Ask HN What Web App Would You Like to See/Need? - <AUTHOR>

I have this hankering to get started on a web app (Not really for YCombinator, but more because I have the time and really want to spend a chunk of time coding).
My problem is I have yet to find a web app that's lacking for my own needs. Tons of news sites, tons of tech sites for questions. This brings up a problem with trying to find a project to dig into.
So, what web app do you want to see happen? What niche, or need do you have that is not currently solved? The bigger the better, and the more interactive the better (I really miss doing heavy JS, so the more interaction needed, the better). Finance is not really my area of expertise, but anything outside that I can consider and think if it's feasible. <comment><USER2> I want an app that will send me an email when a band I like releases a new album. Maybe take my favorite artists from my Last.fm profile, and make money by referring album sales to Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm studying Korean. Learning Korean (or other Asian) words is hard because they usually don't sound anything like the words in other languages I know, making it tougher to create mnemonics for remembering them.

I want to build a super-simple webapp that works like a mad-lib, preferably based on excerpts from Hitchhiker's Guide, in order to hang vocab on memory hooks, using the Greek mnemonic method. User enters a bunch of nouns/verbs/adjectives/adverbs to remember, and the app replaces them into the excerpt. User reads the passage a bunch of times, and the weirdness of the words in the passage helps to give the words some context when remembering them. [Example below]

I'm not a developer, but I built this thing in vb.net reasonably okay. It's really meant to be a webapp though, and I'll bet a lot of language learners would use it.

Wanna design/build it together?

 _Example_

      This 은행 has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the 고양이 living on it were 날씬 for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of 큰 pieces of 숙제, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the 큰 pieces of 숙제 that were 날씬.

</comment><comment><USER4> I really really really want an app that will sync time tracking against tickets in GoPlan (<http://goplannapp.com>) with FreshBooks... that is, I something where I can send time entries in GoPlan to FreshBooks and then generate an invoice.

I even started writing a ruby wrapper for the GoPlan API, but have gotten sidetracked by other stuff :-(

</comment><comment><USER5> The one I'm making right now [1]! (This is probably the answer in everyone's minds.)

[1] Crate for file-sharing - <http://letscrate.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I figured most here are actually building something, but hey worth a shot asking.

The main reason this thought came up is being out of work (You don't hire a Ruby guy and then say "Hey, make this PHP script, Magento, go fast on two servers so it can handle 1000 concurrent requests") I have nothing really exciting to do. Figured I could kill days while looking for a gig with screen fulls of pretty colored code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Crowd sourcing open source projects: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1534517>

<comment><AUTHOR> This actually interests me, since it's hard to find open source projects you might want to be involved in.

So, what would you ultimately like to see? A reddit type interface to talk about open source projects, with perhaps ties into Git/Github etc?

<comment><USER6> There'd be a few things to think about: should the project already exist? If it exists, does the preexisting admin need to be involved with this crowd- source site? If it doesn't exist, should the submitter be the admin of the new project? Should submitters get their reputation from activity already performed on other sites?

Maybe a pledge system, where the submitter and pledgers agree to begin once a certain number of people pledge, and those pledges should be recorded to see if they're followed through. The site should aim to take a project from idea to completion. The submitter could set a number of roles that developers can choose to fulfill.

Even some crowd-sourced funding could work. Funding could be introduced or opened at some point, say from the beginning, but with activity picking up as a project progresses. Imagine Diaspora using the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hrmmm, yes very interesting.

I am picturing an almost Reddit like interface on the front end with lists of open source projects looking for help, os projects that are needed, and os projects that are being abandoned and need people to take over.

I could then add on pledge systems, etc.

<comment><USER6> Yep. GitHub has an API so that could be useful. I'm sure people will want to discuss projects and ask questions, especially with the admin or creator.

Also, I was thinking that a widget would be good, so existing sites could let its users know it's looking for development help. These sites would build up a record of people that have contributed code.

<comment><USER6> Cool.

bbommarito - I had the idea that you might want to work on one of my sites for a convertible note or straight equity. Ping me if interested (or anyone else) - at least you'd be standing on something already there. It hasn't launched but once it does, it really needs another piece to give it something that could gain decent traction. It uses Django.

I can also help with this idea too if you like (inc. mockups) - an idea which really comes about from this situation I find myself. For a domain, you could use hackerbrain .com which I can give.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hrmmm, Django huh? Been awhile since I worked with Django (I typically roll with Rails but have worked with Django).

What's the app? Kind of curious now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> go for the gold - better online dating. its sink or swim, and most sink, but if you swim, you'll be swimming in piles of money like scrooge mcduck.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's funny, but I have thought about going the dating site route.

Looking at the state of gay oriented dating sites, they all pretty much cater to one-night hookups and there are folks in the LGBT community that aren't into that and instead want to make a relationship of it.

I have been playing with the idea of building that type of site. Not only will it fill a need I see, but I could play with web telephony and stuff like that.</comment></comment>


Memory – Part 4: Intersec's custom allocators - <AUTHOR> https://techtalk.intersec.com/2013/10/memory-part-4-intersecs-custom-allocators/

<comment><USER3> The thread test is janky. Most multithreaded allocators optimize for the (common) case that objects are freed by the same thread that creates them. When objects are freed by different threads than the ones that allocated them, typically some sort of slow-path is invoked.

Older allocators with per-thread caches used to behave very badly with cross- thread frees, accumulating tons of freed objects in threads that didn't necessarily allocate a lot of objects. Tcmalloc uses a garbage collection process to move those objects back to the central free list.

The test in the article, where one thread does all the allocations and another does all the frees, basically subverts the thread-caching in tcmalloc, and just tests how quickly the garbage collection process can move freed objects from the free()-thread's cache back to the central heap where they can be reused by the malloc()-thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> I admit that test stress some corner cases (at least some cases that the allocator designer consider as corner cases). That said, malloc has no choice but supporting that use case.

A use case for such pattern is a message-posting with workers: you queue some messages that are later unqueued and processed by a different thread. This is an increasingly common pattern in modern programs. In that pattern the message is allocated in one thread (let say the main one) and processed then deallocated by another thread.

If your implementation of message allocation is malloc-based, then you will stress the exact same code paths the benchmark is stressing.

<comment><USER4> You're not wrong that malloc-based message passing causes that load on malloc, but if performance of the message-passing code is important, you'd want to use a ring buffer anyway - cross-CPU or not, malloc is pretty slow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Clearly, we go back to the initial statement: for specific use cases, we need specific allocators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It should be obvious that a lot of 8 byte mallocs will give bad performance and horrible memory use. This article and in particular the benchmarks in it would be a lot more informative if the test case was more realistic.

Please add at least 32 or 64 bytes of payload to the linked list structure and re-run the benchmarks. Even that is a very small allocation block, but is on the lower end of realistic allocation sizes although not a good practice.

<comment><USER6> 8-byte mallocs are expensive because most mallocs have per-allocation memory overhead to track things. This is exactly why you may want to use a different allocator.

IOW, you're angle is that instead of finding a solution to the problem, instead choose a different problem. You don't always have that luxury.

My background on this problem is compilers. Compilers allocate lots of little structures that represent tree nodes, values, tokens, etc. Forcing them all to be a minimum of 32 or 64 bytes in size on the basis that would justify using malloc for them, would be more than a little bizarre. Arena allocation - <USER2> per module (for structures that need to persist for the whole compilation) and stack based (for structures that are discarded after e.g. evaluation or codegen) - makes far more sense than contorting the problem so that malloc makes sense.

<comment><USER5> > 8-byte mallocs are expensive because most mallocs have per-allocation memory > overhead to track things. This is exactly why you may want to use a > different allocator.

I guess if the objective of the article is to point out the obvious fact that mallocing 8 bytes at a time is a bad idea, then showing up some actual numbers from actual malloc implementations is a good idea. However, even small objects in practical problems are usually bigger than 8 bytes, so making the allocation size a bit bigger would give more realistic figures.

Overall I think the article was informative and well written but more realistic test case would better point out when to write a custom allocator and what allocator to choose for a particular usage pattern.

<comment><USER7> I kinda see it more as "we're using an unrealistic workload to emphasize the per-malloc overhead". A program that was written to minimize and batch allocations wouldn't be as demonstrative.

<comment><USER8> Contra "exDM69", there's nothing unreasonable or "unrealistic" about allocating 8 bytes at a time; it's in fact extremely convenient to be able to do that. I think it's telling that someone would call that workload unrealistic; it indicates to me that they've never even really considered alternatives to malloc.

It's a little like those C programmers who try to use 256 byte static arrays for all their strings because they don't quite grok malloc/realloc.

<comment><USER7> Well, personally, if I'm using C, it's typically for a very narrowly defined, performance-sensitive problem. Both times I've done this in the last couple years, I found myself doing a couple big mallocs at the start and then running some tight loops over that memory with no further mallocs -- for use cases with more allocation, I'll just use whatever other language is more convenient, preferably one with a GC.

But if I were writing a bigger application entirely in C/C++, I could totally see lots of small allocations happening at different points (and getting into wackiness with custom pooled allocators and auto_ptr).

<comment><USER8> That's essentially what I do in much of my C code: implement pool allocators. And that's essentially what the post we're commenting on is talking about.

Incidentally, good common case for 8-byte allocations that is actually common in real-world C code: 32 bit linked list nodes (4 bytes nextptr, 4 bytes dataptr).

<comment><USER9> Hmm, are you sure that this (linked lists with small elements) is a good example which you should tell people about?

Linked lists are bad because they have big overhead (8 bytes for every element in your case - which dominates by a large margin if you store an int in each node for example) and they are really bad for CPU caches (they have very little spatial locality), thus slowing down your code.

I much rather prefer the "growing array" approach.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but they have some unique characteristics related to inserting/deleting from the middle or beginning of the list. They're actually used in a few places in the linux kernel, for performance reasons, in spite of cache locality issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very interesting article, especially the t_scope allocator - I never knew you could get GCC to perform that cleanup automagically. One minor grammar point: isn't a lock under contention a _contended_ lock, not a contented lock?

<comment><AUTHOR> Wording issue fixed.

<comment><USER11> Is the source for the allocators freely available? Would love to study those.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, not for the moment.

<comment><USER12> I'd also like to put in a request for either open-sourcing or a more detailed overview of the implementations, they sound really interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll consider writing a more detailed article on the subject. Open-sourcing the code will not be possible in the short-term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sorry to nitpick, but I believe the time difference code has an error of 1 millisecond 25% of the time:

        int64_t delta = tv2->tv_sec - tv1->tv_sec;
        return delta * 1000 + (tv2->tv_usec - tv1->tv_usec) / 1000;

One way to fix it is:

        int64_t deltasec = tv2->tv_sec - tv1->tv_sec - 1;
        int64_t deltausec = tv2->tv_usec - tv1->tv_usec + 1000000;
        return deltasec * 1000 + deltausec / 1000;

<comment><AUTHOR> The diff is a truncation. The actual error rate is 0.5ms on average. By using a round instead of truncation, we can reduce the error to 0.25ms on average.

<comment><USER13> Well, that much is obvious. But if you are going to truncate, you should be consistent. Always truncate towards 0, not sometimes towards 0 and sometimes towards infinity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The fact that returning memory to the Kernel is hard is supported by the circumstance, that most allocators will use brk/sbrk to resize the data segment of the executing process to allocate memory, at least if they shall allocate few memory.

The other fact, that allocators have to lock global data structures is also not true. Most modern operating systems supports thread-local storage and therefore you don't need locking because you can keep much per-threads allocators, and only if you want to release memory of a foreign thread you have to lock (but that's also bad practice in most cases).

Therefore, this article is great if your horizon end at the default allocators tcmalloc, ptmalloc and jemalloc, but the reality is much more complex. The fact that such a thing doesn't exists isn't founded in the fact that it's hard to implement, it's founded in the fact that there is no need for such an allocator, because most well-written software will allocate large chunks of memory.

<comment><USER15> _> (...) that most allocators will use brk/sbrk to resize the data segment of the executing process to allocate memory, at least if they shall allocate few memory._

The other commonly used backend for malloc() is mmap() without underlying file:

      void *chunk = mmap(NULL, length, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0);

Handy both when allocating large chunks of memory and for allocating pools for smaller suballocations. Has the additional benefit of being zeroed-out at low cost (or no cost at all -- for example via hardware DMA), and also playing nice on systems with constrained / fragmented address space, as kernel is free to allocate at any address visible from userspace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not about heap allocators but I followed the "About" link to this text:

> At Intersec, technology matters…Because it's the core of our business, we > aim to provide our clients with the most innovative and disruptive > technological solutions. We do not believe in the benefits of reusing and > staking external software bricks when developing our products. Our software > is built in C language under Linux, with PHP/JavaScript for the web > interfaces and it is continuously improved ...

So now I'm wondering whether PHP is actually perceived as being hard-core?

Also, how would one stake a brick?

<comment><USER17> I think the really hard stuff isn't done via PHP. Seems to me they use PHP as the front end because they want to focus on their really valuable technology - their C code.

<comment><AUTHOR> PHP is used as a small layer that enables talking to our C code from javascript. We have a custom (Protocol Buffer-like) protocol to manage our RPC, the PHP embeds a native module that implements that protocol and exposes a webservice to which our Javascript code can talk in order to provide some valuable user-experience on top of our C-written technologies.

Nowadays there is so little intelligence in the PHP that we only consider it as a pass-through layer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In thinking about the t_stack allocator, I think I can see some cases for which you might want to use this instead of the alloca function, but there is not enough information to be sure if I am going down the correct mental path. Can you please explain when/why I should use t_stack instead of alloca?

<comment><USER19> In fact, I was thinking of _alloca_ the whole article and I really don't see the benefits of implementing a "custom solution" in detriment of a well working existing one.

It would be great to compare the results they give against alloca =)

<comment><AUTHOR> alloca has its drawbacks. See the previous article in the series: [https://techtalk.intersec.com/2013/08/memory- part-3-managing...](https://techtalk.intersec.com/2013/08/memory- part-3-managing-memory/#Stack)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Really interesting and well written, thanks for that. If you wrote some more about heap allocation strategies (best-fit, worst-fit, first-fit, etc.) to round out the discussion I'd love to read that as well, especially if you add varying allocation sizes to your benchmark.

</comment><comment><USER21> I cannot for the life of me find this t_stack allocator he talks about. Anyone have a link ?

<comment><USER22> It's a custom allocator internal to Intersec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Which version of jemalloc was used in the benchmark?

<comment><AUTHOR> jemalloc 3.4.0 (current package in debian sid)</comment></comment>


Loaded with lead: How gun ranges poison workers and shooters (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://projects.seattletimes.com/2014/loaded-with-lead/1/ <comment><USER2> This article is a bit misleading. Not all ranges are as badly handled as the one they mention, and many many people just shoot outside.

In addition, the major illustration is pretty much false. Almost all bullets are fully jacketed and not just partially as indicated. There isn't going to be lead from the bullet anywhere except at the backstop at the end of the range. There is a bit of lead in the primer (which weirdly the article fails to mention) but it isn't nearly as much.

From the third article -"At a shooting club in Vancouver, Wash., 20 youngsters tested positive for lead overexposure. 'We would get lead on our hands and eat finger food,' one teenager recalls."

Education is key here. I'm not trying to minimize potential risks, but they aren't nearly what this article is projecting. Yes, don't lick your fingers after shooting. At every range I've ever been to, food and drink are prohibited. Wash your hands people.

also from the third article - "While lead poisoning among casual shooters is rare, the risk increases the more they shoot, particularly if it's in poorly ventilated and maintained ranges."

Happy to agree. only use well maintained and well ventilated ranges, or just shoot outside like most people.

The risk is real, but it's really minimal with a little bit of common sense. Focus on educating people of the actual risks rather than scare mongering like this article.

<comment><USER3> Lead is just so awful - it lowers IQ of children by a very large amount, even in low doses. Why not just ban the stuff in bullets? I don't see the problem with outlawing it. These are clear, super negative externalities. Alternatives exists. Enforcing proper handling of lead bullets seems much more difficult than just banning them.

<comment><USER4> Lead-free ammo is much more expensive, and gun regulation is a politically charged topic. Any attempt to ban lead ammunition will, rightly or wrongly, be perceived as an attempt to discourage recreational shooting by making ammunition less available. Much like California's handgun drop-safety requirement is currently perceived as an attempt to discourage handgun ownership, by making them less available, or Texas' recent abortion regulations are perceived as an attempt to make abortions less available. They're ostensibly regulations enacted for health and safety, but nobody affected by them believes that story.

<comment><USER5> One of the other arguments is that, because lead is denser, lead ammo flies straighter for a longer distance than non lead alloys. I wish shooters took that as a challenge rather than a limitation.

<comment><USER6> Name an inexpensive easy to acquire and work metal that would be a good substitute? Should we use gold? How about depleted uranium? Tungsten maybe, but it is spendy and shatters on impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is most definitely piece of fearmongering journalism by a newspaper notorious for promoting an anti civil liberty pro federal agenda... But, it does raise a few good points. Range owners _should_ be aware of lead dangers to employees and follow safety practices. I hope it does raise awareness, but certainly there's no reason to go run for the hills.

What I find most interesting however, is this flies in the face of another anti civil liberty agenda promoted by the BATF. They recently attempted to _ban_ lead free and reduced lead ammunition (aka "green ammo", m885, or "green tip") under the guise it was "armor piercing" (to soft body armor). ...which is laughable because soft body armor can't even hold up to a knife attack.

Sadly, a lot of older indoor ranges are made with the wrong kinds of steel and cannot be certified to have green ammo shot inside them without damage to the structure.

<comment><USER8> A knife and a bullet are very different beasts in terms of how they penetrate tissue like Kevlar, so your comparison is pointless, and something that resists a bullet need not be stab-proof, simply because they apply very different kinds of pressures and kinetic forces.[1]

Also, I have never heard the term "anti civil liberty agenda" before, especially not as an antonym of "pro federal agenda", so thank you for another facet of what I presume to be American patriotic/conservative/right-wing lingo.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletproof_vest#Stab_armor_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletproof_vest#Stab_armor_and_combination_stab- ballistic_armor)

<comment><USER6> To be fair, rifle bullets whiz through soft (cop) body armor like through cheese. It's a matter of velocity, pistols just don't have the oomph to penetrate, and pretty much all rifles do. The "green tip" ammo mentioned earlier? That's from a rifle cartridge that some states won't let you hunt deer with because it is so under powered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to be clear, the danger is because people handle lead a lot at shooting ranges, and they do violent things to lead that result in it being dispersed as fine particulates into the air, right?

My 60/40 tin/lead mix solder sitting on my electronics workbench is safe sitting there, correct? It's only when actually soldering with it, or touching solder joints made with it, that I'm exposed? I avoid touching myself when soldering, to confine exposure to my hands, and wash them when done (elemental lead such as that in solder is not absorbed through the skin).

</comment><comment><USER10> Two dozen US states, including California, ban lead bullets, and the US military has announced plans to phase out lead bullets by 2018.

Source: [http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/21/end-line-for-lead- bulle...](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/21/end-line-for-lead-bullet- regulations-bans-force-switch-to-green-ammo/)

<comment><USER11> This article is incorrect. Certain states have banned the use of lead bullets in hunting certain animals (waterfowl for example can only be hunted with steel shot), they may still be used at ranges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't have the ability to down vote, so I'll just say I don't car about gun ranges or the people who go to them (as reported on HN or elsewhere).</comment>


Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/belarus-protests-tech-workers-flee-as-country-takes-authoritarian-turn <comment><USER2> Emigrating from Belarus to Poland is easy. Even if one of your grandparents has Polish origins you can get easily equivalent of USA green card. Polish governament is working on new law to make it even easier and available more broadly. Given Poland borders before World War II were covering huge part of today Belarus a lot of people can take of the advantage.

Regular work permit for IT proffesional is also rubber stamp. Nothing compared to cruel H1B.

I guess same as after Ukraine revolution, a lot of Belarusians will end up in Poland.

<comment><USER3> >Even if one of your grandparents has Polish origins you can get easily equivalent of USA green card.

>Nothing compared to cruel H1B.

H1B doesn't need your grandparents to be from USA.

<comment><USER4> You're quoting two different things. The first is a green card equivalent, the second is a work permit.

<comment><USER3> you are right. i misread the comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "There's no borders at all for IT engineers. They can find a job anywhere."

Uhm yeah, but they also have parents, siblings, girlfriends. Probably they might have some properties bought already. So as it may seem really advantageous to be in IT, one might not be able to move to another country just like that...

<comment><USER6> And it's naive to say that there's no borders. You have to be qualified for the visa requirements. You also have to renew this visa every year or so. You have to start all over. Of course everything is possible with some effort and money, but i'm tired of seeing this term "no borders for it engineers".

<comment><USER7> Yea, whoever wrote that never heard of a "language barrier." IT is not some universal language.

<comment><USER8> Language is not that much of a problem.

They all speak Russian. Lithuania has a sizable minority of Russian speakers, and has historical ties to Belarus. Latvia is predominantly Russian-speaking. Ukraine as well.

Knowing Belarusian, they can pick up Polish rather quickly.

As a last resort, Russia is still freer than Belarus politically and better off economically. Smolensk is half an hour drive from the Belarusian border.

<comment><USER9> > Latvia is predominantly Russian-speaking.

This seems to imply the majority of residents of Latvia speak Russian natively. That might have been correct had the USSR existed a bit longer, but history took a different turn.

"Most Latvian businesses, especially in the Riga area, will happily serve you in Russian." That would be a more neutral and correct statement appropriate for this context.

Also relevant would be how Latvian government is publicly angling for Belarussian businesses willing to relocate to Latvia [1].

Regarding native tongues in Latvia... Currently, over 30% of Latvian residents speak Russian, Belarussian or Ukrainian natively, versus 62.3% Latvian. In Riga, the number of Russian, Belorussian or Ukrainian native speakers rises to over 43% [0] versus 47.1% Latvian.

[0] [http://data.csb.gov.lv/pxweb/en/iedz/iedz__iedzrakst/IRG080....](http://data.csb.gov.lv/pxweb/en/iedz/iedz__iedzrakst/IRG080.px/)

[1] [https://eng.lsm.lv/article/economy/business/belarusian- busin...](https://eng.lsm.lv/article/economy/business/belarusian-businesses- offered-fast-track-relocation-to-latvia.a372143/)

<comment><USER8> Having being in Latvia a few times and knowing the historical context... I distrust Latvian language statistics.

Still, even those statistics admit that Riga is mostly Russian-speaking [1]. This is where the IT crowd would land, anyway.

[1] [https://www.csb.gov.lv/en/statistics/statistics-by- theme/pop...](https://www.csb.gov.lv/en/statistics/statistics-by- theme/population/census/search-in-theme/1442-home-latvian-spoken-62-latvian- population)

<comment><USER10> As the resident of Riga have to add that it depends on age. Young native Latvian people tend to avoid learning russian (but actually they have to while living in Riga). Also there is a constant goverment level pressure to ignore russian as a vital part of latvian life so you will always feel that you are not welcome in many places like the oficial institutions. But actually you could live for years there not speaking any latvian word :) Also it is worth to mention that english is starting to be more and more important (even more important than latvian) in daily life for IT people as foreign people in teams are much more usual now even than 5 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Despite the authoritarian rule of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus's tech companies have prospered.

The common argument I hear is they prospered because of authoritarian rule. Belarus never had to deal with oligarchs created by a power vacuum like in Ukraine or other EE countries. As a result a large portion of outsourcing labor for other EE countries is technically done through Belarussian companies(EPAM).

<comment><USER8> If you go to Belarus, you would rather hear that IT prospered because Lukashenka could not figure out how to extract money from it easily.

There were a few attempts at hostile takeovers of IT companies by state actors, but the state could seize only used equipment. Staff moved on, clients fled.

So, at some point, the state just decided to let IT free at the effective tax rate of 9% (against 52% for the rest of the country).

<comment><USER12> Living in Central Asia, I'd say, although Lukashenko was/is a corrupt leader, amount of corruption in educational system was relatively low compared to those in -stans of the former USSR, or even Russia. This a necessary prerequisite for high tech companies to appear and grow.

<comment><USER11> I think it's a qualitative difference. Belarus has corruption but it's consolidated to the top even if there's more of it. Compare with Ukraine where IT business will be killed off before it gets off the ground because every small time bureaucrat wants their pound of flesh. As a result a significant portion of Ukrainian talent goes through companies that are/were Belarussian even though Ukraine has the center of gravity in terms of talent concentration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used to contract for a firm which made heavy use of Belarusian software dev teams, hopefully all is cool with the guys I used to work with :S

<comment><USER14> Same.

It also seems like Belarus is killing the goose that laid the golden egg here, not that that's surprising behavior from an authoritarian regime fighting for its life.

<comment><USER15> > It also seems like Belarus is killing the goose that laid the golden egg > here

If some kind of deeper integration with Russia is on the horizon, as many have expected for years, then this might hardly matter. The overall Russian economy is so based on the export of natural resources, that the ruling stratum is hardly worried about other industries like the IT sector. All those Russians except for the ~10 million needed to run and support the oil and gas sector, have sometimes been described as "superfluous population" by commentators. Obviously this situation sucks for the ordinary citizen, but what can you do?

<comment><USER14> The Russian economy is both super small (last time I looked it was smaller than Italy), and not terribly diversified. I'd be a bit worried about it I lived there.

<comment><USER16> The trick the various Russian governments pull is to make sure the general populous is too busy surviving to be able to worry about let alone mount an offensive against the regime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 For those that hit a paywall/ no-script block, here are some alternative links to what I presume to be pretty much the same article

[https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election-tech- idUK...](https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election-tech- idUKKBN25M1MO)

[https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/europe/belarus- it-w...](https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/europe/belarus-it-workers- move-abroad-as-lukashenkos-forces-crackdown-on-mas.html)

[https://icotalknews.com/business/tech-workers-flee- belarus-a...](https://icotalknews.com/business/tech-workers-flee-belarus-as- it-haven-takes-authoritarian-turn/)

P.P.S This was one of things I used to use the now defunct 'Web' button for [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479)

<comment><USER17> most news articles can be traced beck to Reuters verbatim, it's strange how few people go to the actual source and seek out a rose-tinted alternative

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It was already authorization- its the "last dictatorship in europe" \- what did they think it was before?

<comment><USER19> > its the "last dictatorship in europe"

Well, I mean, if you ignore the country that takes up 39% (maybe a little more _de facto_ after recent unilateral border alterations) of Europe, sure.

<comment><USER20> In the quote I think Europe is meant in the cultural sense, and I guess you are talking about Europe in the geographical sense.

<comment><USER19> Belarus is no more (or less) culturally in Europe than Russia or any of the other cultures descending from historical Rus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a Spanish proverb, "Cria cuervos y te sacarán los ojos", "Raise crows and they will poke your eyes out."

How many entrepreneurs and companies fell for the "law and order" discourse every authoritarian uses to gain power?

</comment><comment><USER22> It is a very smart turn of the Polish side to support the political crysis is Belarus. When the country is turned into chaos it will be beneficial for the Polish economy when many Belarussian workers go to Poland.

"IT haven takes authoritarian turn". Really? Isn't the so called IT haven exists under the exactly same government? What changed?

What changed is the situation of foreign instigated chaos intended to weaken a key Russian ally with the additional benefit that when many Belarussian workers leave the country they will serv someone's else economy. The competition of Belarussian IT industry will also be eliminated.

</comment><comment><USER23> Fleeing from Belarus to Russia, from one lifetime president and authoritarian regime to another is a strange choice.

</comment><comment><USER24> One of my favourite cameras, the Agat 18k, is Belarussian. These guys are smart!

</comment><comment><USER25> I have a theory that when news orgs nurture soft authoritarians (Bush/Patriot Act, Obama/espionage charges for whistleblowers) their weakened journalistic instincts leave a vacuum that's easy for harder line authoritarians to fill.

That's what I believed happened in the US. I wonder if a similar process happened in Belarus.

<comment><USER26> Curious why the onus is on journalists and not complacent political parties or branches/members of government.

Sure, newsrooms can sway public opinion, but they're also basically the only reason we know about those problems to begin with. Blaming them seems akin to treating a symptom, not the cause.

Not trying to disagree. I do think journalists today are partially responsible for our current situation - especially White House correspondents, whom are wholly ineffective at challenging any statements from the president or calling out outright lies.

<comment><USER27> Also thinking journalists are at the root of society's ills is probably a sign you're buying into authoritarian propaganda.

<comment><USER25> Authoritarian propaganda alleges that journalists are fabricating news.

I'm not alleging fraud but neglect and passive collusion. That is, journalists are allowing certain US Gov misdeeds to go largely unreported while amplifying US Gov voices w/o ever vetting if official claims are true.

<comment><USER27> A lot of misdeeds are documented but nobody is really outraged by them. There's certainly lots of bad stuff happening that doesn't have a legion of takery behind it to drive a certain narrative but... the reporting is there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There is at least a degree of cowardice in those who leave their home country when things get difficult.

<comment><USER29> I think everyone has the right to make the best possible life for themselves. Life is short and if I was in that situation I'd rather not waste it living under a dictator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a harbinger for the western world too. Can any of us in the tech industry claim that silicon valley "authoritarianism" is not an issue?

Working in tech now is fraught with peril, especially if one says anything outside of the overton window. I wouldn't be surprised if this starts happening in America as well in a few years.

<comment><USER31> The issue is that currently public discourse happens on semi-public spaces. (Eg. Facebook, reddit, YouTube.) All slightly different mediums, different rules, different communities (and meta-communities, and other aggregates and hierarchies and moderation/reporting systems).

And the owners of these places want to extract profit from these places, they on one hand like the money, but they reasonably must police their places. Virtually millions of people can shout at the same time at the same place. Bullying, doxxing, harassment, SWATing, spam, scam, porn, gore, really fucked up ideologies, racism/xenophobia, and whatnot are cropping up.

And it's clear that people are not really interested in going back to the typewriter and mailing letters to various publications.

This large scale "politicing" is likely truly unprecedented. Bored and angry people can comment, like, upvote, downvote whatever anyone wrote/posted/created/asked.

> Working in tech now is fraught with peril, especially if one says anything > outside of the overton window.

That's "fake news" \- because the base rate is low, even if there are clear examples of it. (Eg Google firing Damore who pointed out that Google's diversity group/effort is very inefficient because it's unscientific, so inadvertently exposed it as a simple PR effort.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> They felt fine with Lukashenko for the last four years, they'll be fine with Lukashenko for the next four years. Actually, I don't think Daddy will hold up for the whole term, Russia will play smart and integrate Belarus , one way or another. Not as part of Russia, but I'd expect closer ties in finances and planning; and, possibly, heavy industry</comment>


The Magical Founding Team Mix For Web Startups - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/13808/The-Magical-Founding-Team-Mix-For-Web-Startups.aspx9

<comment><USER2> Reading the comments on the blog it becomes clear that people's opinions are most likely generated by their jobs. If they create stuff (engineer or designer) they value others who also create stuff. If they are a money person (business or sales) they seem to value others with the same skill set. I suppose the ultimate is to see the value in each skill set.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Ecstatic users do much of your marketing for you." is one of the biggest misconceptions a startup founder can have. _Please_ don't make the mistake of depending on your users for marketing- you will fail.

And your marketer should absolutely know how to create good content/write good copy- but unless they know how to spend an ad budget to drive traffic to that copy, your content is worthless.

</comment><comment><USER4> Damnit, what if I'm a competent designer but a mediocre/crappy developer? I want to do a startup too!

<comment><USER5> Speaking as a programmer, I don't think you need to be a brilliant programmer to do a startup. If you can cobble something useful together using duct tape and glue, then sprinkle some glitter on it until it looks sort of nice, people will probably start using it until you have enough traction to hire a competent programmer.

But you do need to at least be able to do duct tape programming.

<comment><USER6> I think you make a good point--one that business types often overlook. Its extremely daunting to begin duct taping a startup together though. Your options are never optimal. I've spent nearly 2 years (on and off) banging and hammering on Drupal to try and make it do something non-trivial. I'm proud of what I've been able to do, but I can't help but think what I could be capable of if I devoted that time to learning to program the right way.

With that being said, I would highly recommend Drupal as a reasonable way for a non-technical type to piece something together. The community that supports the project is pretty top notch IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hardly as amusing as Guy Kawasaki's Funny Farm (scroll down) - [http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/08/the_inside_scoo.html#axz...](http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/08/the_inside_scoo.html#axzz0wpRYB51e)

</comment><comment><USER8> wanted: inbound marketer</comment>


Improved JavaScript and WebAssembly performance in EdgeHTML 17 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/06/19/improved-javascript-webassembly-performance-edgehtml-17/ <comment><USER2> One announcement I'm waiting to hear about in all honesty is Microsoft open sourcing Edge, they don't have to reveal Cortana specifics (though that would be fund to read through if they'd allow it) but just EdgeHTML with Chakra in a way that compiles nicely. I would love to see what would happen if they allowed the community to contribute back to Edge if it could become much more competitive as a result of them welcoming contributors.

A few years ago I'd sound like I'd be tripping on bathsalts but I think it could happen, just a matter of when they choose to do so.

<comment><USER3> Chakra is Open Source:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore](https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore)

but I guess what you want is an "Edgeium" equivalent of Edge in the way that Chromium is the full (compilable) OSS version of Chrome.

<comment><USER4> I think that Microsoft is still working on a Chakra version of Node as well. That's probably what I'm most excited about, V8 hasn't had much competition, which means that there's nobody to question its approach to resource usage, garbage collection, etc...

V8 is great for some things, but it falls down hard on low-resource environments. This is one of the reasons why Electron apps are so greedy, you have to kind of do a lot of fighting with V8 if you don't want it to balloon RAM usage. If you have open RAM sitting around, sometimes V8 will decide to just take it so it can defer garbage collection longer, or so it doesn't need to waste time asking for it in the future. From what I've heard, Chakra is better about those kinds of situations.

I would really like to see a runtime ecosystem for Node and Electron that is as competitive as browsers are. Microsoft is probably in the best position to push that.

There's some potential that with a solid competitor they could open the floodgates and encourage other developers to start building browser runtimes that are optimized for specific scenarios rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore](https://github.com/nodejs/node- chakracore)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never seen a person using Edge. Does anyone here use it? Do you work at Microsoft or have a big technical investment in their technology? Do you find the lack of cross-platform support annoying, or do you primarily use a single OS?

These changes all look like they apply to ChakraCore, which is open source and available outside of Windows. I'd be curious to hear what kinds of use-cases people have for using Node Chakra over Node V8.

<comment><USER7> Edge is the most resource efficient and respects modern Windows conventions, therefore it has the best, pen, touchscreen, tablet (including share button and stuff) and precision trackpad support. And since it's WinRT/UWP, it can suspends its tab processes, and also itself when minimized or automatically during tablet mode in the background, and during fullscreen it also automatically unhides the taskbar when you hover over it, for better multi- tasking.

It also has nice features such as the set tabs aside session manager that even retains history and session cookies, and it a nice PDF and ePub reader with support for notes and highlighting with the pen, and Cortana integration. Before Edge, I primarily used Firefox and dabbled with Chrome and Vivaldi.

Edge is on both iOS and Android, and no I don't work for MS, I just value proper modern OS integration and battery efficiency, so that I can use my device as intended.

<comment><USER8> > Edge is on both iOS and Android,

Something called Edge from Microsoft is available for iOS (where it is a rebranded WebKit) and on Android (where it is a rebranded Blink, IIRC). If you primarily work with Windows 10, Edge makes some sense, otherwise it makes no sense.

On iPhone, by Apple decree, ALL web browsers (including Firefox and Chrome) are rebranded WebKit; However, on Android, Chrome is (mostly) the real chrome and Firefox is (mostly) the real firefox.

> I just value proper modern OS integration and battery efficiency, so that I > can use my device as intended.

The only downside to it I see is that you are using Windows 10... I value privacy and control of my devices a little more than 10% of battery efficiency.

<comment><USER7> > Something called Edge from Microsoft is available for iOS (where it is a > rebranded WebKit) and on Android (where it is a rebranded Blink, IIRC).

Why is it a problem that it uses webkit on iOS and Android? Why reinvent the wheel, when those rendering engines are already optimized for those platforms? The thing I care about is that it supports syncing of settings.

> If you primarily work with Windows 10, Edge makes some sense, otherwise it > makes no sense.

If you primarily work with Mac OS, Safari makes some sense, otherwise it makes no sense. Why do I never hear that complaint?

Also, Edge on iOS and Android will soon have a built-in adblocker.

> The only downside to it I see is that you are using Windows 10... I value > privacy and control of my devices a little more than 10% of battery > efficiency.

Have you ever looked at the privacy controls of Windows? Also the battery efficiency is significantly more than 10%, and try find me an as versatile and user friendly alternative OS for pen capable 2-in-1s, that has better privacy controls.

<comment><USER8> > If you primarily work with Mac OS, Safari makes some sense, otherwise it > makes no sense. Why do I never hear that complaint?

Yes, but I work on all three desktop OSes, and two mobile OSs; I picked Firefox, which I use everywhere except on iOS (where it does exist, but is not really Firefox, even if it does sync with the rest of the Firefoxen).

> Also, Edge on iOS and Android will soon have a built-in adblocker.

Cool. Firefox already does, and I can also use it on Linux and Mac.

> Have you ever looked at the privacy controls of Windows?

Yes, I have, and they are horrible; Have you?. I cannot stop telemetry or updates (unless LTSB which I can't even get, or enterprise which is too expensive to get for home), I can't get security updates without _eveything_ else that Microsoft decides to bundle even if I did use LTSB or Enterprise. I have no way to verify exactly what Microsoft sends to their servers (and their description is incomplete and out of date, if you care to trust it).

The upgrade-to-windows-10 dark patterns are what you should consider when you think "windows control & privacy".

> Also the battery efficiency is significantly more than 10%,

Not in my experience of Edge vs Firefox, unless things have changed very dramatically in the last few months.

> and try find me a more versatile and user friendly alternative OS for pen > capable 2-in-1s, that has better privacy controls.

"versatile" and "user friendly" are very subjective terms; I curse every minute I have to work with Windows after having used a consistently set up linux machine (and even MacOS is a little clunky in comparison). "pen capable 2-in-1" is a very specific requirement that means nothing to me and (I would guess) 95% of the users.

In my biased sample of the world, PCs have gone back to being work devices, and everything else is being done on the phone, with cloud sync bridging the gaps. I know a few people who bought a 2-in-1 but no one uses them except as a laptop except on very very rare occasions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Surely not an Android nor ChromeOS user I would guess.

Where are the telemetry setting again?

<comment><USER8> On android they are called "Google Play Services". I'm an incidental Android user, but last I tried removing them, that did stop the telemetry (and killed a lot of functionality, but my phone is still usable for my usage).

No idea about ChromeOS - my chromebook runs Arch ....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two things on my wishlist as a developer:

1\. Decoupling Edge updates from Windows updates for quicker adoption.

2\. Custom Elements as the basic feature for Web Components.

<comment><USER10> Edge is a Windows component, why decouple its updates? Is there any problems with quick windows updates? Ordinary users can't even disable updates now, so it shouldn't be a problem.

<comment><USER11> Why tie one program's update cycle to the update cycle of the entire OS? It would unnecessarily slow down updates to Edge.

This is the opposite strategy that Microsoft adopted with .NET Core, where everything is being moved to smaller, individual packages so they can be updated on their own schedule instead of being tied to the overall framework version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The browser wars are back; that's a good thing. The web started moving forward again since Firefox upped their game on the performance and ux front. I converted back (from Chrome) about a year ago and haven't looked back.

MS has been bleeding market share for a long time. The IE to Edge transition basically fragmented their market, destroyed their brand name, and they never really got back the market share they had gotten used to with Edge. Most people I use that actually use windows, have Chrome or Firefox as their main browser. Apple has the same problem with Safari. I only ever use it to download Firefox or Chrome. Mobile browsers are completely dominated by Chrome and Safari. MS killed their mobile platform and basically serves a niche market for people that really want a MS branded platform there. I actually use Firefox on Android and like it a lot but I'm a minority.

IMHO wasm is approaching the point where it will (finally) create a viable ecosystem for languages other than javascript to be used for mainstream web development. MS, is well positioned with their tool chains to take advantage of that. So, not strange to see MS investing there. Though I do think they need to cut their losses and put their money behind either Chrome or Firefox and retire their in house browsers. Edge at this point is not an easy sell. They did the right thing on mobile killing of windows phone and eliminating that as an internal distraction and I don't see them getting away with having any edge only websites these days.

<comment><USER7> There is no need for MS to abandon Edge, especially when OS integration is going to be more important in the near future. Chrome and Firefox are also not as resource efficient on Windows, which his especially important on battery powered Windows devices. Same as on Mac OS, where you use Safari, if you value your battery life.

Also there will be new mobile Windows devices very soon. [https://www.windowscentral.com/upcoming-microsoft- hardware-w...](https://www.windowscentral.com/upcoming-microsoft-hardware- watch-out-over-next-year-or-so)

<comment><USER12> I imagine maintaining it is a big effort and keeping up an even bigger one. Sure they make billions, but still. What are they really getting out of this at this point.

<comment><USER13> For one, they're getting a platform for UWP applications that are written in JS, which I would guess is pretty important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article I find weak. They state things like 'an average memory savings of 7%' and 'up to 2.5x faster' without providing details. I would like to see benchmarks. Then again, I don't really care. Chrome has won the game on Windows.

Beyond that, I feel people who have chosen Chrome as a browser on Windows will be very hard or impossible to switch because of their browser history, passwords and so forth is saved and carried over across devices.

<comment><USER2> Speak for yourself, Firefox has been good to me, and without phoning back home to Google. Facebook & Google Containers are great.

Browsers are like text editors, opinions and (pardon my French) like assholes, everyone has one, but nobody likes anybody else's...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Good ideas, thanks."

\- V8 team

</comment><comment><USER16> They should just add buttons to download chrome/firefox/opera. That is all Edge users needs at this point

</comment><comment><USER17> Seriously Microsoft -

let addOne = (x) => {x + 1};

That is such a basic syntax error it's unbelievable that whoever wrote it didn't see it, and whoever proofread it didn't see it either.

<comment><USER18> "teh" is a basic spelling error, but I bet you've let it slip through somewhere before

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > our early experiments show an average memory savings of 7% from this and a > few other memory improvements

This seems little. I wonder if they knew it beforehand and decided it is worth the effort, or overestimated potential memory savings.

> Chakra was able to reduce RegExp bytecode memory in some popular extensions > in this release by up to 10%

Same as above. My current total size of ad filter rules is less than 1MB. Even if all of them were RegExps and bytecode representation was few times larger than raw rules, that would be quite insignificant gain.

<comment><USER20> Some optimizations compound. Skipping anything that doesn't pass some impressive threshold (20%? 30%?) is the path to 500MB about:blank tab processes.</comment></comment>


German Hacker's website - <AUTHOR> http://www.german-hacker.de/

<comment><USER2> "Hacker" is also the brand of a German beer ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker- Pschorr_Brewery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker-Pschorr_Brewery)), a bridge ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchen_Hackerbr%C3%BCcke_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchen_Hackerbr%C3%BCcke_station)) and as we see here a family name. It unrelated to the English word. Probably comes from "Holz hacken" (cutting wood with an axe).</comment>


Ask HN: Monitors - <AUTHOR>

I've come to the point where my laptop screen is not enough and I'm looking at adding an external monitor. Instead of killing hours on sifting through reviews and trying to understand which models work best (for programming that is), I thought I'd just ask here, tally up the results and buy the top ranking one :)<p>So, ladies and gentlemen, what's your LCD poison and how happy are you with it? Bonus points for monitors supporting hardware/LUT calibration. <comment><USER2> Well, you could read up on the latest 'hype'; cheap Korean HR IPS monitors. [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/the-ips-lcd- revolut...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/the-ips-lcd- revolution.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, yep. The Apple's rejects with non-uniform backlighting and similar "smaller" issues. I think I'll just take some well-ranking Dell and be done with it.</comment></comment>


Amphetype: a Python-based (touch) typing analyzer, creates lessons from any text - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/amphetype/

<comment><USER2> Amphetype works well, but note that it's basically unmaintained at this point.

(Incidentally, I did an analysis of my Amphetype performance once: [http://www.gwern.net/Treadmill#typing](http://www.gwern.net/Treadmill#typing) )</comment>


Google is working on a Telegram competitor with Bot features and AI - <AUTHOR> https://orat.io/blog/google-is-working-on-a-facebook-messenger-rival-with-bot-features-and-ai/ <comment><USER2> telegram is already doing a great job with their bot platform. hard to catch up for google...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, but I think Google has still the advantage of having millions of millions of users already using at least one platform. And if this messenger will be delivered through Android, this will be some hard competition for other messengers</comment></comment>


When Doctors 'Google' Their Patients - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/when-doctors-google-their-patients-2/?_r=1&

<comment><USER2> Wait, I thought doctors were supposed to break into their patients' houses without permission in order to search for clues as to how they got sick!

This undermines everything I learned about medicine from the TV show, House.

<comment><USER3> In his 8 or 101 seasons, did he ever diagnosed anything wrong?

<comment><USER4> Yes, the 2-4 diagnoses he came up with in the first 35 minutes were always wrong. Only then did he get it always right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is horrible. mugshots.com is a fake website. It creates fake profiles based on queries it gets. So you enter in: First Name Last Name Drug. It will put a fake picture most likely based on last name. Meaning Ramirez isn't going to pull up a white dude. Gender is based on first name. drug or crime creates the context. It then creates several pages based on this. Then it relies on the person doing the search to apply bias. Throwing out information to make it fit your preconceived notion.

This is extremely dangerous and unbecoming of a doctor. What if the lady really had no idea. What if her son swapped out the sugar with cocaine in a panic and she OD on it.

Bottom line don't trust everything you read on the internet.

<comment><USER6> What's your source for this claim? I've read a little about the mugshot industry (yes, it is an industry) and how it works and I never read they were posting fake arrests/mugshots.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a- mug-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a-mug-shot- online.html)

This article and every one I have read has no mention about fake profiles, just scraping real arrests.

>Meaning Ramirez isn't going to pull up a white dude.

I randomly searched for Ramirez and got a white dude

[http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/Texas/Comal-County- TX/Bobby-...](http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/Texas/Comal-County-TX/Bobby-Ray- Ramirez.65582816.html)

EDIT: I just tried to "create" several fake arrest records, and I was unable to, with many tries. I used last names from real arrests I knew (and verified) were in the database with first names that weren't.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, didn't check back to see if anyone replied to me until today. Source, My self. Unfortunately I don't think I can recreate my proof.

Around July 2013 the company I work for was looking for a new front desk person to handle payroll/AP/answer phones. Well the main boss was googling the top 4 people. One popped up as a criminal like 4 or 5 links down on google. He went around poking fun of her and her arrest recorded. At first I laughed. The next day I was thinking how did he get this info. I asked him and he said a simple google search.

I did the same search sure enough there she was. (mind you we have no idea how she is spouse to look) He dismissed her based on this alone. What really sucks. Something seemed off so I looked into. I was able to get the exact same picture to show up on several names and several charges. Started playing around with it and got pretty good at predicting the results. I know for 100% fact it was dynamically creating pages. I got pretty bored fairly quick. So I didn't note anything down as its not my main interest.

Why I think I can't recreate what I was seeing. It seems they have been getting in a lot of trouble as of late.

General article talking about it: [http://www.project- disco.org/competition/101113-mugshot-mess...](http://www.project- disco.org/competition/101113-mugshot-mess-provides-a-reminder-you-dont-want- search-neutrality/)

Why Google should change search Algorithm: [http://searchengineland.com/opinion-why-google-should- crack-...](http://searchengineland.com/opinion-why-google-should-crack-down- harder-on-the-mugshot-extortion-racket-145570)

Google changes search algorithm: [http://www.seroundtable.com/google-mugshot- algorithm-17526.h...](http://www.seroundtable.com/google-mugshot- algorithm-17526.html)

Some articles talking about the ohio case: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a- mug-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a-mug-shot- online.html?pagewanted=all)

Its a removal service but links to all the sites: I'm sure one of them is the one I was talking about. If you want to spend time i'm sure you can reverse some of the sites algorithms and find something similar to what I was talking about. [http://www.internetreputation.com/information/delete-your- mu...](http://www.internetreputation.com/information/delete-your-mugshot-from- google/)

and 19hours ago they WON! YAY!: [http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/01/07/Plaintiffs-win- set...](http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/01/07/Plaintiffs-win-settlement- over-online-mugshot-sites/UPI-85291389134529/)

I realize am just some random dude on the Internet so I understand you can't just take my word for it, but there it is. Hopefully, its enough information to make you think I am not some kind of lair ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you have a web presence of your own and run analytics software, it's probably easy to check if your doctor googled you. In fact, several times I've met with people who told me "I saw your site on the web before!" when I already know that they googled me last night and viewed three pages on my website. It's tempting to follow up with, "how do you like your Android tablet with 1920x1080 resolution running the Opera browser?"

One of my worst clients told me at our first meeting that he had viewed every single page on every website I ran, and he had this habit of starting off subsequent meetings by saying, "I reviewed every single page of the development site," etc. when the logs showed in each case that he had viewed at most three or four pages. It appeared that he was using every possible tactic to absolutely dominate any discussion or potential negotiation. I finally called his previous vendor and determined after a short discussion that the guy was a big liar, and helped him find a new vendor shortly thereafter.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes I would like Dr to be able to easily extract as much information so they can more accurately treat me. Most of time I'm just not good at describing what's wrong with me.

</comment><comment><USER9> Doctors barely give you any time during an office visit, so I find it highly doubtful that they will want to waste more time searching online for someone.

<comment><USER10> As long as we're throwing anecdotes around, my doctor always gives me plenty of time; in fact, every once in awhile we just chat about personal things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this against some professional code they are bound by?

<comment><USER12> Not to my knowledge (this could vary greatly from one country to another).

They must not disclose private information concerning their patients, but this is precisely because they sometimes need to know very personal stuff in order to better treat and cure.

<comment><USER11> Doesn't disclosing it to a third party count?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Once again I am saved by having a ridiculously common name.

</comment><comment><USER14> Should be illegal. Full stop. This "must know everything" nonsense is ridiculous.

<comment><USER15> Patients are, across the board, pretty rubbish at giving histories. They overlook things because _they_ don't think it relevant or don't want to tell their doctors for some reason (even though it _is_ relevant). This is especially true of drug and alcohol abusers.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure most of those types of things would show up in a cursory search.

<comment><USER12> You may be underestimating the stuff people post on facebook these days.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An economist explains what is happening to the global economy - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/298405/an-economist-explains-what-the-heck-is-happening-to-the-global-economy/ <comment><USER2> the article ends with a trite dogmatic assertion that individualism will save the world. no, ayn rand, it will not. individualism and collectivism need to maintain a creative tension for economies to thrive. it's irreconcilable that the same troubles cited by the author (income inequality, militaristic aggression, religious extremism, etc.) have roots in stroking the individual's ego.

there are some interesting tidbits like technological change creating (short- term) economic upheaval and credit cannot fuel economic growth. but the conclusion drawn is a curious amalgamation of progressive individualism that simply doesn't follow from the observations that come before it.

<comment><USER3> Now it is a good time to read 'The Road to Serfdom' by F. Hayek one more time. Rising expectations of some part of the society that the government can give them a shield from change and solve their problems are common during a crisis. On the other hand, governments everywhere, the West included, are eager to take more and more control over individual life. The book is in the public domain and is available here [https://mises.org/library/road- serfdom-0](https://mises.org/library/road-serfdom-0)

<comment><USER2> i haven't read it (and maybe i should) but it sounds like that book might be ideologically dogmatic. i get disappointed by such things because they never model sociopolitical life accurately enough for the conclusions to be useful.

governments are not special in requiring vigilance to keep them in check. religions, corporations and other large political bodies (in the larger sense of the word) also require vigilance. the answer isn't simply individualism. these political bodies form because they provide social and economic efficiencies that we want. such groups form instinctively and immediately, and as such, we won't stop the formation of political bodies. the question then is how to we structure the collection of political bodies so that they keep each other in check, since no one individual can effectively orchestrate such a balance?

democratic capitalism is interesting in that it's an (imperfect) iteration of such a system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No facts, no cold hard hard data, no references, all emotional hand-waving.

<comment><USER5> Totally agree, overall a presumptuous piece of conjecture and a weak justification of the present state of suffering experienced by millions (excluding the author I presume).

It also struck me as originating from a highly US-centric view of the events in Latin America/Europe/Middle East. Low in nuance and meshing poorly with how the leadership of these countries understand and characterize their own economic/political dilemmas and decisions. It essentially assumes a "one right path for the world" and considers confused or invalid any deviation in discourse or policy. Also seems to perpetuate the old Colonialist chestnut - civilize the world (often directly against its will) at any price.

<comment><USER6> Ukraine too. Russia was subject to an enormous amount of provocation from the US, very little of which is reported. For an alternate view, the Russian President's office publishes his speeches in english; this [1] is worth reading.

But whatever you think of Ukraine, just remember how we reacted when Russian put nukes on our doorstep. Yet the US government is happy to meddle in Ukraine, on Russia's doorstep, and is shocked, shocked! when Russian reacts very negatively.

[1] [http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/23137](http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/23137)

<comment><USER7> Another day, another hack, another story ignored by the main stream media:

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-25/hacked-us- documents...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-25/hacked-us-documents- said-reveal-extent-undisclosed-us-lethal-aid-ukraine-army)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is utter nonsense. An article full of dogmatic assertions with no backing data.

If you want to understand the world, look at the numbers, like this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png)

A non backed assertion example: "Technological revolutions result in negative turns in the distribution of income, as income flows towards those who take early advantage of the new technologies."

Today the number One distribution machine is the computer of the central banks that let them print billions of currency a day(dollars, euros or yenes) backed by nothing real in the material world.

This people print on a single day the wealth that takes a year to generate in the real world. Look at how much shadow money there is in securities and derivatives compared with the real economy. As Warren Buffet says, it is a weapon of mass destruction.

Even something technological like Facebook earned most of their money from an artificially pumped stock market, not from the real world selling products and services.

I have profited enormously from the stock market because I understand this, it is not so hard. It is way harder to create valuable products out there in an economy that is taken for ransom by the banks, big companies and governments that are robbing them blindly.

Another powerful assertion: "Russia's annexation of parts of Georgia and Ukraine brought back another monster that we thought had disappeared between the 1930s and the 1940s—the territorially acquisitive authoritarian Great Power."

Russia should have supported a violent coup d'etat in Ukraine that replaced their pro Russian democratically elected gobertment. They also should have given them Sevastopol, and also let the US putting "defense" missiles there pointing to Moscow.By the way they should also let the US to destroy Russia-EU commercial relationship, and why not let foreign companies control their bast natural resources(as the biggest country in the world).

Russia, like the US or China, has her own interest, like any other country.

Thinking a modern country is going to behave like Iraq when you invade their country to take their resources is probably not a good idea.

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry, as a person that lives in Poland i have to disagree with rampant BS about Russian involvement

Ukrainian government was an oligarchy, bought by Russia (The president miraculously changed his mind right before it was time to sign the treaty - having before, repeatedly, said how important to growth and stabilisation of Ukraine affiliating with EU was)

Then, when it all blew up, he run off to his masters in Russia.

Russia is actively fueling the fighting in Ukraine, providing weapons, specialists, training, money etc. A passenger liner was shot out of the sky using modern Russian AA battery that had to be provided by Russian state. Poor, poor victimised Russia...

About the missile batteries - Russians freaked out when they learned that US shops carry ASAT/Anti ballistic missiles, not because it is a direct threat, but because it stops them from doing something stupid with their nukes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The way I see it, unrestrained capitalism creating boom and bust cycles and wealth inequality were what lead to the upheavals of the previous century. We supposedly learned our lesson after the great depression, but then in the 1980's had a change of heart and decided that government meddling in capitalism was the real problem and started going back to the old ways. Slashing taxes and regulations Which has lead us into a new period of boom and bust cycles and wealth inequality. I know that's an oversimplification and not particularly technical, but the same can be said of this article.

<comment><USER11> Aren't the boom and bust cycles more due to central banks, rather than capitalism, itself? I have read it successfully argued that the United States hasn't yet practised true capitalism, but rather forms of mercantilism.

<comment><USER12> I suspect that boom and bust is more fundamental than that. The essential problem seems to be that when there is an opportunity for profit, capitalism very efficiently drives us to exploit said opportunity. In almost all cases, this causes a usage of said opportunity beyond sustainable levels leading to an inevitable bust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd be interested to know if some people do not feel (entirely gut feeling is what i'm referring to, no hard data required) that the world is headed towards another world war? If you do not feel that way, please elaborate on how you feel the events around the world transpire into your view of reality. (no sarcasm intended in this message, please respond seriously if you do)

<comment><USER14> The economic situation of today is not conducive to global war. Our whole system is now based on international trade and skilled labor. When war breaks out what happens is the skilled labor evaporates, destroying the local economy, which then percolates into the global economy. Simply put, a world war is now too expensive because governments wouldn't be able to simultaneously fight and keep their population fed. Only if you had the right mix of dogmatic leaders who were willing to throw their own people under the bus and had the support of troops to do so (think taliban) could it happen, but given the gradual decline of populous religious extremism in most regions (except the middle east) i doubt we could get to that point any time soon.

Then again, world war 3 might break out next year. You can never tell such a thing in advance.

<comment><USER15> > a world war is now too expensive

That's what they said about WWI. Direct quote. My observation is that most populations are pretty readily swayed to support a war. And the invisible hand is no match for martial law in organizing resource commitment in a war footing. It's been decades since this happened on a large scale, so I think we've forgotten how truly terrifyingly effective a war footing can be for a major power.

I mean, can you imagine the kind of utter devastation that would result if the United States, as a society, really, and I mean _really_ , decided that Islamic terrorism was an existential threat, and mobilized to fight it on the fully integrated national level comparable to WWII?

If the country were all-in -- spending at the level of the European powers during WWII -- this would mean an expenditure of perhaps $30 trillion per year for three or four years focused on that goal, an intensity which is almost beyond imagining. That's war mobilization in a modern economy. It's hard to conceive because it is, frankly, inconceivable. How would that even work? But possible? Oh, yes.

<comment><USER16> It's easy for the US to attack the middle east, because the US is almost self- sufficient (they grow plenty of food and have a lot of oil), and they get almost nothing from the region. It would be way harder for most other countries to attack/be attacked, because most countries simply _need_ the exports/imports to survive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think Latin America is doing quite a lot better for "petty tyrants" this century than it did for most of the last. The main difference is that the US hasn't been as successful at replacing the uncooperative ones with its own.

<comment><USER18> You can read Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" \- very enlightening on what the US was really doing in Latin America and Indo-China during the last half of the last century. I bet you twenty, it did not stopped doing that now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very interesting read.

Although while reading this article, I couldn't help but think that this entire article is a theory and it's just one author's opinion. Because of the arbitrary 100 year timeline, it seems a lot of thinkers are drawing parallels to the early 1900's and perhaps the start of WW1 in 1914.

</comment><comment><USER20> The real problem is that the oligarchy are in extraction mode and the proletariat don't realize it yet. Resource wars loom on the horizon and two of the three-city-oligarchy's have just about completed their revenge for the deceleration of independence in the form of the dismantling of the American System. It was the American System that gave us the industrial age.

"British free trade, industrial monopoly, and human slavery, travel together, and the the man who undertakes the work of reconstruction, without having first satisfied himself that such is certainly the fact, will find that he has been building on shifting sands, and must fail to produce and edifice that will be permanent. Look where you may, you will find prosperity to exist in the inverse ratio of the connection with Britain." -Henry C. Carey (Lincoln's Economic Advisor)

<comment><USER18> The ultimate question is - do we need a permanent monetary system. (We do not have one at the moment nowhere in the American System.) UPD: downvoted ;-) I expected that. This research shows that political emotions always hinder the human computational power -- [http://www.alternet.org/media/most-depressing- discovery-abou...](http://www.alternet.org/media/most-depressing-discovery- about-brain-ever) . I cannot be upset, biology always overcoming maths.

<comment><USER20> I actually think our money system is fine, but that control should be put back to congress as designated in the constitution and not to a non-governmental body such as the fed. The problem is that before that would be viable, congress needs to be purged of corruption first, which is much harder as long as the monetary system is controlled by the international banksters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A lot of fancy words, I stopped after reading "Russia expanding its territory just like the aggressive powers of yesteryear".

Mr "economist" if you don't understand that Russia's actions were a direct reaction to the US led coup in Ukraine, then I don't need your explanations about what the heck is happening in the world : you're clueless.

My take on this, is that the USA are collapsing and they intend to take the rest of the world with them. Don't think I'm anti-American, I can make the difference between decent ordinary Americans and their crazy government.

<comment><USER22> This is the first I hear of a "US led coup in Ukraine." Can you share some information on that topic?

<comment><USER23> My understanding of "coup" is that it refers to the military overthrowing the government. In this case the US is giving aid to the Ukrainian military in their _support_ of the government against separatist rebels, no?

<comment><USER24> "Coup" refers to the way the previous, legitimately-elected government was overthrown, before the "rebellion" had even started. It's still unclear who really managed to escalate the situation using snipers (who were never found, afaik), and how bands of "revolutionaries" were armed and organised. We know the US were pushing hard for regime change, thanks to the Nuland intercept, and the personalities reported as US-connected in that intercept were the ones actually taking power.

History will usually call "revolutions" the overthrown of unpopular governments doing outrageous things, and "coup" the overthrown of legitimacy- elected governments doing things that only a minority considered objectionable. You can see how this could lead people to judge the Ukrainian series of events in different ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am unable to see any explanation in that article but merely unsubstantiated claims (basically rhetoric). People are disillusioned with democracy and capitalism ? Really ? 1/6th of world's population (India) just had one of the most peaceful election voting in a "minimum government" capitalism oriented leader with unprecedented voter turnout and thumping majority.

Any ways, I will not take even a Noble winning economist seriously if he says he can "explain" global economy. These systems are far too complex. A Computer Scientist with exceptional knowledge about Compilers might be as clueless about machine learning as the next guy. No one can really explain these things. The closest explanations about such things in my opinion is given by either Milton Friedman or Nissim Taleb, and their explantions seem to be that there is no explanation.

</comment><comment><USER26> There are all sorts of problems with this narrative. It entirely misses large components of the contemporary economic situation, and seems to be written from a rather imperialistic standpoint.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think economics is fascinating, but sadly, too close to politics to not generate flame wars on sites like this, so, reluctantly, I flag most broader articles about economics.

</comment><comment><USER18> Strangely enough this explanation does not involve any economical arguments, figures or analysis. The main topic is demonising Russia.

</comment><comment><USER28> The job of economics is to justify why the rich should remain rich. The really good economists can even come up with a plausible story that this is just. Economist would have been B Ark Golgafrinchans.

<comment><USER18> This is a good one. The recent research (I mean real research) gives a clue on how riches do it -- [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-014-9219-y/f...](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-014-9219-y/fulltext.html) . By passing wealth to direct kin and fiercely protecting it.

<comment><USER28> Yes economists are one of the phalanxes of mercenaries hired to enable this to happen. I am still amazed that the rich have managed to pull this off, but they do get the best advisers money can buy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fact that this explanation doesn't even have a single mention of the unfolding currency wars, makes me think this economist really doesn't understand the times that they live in.

</comment><comment><USER29> this reads like some brain wash text from an worker of _the_ establishment. not one word about why there is terrorism just saying it is linked to the fear of change which is just a bad joke. look what the western countries have done in the last 40 year and you know why. and then the statement about russia expanding its area of influence but not one word about the NATO doing the same and in a much more aggressive way.

this text is biased to the bone!

</comment><comment><USER30> Capitalism, monopolizes. Technology, innovates. What you know today, it is deprecated tomorrow. In today's world you can't feel accommodated.

</comment><comment><USER31> This piece needs a real editorial once-over for grammar and spelling. I'm not impressed with the QC the current editors bring to Quartz stories.

</comment><comment><USER32> very Alvin Toffler Future shock like. At least from what I recall. Not really "utter nonsense" but I think, raw ideas that need to be fleshed out into a meatier narrative/argument.</comment>


Space and Time - <AUTHOR> http://thegreatatuin.blogspot.com/2015/07/space-and-time.html <comment><USER2> Let's not forget about the habitable epoch of the early universe [1]. There's a good 7 million years near the beginning of the universe that in principle was inhabitable to Earth-like life. None can say if the physicists of that epoch (if there were any) had enough observational evidence to foresee their quickly approaching end.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613](http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613)

* do actually I believe there was early-epoch life sophisticated enough to think up physical theories? No, but what does that matter?

</comment><comment><USER3> "It should be noted that a full 90% of the non-dark-matter mass of the universe appears to be in the form of very thin X-ray-hot plasma clouds surrounding large galaxy clusters, unlikely to condense to the point of star formation via understood processes."

Wow. Non-dark matter is ~5%, so non-xray-hot-halo matter is 0.5% of the matter universe? That's all the rocks, all the stars, all the exotic objects we can count. Half a percent?

</comment><comment><USER4> The article shows that the Fermi paradox is even more mysterious than some thought, because we will probably not be the civilization in this universe or galaxy that is 'in front' as we are not early but average.

However, something always bothers me about the Fermi paradox. I've never seen the most obvious resolution mentioned (at least to me). I think that we are just not (yet) able to detect any civilization given the maximum technological state a civilization may reach. Many people assume that because technological progress has been exponential last century for humans, that this can be projected indefinitely into the future. Similarly like some thought about indefinite economic growth. But this is nonsense, it is much more likely we will plateau at some point. The Seti-project listens for radio signals with star strength, assuming that a proper developing civilization is able to manipulate stars as radio beacons. I find this highly unlikely that any civilization will ever reach such technology or that it is even physically possible. I think it isn't.

The only thing one can say is that apparently in this galaxy, no civilization seems far enough 'progressed' yet to have colonized the entire galaxy, as I also think that crossing galaxy boundary will be a no go for any civilization. But will humans ever undertake such a quest? It will mean building generational ships, enough DNA diversity to make a new civilization feasible (minimum 5000 people?), finding a good habitable planet from here or be doomed as traveling will take thousands of years and will be tremendously costly in terms of effort, energy, materials and personal costs. How likely is that we will ever do that for every planet in the galaxy? Technology to turn one selves inward (e.g. VR) seems a much more likely turning point at which outward exploration might not seem that interesting anymore.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is something that's hard to get in general science journalism.

The logic of why things happen (why elliptical galaxies or small galaxies are not good for life) is only easy to explain if you master the subjects very well.

</comment><comment><USER6> fun to read this alongside landis's "the melancholy of infinite space": [http://www.geoffreylandis.com/infinite.htp](http://www.geoffreylandis.com/infinite.htp)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hmmm, great article that summarizes some of the more advanced explanations for the Fermi paradox.

Some say that the Sun is young and so if there's other intelligent life, some would naturally have a 7 or 8 gyr lead on us. But the contra is that the young sun evolved just when the metallicity of the gas was high enough to actually form rocky planets and the solar system.

The article notes that the universal star formation rate has been decreasing for a while, since about redshift 2. So everything that's going to get a start has already gotten it. The vast majority of possible planet host environments are hostile because of SNe, AGN feedback, stellar winds etc. etc. etc. in the article.

Short of the long, sure we could say that we are approximately at the time when one would expect to see the emergence of advanced life give or take a couple billion years.

HOWEVER, this article neglects the fact that there are still billions of stars similar in aspect to the sun, that have cosmically long lifetimes, high metallicities and relatively quiescent environments.

From Kepler we know that planet formation is not the exception, it is the norm; at this juncture, it is impossible for us to say if rocky planet formation is an exception or a norm. You have to understand that the Kepler mission was not designed to figure that out, it was designed just to figure out if planets were common. The next major ESA planet mission, PLATO (and I think NASA may have a similar project in the works), will answer that question, and until that time, it's entirely plausible that the galaxy is filled with goldilocks planets.

(For reference, the Kepler spacecraft's sensitivity to earthlike planets in the habitable zone is minimal-- it's a function of size of the planet vs distance from the star, every time the planet goes in front of the star (function of distance) a small signal (function of size) is added to a time series that can be coadded over and over to remove noise (so maybe it takes 7 or 8 orbits to verify a planet). This is why Kepler mostly finds molten rock planets and gas giants. The distribution of planets we know about today _is a function of the instrument, not the actual planet distribution_.

The more interesting projects are the ones attempting to take planetary spectra. A spectra of a planet's atmosphere will tell you the chemical components of that atmosphere and is performed by taking a spectra of the star and then subtracting the spectra of the planet in front of the star (the difference between the two being the planet. There are certain chemicals in atmospheres, called biomarkers, that are indicative of life (ozone, for example, only exists in meaningful quantities because of photosynthetic life). This is an incredibly difficult and ambitious project: you need high res spectra at large signal to noise to even see these biomarkers which means probably multiple nights of 8-10 hour observations on modern 8m class telescopes, in the 30m telescope era, maybe it's more plausible; you need the right type of rocky planet, of which we know few; you need that planet to be in the exact right spot in its orbit in front of the star; and of course god needs to make it not rain after your 20 hour flight to Hawaii.

For all we know, not only are planets the norm, not only are rocky planets the norm, but life is also the norm.

Thus, not seeing advanced life is a function of _our instruments_ not indicative of the fact that advanced life is somehow new, or rare. Even with all the notes in the article, there could be advanced life with several billion years head start on us.

A thought I haven't devoted much time to is that perhaps interstellar travel is just downright impossible on a meaningful scale at a reasonable speed.

... Unless of course life arose from a panspermia situation, and we are the actual results of the most sophisticated form of interstellar travel in the universe. Perhaps we are a colony of some monolithic species, packing their genetic blocks into chunks of ice and tossing them willy-nilly about the galaxy...

<comment><USER8> > make it not rain after your 20 hour flight to Hawaii

Why is this not a global armchair sort of affair? Staff the site with a tech as needed, but otherwise automate the whole deal and observers can queue their requests which will get filled as god/weather/orbits permit?

<comment><USER7> First, some telescopes do do portions or all of their observations in queue or staff mode, where you just give them the required objects and weather conditions. Just not all of them. I think most 8m class ones will have a mixture-- if your proposal wins just 1 night, then maybe it goes to staff, but if you got 10 nights you get to do it yourself.

There are a few reasons. First, lots of astronomers do not trust anyone but themselves to deal with the data (and this is a reasonable distrust as every single telescope has a unique 'feel' and quirks)-- so they want to be there to do reshoots if necessary.

Another is that it's not entirely schedulable, like, if you queued up the whole year's worth of observations (this is what you do, twice per year you can apply for time, some telescopes once per year), and then everyone's sent you their absolute best case requirements and you end up not being able to fulfill them on time (because maybe there's a big volcano in Iceland that changes the atmospheric transparency for 4 months), then its inconvenient and the astronomers feel gypped that they won the time but didn't get the observations.

Astronomers prefer being told: okay, you get 8 dark nights, but if there's a storm, your SOL. But this is ok because you frequently have all your buddies on Skype at the dome, so when you say "shit well the seeing is too bad to get these spectra" your buddy says "well I have a bright night project we can probably do through the clouds." This is how a lot of observations and projects that can't win time on their own get their data.

A staffer will know how to take your observation requirements, wait until the conditions are right and get exposures of x object at y wavelength for z time.

An astronomer will be able to, on the fly say: well our original plan isn't going to work, but I know that at this time in winter we can see Draco from this latitude and my friend was doing a project in Draco that isn't too hard so I'll just snap that while I'm here.

That and most people like going to observatories, best business trip ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> this is interesting, but also I'm curious how a week-old blog on a old school blogger template with only two posts got noticed so fast?

<comment><USER10> Somebody wrote an article and shared it. Somebody who read it linked us to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great read, thanks. Title is a bit off though

<comment><USER12> I agree - great article, although I was expecting something on relativity or maybe the recent attempts to remodel physics with only events and not rates (e.g. exploring the possible non-existence of time).

But I did love the blog title - always nice to find a fellow Terry Pratchett fan, RIP.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I created an Airbnb/vrbo revenue forecasting and benchmarking platform - <AUTHOR> https://hostology.co/en <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, I'm the creator. As a host, we spent several days/weeks parsing through information to figure out the best location, price, and size for our current vacation property. The research paid off, but it was time consuming. After doing that several times for friends and family, we decided it was time to create a simpler approach.

Thus Hostology was born. I'm a self-taught developer, and I decided to give it a shot with what I knew. I used Ruby on Rails with Postgres and Redis for the backend, and Javascript for the front end. I learned a lot about how to efficiently digest json responses, but most importantly the importance of having automated tests early on (and running them often…)

This platform is in its early stages; I'm hoping to add more tools to help us hosts outperform our competition. Feel free to have a look and let me know if you have any questions.

<comment><USER2> Great idea! At first sight, looks cool and useful for the host.

However, the difference between the Low Medium and High revenue potential seems too big to me. It looks more like guessing than the actual estimate. Moreover, I don't like abbreviations of any kind that I need to lookup. In this case ADR or COMPS.

How do you get occupancy rates?

<comment><AUTHOR> The high, medium, low is based on the bottom 25%, average, and too 25% occupancy and rates. So yes, the difference can be big. The idea is that with the personalized estimate and based on where your property falls in regards to amenities, you can get a more accurate estimate for your house by adjusting your rate and expected occupancy

Occupancy rates are based on the historical averages for that market segment. So for example if you looked at a 2 bedroom property, its providing the occupancy rate for 2 bedroom homes within that specific market

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks like fetchmyguest.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd never heard about that site but it certainly looks interesting. It is different though,it seems to be a peer to peer booking platform (without the Airbnb/VRBO fees) and not an analytics site (although they do have some marketing analytics)</comment></comment>