> This isn't about losing an election, this is about the next 40 years. Trump will sit one justice immediately, setting the lean of the court, and likely 3 more over his presidency. He is setting the SCOTUS for the next 40 years.

He has all 3 branches.

</comment><comment><USER26> I voted for Obama and I voted for Trump. I am not alone. The "other side" is not the mythical homogenous group of zealots so many have painted it to be. A lot of supposedly rational open-minded people are interpreting this in an overly simplistic, frankly emotional way. I commend the message here. Just stop and breathe. Take it in, don't jump to conclusions based on your knee- jerk reaction/feelings.

</comment><comment><USER28> Right now, we have no clue if it will be OK. We have no idea what Trump will do on foreign policy. Harry Truman once said "domestic policy can only hurt you, but foreign policy can kill you". He'd been in charge for the end of WWII, after all.

It will matter a lot who Trump picks as Secretary of State. They'll probably determine more of foreign policy than Trump does.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't see how you can realistically claim that public policy _just doesn 't matter_. Republicans just claimed control of the Presidency, the House, and the Senate in a clean sweep, while the Supreme Court has a vacancy and numerous federal judicial and executive positions remain unfilled. They are going to be able to implement whatever they can come to consensus about within their own ranks.

This isn't Windows versus Macintosh. This is life and death. You can hold the opinion that the Republican policy platform is acceptable while acknowledging that your party just got near-total power over a heavily divided, regionalized, racialized country in an incredibly narrow victory. There is going to be conflict over this.

</comment><comment><USER29> This was a refreshing read. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think the mistake this post makes is that this revultion isn't just about the politics. It's also and much more so for me, and the person.

</comment><comment><USER31> Yeah, I was voting age through the Clinton and Bush Presidencies. I view the Bush Presidency as a complete disaster. What we have here, however, is setup to be worse, because the Republican Party has shifted even more to the right with the rise of the Tea Party.

They can most immediately do massive damage through appointment of Supreme Court justices. While its true that the open seat was an arch conservative and having a Republican appointment to that seat will not change the balance of power in the court much, Kennedy, Ginsburg and Breyer are all 78-83 and mortality will be catching up with them soon. That puts Roe v. Wade legitimately in jeopardy like never before.

When it comes to one of the biggest issues of our time -- climate change -- we just elected the candidate who claimed that it was a chinese hoax. The House is full of candidates who believe similarly. The most moderate of Republicans are likely to dismiss the magnitude of the concerns over the climate and vote in favor of protecting carbon based industries. It really is fairly black and white on this issue and the fact that there's a few moderates who won't straight up deny the science doesn't help when they form a coalition with the anti-science tea partiers, the effect is going to be the same.

Its also likely that the ACA gets repealed now. It might take triggering the "nuclear option" in the senate to override a fillibuster, but I can see that happening now. About the only upside to this is that when 10 million or so Americans wake up the next day and find they've lost their healthcare they might think twice about voting Republican. Conceivably the possibility of that backlash might cause some Republicans to defect and not consider the nuclear option and this may not happen, but that is teetering on a hugely sharp knife edge.

Then there's just rolling back all the progress over the past 8 years in civil rights. At the very least it will solidly block progress for the next 4-8 years. It won't be getting any better. I can't imagine that the issues with police shootings of black males will improve and that BLM will be going away. If anything, I could see even more incidents like the Dallas shootings and movements springing up that really were more like the Blank Panthers. Riots in major cities, etc.

And then there's foreign involvement. I suspect that everyone who voted for Trump thinking that was the anti-war vote is going to be shocked pretty soon at how many boots we wind up with on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. I would never defend Obama's drone strikes or Hillary's penchant for bombing, but the Republican party is the one that likes to see Abrams battle tanks rolling across sand dunes in the Middle East, which is orders of magnitude worse. There was one anti-war candidate in this election and it was Bernie Sanders. What we got was the Hawk in Dove's clothing.

And when it comes to financial crisis we're going to see the repeal of Dodd- Frank almost certainly. The problem here is that while during the 2008 crisis you saw George Bush's administration rescue the financial industry (and the entire country) there's no assurances that we won't see the Trump administration and the Republican congress blow up the US financial industry. Last time there was that awkward picture of Treasury Secretary Paulson getting down on one knee and begging Nancy Pelosi to stop the financial crisis. What we've elected since then is the whole Tea Party wing who think the solution to financial crisis is not regulation before it happens and instead is just letting a financial crisis unwind with maximum possible destruction. Next time we might see money market accounts lock up, short term credit evaporate and literally ATMs and monthly paychecks from otherwise solvent industries stop. We peered over that abyss in 2008 and now we've put all the people who thought going over that cliff sounded like a great idea into power.

And even if you discount those last two arguments I made as being unlikely, its still not remotely going to be okay.

</comment><comment><USER32> couldn't agree more.

Imagine this election is a startup. You have this wonderful/magical/great product but just not sell. Then what? Back to development and try again!

<comment><USER33> Sure, but the unfinished product can severely impact your life regardless of how it's going.</comment></comment>


Cutting Edge Prosthetic Arms (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6R5bm6qx2E&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eyoutube%2Ecom%2Fwatch%5Fpopup%3Fv%3DT6R5bm6qx2E&feature=player_detailpage

<comment><USER2> Simply amazing. The convergence of robotics, biology, and software is both powerful and frightening.</comment>


The Lean Startup bundle for only $49 - includes Eric's Book - <AUTHOR> http://deals.feld.com/deal/lean-startup-2/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, just bought this bundle offer (down from $150) and thought it might be of interest to HNs.

it includes access to 3 LS courses plus Eric Ries' new book.

hope you can take advantage of it.</comment>


Bird populations have declined since 1970 across nearly all habitats - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silent-skies-billions-of-north-american-birds-have-vanished/ <comment><USER2> New Zealand used to have a dawn chorus of birds before it was settled by Europeans.

"When Captain Cook came to the Queen Charlotte Sound in 1770, his botanist, Joseph Banks, described the dawn chorus he heard in his journal. 'This morn I was awakd by the singing of the birds ashore from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile, the numbers of them were certainly very great who seemd to strain their throats with emulation perhaps; their voices were certainly the most melodious wild musick I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells....'.

The dawn chorus doesn't exist now for two reasons: forest was felled and converted to farmland, and bird/egg eating mammals were introduced.

New Zealand is trying to stop the decline in our bird numbers and threatened species, and we are even succeeding in small areas. We have been leading the world at completely eradicating pests from some islands, and fencing off some forest areas within our cities, and eradicating all mammals (rats/stoats/cats) within them.

Fortunately New Zealand is quite progressive on environmental issues (although we need to do way better), and about 5% to 10% of our parliament is the Green Party (who regularly have real power by forming coalition governments or strategic voting on bills). I think much of their policy is whacko, but as a minority they work well to effect change and represent the large number of New Zealanders that care deeply about our environment.

I like this summary [http://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/8206417/A-deafening- dawn-ch...](http://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/8206417/A-deafening-dawn-chorus) (although maybe stop reading when she starts rabbiting on about her rooster!).

<comment><USER3> From what I can tell between 10,000 and 100,000 species are becoming extinct each year. Maybe we should tax the rich to save them all? How can we save 100,000 each year. Do we think Capitalism is causing these extinction?

<comment><USER4> Broadly speaking, "people growing food" is causing these extinctions. Ending capitalism might reverse these changes to the ecosystems, insofar as people suffer mass starvation, are killed in revolutionary struggle / civil war, or are exterminated by a dystopian post-capitalist state; aside from this you should, broadly speaking, expect the inferior yields of collectivized agriculture to worsen the environmental degradation (by requiring more farmland), not improve it.

<comment><USER5> Well if history is any measure the move away from capitalism will kill off a good percentage of the population. So I guess from an ecological standpoint it would be good to have a communist revolution every couple decades then quickly go back to capitalism so the people left can live nice lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There must be something more than habitat loss or pesticides.

Outside of Central Asia sparrows are introduced species, adapted to live on remains of our towns. Urban environments is the natural habitat of sparrows, like rats with wings. They don't belong to the wilderness. If sparrows are also disappearing then the loss of natural habitat is not the only answer.

Edit: from this graph [0] it seems that the loss is concentrated on introduced species (such as sparrows), shorebirds and insectivores.

[0][https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silent-skies- bill...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silent-skies-billions-of- north-american-birds-have-vanished/)

<comment><USER7> It sounds like you are referring specifically to the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) which is not native to North America and is indeed strongly associated with urban environments.[0] But the native New World sparrows to which the article refers are a separate group of species and are dependent on natural habitat.[1]

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe not only birds.

Today, I drove home from Las Vegas to Portola Valley. I went 95->6->120 over Tioga pass, then home.

I've driven this route over several decades. My recollection (corroborated by a few Kodachrome slides) is that my windshield would be smeared with bug impacts by the time I got to Lee Vining, necessitating a stop at the humongously overpriced gas station so I could use their window cleaners. Since about 15 years ago, not so much.

I had a total of three bugs at Lee Vining today. I bypassed the gas station and window cleaning, went over Tioga.

If we're really missing the quantities of bugs my anecdote may illustrate, it's no wonder the birds are missing, too.

<comment><USER9> Curious how many times you and millions of others thought you could slaughter all those insects with your cars before it would harm them. Roads are one of the main reasons for declining animal populations and insects are impacted as much as or more than any animals.

<comment><USER10> Is this true? I always thought the decline was more often caused by removing habitats. Would be curious to know how this is measured and communicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Living in rural Illinois I can attest that bugs have pretty much vanished. You used to be eaten alive outside, not so much near any crop fields (i.e. most of the state). I never even get bit at night.

I'm sure that is the largest impact on birds, no food.

<comment><USER12> Remember when you had to scrape your windshield down after a car trip? I noticed the birds vanishing in my area, but I had no idea it was happening on this scale.

<comment><USER13> A lot of that is aerodynamics improving in newer cars. I drive a Jeep Wrangler and it catches a lot more bugs than our modern Honda

<comment><USER14> I drive old cars, and have had the same exact model for over a decade, and cross the country often between the west coast and midwest.

It used to be that I'd have to clean my windshield at gas stops and the car would need its bumper and hood washed of insect genocide on arrival.

These days neither are necessary, it's _very_ apparent.

<comment><USER15> You obviously haven't driven through southern Oregon on highway 97 during sunset. Had to use the windshield wipers because I couldn't see from all the bug carcasses on the windshield.

<comment><USER14> I haven't, but have certainly experienced driving through regions where there are still insects. Northern MN for example, that was reminiscent of what it used to be like driving through NE.

That's besides the point though, at least along the route I drive most often, which is i80 between SF and Chicago, there's been a very visible decline of insects over the past ~1.5 decades according to the windshield gauge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Outdoor domestic cats, apparently, kill billions of birds annually. Have a cat? Don't let it outdoors.

<comment><USER17> I wonder what impact it would have if everyone put a collar jingle bell on their cat.

<comment><USER18> My sister's cats have multiple bells and they still murder all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I thought the Bay Area was unnervingly devoid of birds, I guess I was right.

</comment><comment><USER20> Tangentially related, but is Scientific American worth subscribing to? I really like reading paper magazines and am a subscriber to Science, but feel like I could use lighter reading if it's not too sensationalist

<comment><USER21> No. It used to be great but then they went way downmarket about 20 years to increase readership. After several years of declining quality I quite when I noticed they had adjusted the font size and spacing to have about the same number of pages (and ads) in each issue while reducing the actual content by ~20%.

I mean, it's not terrible but it used to be solidly educational whereas _Nature_ or _Science_ is relatively hard work to read unless you really love getting into the weeds. _Scientific American_ used to sit in the middle ground between _Popular Mechanics_ or _National Geographic_ and actual journals, but you'll probably find it disappointingly shallow.

<comment><USER22> More to the point then, is there anything that sits between the high quality generalist journals and generalist scientific magazines (Nat Geo. and the like)?

I can and do read Nature and Science, but outside of my PhD field I find it pretty slow going and often feel like I'm missing out on what could be interesting findings due to not having sufficient background to fully understand the problem space.

<comment><USER21> Not that I'm aware of, sadly. There's _New Scientist_ from the UK but that's more of a weekly newspaper and thus a bit shallow. There's some great online magazines of course (Quanta is pretty good) but for longform writing I still like hard copy cause I'm old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Other live discussion about same topic/study:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018916)

</comment><comment><USER24> We ded</comment>


Brain Scans Reveal Why "Night Owls" Have It Rough in a 9-to-5 Society: Study - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/53324-night-owls-morning-larks-study <comment><USER2> Did we prove that early birds vs night owls exists on a biological level ?

As in, after taking into account individual habits / conditions: coffee, alcohol consumption, quality of sleep (noise/light in the room), physical activity, stress level, usage of artificial light before bed, &c.

If I strap a 10000 lumen blue light in front of your face every single night until 2 AM for a few weeks I guarantee you'll turn into a night owl by the article definition (shifted melatonin and cortisol production cycles).

They kind of make this point themselves: "genes can even shift a person's natural waking time by up to 25 minutes." and in the linked article "the mean sleep timing of the 5% of individuals carrying the most morningness alleles is 25 min earlier than the 5% carrying the fewest.".

If genes only account for up to 25 min then the rest might come to personal routines and behaviours.</comment>


PyPy can now load and run CPython extension modules natively - <AUTHOR> http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-cpython-extension-modules-with.html

<comment><USER2> Wow. Weren't C extensions precisely the major problem which lead Google to build Unladen Swallow instead of contributing to PyPy?

Hope we'll soon have several great Python environments, even though I was secretly rooting for PyPy, being in Python (that must be common fantasy after reading some parts of SICP!).

<comment><USER3> I doubt it. Unladen Swallow was meant to be conservative. As in, production code with 1 billion users conservative.

Still, it's a big step towards other people taking it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The post isn't too clear on this, but you should note that this work is not yet in PyPy trunk. You need to check out the branch if you want to test it.

<http://codespeak.net/svn/pypy/branch/cpython-extension/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Please add support for pip - it really makes life easy.

<comment><USER6> Support for pip is a slightly different issue, pip doesn't rely on any C extensions. Out of curiosity, how does pip currently not work?</comment></comment>


Tesla taking orders for next summer now - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/want-a-tesla-next-year-get-in-line-now

<comment><USER2> They've recently opened a Tesla showroom on El Camino just north of the Stanford Mall. I wonder if they have any cars to test drive.

</comment><comment><USER3> The $109,000 price can only be locked-in until the end of 2008. I think it can reasonably be anticipated that the 2010 Tesla Roadster will be $119,000.</comment>


The Oculus Rift makes Elite: Dangerous amazing–and impossible to describe - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/11/the-oculus-rift-makes-elite-dangerous-amazing-and-impossible-to-describe/

<comment><AUTHOR> I played the original on the BBC B. It was amazing. Stunning. Blew my 14 year old mind. I feel this combination of technology and the perfect game will completely blow my 44 year old mind.</comment>


If Google had a gun… (or – shoot your developers first, ask questions later) - <AUTHOR> http://pingjam.com/if-google-had-a-gun-or-shoot-your-developers-first-ask-questions-later/

<comment><USER2> "He told him that we could not share any non-public 3rd party contact information without the explicit consent of that 3rd party. Although this is much stricter than the strictest legal opinions we had – we had no choice but to abide."

So you reluctantly stopped stealing people's data? It's hard to have sympathy when you're complaining about Google protecting people's privacy!

<comment><AUTHOR> No stealing what so ever ,see Elnor's response : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4175896> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "He told him that we could not share any non-public 3rd party contact information without the explicit consent of that 3rd party."

The European Data Directive, which Google is subject to, does prohibit this practice. Enforcement on this in the EU is sketchy but Google is already under the microscope in the EU for many other practices.

And their revision of only pulling from public sources isn't quite that clear. If they are aggregating that data then it could be considered transforming pseudo-anonymous data to something that is personally identifiable -- or at least the risk of that.

I don't agree with these laws and regulations and I can sympathize with the company but Google is really just protecting themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes but at what cost? , wouldn't it be better that google will have some sort of approval process like in the apple store. at least there you know where you stand.

</comment></comment><comment> hendrik-xdest I don't think that a publicly available database means that you can use their data without consent. In Germany any collection of data might fall under the protection of copyright (or you could even patent a data collection, if I am not mistaken). Telephone books, for example, are free for anyone. But you can't go ahead and scan the pages and provide a service that parses through the data.

My guess is that the sources you use might be free to use but not necessarily free to integrate into a software product. Even if there are APIs available I would check your sources to see if there are special rules for commercial products or applications that access the data massively.

<comment><USER2> In Canada, raw data (such as telephone book listings) are not copyrightable[0]. The graphics and layout of the phone book pages are, but the data is not.

[0] <http://www.lmlaw.ca/copyright_raw_data.pdf>

<comment> hendrik-xdest I remember a German or European court ruling that states that as soon as a measurable effort is needed to collect the data it might be protected by copyright--could even be the effort to create a management or collection software. At least, I think that was the case but I might be mistaken. Also, I do not remember what kind of data collection this related to in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Does that then mean that only the first collector is allowed to collect, even if subsequent collections are independent efforts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking at this from Google's perspective I can't really blame them for what they're doing although its unfortunate they aren't being more forthcoming with you. Your app, while a great idea, has serious privacy ramifications and Google will receive a lot of the backlash if its covered by mainstream media in an unfavorable light.

<comment><AUTHOR> on the other hand , google play approved white pages app which reveals not only your name but also your physical address.

further more to remove yourself from white pages listing you need to pay a monthly fee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Welcome to working with large corporations. Not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, the fingers are pretty much in the dark, too.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the comments and don't get us wrong, we fully agree that everyone's privacy should be respected. This is why we started this endeavor by consulting a crack team of lawyers and by surveying a lot of users to understand where the line is drawn by both. We went for the less invasive option, and when all was said and done - almost all we did that exposed any 3rd party details was to show you the name of the person that is calling you. After all, if they are calling you they either want to share their name with you anyway or they are shady to begin with. Again no problem with having clear directions and following them. Huge problem with arbitrary, terminal decisions that come without dialogue or an opportunity to understand what is deemed wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a second post (of many more it seems...) in the saga of pingjam's play (store) adventures. In the past month we have been working our asses off because of google's store random bans and lack of communication.

Since Google is blatantly ignoring us - we would appreciate any comments and experience you have and are happy to share ours as well .

<comment><USER8> You should consider caching your post before putting it here. Google doesn't seem to have a cached version either and I'm unable to read your post because your site is down.

<comment><USER9> Cached version has finally come through: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://pingjam.com/if- google-had-a-gun-or-shoot-your-developers-first-ask-questions-later/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: As a contractor can I list projects I've worked on on my resume? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
Just started out full time contract work this year with some great success. I've worked on some very well known web sites.
Is it ok for me to list these websites in my resume? Do you guys do this? Including these projects in my resume would make it much more impressive and would lend me a great amount of credibility to potential contracts that I'm looking for.
On the other hand I'm not sure if this would be a breach of an NDA agreement or not. And what if I haven't signed an NDA?
My rule of thumb has been to only talk about projects that I've worked on that could be deduced from publicly availible information, but I'm not sure even this is ok.
Thanks for any feedback you can give me! <comment><USER2> I am not contracting at this point, but I have done a lot of it in my past.

The answer is, it depends on what the NDA & your contract says. Generally in my contracts I used to always have a clause that allowed me to say who and what project I was working on, and it overrode the NDA for that sole purpose. There were a few exceptions when a project was stealth of course which is fine.

Mine basically spelled out what I could say, basically it was generally: who, what, when and basic goals. Outside of that and you have to get permission usually. I also still to this day don't list them on my resume by name, but instead by basic details. When I talk with people I will say who/what and that lets them know I have the chops which can be validated through contracts or references in certain cases. To be fair, usually the talks come first then if they need further due diligence they see my resume. When I was contracting it was super rare anyone on my team had to produce a resume for clients, except for the largest of clients who wanted more to vet and frankly to get them in their contact list to try and poach them later. No matter what was in the contract about anti poaching, every person who produced a resume would suddenly find themselves in headhunters sites or in corporate recruiting systems (mine included sometimes).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply! Did you submit this clause to them yourselves when you agreed to the work? I'm not working with an agency, I'm just scouting work myself. It seems like I could generate a lot of friction from potential employers by asking them to sign a clause like this.

I'm been searching online to see if the specific project I just left could be publicly connected to the company for which I worked, and I'm finding that all of my fellow contractors have listed the project on their linkedin. I think I'm going to take their queue and put it on my resume myself.

<comment><USER2> I didn't work through an agency, I have been the founder of more than one consultancy. I had my own MSA/RSA agreements and SOW templates I would work from. And in some cases large companies or publicly traded ones would want to use their own contract and I would send them my requests which is part of normal business practices. If you don't send them back something on the contract than you probably haven't looked close enough to find the potential problems with it, and they get it. Any client that got all pissy about contract revisions was a client not worth having because they were trying to get something over on me and I wouldn't put up with it. Push back/negotiation is fine, pissy attitude isn't.

I am not a lawyer but use them when needed, you should too. But in general, usually in the MSA/RSA or similar I'd have a clause under a section called "publicity" or similar that would read substantially similar to below, where Company was my company and Client was the client we were doing work for:

"Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Agreement or applicable Statements of Work, Company shall be permitted to disclose in summary form the nature of the work performed for Client under the applicable Statement of Work. Such disclosure includes a description of the technology utilized by Company, but Company shall not disclose the proprietary business processes of Client or otherwise result in any breach of any other term of this Agreement."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the reply! My medium-long term goal is to turn what I'm doing as a freelancer into my own consultancy/development firm.

Really appreciate the feedback. I'll look into integrating this sort of thing into my future contracts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work in live events and frequently see people list specific events they have worked on in their resume. While this isn't an apples to apples comparison, it has some merit. Generally, it's not useful for me to know that you worked on something a few years ago. What I care more about is a narrative of impactful work across a number of projects, whether small, large or in between.

If someone violates an NDA to tout their contribution on a project it is an immediate turn off as it shows a breach of trust before we even have had a conversation.

It's likely that over the course of n projects, a contractor was 'over hired' and 'under hired' some amount of times. Seeing a trend of consistent placement in their past work helps me know that they have an area of focus and expertise that I can capitalize on as well. This means they will have a high level of efficiency in the work that I need them to do. Given this, seeing that narrative played out in the resume is important.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do not disclose any details if you know that information is valuable to your clients. Follow the agreement.</comment>


Amazon Echo Auto – Add Alexa to Your Car - <AUTHOR> https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07VTK654B <comment><USER2> "No, I wanna copy Apple now!" \-- Amazon, to Google, overheard by a confused Apple employee who thought they were copying the other two.</comment>


Capture and Decode FM Radio - <AUTHOR> https://witestlab.poly.edu/blog/capture-and-decode-fm-radio/ <comment><USER2> Very nice article. Implementing something commonly known yourself with instructions tends to be enlightening. The instructions save you maybe 80% of your time, but you still have the chance to learn how everything works if you focus. It also gives you confidence.

Some of the best resources I've seen in that regard are nand2tetris and make- a-lisp.

The SDR community seems to mainly consist of people interested in using existing software and focusing on the received signals. There's still a lot to be discovered if more people start writing software to _decode_ the signals.

<comment><USER3> _> There's still a lot to be discovered if more people start writing software to decode the signals._

You might be interested in the GNU Radio project, a modular suite of tools for building software receivers.

[https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/What_is_GNU_Radio%3F](https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/What_is_GNU_Radio%3F)

You may also be interested in WSJT (ultra-efficient data modes) and FreeDV (ultra-low-bandwidth voice). A number of people in the amateur radio community are working on modern modulation and codec systems.

[https://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/](https://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/)

[https://freedv.org/](https://freedv.org/)

<comment><USER2> Yes, I've been planning to learn GNU Radio. Thanks for pointing me to other interesting projects, too. I feel like I'll need to gain a better understanding of radio technology, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool introductory article that will leave you knowing more about SDR signal processing than you might have expected when you first clicked on the link.

As usual in this business, setting up the development environment will be 90% of the hassle. But it looks like it'd be well worthwhile for those just getting started in the field, especially if you're already comfortable with Python and Linux.

GENI also sounds extremely interesting. Being a Windows-dweller for the most part, I'd never heard of that before.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just a few hours back I was checking whether I could capture audio via 3.5mm from iPad nano, to stream FM radio channels to my smartphone.

I was thinking like 3.5 mm from ipod to RCA & then RCA to Raspberry pi Mic. Then processing the mic input for streaming.

I think I'll loose the dual channel & also not sure whether I would be able to control the channels without creating a breakout switch in the line to ipod's 3.5 mm.

Can anyone suggest a better way to do this? There's no Internet Radio in India & smartphones doesn't have FM radios now a days.

<comment><USER2> You can get a software defined radio for around $25 (see rtl-sdr.com), allowing you to capture many kinds of radio signals (including FM radio, amateur radio etc). But I'm sure there are also dedicated FM radio usb dongles for much cheaper.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. I guess, that would be the sane way to do it. The OP article talks about Mono channel, does dual channel stereo work just as seamless with RTL- SDR?

<comment><USER2> Probably. The stereo separation is encoded in the signal, and I think mainstream SDR software has it working out of the box (but I don't listen to WBFM). Not decoding in stereo was probably just a simplification for the article.

Then again, an SDR is overkill if all you'll ever want is FM radio. A dedicated FM receiver will use less power, take less space and hopefully have better usability.

<comment><USER5> You're correct. Due to fudged up electronics prices here, DVB-T is cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never been able to get clear FM reception through an RTL SDR. I ended up buying an Arduino powered radio that I should be able to modify to use as a base for an FM to DLNA project.

<comment><USER5> Do you mean a radio receiver for Arduino? can you provide link for the same, I would like to check whether it works for RPi.

<comment><USER6> No, I was on a phone so probably a bit too terse.

What I bought was [https://www.tindie.com/products/microwavemont/dsp-radio- vers...](https://www.tindie.com/products/microwavemont/dsp-radio-version-4/) \- I'll be hooking this up to a Pi with some kind of audio capture and hopefully modifying the firmware so the frequency can be set via UART.

What I'd really like to know is how hard it would be to hook up the same kind of chip/circuit to another chip that does USB Class Audio so there's no extra capture step to get audio to a Pi.

<comment><USER5> thanks, though it will be fun to try that; RTL-SDR method suggest by others seems reasonable & cost-effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great article. I love SDR, and this kind of tutorial really brings it into the home accessibly.

For more, there's another really nice SDR basics course online you can find at Great Scott Gadgets ([https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/](https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/)) associated with the HackRF One open-source SDR hardware. It goes into it a bit with GNU Radio, which is a really incredible project.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've always wanted to learn more about SDR especially when you think about just how many signals are present in the air. Thanks for the good introduction!</comment>


Understanding Debt, Risk and Leverage - <AUTHOR> http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-debt-risk-and-leverage/ <comment><USER2> Even as a libertarian, I find the temptation to call for a ban on leveraging past about 10x very strong. It's just insane. As the article says, at 30x you're looking at a 3% drop wiping you out and 4% sending you into horrifying debt. What market, anywhere, ever, can guarantee never to drop 3%? None worth being in.

And it has to be a guarantee, too, because like gambling in Vegas, once you're wiped out, you lose and can't play again. (Without a government prop, anyhow.)

Add to that the way leverage calls tend to cascade and crash the entire system, and it just seems an insane primitive to build a financial system on.

(In practice, my ban would fail anyhow, since I'm sure some financial legerdemain could figure out how to triple-leverage something if somebody really wanted it, regardless of how carefully the law was written. Maybe what I really want is the ability to invest money (including my bank savings account) and specify a leverage tolerance limit. Anyway, I'm not really trying to propose a solution, just express some horror at the use of leverage in our system.)

<comment><USER3> It took me less than two seconds to figure out how to use two companies to get to 100x, or three companies to get to 1000x, etc, etc.

Thinking as a libertarian, the key is to eliminate the government prop for the losers. People involved get the implied government/judicial prop of bankruptcy protection if they need it, but otherwise, let them fail, let the failures cascade as they will, and get on with the healing/repair/rebuilding as soon as possible.

Sure, I agree that it sucks that someone might have an employment agreement that suggests they are owed a stream of the future profits of a company in the form of a private pension, and if that company fails, they won't get that pension payment.

So what? That's like me betting my buddy a billion dollars on a coin flip and then the winner trying to collect the bet from a third party (the government is nothing more than a series of third parties acting collectively). "But I had an agreement and I was counting on that money to live in retirement?" True, but not the problem of the taxpayers that you wagered your retirement on a poorly managed company, whether it's a bank, brokerage, or in the case of GM, a retiree health care and pension company that happens to build cars with a portion of its efforts.

<comment><USER4> _Thinking as a libertarian,_

To me there seem to be two practically inseparable parts to thinking as a libertarian, when applying it to a practical issue. The idea that Government intervention is amoral & the idea that government intervention is counter- productive.

The former is really an assertions in an area where it is hard to rationally reach an kind of a foundation. This applies equally to most ethical frameworks. I'm not singling out libertarians. The latter often seems to be motivated by faith associated with the former.

You don't here many socialists admitting that while libertarians are morally wrong, their economic models produce a lot more wealth. You don't hear much the other way either.

In fact, those that accept that morally superior & practically effective are often independent. What I am saying is that I don't think that many without an ideological attachment to 'laissez faire' economies would be arguing your position.

The incentives & market signals may not have been perfect. There may have been some distortion coming from the possibility of state intervention. But there was & remains a clear incentive to succeed & a clear disincentive to go bankrupt. The major forces at play leading to a 30/1 leverage are market forces. But eliminating the chance a bailouts are a small drop in that ocean. How about eliminating the possibility of bankruptcy or legal liability? Those are probably bigger

The paper economics is built on lots of assumptions & axioms nailed in with common sense & on average or defining away problems. Consumers make rational decisions=> Define utility creatively. On average & in the long term people are perfectly informed.

Anyway, technical discussions aside, I think it is important for people to look at what parts of the 'ideologies' they subscribe to are independent of each other.

Does it follow from agreeing that socialism is a morally superior concept to capitalism mean that there are no problems inherent in state controlled institutions? Does believing that a coercive state is a bad thing mean that everything you want from an economy can be achieved without it?

I think that the anti-welfarists need to accept for example that sometime, somewhere laissez faire markets may produce a situation where a good chunk of society is undernourished. And more to the point that it may not always produce the economically most efficient outcomes.

<comment><USER3> For the record, I do "accept that sometime, somewhere laissez faire markets may produce a situation where a good chunk of society is undernourished." I think that it's the pro-welfarists and socialists that seem to have a problem accepting that.

To me, wanting minimal government interference in private choices is purely a matter of practicality, not one of morality. I'd prefer that the government not be a nanny to the entire population, constantly at the ready to wipe the nose and dry the tears of anyone who gets hurt. I do agree that _if_ the government is going to serve that purpose, then they'll pretty much have to take away the rewards for good choices, as both a disincentive to take large risks and equally importantly, because it's going to be damned expensive to prop up everyone who chose poorly, someone's got to pay for it, and only those who chose well can afford it.

We're pretty far afield of hacker news at this point, and I suspect we understand each other views at a gross level and simply disagree on where the optimal point for a society's government to strive for is located. If it's any consolation, despite having made good choices, I have no say or sway in the matter and that people who think more like you are in power and are determined to wipe the noses that "need" wiped and dry the abundant damp eyes, so you'll get your way anyhow...

<comment><USER4> Yo're right I did hit far off the point I was making which is: Hard libertarians read this story as market signals were distorted by government. We might as well be burning silos of wheat.

Social Democrats are predictably reading this as an example that markets do not protect themselves against unacceptable results.

But it seems that anyone without an ideological attachment is siding with the latter. Of course this is dangerous as it probably means a wholesale swing towards that side which comes with a whole lot of completely unrelated stuff.

<comment><USER5> > Social Democrats are predictably reading this as an example that markets do > not protect themselves against unacceptable results.

Yes, but Social Democrats haven't figured out that regulation doesn't eliminate risk. Financial regulation in particular concentrates risk. The "most effective" reduces the probability of a loss but increases the magnitude even more, increasing the expected value (which is the product of the probability of a loss and the loss's cost if it occurs). This can be a bad thing if the expected value is catastrophic, as we're seeing.

We're much better off with continuous small failures than we are with occasional large ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _My inner geek cringes, since the sides of a lever move in opposite directions_. His inner geek need not cringe, a crowbar is a kind of lever where the 'sides' move in the same direction. Voilà!

</comment><comment><USER7> Taking leverage makes sense only if the expected value is positive.

If you don't know it, only if marginal utility of potential loss is either smaller or equal to potential gain.

It is important, though, to not confuse potential loss with volatility. :-)</comment>


LiveJournal loses DMCA safe harbor protection [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2017/04/07/14-56596.pdf <comment><USER2> They didn't lose protection. They simply failed to establish such protection at the summary judgment stage.

      In light of the summary judgment record, we conclude
      that there are genuine issues of material fact as to whether
      the moderators are LiveJournal's agents. The factual dispute
      is evident when we apply common law agency principles to the
      evidentiary record.

DMCA safe harbor is an affirmative defense. An affirmative defense means that the defendant bares the responsibility to prove the defense. That can be very hard to do at the summary judgment stage when there are legitimate factual issues in dispute, as there are here.

The central issue here is that one of the moderators was an employee of the defendant. Notably, the moderators prescreen and curate material for publication. Furthermore, there was conflicting testimony about the role of the employee-moderator and his relationship with the other moderators, such as the extent to which he directs and guides them.

The only way the judge managed to discard the case at the summary judgment stage was by holding that the common law of agency didn't apply, not even with regard to the employee-moderator alone. (Which is to say, by holding that the factual dispute about the employee-moderator's knowledge, role, and relationship was irrelevant.) I haven't read his opinion so I have no idea how he arrived at that holding, but on its face it seems unsupportable.

<comment><AUTHOR> > They didn't lose protection.

You've being overly pedantic.

> They simply failed to establish such protection at the summary judgment > stage.

Of course. They lost the ability to use the standard affirmative "safe harbor" defense that many internet services currently rely on. At least one copyright lawyer believes[1] this may have significant implications for other places that moderate user content. Reddit and YouTube were specifically mentioned as _possibly_ affected due to their own appointment of moderators.

Obviously, the details are decided in the retrial. However, the previously mentioned lawyer[1] suggests this puts LiveJournal in a poor position that encourages them to settled out of court, leaving the practical utility of safe harbor uncertain when appointed moderators are involved.

> DMCA safe harbor is an affirmative defense.

Yes, that was a key part of opinion.

> an employee of the defendant

Agent of the defendant, which includes non-employee unpaid positions. Regardless, I agree that the status of the moderators is indeed the central issue.

> on its face it seems unsupportable.

I agree, and so did the 9th circuit appellate court. That district covers YouTube and a lot of other internet businesses, which ads a lot more uncertainty for any of those businesses that moderate content and might be seen as having an agency relationship with their moderators.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R48QHBakioI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R48QHBakioI)

<comment><USER3> > You've being overly pedantic.

No, he's pointing out an enormous distinction.

> They lost the ability to use the standard affirmative "safe harbor" defense > that many internet services currently rely on.

No, they retain the ability to use it. It's just that, at summary judgement (which views all disputed factual questions in the light _least_ favorable to the party seeking summary judgement) their _success_ in using that defense has not been established.

Which means that the elements of the defense will need to be established at trial, which is the norm for an affirmative defense.

> Obviously, the details are decided in the retrial.

Trial, not retrial. There was no first trial; the district courts (now reversed) summary judgement decision occurred before trial.

> That district covers YouTube and a lot of other internet businesses, which > ads a lot more uncertainty for any of those businesses that moderate content > and might be seen as having an agency relationship with their moderators.

Lots of sites with user-submitted content that have moderators engage in reactive moderation; LiveJournal, with ONTD, had moderator pre-clearance of content for posting. Even if moderators are agents, if they aren't approving content to be posted, their existence doesn't raise the issue that the content may be posted at the direction of the site owner (via an agent) rather than the outside user. It might raise issues of red-flag knowledge, but without blanket pre-clearance of the type LiveJournal practice, even if the content itself has somethibg like watermarks that would make a strong case for any viewer having red-flag knowledge, and the site has moderators that are unmistakably agents, it'll be much harder to make the case that the site had red-flag knowledge.

LiveJournal really seems to be in different position here than many sites with moderators.</comment></comment></comment>


Why are there no web designers in W3C? - <AUTHOR> http://www2.jeffcroft.com/blog/2007/aug/18/w3c-where-are-web-designers-and-developers/ <comment><USER2> Browsers are free to implement portions of CSS3; it's not the W3C's fault that they haven't (naturally, "they" in this sentence usually means "Internet Explorer").

I don't envy the W3C's position; everybody knows HTML, so everybody's a critic.</comment>


Bill of the Month: A $48k Allergy Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/10/29/660330047/bill-of-the-month-a-48-329-allergy-test-is-a-lot-of-scratch <comment><USER2> I've commented on HN specifically about Stanford billing in the past. I will stick my neck out and say that I believe it is straight up fraudulent.

I am convinced, although I have no evidence, that there is a kickback somewhere along the line back to the insurance company for approving the inflated bill, knowing that they can kick 20% of it over to the customer as co-insurance.

I had my own Stanford bill for a child's ER visit which included a basic blood chemistry and a single shot of insulin that turned into a 5-figure bill of which they wanted me to pay 20%. They "coded" the visit as intensive care, even though my child never left a basic exam room, and the only treatment was a subcutaneous injection. The good news is that after a year of fighting they wrote it off and I paid nothing. But it took about 100 hours of calls, letters, and threats. Patients should not have to go through this.

I blame the regulators. I blame the insurance company. But most of all, I blame Stanford Hospital. They should have their non-profit status revoked, because in fact, they are one of the most profitable hospitals in the country.

<comment><USER3> Check your credit. My second son was born a month early and spent 3 days in the NICU. 3 years later I was getting fresh bills from doctors I couldn't remember. Spent another year arguing with the hospital, the doctors and the facilities people(hospital and floor space and doctors all are different bills!!!!!). After a year they "wrote off the bills" what they actually did was stopped chasing me or accepting my calls, and put a knock on my credit report for the debt. it was another year of fighting those.

<comment><USER2> If they told you they were crediting the bill and then slammed your credit, that's just more fraud. Probably a felony, but IANAL. Of course, nearly nothing you can do about it except take them to small claims court?

At least in my case it never went to collections or hit my credit report. This was 5 years ago, I guess it's never too late for them to try. Makes me wish I recorded the call when I finally was told they were crediting the bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everyone in the medical industry is complicit.

Doctors, nurses - even if they are removed from it - they are essentially corrupt and responsible - they cannot wash their hands of it.

This is a deep, deep social problem in the US - far bigger than many of stupid things they talk about in the press.

It's probably bigger than prison reform, policing issues, privacy etc..

It might be the #1 social problem in the US given how many people it affects (basically everyone), and the vast sums in involved.

50% of bankruptcies are due to medical bills.

In 100 years I think they will look upon this period as Dickensian.

I think free markets are important but I'm not sure if any of this is free market at all ...

<comment><USER5> > I think free markets are important but I'm not sure if any of this is free > market at all ...

For reference, I worked in a large medical billing office for years.

It's not a free market, it's the opposite. Completely socialized, just in a very round about way.

Medicare pays roughly 10% of any bill that's charged. It's a flat rate now (but remains about 10% of what insured people pay). Essentially anyone with insurance is "taxed" by having to pay 100% (then negotiated down by the insurance companies). You legally cannot not have insurance, if you make over a threshold (in part due to Obamacare), which has made the issue worse.

The above combined with the inability to see prices beforehand and the way the U.S. foots the bill for the worlds medical research has made it pretty insane.

IMO the ideal solution is to make insurance illegal. Hospitals then need to manage the cost and risk of running procedures. Yes, this means some people get worse treatment, however -- they also only get paid if you live and are happy. The incentives are then aligned, and the hospital manages the risk so better hospitals stay in business longer.

There may be some middle ground there, but having worked in the industry, it's the only "good" solution I see.

<comment><USER4> Insurance is up there with penicillin in terms of it's ability to help the masses. The idea that we can avoid the 1% chance we might lose our homes to fire if we just pay a small amount has transformed society.

So we still want insurance.

But we need a way to make it more competitive.

Ultimately - even with insurance - the 'price comes home' \- and most of us are very price sensitive.

If we had to pay for plans out of pocket ... and they were different prices with transparent points ... we'd see competition.

Also as you say hospitals have to be fully transparent about stuff.

If someone working on your car can bill you for labour and materials, so can doctors. This 'billing problem' is BS.

For example - hospitals should just provide many things as complementary, i.e. just part of the stay in the 'grand hotel'.

Regular doctors + nurses time should just be part of the deal, you only pay extra for surgery time.

Inexpensive things like x-rays should be part of the daily rate, not a specific charge.

Can you imagine if the hotel charged you for every coffee creamer? My god.

<comment><USER6> I've worked in insurance for almost a decade (P&C), and I believe what the U.S. calls "health insurance" is a travesty.

 _" Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss"_

Insurance should never be used for something CERTAIN and inelastic such as healthcare. For specific health risks, sure, but for standard care? It makes absolutely no sense.

I don't know how the U.S. can fix its healthcare crisis, but it's an absolute disaster. Other countries don't have 48k allergy tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Total bill: $48,329, including $848 for the time Winston spent with her > doctor. > Winston's health insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, paid Stanford a > negotiated rate of $11,376.47. > Stanford billed Winston $3,103.73 as her 20 > percent share of the negotiated rate. > ... > Winston ultimately paid > $1,561.86 out of pocket.

48329.00 nominal bill

14480.20 R == ~30% of nominal bill

11376.47 ~80% of R - negotiated rate Anthem paid

3103.73 ~20% of R - billed to patient

1561.86 patient paid, negotiated

So, the patient paid 3.23% - or about 50% of 20% of 30%.

Imagine if other businesses charged like this.

Imagine going into a restaurant, or a furniture store, or an auto mechanic, and being told "It's not expensive" without a specific price, and then finding out that the bill is supposedly 30x your typical expected monthly cost. Whoops, no, 10x. Oh, really 2x. Okay, 1x.

If a billing process like this happened to a character in a movie viewers would describe it as farcical or unrealistic. But many people in the US accept it as normal.

How did we get here? More importantly, how to we get to something better?

<comment><USER8> The point is, in most EU countries the bill would be maybe 300-400 USD. Not just the patient co-payment, the whole sum. So the US healthcare is overpriced by the factor of 120x.

<comment><USER9> Seems like the $50k "bill" might just be sneaky way to get the patient to fork over the 1.5k instead of the 300.

All the rest is a hand-wavy misdirection. Is it even possible to know if, after all the shells stop moving, the insurance company really "paid" anything like they said they did? Or was the real cost of service the 1500 and everything else just expensive theater funded by the insurance "premium"?

<comment><USER10> Health insurance companies in the US are legally obligated to[1]:

1\. Spend 80-85% of premiums on medical spending (with a loophole that "quality improvement" initiatives count). That leaves 15-20% for overhead and profit.

2\. Rebate you any excess they collect if they don't meet that medical spending requirement[2].

3\. Justify large rate increases.

The insurance company really does pay those costs, rather than playing theater. They have absolutely no incentive whatsoever to limit inflated passthrough costs, and every incentive to justify as high of passthrough to providers as possible. Any attempt at cost control above the bare minimum will result in cannibalizing their own profit potential, because they're not allowed to keep that improvement. And the more inflated the passthrough costs, the more they can justify large rate increases (which then increases the absolute size of the 20% they're allowed for non-medical spending).

But wait. Only their health insurance arm is subject to such profit capping. Now that "market rate" for various intermediate services has been established at such an excessive level within the environment of payers having no incentive to reign in costs, they can gobble up some of those middlemen and reap the benefit of those crazy profit margins. Because their insurance arm is complying with their 20% overhead mandate, but their newly acquired PBM has no such mandate on profit[3]. That way the profit transfer from one internal entity with a statutory profit limit to another without one is seen as kosher and not a run-around.

So it is theater, in a sense. But it only works because it didn't start out as theater. They had to truly passthrough costs and get acceptable and normal market rates established, _then_ start gobbling up the intermediaries in the value chain that they fattened up. If they hadn't done that, it would have looked like self-dealing from the outset and never would have been successful. Whereas now they're able to hand-wave it through regulatory approval with vague promises of efficiencies.

[1] [https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law- protections/rate-...](https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law- protections/rate-review/)

[2] Individual plans rebate to the individual. Group/Employer plans rebate to the employer, and don't have to pass it through to the employee if they can think of a way to "apply the rebate in a way that benefits employees".

[3] [https://www.hallrender.com/2018/03/16/the-wave-of-pbm-and- in...](https://www.hallrender.com/2018/03/16/the-wave-of-pbm-and-insurer- integration-continues-as-cigna-and-express-scripts-announce-a-merger-of-their- own/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This one thing keeps me from moving to US. Here in Europe I can pay about $50 for a set of 10 allergy tests (if I go to a private clinic).

I pay about $10 per month for a national health insurance for my whole family (I pay much more, but most of that is deductible from income tax - so when I calculated how much money would I have if I wouldn't pay this, it was $10).

As my wife is sick, she needed some special treatment. For the first days in hospital she got antibiotics, 4 times a day, $300 per injection. I payed nothing. Then she got some more drugs, sometimes a box for 5 days was worth about $3k - I payed nothing.

When our kids were born and spent the first 6 weeks in hospital on an ICU, the cost was about $150 - I payed nothing. When they had to get a special medicine for $4k - I payed nothing.

And yes, my taxes are a little bit higher than in US, but come on, I'd go bankrupt if I had to pay for all that. Or rather: I wouldn't pay, I'd live on street, and we would be dead now.

<comment><USER12> That is the one thing that keeps you from moving to the US? Granted, it is a pretty big problem, but I'd say it is far from being the only thing the US gets wrong that the EU generally gets right.

<comment><USER11> This is The Thing. The list is much longer. On the other hand there are many problems that are worse here as well. But for me the main thing is that in US people are dying or lose everything just because someone in the family got sick. This is sick!

<comment><USER12> Long prison sentences for non-violent crimes also ruin lives. Police indiscriminately killing unarmed citizens because they are armed and trained to shoot first also ruins lives. Non-existent support for mental health problems also ruins lives. Major homeless problems in all major cities with no long term solutions also ruins lives. Shall I go on?

<comment><USER13> Those are probably issues that are mostly irrelevant to both the parent poster and the discussion at hand.

It seems doubtful this family man would move to the US and immediately become a homeless, mentally ill victim of police violence.

Everyone agrees the US has plenty of issues (and there's plenty of homeless in Europe too), but you're replying to someone mentioning his personal reasons and telling him a laundry list of other issues that America has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This whole practice should be illegal, why can't hospitals list the materials they used, their cost and how many hours doctors and nurses worked and what they bill hourly? The cost for a hospital to do a procedure doesn't changed based on my insurer, so they shouldn't be able to charge differently.

<comment><USER15> Cost accounting.

Hospitals are terrible at it. Even if you asked the hospital, how much does it cost to take an x-ray? Personnel, capital costs, material costs, everything. Most hospitals couldn't tell you.

They tend to measure based on service lines. "Our stroke unit is profitable".

Beyond that, they are pretty hopeless from what I've seen.

<comment><USER14> That's 100% the hospitals fault, no other profession would get away with not knowing how much the service they provided you costs and then making up a number to charge you.

<comment><USER16> how come the US is so opaque about pricing? Any other country i have been to (national insurance or not) has been absolutely transparent about pricing of healthcare. Including a GP in a tiny village in france who didn't speak english who sew back the skin on a finger after a nasty cut. (i had to pay a fee because i am not a french person, and the EHC doesn't cover "mundane" injuries like a deep cut in your finger.)

the healthcare system in the US seems like total chaos to me.

<comment><USER17> We aren't even transparent about the cost of buying a candy bar at the convenience store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My company has been pushing a high deductible plan exclusively provided by Stanford. They would NEVER answer questions about pricing up front in the year I tried the program, so I switched back to another provider that does (Kaiser). Stanford is a complete racket as the article shows.

<comment><USER13> I always pay extra when given the option for the low deductible plans and the one time I hurt myself snowboarding and needed physical therapy it paid off tremendously.

Being on the hook for 5000 worth of care would have been a tremendous burden where as whatever I was on the hook for (maybe a fifth of that? Maybe less?) was not so much.

There's also differences in fee scheduling which makes a huge difference. For instance if you're on a medicaid fee schedule they tend to charge less for a lot of things making it a lot more difficult to ever hit your deductible putting you on the hook for more charges over time. If you're on a standard fee schedule you'll hit your deductible faster.

It's all incredibly confusing in the end and very hard to figure out and most people don't until something happens and then it's "oh shit I'm getting fucked aren't I?".

Not a great system, and pretty pathetic for the richest country in the world to bring so much hardship (as noted, something like 50% of bankruptcies are due to healthcare costs) upon it's citizens in times when they're probably already in some of the most stressful situations of their lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Absolute insanity. This should be made illegal... seriously, if policians have enough time to deal with privacy issues and gdpr and they should have enough bandwidth to deal with stuff like this.

<comment><USER12> US politicians apparently don't have time to deal with privacy issues and gdpr. They're too busy trying to keep people out of the country, give tax breaks to wealthy folks, repeal health benefits, prolong armed conflicts, and tweet about how great they are making america.

<comment><USER20> >> US politicians apparently don't have time to deal with privacy issues and gdpr. They're too busy

...trying to get re-elected. Every action they take is with that singular goal in mind.

<comment><USER21> Or make rules and regulations for an industry for which they will transition into direct hire or lobbying after serving in Congress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UNH/financials?p=UNH](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UNH/financials?p=UNH)

$201B last year, from one insurance company alone. That's how much money flows through just ONE healthcare insurance carrier in the US. JUST ONE.

For the technical crowd out here, Amazon did $177B last year in sales. Americans are spending more money on healthcare insurance on the largest healthcare insurer than they spend on retail from the largest retailer in the US.

The difference?

Amazon:

\- I can freely decide to use them or not. I'm not penalized if I don't

\- I know exactly how much something is going to cost and can shop around online (at competitors even)

UHC:

\- If I chose a doctor out of network, I get penalized

\- I have no idea what the pricing is and it can change at any moments notice

</comment><comment><USER23> > 119 tiny plastic containers of allergens were taped to her back over three > days of testing

> Winston's health insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, paid Stanford a negotiated rate > of $11,376.47.

> She made the argument that her doctor had told her the cost per allergen > would be about $100

$48K is some phony list price that doesn't matter.

Maybe that's higher than it should be, based on the comparison to averages and medicare, but I don't see where the shock comes from, as she (+insurance) was billed 99% of what her doctor told her it would cost.

<comment><USER24> > _$48K is some phony list price that doesn 't matter._

It does matter, though. These high list prices sacrifice the uninsured for larger chips at the insurance negotiation table. The uninsured don't have anyone negotiating rates for them so they end up paying the list price (or going bankrupt instead).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> And on top of that my insurance premiums for a family of 4 is constantly being increased by at least 20% year over year, and that considering that we have not visit any doctors with my wife in the last 3-4 years and only do regular checkups for kids once a year ...it's getting ridiculous to pay 1300$/month for the cheapest possible insurance of family of regular size. And we still have to pay ~$100-120 for each visit and have a 7k deductible ...

</comment><comment><USER26> Somebody needs to start suing these providers for fraud like consumers did to RR Donnley publishing a few years back were they were caught regrouping their price schedules to maximize their profit while telling customers they were optimizing to give them the best cost. Consider McDonald's Dollar menu pricing. Same thing sold, how you group it matters on the bill.

</comment><comment><USER27> Business as usual

</comment><comment><USER28> > Her Stanford-affiliated doctor had warned her that the extensive allergy > skin-patch testing she needed might be expensive, Winston said, but she > wasn't too worried. After all, Stanford was an in-network provider for her > insurer — and her insurance, one of her benefits as an employee of the state > of California, always had been reliable.

And here we have one of the biggest problems with the American health care system: a) no one knows the cost of anything (except insurers), b) customers feel no need to be cost-conscious.

They tested her for 119 allergens, but from her symptoms they could probably have cut that way down, and tried an iterative process (trial and error) that should have cost much much less. But the patient "wasn't too worried" because the insurer "always had been reliable".

If we went back to old-style insurance (think Blue Cross & Blue Shield), you know, you pay 100% until deductibles are met, then they pay 80% and you pay 20% up to some cut-off after which they cover 100% up to some large max... then patients would become cost-conscious. Doctors (or their assistants) would have to be able to quote prices on the spot. All the per-network variation in prices would be reduced or eliminated. Patients would be able to negotiate prices with doctors!!

Imagine that, people negotiating prices. In a world where no one feels the need to negotiate, no one knows how to negotiate, and no one bothers to negotiate, and so when costs mount all we know how to do is complain.

A free market needs pricing signals. The American health care market lacks pricing signals. The American health care market isn't functioning very well like a free market. Indeed, there's a ton of regulation too that, along with the HMO/PPO/everything-but-traditional-insurance system serves to increase costs and hide this from the consumer until it is too late.

The most sensible reforms at this point would be those that make the system more transparent to the consumer _before_ they consume.

On top of all this we have tremendous protectionism:

      - it's too hard to become a doctor
      - it's too hard to build new hospitals (you need a
        "certificate of need" -- did you know about that
        bit of protectionism??)
      - FDA regulation makes generics manufacturing really
        difficult (my father tells me how he can't sell
        chemicals to generics manufactures even at 25% of
        what they pay someone else because the regulatory
        cost of switching sources is so high)

Our system is practically designed to produce ever more cost inflation for health care.

EDIT: Let's not overlook, either, the conflict of interest that the doctor in this (and every case) had! The practitioner in this case ordered practically every test without quoting the customer a price, thus ensuring a bigger payday for themselves. Sure, they said it _might_ be expensive, and sure, the customer acquiesced without inquiring further, but the practitioner almost certainly didn't care whether the customer could afford this, and they didn't know the final price either. This conflict is unavoidable, naturally, but that doesn't mean that we cannot deal with it reasonably. Doctors should absolutely be required to quote prices to their customers prior to performing procedures or ordering tests, and generics substitution should always be permitted.

</comment><comment><USER29> it was only 3k though after everything was said and done. not as much scratch as the title is posted. yes the original charges pre insurance are ridiculous but thats everything.

<comment><USER30> > yes the original charges pre insurance are ridiculous but thats everything.

Why do we do this? (I'm just as guilty as anyone, btw, not calling out you specifically.)

Why do we acknowledge that the system is totally broken, then shrug and say, "Medical prices sure are weird, nothing we can do."

It seems pretty rare to see the conversation turn towards, "It was only 3k after everything, but the original prices were way out of line with what they should have been. We should really try to fix that."

<comment><USER24> Providers do this because it's a bargaining chip when negotiating rates with insurers. An insurer will say "this procedure should only cost $100". The provider will counter by showing that their "list" price for the procedure is $1200. They'll compromise on $250 and some uninsured schmuck will go bankrupt trying to cover the "list" prices.

It continues because 1) Having absurd prices is not illegal. Of course absurd prices are usually self-correcting. 2) It's politically infeasible to fix this because it means "someone" (aka the government) has to mandate what the prices should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand why this isn't treated as predatory.

<comment><USER32> Because the predators made the rules.

<comment><USER33> And have other large predators (lobbyists) protecting everything.</comment></comment></comment>


Alt-E Fund - <AUTHOR> https://www.alt-efund.org/ <comment><USER2> I'm incredibly skeptical of this. Graphics are ripped from Wikipedia, Basic SquareSpace site (Low effort), All accounts social created in the last few days.

Seems like an easy way to get some cash.</comment>


Google Accounts for 6% of All Internet Traffic - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/10/13/13readwriteweb-google-accounts-for-6-of-all-internet-traff-90323.html <comment><USER2> What's really interesting is that they're counting all Internet traffic in this study. They quote Web Traffic as making up 52% of Internet Traffic meaning Google actually accounts for more than double that 6%.

More interesting to me was the fact that 30 companies (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, et al.) account for more than 60% of web traffic. I actually thought that number would be lower.

<comment><USER3> What about things like SMTP? Google probably shuffles around a bunch of email data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Probably eventually the Pareto principle will apply.</comment>


Kindle Fire Rooted - <AUTHOR> http://m.tgdaily.com/security-brief/59670-someones-already-rooted-the-kindle-fire

<comment><USER2> I'm not quite sure what the iFixit teardown has to do with rooting. For more info on rooting Kindle, see <http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=1348830>

</comment><comment><USER3> Mmmh, unless I'm missing something, I don't understand why the iFixit teardown is related with this supposed rooting of the device. Does anybody have more details or an other source? It's nonsense to me.

<comment><USER4> They used SuperOneClick, which is a pretty much standard way of rooting Android devices.

Some sources:

<http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1348830>

<http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=803682>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do not think iFixit had any part in rooting the Kindle Fire. They took it apart, yes, but for more information on the actual rooting, see: [http://androidforums.com/kindle-fire-all-things- root/446276-...](http://androidforums.com/kindle-fire-all-things- root/446276-root-one-click-how-get-adb-running-root-superoneclick.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> according to the teardown the comm module is BT-capable, right? is this something that has been software-disabled?

edit: link <http://www.jorjin.com/Product_SiPmodule_WG7310.htm>

</comment><comment><USER7> Sweet. Nice hardware and US$50 cheaper than the Nook tablet.

The only downside is that they probably subsidize the device and it doesn't feel right doing that to Amazon.

<comment><USER8> But it's not like they are offering the same tablet, and Amazon subsidizes it by $50 while B&N doesn't though.

The extra 8GB, microSD slot, 512 MB of RAM and a mic are worth the extra $50, so the Nook Tablet is very price competitive for what it offers, too.

I'm not saying most people will care about that, they'll just care about the lower price. But I'm saying B&N isn't ripping you off or anything, compared to Amazon. B&N might be losing money on it, too, or selling it for zero profit.

<comment><USER9> Great point - voice recognition is one of my favorite parts of Android (especially with the enhancements in ICS) and you'll obviously need a mic for that.

-

Even though this is Amazon, a company with a strong tech heritage, I'm pretty dubious of anyone's ability to improve on stock Android, especially now that it has strong design leadership in Matias Duarte. The improvements in ICS certainly look far more compelling than anything Amazon or B&N added.</comment></comment></comment>


San Francisco and Portland Ranked Most Polluted Major Cities in the World (Live) - <AUTHOR> https://www.iqair.com/us/world-air-quality-ranking <comment><USER2> Probably worth adjusting the title -- air quality is not just a measure of pollution. In this case, both SF and Portland are filled (unfortunately) with wildfire smoke, rather than a man-made pollutant...

<comment><USER3> Why do you want the title adjusted? It's sadly just a fact that the air pollution is bad in SF today.

If bad air pollution is caused by factories do people in those towns come and make similar arguments?

<comment><USER4> because the title is no longer correct? it's no longer the worst. not denying that pollution is bad in SF.

<comment><USER3> That's just semantics, it was the worst very recently?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> this isn't an accurate title at all. And at the time i clicked the link, SF isn't even #1 anymore... Portland is.

its just a list of cities sorted by their Air Quality Index and has very little to do with pollution.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, since there's a major forest fire nearby...

It's like saying my fireplace is the scene of one of the hottest temperatures on the planet (updated live)...

</comment><comment><USER7> 38 mins after this was posted it looks like Portland passed San Francisco by. Portland is at 220, SF is at 181.

<comment><USER4> Yea - the title of the article is definitely a click bait. If the positions are going to switch so fast, there is no point in calling that out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Updated title to include Portland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The wildfires are wrecking havoc for the air across California.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would say a more interesting data point there is that Jakarta air pollution on a normal day is the same as San Francisco air pollution on a historic wildfire day.

SF air pollution levels on an average day is very low.

<comment><USER10> Came here to exactly say this, living your life in a non-emergency situation in some parts of the world like Delhi is close to current living conditions in the Bay Area (+surrounding states) under unprecedented wild fire in the modern history!

Now let that sink in :(

<comment><USER11> emergency is becomingly unfortunately normalized with regards to wild fires in the western part of the country. also, "living your life" infers a generalized comparison and if that's the case you must consider the destructive impact (homes/businesses) of the fire that lives on well beyond the actual event. - bad air quality from pollution isn't destructive in that manner</comment></comment></comment>


Bracket Computing - <AUTHOR> https://www.brkt.com <comment><USER2> Not open source? As many times as it's going to take, these people will get the message. I grabbed the "Bracket Computing Cell" transparency PNG to mash into something later. That's my take on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its not open source so why should I care? Also the website is really bad and doesn't give much real information beyond buzz words without real digging. What is your target audience, is it us? The page doesn't feel like it, it feels like it was targeted towards business people who don't know much about computers and like hearing buzz words.

<comment><USER4> I agree. No open source, no thank you.</comment></comment>


Awesome-dotfiles(400+stars a day in GitHub) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wsdjeg/DotFiles <comment><USER2> Why the JDK? What part uses it?</comment>


Ask HN: Keybase.io About Transparency and Open Alpha status - <AUTHOR> Keybase is widely used by members of HN, and discussed in many threads before. I really like the ideas behind the software and the vision to bring public key encryption to the masses.
But what I find odd, and not addressed in any discussions I've seen, is that a commercial company (Keybase Inc) that is about delivering products to prove ones identity, has so little information about themselves. Keybase.io is lacking most of the information you generally find on a company website. Sure, there is a ToS and PP, and a Jobs page, and in a 4-year old blog post [0] I can find a bit on founders, team and investors.
As lead of Humane Tech Community I made it a bit of habit to check openness and transparency of the commercial entities behind cool projects, their position, revenue models and their future plans, and I find Keybase lacking a bit here.
Wikipedia says 'Current status: Open alpha' [1] which I find also weird. This makes me hesitant to try out the service, and I think it could be an improvement to the company to provide more openness and transparency to gain trust with the broader public. Do you agree?
It may be that this is all intentional, because Keybase is indeed in alpha phase and testing out their products to a selected audience of more expert techies, like you all on HN. Would be great to know more about how this fits together.
Edit: If this has been asked before and I overlooked, I'd be happy to just have the pointer to that info.
[0] https://keybase.io/blog/2015-07-15/keybase-raises-series-a
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keybase <comment><AUTHOR> Anyway I created a post mentioning Keybase on our community forum to a topic where we track similar identity systems and technologies.

[https://community.humanetech.com/t/3089/22](https://community.humanetech.com/t/3089/22)</comment>