Photographs Taken of San Francisco Before It Became the Center of the Tech World - <AUTHOR> http://humansfromthepast.blogspot.com/2017/01/colorful-photographs-taken-of-san.html <comment><USER3> San Francisco isn't Silicon Valley. It has never been the center of the tech world, and to whatever extent it's tech-heavy now that's less than 20 years old. These pictures act like SF was churning out silicon and code starting in the 1980s (based on the age of the pictures) which isn't even close to true or accurate.

Even during the last dot com bust it was mostly just marketing companies in sf - all the tech was south of Menlo Park.

I actually really hate that people try to retcpn SF into this visionary of technology and futurism. Almost all of that was and remains in the South Bay, as much as SF startup peeps hate to admit it.

<comment><USER4> > San Francisco isn't Silicon Valley. It has never been the center of the tech > world, and to whatever extent it's tech-heavy now that's less than 20 years > old.

I moved to Mountain View to found a startup a few months ago. When I think about the "chat over coffee" type of meetings go, I would say that there may be slightly more of them in San Francisco than South Bay.

It feels like San Francisco starts to outweigh Silicon Valley. I didn't do precise calculation, but estimation based on my gut feelings would say that ratio of "Seed stage" startups between SF and South bay is 2/1.

<comment><USER3> Long-term companies in the south bay that have no (or virtually no) SF tech presence. Just off the top of my head: Google/Alphabet, Facebook, Oracle, Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor, Intel, AMD, Applied Materials, Apple, Yahoo, Tesla, Palantir, and so on and so on.

Yes there are lots of kids in SF trying to get their website turned into the next unicorn. That does not make SF the "center of the tech world", it makes it the "center of the SF tech startup world".

<comment><USER5> I don't know about the rest, but google has a large office in SF and many, many people wanting positions in it (even if just a few days a week).

<comment><USER6> Most people who "work" in the SF office commute to MTV 3x/week. It's more of a coworking space than an office.

<comment><USER5> There are dedicated teams that are only there, and/or parts of teams that are full time only there. I was on one, for example, and knew of others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These are beautiful pictures. Thanks for posting.

What I find interesting of them, is how little has changed. This could practically be taken now, perhaps replacing those kids with some programmers...

One thing people may not realize, one of the most beutiful areas of SF, the waterfront by the ferry building, used to have a huge multi-level highway.

Now it's one of the best looking areas of the City.

<comment><USER8> In this photo I don't see overhead power lines for the tram:

[https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PgZkW7hgkro/WHPMo2nxx7I/AAAAAAAAD...](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PgZkW7hgkro/WHPMo2nxx7I/AAAAAAAADpw/bvPqIZrdDI04RQA_B1bloNfkG- QCHsHOwCLcB/s1600/San%2BFrancisco%252C%2B1940s-50s%2B%25286%2529.jpg)

Does this mean trams only went downhill on this particular road? Or were they powered some other way? Other photos show overhead wires.

<comment><USER9> That'd be a cable car, I think. It's pulled along by a cable embedded in the middle 'rail', afaik.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that middle "rail" is the underground cable. I don't recognize the street, but that doesn't mean much. There were a bunch of cable car lines that were removed, we now have three left:

[https://www.sfcablecar.com/routes.html](https://www.sfcablecar.com/routes.html)

It looks like most were removed in the 40's, and 50's

[https://www.sfcablecar.com/history.html](https://www.sfcablecar.com/history.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf I love this nostalgia. I find myself watching old movies of San Francisco just to see how the city has changed. In one of the Dirty Harry movies there's a great shot that shows the where the ballpark is now as a basically empty industrial area. Great to see how soma and the rest of the city has evolved over the years.

<comment><USER10> If the evolution of soma interests you, check out the work of this photographer [https://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/janet-delaney-south- ma...](https://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/janet-delaney-south-market)

<comment><USER8> The quality of those images is very nice. Smartphones definitely don't come close to those colours. No doubt the photographers skill also plays a big role, but that "pigment print" is sublime.

<comment><USER11> I'm guess Cibachrome prints though you can't fully appreciate online.

Pigment prints are pretty rare these days. A photographer I was at a dinner a couple of months back favored a Bay area company that prints on metal as an alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've read in mags like National Geographic (old issues) that in the 50s, 60's and earlier, Silicon Valley had a lot of orchards with apricots, almonds, etc. Must have been great to have lived there then.

</comment><comment><USER13> Check out SFMOMA's Pritzker Center if you happen to be in or around SF. Really amazing photography collection.

[http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/a-comprehensive- loo...](http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/a-comprehensive-look-at- california-and-the-west/)

and

[https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy- editorial-10-photographe...](https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy- editorial-10-photographers-who-captured-the-changing-face-of-san-francisco)

</comment><comment><USER14> I was expecting a snarky post with pics from the 90s, or today, with a point that tech never really centralized in the bay, just the money. But old pictures with questionable relevance are also nice.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of those photos includes a place I rented in the 1990s.

Thank you so much for that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice collection. But from the look of these photos, you'd think the person slapping the title on top was at most... about 21 or so. "1940s? 60s? 90s? It all looks the same."

BTW, if you're wondering why the Sally Rand Nude Ranch looks out of place -- that's because that scene was from Ft. Worth, Texas, not SF.

</comment><comment><USER17> I always marvel at how clean cities used to look before we began churning out garbage and waste breakneck speeds.

<comment><USER18> Really? Nothing was ever recycled back then (maybe metal and glass). We were way more wasteful back then.

<comment><USER19> Tons of stuff that's now sold in blow-molded plastic was in glass or aluminum back then. Stuff that's now sold in styrene and/or plastic wrap was wrapped in waxed paper. And, of course, people made and consumed food at home _way_ more often. So, more of the waste was in the form of of cars dumped down ravines, and less in the form of shopping bags and granola bar wrappers blowing in the wind.

Also, from personal observation, I'm inclined to say that a significant amount of trash these days is due to the rolling trash bins and the hydraulic arms used to gather them. Many people don't bag their trash, and I always see a significant increase in 'litter' after trash day.

<comment><USER20> > now sold in blow-molded plastic was in glass or aluminum back then.

and how much "greener" is it to use aluminum, whose cost is mostly due to the energy required to separate it from its oxide, than to use plastic that is a natural (yes, it comes from the earth) byproduct of oil production?

> more of the waste was in the form of of cars dumped down ravines,

that can percolate down into the waterways and ground water, versus dump in a landfill with a 4ft clay liner specifically designed to catch contaminants.

Trash-to-energy is also a thing now. Plasma from an electric arc can (somehow) incinerate trash without harmful byproducts and actually results in a surplus of energy [1]. Not to mention methane recovery from landfills that's been a thing for over a decade [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to- energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Center of the Tech World

A bit of a stretch considering there's the rest of the Bay Area

<comment><USER22> Or the suburbs.

It ain't Oakland, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just came across this 20 minute 1955 cinemascope feature on archive.org earlier today:

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

[https://archive.org/details/SanFrancisco1955CinemascopeFilm](https://archive.org/details/SanFrancisco1955CinemascopeFilm)

</comment><comment><USER24> Another nice photo set from that site -- "Composite Then and Now 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Pictures"

[http://humansfromthepast.blogspot.com/2016/11/composite- then...](http://humansfromthepast.blogspot.com/2016/11/composite-then-and-now- photos-of-1906.html)

Puts the destruction of that earthquake in perspective.

</comment><comment><USER20> sorry if stupid question, but how do the trolley cars get enough traction to travel up/down steep hills ? is there a rubber wheelset ? I can't imagine metal wheels on rails would have enough friction to climb up or descend safely.

edit: I see below that someone says there's an underground cable. Is there an emergency backup (like a rubber foot or something) in case of cable snap?

<comment><USER25> > I see below that someone says there's an underground cable. Is there an > emergency backup (like a rubber foot or something) in case of cable snap?

There is a brake system on the cars, that basically presses down on the rail - they're made of wood, like they've always been:

[http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/the- brakes.html](http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/the-brakes.html)

That museum is at the "head" of the lines - it has the motors which drive the cables, and so in the museum you can learn about how it all works, see the cables running, all the sheaves and such, and down below the machine room where they do maintenance.

That said - cable-snaps are probably the rarest of rare things to occur. What happens first, as the cable runs (and it is always running), it frays (steel cable - and you don't want one of the "threads" to pierce ya!). As the cable runs, there is a "switch" sensor mechanism that can tell when the fray passes. When that happens, they know then they have to change the cable.

At night, then (when no cars are running) they run the cable at a slow speed (I think it is to keep it lubed and not rust or something), and wait for it to trigger again, then they slowly run it to find the fray. At that point, they stop the line (all lines, actually), and splice in a new cable (they have many reels in the work area), put tension on it, then turn the motor back on and let it winch the new cable thru (and take in the old cable), until the splice come back 'round, then they cut out the splice, and splice the ends of the new cable together.

I can't recall how often this happens, but IIRC, one line or another would need replacing on a monthly basis (?) - I might be completely wrong.

<comment><USER20> thanks for the info. I wonder if they "braid" the cables? Like I've heard they do for ski lifts. Supposedly they dont weld/solder them in, they just braid them very carefully and friction is enough to hold it together!

<comment><USER25> > I wonder if they "braid" the cables?

I don't know - maybe I'll look it up when I get home (I purchased this huge and expensive history book on cable cars from the museum when I last went - <USER2> probably has info in it about that aspect).

My best guess would be that they do; I can't imagine another way (like welding or soldering) wouldn't cause issues going over the sheaves, possible causing the cable to jump the pulleys. Plus there'd be potential issues with the cable pinch system on the car itself should such an area be "hooked" so to speak...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hmmm, No pictures of the wonderful parking lots and barren wasteland that turned into the Mission Bay neighborhood?

<comment><USER27> I live in Mission Bay and it sucks dick. As a residential neighborhood, I'd rather have warehouses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Really cool picture of the B-Geary street car turning right off of Market St. en route to the Transbay terminal.

</comment><comment><USER29> Are there recent photos to compare?

<comment><USER30> A lot of them would look exactly the same other than newer cars.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I found that, other than the cars and people, it looked a lot like the San Francisco I've been to last year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> such a beautiful city. All good things will be commandeered by the rich.</comment>


The NYC subway system runs on OS/2 - <AUTHOR> https://tedium.co/2019/06/13/nyc-subway-os2-history/ <comment><USER2> Is it just me or does this article feel kind of shallow? Like there's a lot of fancy text boxes and nice big text, but it doesn't cover a whole lot of information. Like how did the MTA build this infrastructure? Who lead it? What went into their decision making process for OS/2? Were there other options? They briefly discuss how the MTA is moving to contactless payments and casually mention Andy Byford's hiring (incorrectly citing him as the former head of the Tube—unless the MTA hired another former Tube employee?), but they don't delve into that either.

It's nice to have a succinct article, but I'd much prefer a long form version. If this article ran in say, the New Yorker, it'd provide a level of depth and information that I'd find really valuable. I assumed from the design of the site, namely the very pretty interludes, that I'd be in for some really good long form journalism. Unfortunately not the case.

Edit: Here's a funny snippet from an article about Andy Byford in which the credit card processing for the Metrocard machines goes down.

> It seemed that only Miguel knew how to log in to the relevant subprocessor > and do the reboot.

> "Where is Miguel?"

> He was in a car, apparently, on his way home. He wasn't answering his cell. > He lived in Port Jervis.

> Byford looked at Meyer and Nugent. They shook their heads. Port Jervis was > upstate, three hours away.

> "Unbelievable."

> More calls were made, more cages rattled. Was it really possible that > hundreds of vital machines, the main revenue engines of the subways, could > be repaired by only one person at the M.T.A.? It seemed so.

Perhaps an upgrade isn't such a bad idea.

<comment><USER3> Andy Byford was manager of several Tube lines

Theres a good New Yorker article about him

<comment><USER2> Yep, I quoted the article in my edit. He's incorrectly referenced as the "former head of London's train system" and they claim the reason for his hiring was "ultimately eliminating MetroCards", which is flat out wrong. Byford was brought on to "fix" the inevitable trainwreck that is the MTA while also taking the fall for said trainwreck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They could have done a lot worse.

OS/2 was very stable compared to the NT of the same era.

I'm not sure why we laugh at old systems that are still doing their job thirty years later. If anything we should celebrate the resilience and longevity.

Would it be immediately better if we replaced it with a bunch of docker containers connecting to mongodb or something?

I think we'd be better off as a society if we became tech luddites a bit more. Maybe we could start by replacing all of the facial recognition advertising panels with OS/2.

<comment><USER5>
      I'm not sure why we laugh at
      old systems that are still
      doing their job

Because other countries are hacking our infrastructure, as we hack theirs, and those laughing are doing so nervously, because with an operating system that is decades out of date, it's painfully obvious that anything defended by a password protected user account on that operating system isn't really protected against a determined enemy at all, and any of the permissions and privileges conferred by user accounts on that system are likely a facade protected by an honor system, and mostly physical security.

In truth, even if the operating system were newer, we would not want it hooked up to the internet, but if the operating system were up to date, and not well isolated and became exposed to any public gateways, it would stand a fighting chance of not spilling its guts to the world.

With such a system disconnected from the internet, one can still bet that a determined attack is going to implant remote connectivity under their own control, and their job is much easier once the implant is connected. They don't need to sweat OS level password rotation, probably won't worry about strong encryption key changes or having to prove identity to policy enforcement tools with signing keys or tokens. Very little in the way of locking the integrity of the system is built into the concept of the OS. The application layer may offer better protection with proprietary controls, but the contents of disk and RAM are very probably possible to dump, inspect, bit twiddle and write back in place to just do anything you want, if your expertise runs deep enough.

<comment><USER6> Is the NYC subway's OS/2 connected to the internet?

<comment><USER7> I think the real question is "what is the physical security model of the OS/2?"

I would imagine a determined attacker could infiltrate the system in-person. The question then becomes - how easy is it to compromise the system given physical access? And, assuming total compromise, how much damage and loss of life can be caused? (Do the subways have physical fail-safes?)

<comment><USER8> OS/2 was a single user PC OS, it didn't have any physical security or account passwords or etc.

<comment><USER9> Countless ATMs ran it for decades. They obviously figured something out to secure it.

<comment><USER10> Cameras, locks, and obfuscation, basically. Ti hack it, you need to be alone with it long enough to find the flaws, figure out how dispensor works, etc. People hardly ever try to bypass them.

Recently, hackers have been buying, studying, and hacking ATM's. They're not secure. You can see them in action searching for DEFCON ATM hacking on YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The trains in Melbourne ran on a DEC PDP-11/84 based signalling system.

In 2003 they started to move the application to PC running Windows XP using a special processor card to virtualise the old CPUs although "Due to the core software limitation (no source code available) we were compelled to integrate some original PDP-11 computer cards into the final product and this resulted in a hybrid PC platform"

[https://www.equicon.de/images/Virtualisierung/LegacyTrainCon...](https://www.equicon.de/images/Virtualisierung/LegacyTrainControlSystemStabilization.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Why not to hire a reverse engineering company and restore the source code for them?

<comment><USER13> Would that be legal?

<comment><USER14> Australian lawyers from the top of Google Search results say that it can be if done careful:

 _> Generally, where a computer program is reverse engineered by copying the idea of the function presented in the program code, the original computer programmer's copyright is not infringed. Where a computer program's expressions in code are reproduced or adapted (including into a different computer programming language), the original computer program's copyright is likely to be infringed. This means that where reverse engineering occurs by "clean room" design, Australian courts are unlikely to find that there has been an infringement of the original author's copyright._

Source: [https://www.dundaslawyers.com.au/reverse-engineering-of- soft...](https://www.dundaslawyers.com.au/reverse-engineering-of-software- what-are-the-legal-boundaries/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The system does not "run on" OS/2\. That is used to glue the metrocard terminals to an IBM mainframe. The subway "runs on" relay logic. Trains occupy a block because they short the two rails together, which completes the necessary circuit. Only part of the NYC subway is computerized. That part uses off-the-shelf hardware and software that I believe runs at least partly on Solaris.

<comment><USER16> This seems needlessly argumentative and unwilling to allow for any editorial leeway. A subway is composed of many parts that all need to operate for the system to work.

But if we want to get pedantic, the subway wouldn't exist without revenue, and that revenue is indirectly managed through an OS/2 system. Ergo, the subway runs on OS/2.

<comment><USER17> Most subways don't pay for themselves; it's funded by the state. Really there's no reason to charge for usage except that everyone in government likes to steal money from them when nobody's looking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _In the future, people will access New York's subway like they're queuing > for a roller coaster at Disney World. The process will require users to have > an internet connected device that gets you through the gates, whether that's > a phone or a smartwatch. If we're lucky we get a new MetroCard option. But > it's no guarantee._

This is false:

\- You do not need an "internet connected device." (There isn't even reliable cell service at all turnstiles.) You can use an offline device that's previously had a card added to mobile wallet. You can also just use an actual physical credit card that supports contactless payments.

\- The MTA has indicated that they're replacing MetroCard with an OMNY- specific contactless payment card, which you can buy using cash if you want. "Although cash isn't accepted for OMNY right now, cash will always be an option to access MTA services. You still have the option to use MetroCard until OMNY rolls out system-wide." [https://new.mta.info/omny](https://new.mta.info/omny)

"In 2020, we will enable mobile ticketing in the OMNY app. In 2021, we will introduce a new MTA-issued contactless transit card for OMNY that you will find at retail locations throughout the New York region. In 2022, we will install OMNY vending machines at subway and commuter rail stations. In 2023, we will say goodbye to MetroCard. You will always be able to pay with cash at retail locations and vending machines." [https://omny.info](https://omny.info)

</comment><comment><USER19> The OS/2 ecosystem helped to bring the Windows "start button" back to Windows 8/10.

After Microsoft removed the _Start_ button, the former #1 OS/2 ISV (Stardock Systems) created the Start8 utility as a 3rd-party $5 replacement start button. They sold millions of copies, proving market demand and motivating the return of the button in future Windows releases.

<comment><USER20> This is a more interesting tidbit about os/2 than the entire article

<comment><USER19> OS/2 had an object-oriented GUI (Windows "Cairo" never shipped) and Stardock was a pioneering ISV. They later moved onto Windows games and utilities. Commentary by Stardock CEO, [https://www.stardock.com/press/customerreports/stardock2014....](https://www.stardock.com/press/customerreports/stardock2014.pdf)

 _> Over the years, we've developed and/or published a lot of software that was "ahead of its time". Sometimes, too far ahead of its time. :) ... Broadly speaking, Stardock is a bunch of "techies" who have let their hobby get out of control ... most consumers would be shocked if they knew the actual dollars earned by reasonably "popular" iOS and Android games and apps ... Our poorest- selling DLC for PC games generates more income than nearly every iOS or Android developer app we've gotten numbers for ... Start8 will undoubtedly be obsoleted by a future version of Windows as its stunning popularity (over 30 million downloads and counting) makes it clear it was a mistake for Microsoft to get rid of the Start menu in Windows 8. In the meantime, Start8 has been an unexpected boon. If it makes Microsoft feel better, the revenue from Start8 has helped us hire a lot of new developers making new Windows software.

> ... In 1998, the OS/2 market died off. Stardock went from a multimillion > dollar business to one that made less than $400,000 in one year. The only > reason we survived was because our former OS/2 user base bought Object > Desktop for Windows, sight unseen, a year before it would be released. While > "Kickstarter" is now common, most of you reading this know that in 1998 just > doing credit cards over the Internet was a new thing, let alone giving $50 > to a company to make a product that didn't exist._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Given what I have seen in some large corporations, I honestly believe that eBay has the data on which companies use very old computers in mission critical processes. The amount of "vintage" parts that were bought off sellers on eBay by a couple of corporations I was at was rather large. It amazes me what has to happen for some companies to realize that your logistic system needing parts from eBay is a bad thing.

<comment><USER22> It's the "whatever keeps it moving" mindset rather than the "take a hit now for a better return later" mindset. I used to work as a Colgate factory making liquid soap and it blew my mind how poor of a condition their machinery was in and how it was run. Machines help together literally with ductape, zipties, and miscellaneous objects that we could find around the plant to repurpose or materials we could find at Walmart (it's the only place around open 24hrs). Many times machines would be down and instead of fixing them we would just "throw people" at the issue and keep the lines running with manual labor, creating an insane amount of inefficiency and waste so that there's no "downtime".

<comment><USER23> That shows how little value most labor has, unfortunately, versus how much money can be make just keep the business running. It's a simple computation for anyone upstairs.

<comment><USER24> In that kind of manufacturing environment, typically it's just middle management keeping things at a local maximum and hiding problems from plant managers. Middle management is incentivized to maintain said local maximum based on some arbitrary metric (ie uptime) which can be decoupled from productivity. This is the primary mistake. Plant managers usually have the bigger picture in mind, but aren't aware of the issues, as they trust the people below them. Operators eventually stop complaining when nothing gets done, as they assume that's how it works. This leads to money spent fixing operator culture, which is really just a more visible symptom of the actual issue.

Long story short, you get what you incentivize for. Incentivize carefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I grew up on OS/2 Warp on a PS/1 Consultant. I still have a couple of boxes with original copies of OS/2 Warp and the manuals and optional software disks in my back closet. I guess you could say I have a soft spot for it. It was really ahead of its time compared to its contemporaries, second only to BeOS. But people who weren't techies back in the early 90s didn't see the value in buying a different operating system when their system came with DOS and Windows 3.1. And, honestly, they were probably right! Computers didn't really have the oomph or the networking capabilities at the time to power all the multimedia applications IBM had in mind.

So I can't really judge the MTA too harshly because OS/2 is solid and it'll probably gladly do the job for another 30 years so long as the hardware lasts.

</comment><comment><USER26> This got me wondering...if you were building out a system like this today, which OS would you choose that wouldn't seem ridiculous 30 year later? And why aren't we building OSes that are simple and feature-poor with the intention that they'll be used for 30 years? Or the airline problem: it must be annoying that the tech you put in seatbacks has a short shelf life and will look primitive compared to the phones in everyone's pockets.

<comment><USER27> The seatback device is a consumer electronic that can (and should) be experimented with, updated, upgraded, and replaced regularly. I don't care what OS it is using today or how fancy it looks - that has nothing to do with the first part of your question, which should (and fortunately usually is) altogether separate.

The off-the-shelf answer today is a variant of QNX or VxWorks. No one gets fired for picking those.

<comment><USER28> I thought most seatbacks ran Linux?

For more critical applications, Boeing is using Ada on Linux atop AMD's new embedded CPUs, which have no closed firmware (to ensure auditability).

Sadly, Boeings culture rot has led to some poor design decisions recently.

<comment><USER29> I am yet to see any Linux distribution certified for high integrity computing.

Usually Linux always runs in a VM sandbox on top of such OSes, like Green Hills INTEGRITY OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well there's probably not a whole lot of OS/2 ransomware, so they're less likely to wind up in the situation of the San Francisco Muni

[https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/you-hacked-appears-at- muni-s...](https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/you-hacked-appears-at-muni- stations-as-fare-payment-system-crashes/)

<comment><USER31> I don't think it's better security-wise to run software which doesn't get updates since 17 years.

<comment><USER32> "IBM had long given up on it, even allowing another company to maintain the software in 2001. (These days, a firm named Arca Noae sells an officially supported version of OS/2, ArcaOS, though most of its users are in similar situations to the MTA.)"

So I suppose there are still updates. As an aside, at $129 for the personal edition [0] I want to pick it up just for the novelty of having an OS/2 machine running on modern hardware.

[0] [https://www.arcanoae.com/shop/arcaos-5-personal- edition/](https://www.arcanoae.com/shop/arcaos-5-personal-edition/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> London's runs on iRMX III. The hardware is x86 but non-PC, based on Multibus.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMX_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMX_\(operating_system\))

That OS was pretty much a feature demo OS for the x86. All that task switching stuff is used to the max, and of course the segments are as well. Good luck porting anything, even if you did have the source code and a budget. Also, the popular language was PL/M, which is impressively awful. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/M](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/M)

</comment><comment><USER34> Favorite quote from the article, "Despite the failure of OS/2 in the consumer market, it was hilariously robust..."

Would this make the NYC subway system more or less prone to hacking? Can't imagine there are a ton of exploits in OS/2 that modern hackers would know about.

<comment><USER35> Does os/2 even have TCP/IP support?

<comment><USER36> If you're running Warp, yes. I believe it's dial-up only though.

<comment><USER15> Nope. Ran Warp on a PC with a PCI bus Ethernet adapter and TCP. Worked fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I used OS/2 on a 486DX-66 back in the day at home. I ran also ran it on a my first SMP system - Dual PPro (custom IBM build that did SMP - I worked there at the time and even wrote some code for it). It was rock solid for the most part. I still miss parts of the GUI - the ability to rip off a template for printer or a Doc, etc. There are still things that the latest OS just do not do well. Biggest issue was alway the single input queue issue in the GUI that could lock up the GUI but the system would just keep running.

Also Galactic Civilizations was a damn good game and only on OS/2 at the time -

[https://www.stardock.com/stardock/articles/article_sdos2.htm...](https://www.stardock.com/stardock/articles/article_sdos2.html)

<comment><USER38> I think I played some sort of predecessor to that game, called Star Emperor?[1]

But from the first link in your link… they also made Trials of Battle! That it's listed under "Other Products" does not do it justice, IMO. _And_ Stellar Frontier. I did not realize how much of their stuff I had played.

[1]: [https://www.os2world.com/games/index.php/native- games/strate...](https://www.os2world.com/games/index.php/native- games/strategy/306-star-emperor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> As late as 2003 (when I separated from them), Sterling Commerce, a Columbus based EDI network now owned by IBM, used an OS/2 system to convert zModem and FTP traffic to SNA, so that PCs could talk to a mainframe without needing to to buy special modems that could talk bisync. That was the only non-trivial use of OS/2 I've seen, and for all I know it's still running.

In the 90s, the CompuServe online service had a dedicated tech support team for people using OS2CIM to connect, and they were pretty evangelical about using OS/2 over Windows or pre-OSX Macs. It's a fun ecosystem, and its users were pretty passionate about it. I'm glad to see it's still being used for something interesting.

</comment><comment><USER40> [http://www.osfree.org](http://www.osfree.org)

The free and open source OS/2 clone OS. Some things cannot be ported to Windows.

</comment><comment><USER41> Canadian flavour of this, from the late 90s was that

1\. SkyTrain (driverless monorail) in Vancouver ran under OS/2

2\. All street lights in Toronto were managed by a single 486 box running QNX

Not sure how true #2 was, but Skytrain had an OS/2 position open for a while, so it was a part of their setup for sure.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_\(Vancouver\))

<comment><USER42> SkyTrain is not a monorail. It is standard (driverless) light rail.

<comment><USER41> Quite possible. It's been 10 years since I last used it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> One thing that the IT world (being a field which is only a few decades old) is going to have to come to grips with is the fact that, in general, infrastructure doesn't necessarily get thrown out just because it has grown a bit long in the tooth. In the US we have physical infrastructure which is many decades to centuries old, and elsewhere in the world there's still infrastructure in active use which dates back to at least Roman times. Now that old stuff certainly may not be ideal by modern standards, of course, but to the extent that it gets replaced this is usually done relatively slowly, and some of it may yet end up sticking around indefinitely.

</comment><comment><USER44> If I remember well, Trenitalia POS and many European banks still use OS/2\. A lot of mainframes have OS/2 as a frontend to boot (IPL) the big iron. Got heartbroken when OS/2 got sold.

<comment><USER45> That mainframes need a standard computer of some sort to run as a controller to reach IPL boggles my mind.

<comment><USER46> It is done in this way on almost any platform that is classified as mainframe. Originally one would IPL such platforms by manually toggling in either some simple code that would somehow DMA the OS bootloader from some external device. This was not exactly user friendly and replacing the front panel blinken lights with some sort of interactive monitor/debugger running on separate smaller CPU was common approach (for example many PDP-10s have PDP-11 in them used as "console processor").

For more recent systems (IBM mainframes, Sun/SGI large machines, etc.) the controller also handles things like power sequencing, hardware configuration (e.g. physical partitioning of interconnect buses, resource allocation...) and mainly also enforces the hardware licensing policies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> "In the future, people will access New York's subway like they're queuing for a roller coaster at Disney World. The process will require users to have an internet connected device that gets you through the gates, whether that's a phone or a smartwatch. If we're lucky we get a new MetroCard option. But it's no guarantee."

Is that actually true? Seems like a terrible decision, if so. I fundamentally don't understand why the onus would have to be on the user to have internet connectivity.

London lets you use contactless payments with normal bank/credit cards, Apple Pay etc.

<comment><USER48> There's been a ton of FUD around this concept since the moment OMNY was announced as the MetroCard replacement. They've committed to supporting phones with NFC, contactless credit and debit cards, as well as a future vended card that can be paid for with cash, likely from any nearby convenience store or machines in the station. Yet despite the hundreds of options that enables, there are still people spreading fear that this change will somehow lock out hundreds of thousands of people from using the subway (the argument being that lower income riders don't have access to the contactless payment methods). I've seen nothing to indicate this will be the case and they've committed to supporting the additional card before retiring the existing MetroCard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I used to work for a bank with a large number of OS/2 based ATMs.

It's out there, in a lot of places.

<comment><USER41> Diebolds?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I remember IBM even handed out freebies of OS/2, I was quite a fan of it and its Scripting language REXX. Jokingly we pronounced Os/2 as "O - S - half"

</comment><comment><USER51> > 5.7M The number of people that rode the New York City subway on an average > weekday in 2016.

Shouldn't that be:

> 5.7M The AVERAGE number of people that rode the New York City subway on a > weekday in 2016.

You're averaging the number of people, not the weekday. (I guess this is a stylistic linguistic choice, but it's always bothered me.)

<comment><USER52> Why so? Very likely they took every weekend ridership and averaged them together. If anything, "averaging the day" makes more sense than "averaging the people". The latter would be something like "the average person takes the train every other weekend".

<comment><USER51> I never said averaging the people; I said averaging the NUMBER of people, which is what's being done. "Averaging the day" makes no LOGICAL sense; what is being summed? Over what is that sum being divided?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm actually surprised it's this advanced. This is the system that still uses glass insulators and cloth wire. The unions keep any technology advancements out to prevent displacing jobs

</comment><comment><USER54> I think Citibank did too, for the longest time. I had multiple occasions of visiting their ATMs and being treated to a space invaders style interface ...

</comment><comment><USER55> Wow. The last time I saw OS/2 in production was at Egghead Software's back- office on PS/2's in the very late 1990's.

</comment><comment><USER56> It's a bit unclear. So does OS/2 run on the turnstiles?

Also my mom loved OS/2 Mahjong so it had a long life in my house growing up.

</comment><comment><USER57> Someone once told me that a lot of the big navy ships run on a customized version of Windows XP! Can anyone here confirm?

<comment><USER57> [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2939435/us-navy- paid-m...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2939435/us-navy-paid- millions-to-stay-on-windows-xp.html)

<comment><USER58> Interestingly, in 2011 they were still using MS-DOS:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_110129-N-7676W-15...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_110129-N-7676W-152_Culinary_Specialist_3rd_Class_John_Smith_uses_the_existing_DOS- based_food_service_management_system_aboard_the_aircraft.jpg)

...and a lot of (physical) stores still use a DOS-based application for their POS systems, judging by the appearance, although they might not actually be running it on DOS but a later version of Windows.

<comment><USER59> SCO UnixWare / OpenServer was the basis for many POS systems, with curses displays resembling (though not) DOS.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-dub The MVMs have been on Windows for some time... you can see when they crash.

But yeah, it was huge in banking when they released 2.0...

</comment><comment><USER60> This is not at all surprising. There are still a lot of mechanical signal boxes in operation.

</comment><comment><USER61> there's a saying that if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

but the new york city government must be dumping tons of tax dollars maintaining this outdated technology, i'm speaking mostly about the hardware required to run this operating system and software.

</comment><comment><USER62> Similar situation in Vancouver as of 2010.

</comment><comment><USER63> I had never ever seen that neon colored os/2 logo before. why pick such an outline oddity to report on some unknown banality from the past?</comment>


IRS Increases Marriage Penalty, Unwed Couples Get Twice the Mortgage Deduction - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2016/08/01/irs-increases-marriage-penalty-unmarried-cohabitants-to-get-twice-the-mortgage-interest-deduction <comment><AUTHOR> Original title was "IRS Increases 'Marriage Penalty,' Unmarried Cohabitants To Get Twice The Mortgage Interest Deduction" but the HN title char limit is 80 so truncated/reworded a bit.</comment>


A Walkability Score For Any Address - <AUTHOR> http://www.walkscore.com/

<comment><USER2> This might be well served by adding yelp or other business review sources to the calculation.

For instance, my neighborhood shows a fantastic score (99 - Walker's Paradise), but most of the locations listed are subpar at best. The score seems to be primarily based on access to transportation and walking distance of local establishments regardless of how much anyone would actually WANT to walk to any of them.

Mind you, I love my neighborhood Because of the fantastic access to the rest of the city, without being a social center. I'm just stating that very fact isn't reflected well

<comment><USER3> You can set priorities with the excellent walkshed.org.

<comment><USER4> just saw this post after I posted, sound like exactly what I was suggesting, will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't work for me.. I live at a University in a building development designed for reduced car usage and I get 43. My parent's place in the worst kind of suburbia hell gets 53.</comment>


Apple to Combine iPhone, iPad, and Mac Apps by 2021, Says Bloomberg - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/20/18233001/apple-marzipan-universal-apps-iphone-ipad-mac-2021-rumor <comment><USER2> Windows 8. Now with Apple theme.</comment>


The Book of Red Gate: how gold was born from mud - <AUTHOR> http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/04/the-book-of-red-gate-how-gold-was-born-from-mud-10geeksin5weeks.html

<comment><USER2> This article is completely content-free. The book is just a company (culture|inside-joke|aren't-we-awesome) thingy. Which is nice for them.

My recommendation: your time is better spent elsewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Read the book. It's quite interesting to see how they're presenting themselves to potential employees. Maybe some ideas for any startup who is recruiting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I get that he went from skeptical to impressed with the book, but he never explained why. What's so impressive about this book? That example image did not really make any sense to me. Given that I don't really understand why the book is so great, I can't follow his premise to the conclusion. I don't doubt there's something to being a goofy genius, but I don't think this was an argument that made any sense to me. Maybe someone else can explain something I missed. :/

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a link at the end to download it.

<http://www.red-gate.com/careers/book_of_red_gate.htm>

It's quite a good bit of propaganda for potential colleagues.

<comment><USER4> I haven't read through the PDF though, however I did contact Neil to take him up on his offer of a free copy. I'm always interested to see something that clearly inspired him and the people he respects...

He wrote back promptly saying that a copy was on it's way. I'm looking forward to reading through it!</comment></comment></comment>


MS Open Technologies contributes Hyper-V provider for Vagrant - <AUTHOR> http://msopentech.com/blog/2014/02/25/vagrant-and-hyper-v-provides-managed-devops-work-environments/

<comment><AUTHOR> And the code itself can be found at: [https://github.com/MSOpenTech/vagrant/](https://github.com/MSOpenTech/vagrant/)

Have had a quick look, and hopefully will get the chance to install and use it soon. It appears they are shelling out to Powershell scripts to do the heavy lifting, which means this needs to be run on the Windows box that is the Hyper-V server (Hyper-V is included in Windows 8 desktop as well). While thats kind of expected and certainly the easiest path, it would be great if they implemented a Ruby WMI client (or Powershell remoting client?) that could interact with the Hyper-V API directly.</comment>


Los Angeles – scenes from the collapse of a city that's lost control - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-skid-row-rats-trash-20190601-story.html <comment><USER2> The natural reflex in the US is to scream "Democrat" or "Republican" as the supposed root cause of every problem.

This is just rooting for your favorite team and it doesn't illuminate what _policies_ work or don't work.

A better way would be to survey the cities of the world, measure crime and homelessness, and systematically identify the _policies_ that consistently deliver better results.

<comment><USER3> Umm.. this article is about illegal dumping. That has nothing to do with politics.

What LA needs to do is setup cameras in those areas with license plate readers. Also LA has also always had a problem with illegal dumping. Maybe offer a tip line as well with cash rewards.

<comment><USER2> _> Umm... nothing to do with politics._

Cruise through the comments on this thread to see this "natural reflex" on display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Article describes many more problems than the homeless, such as rampant illegal street dumping done by businesses and residents, unchecked rodent population and used needles littered everywhere which are definitely things a city mayor could do something about.

</comment><comment><USER5> I talk with the homeless in my neighborhood all the time. I've not met one over 30 who didn't have severe mental or physical illness. Those who call it a housing problem are confusing you. This is a public health crisis in the states where the authorities have no authority to help those who can't help themselves

<comment><USER6> There are several studies and pilot programs that show that reliable housing is a key component in recovery of homeless people with mental health issues. Conveniently, providing it also solves the homeless problem.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but the housing problem still isn't the homeless problem. Affordable housing won't prevent or cure mental illness, housing _support_ is just a requirement for recovery. They aren't directly related.

There's no way to fix housing sufficiently to make it affordable to someone dealing with mental illness and living on the street: that problem has to be addressed separately, and directly.

<comment><USER5> In San Francisco state supported affordable houses are around 500k. This is a mansion in most states. Anyone who thinks that the people on the street are helped by this program are confused

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know which city is worse, SF or LA, but at least in recent weeks/months SF OK'd construction of a new shelter along the Embarcadero despite money and outcries from nearby condo owners.

I still don't know what the solution is to address the mental health aspect of homelessness. It's disturbing seeing disheveled people scream at the top of their lungs in the middle of FiDi after work and no one batting an eye.

</comment><comment><USER9> What's with all the dumping? Is it hard to get rid of trash in LA, or have people just stopped caring?

<comment><USER3> It's not hard but can be expensive. Since illegal dumping is not being enforced, people are getting away with it to save money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a state in the US that is more diverse (geography, economy, etc)? I wonder how much that complicates things.

You can drive north for nearly 8 hours from San Diego and still be in the state. You'll go from inner city to cow pastures and onion fields and back again.

</comment><comment><USER11> "The bags, some of which were split open, contained spoiled fruit and trimmings from pineapples and mangoes. That part of town has a lot of produce wholesalers, and it's no secret that some of the illegal dumping is done by local merchants and customers."

The City of Los Angeles doesn't have a composting program?

<comment><USER12> Illegal dumping happens because enforcement is low and it's easier than the alternatives. It doesn't require alternatives not existing.

And in this case, the reason you'd illegally dump is because it's free, whereas commercial trash collection and composting services aren't (which is generally true in most cities).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://archive.is/xL5FA](http://archive.is/xL5FA)

</comment><comment><USER14> Just s/Los Angeles/San Francisco/g and it's the same story.

</comment><comment><USER15> The polticians have destroyed California. This is your case study for social programs, socialism, unlimited immigration, social justice policy and now they are testing UBI?

California should be our wake up call to change, instead, we double down on the same policies.

<comment><USER16> What does reasonable policy regarding homelessness look like? I'm not trying to be snide, I'm genuinely curious. I don't live in California btw.

<comment><USER17> Hopefully a moderator pulls (your post) out from under the parent and makes it a top-level reply to the article.

To start with, any policy affecting a population that can move and be moved has to operate at the scope that those people are allowed to move. That means the taxing and funding distribution HAS to be on a national level. It probably also means that per-recipient funding needs to be proportional to the cost of living in a given area. (which SHOULD also be calculated realistically.)

This would at least stop "poor" communities from dumping a national problem on bigger cities that try to be more kind. It would also encourage longer term solutions over broken window / temporary bandaids.

It would also need to be systemic. There are a number of failures in society contributing to the issue.

      * Single payer healthcare - everyone's covered.
      * Actual mental healthcare (not just asylums)
      * Everyone is a worthy being
      * New New Deal - A job for all, with meaning and value.
      * Identify and correct market failures.

One such market failure is 'housing', where there are jobs, where there is opportunity to build a new and better life, that's where people want to live. However rent-seeking is destroying the ability to build a life, a community, an actual home, family, or future.

<comment><USER18> So I agree in principle, but I also think our culture fails on imposing ownership of one's choices in nearly equal and opposite proportion to how much Asian countries overemphasize it.

And this came to a boiling point when a Chinese friend insisted the homeless situation was better in China. So I looked up the numbers. Adjusted for population, it isn't, and in fact it's slightly worse. That was a surprise to me. But it's less visible there because it's considered shameful.

I personally think everyone deserves a fully belly and a roof over their head. I think the rest is up to them. And I could go with medicare for all as an improvement over the current inequitable situation, but I think we could do better than that, yet I doubt we ever will. And that saddens me.

<comment><USER17> In what way do you think choices reflect on any of the points I was trying to make as changes in social support?

I can only see two that are well within the range that might be covered if all the other safety nets fixed individuals that had become injured or otherwise unable to work (this is assuming we have MUCH better tech, like Star Trek / Orville level tech, to actually repair all types of damage).

Housing: This is more a choice made by the irrational market, not so much by individual humans. Yes there is less expensive housing, but it's usually not located near jobs or has a high externality / transaction cost of somekind. Referencing the source article, Japan does have a fantastically run transit system that is also reasonably priced. That does extend the range of available locations.

Jobs themselves; do you think that job placement systems are not a better idea instead of being "hired" to "look" for a job (which should not be ANYONE's primary life skill!)? If an aptitude test shows that there is untrained area that skill could be acquired in, getting that skill might be the assigned 'job' instead. (retraining/education)

<comment><USER18> Points 3 and 4 personally. Feel free to disagree, but some of the homeless are bums IMO (note IMO). I'm willing to help them if it helps everyone else because it's cheaper than any other alternative, but I'm not going to pretend I don't know what they're up to. If I knew a way to reliably isolate the cheaters, I would. I don't, and I'd rather see everyone housed and fed than stay up at night worrying about freeloaders in this age of plenty if only we didn't consistently squander our surplus.

I don't tell people what to do with their lives and the thought of a well- intentioned bureaucracy doing so doesn't thrill me (perhaps from being placed in all the slow classes against my will as a child I am biased here). I like the free market for jobs. Empower people to make their own choices. Give them free community college even. But let them make their own minds up.

California could turn a lot of its secondary cities into job markets as well as suburbs for the major cities if they could build cost-effective mass transit. It seems incapable of getting that job done though so it seems like the only alternative is remote work, and without a cultural shift, that is piecemeal solution. Also look at what happened to SB50, shot down by effectively friendly fire from NIMBYs, not the conservatives.

[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/california- sb50...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/california-sb50-housing- zoning-wiener/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I audit my employer for invading my privacy? - <AUTHOR>

For real: here is a little story, I work for a Fortune 500 botnet, I brought my work laptop to a friends house, VPN'd in from their house and now their network is absolutely fried (strange behavior, weird connections, etc)...even after replacing the router. Additionally, I am almost certain my iPhone is bugged, and these strange little saucers appeared on my telephone poles a few months ago. I am almost certain I have been "surveiled", join the club right? But seriously, how can I go about proving they are invading my privacy? How do I expose their malware? <comment><USER2> There's a community dedicated to discussing these sorts of things:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/badBIOS/](https://www.reddit.com/r/badBIOS/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I posted a new comment about the saucers under this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >> strange little saucers appeared on my telephone poles a few months ago..

Post a picture

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://s13.postimg.org/7e04u78cn/IMG_0414.jpg](http://s13.postimg.org/7e04u78cn/IMG_0414.jpg)

<comment><USER4> If one were bugging a telephone line, I think they'd use something far less conspicuous

<comment><USER5> And the telephone line is either the bottom one or the one next up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is more than likely that you aren't being bugged. The network issue might well be just a misconfigured home router.

You have two possible choices:

\- Technological (wireshark/MITM) to look at network traffic

\- Sociological (trick your employer into admitting it)

Assuming that you aren't bothered about risking your job, then you could always do something that triggers your employer to act in a way that demonstrates that you are being monitored.

I don't have any great ideas of what you could do, but please make sure it is legal and ideally doesn't break your employment contract!

</comment><comment><USER7> My concern when I had a work issued laptop was that they would see the network traffic my wife was generating by streaming YouTube videos and playing video games and assume it was me. Fortunately, it seems that was not the case.

I am not one to turn away from a good conspiracy theory, so don't get me wrong. I just think you can see any patterns you want in the random noise of life. It is a strange set of symptoms your friend is experiencing, but why would they destroy your network, hampering you from being able to do work?

</comment><comment><USER8> Is your name John Nash?</comment>


Now Available - Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) on VMware - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-available-amazon-relational-database-service-rds-on-vmware/ <comment><AUTHOR> The requirement for 24 vCPUs, 24 GiB of memory, and 180 GB of storage for the on-premise management component seems like crazy high requirements for something like that. That is without any actual databases.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do companies expect above average talent for average salaries? - <AUTHOR> Most software companies offer "market rate" and "competitive" salaries. But all of them want exceptional candidates. It's like they're shopping for a Porsche with Hyundai money. I get the idea of dreaming big and trying to catch an offer. But this is just ridiculous.
Before you tell me to look for another company, I did. All of them know the market rate and all of them set their max salary to it. Ask more than that and the guy across the table will look at you like you're insane.
Shouldn't above average talent be paid with above average salaries? I fell like I'm taking crazy pills.
I feel more and more that contracting is the future. Software developers are becoming the new factory workers. <comment><USER2> > Before you tell me to look for another company, I did. All of them know the > market rate and all of them set their max salary to it.

Where are you looking for companies? This matters greatly as to whether or not they have the resources/inclination to actually hire above average talent. No company is going to admit that they actually want employees who are "meh" because they don't actually have much money to spend on development and that their projects are uninteresting and that they don't solve hard problems, but that is sometimes the case.

If you look at the American midwest, it's pretty much what you're describing. If you look at Silicon Valley, NYC, Chicago, Austin, Boston, etc. you'll find huge salary ranges, with compensation easily matching talent (and beyond, in some situations).

<comment><USER3> Data for context: [https://www.glassdoor.com/research/real-value-of- salaries/](https://www.glassdoor.com/research/real-value-of-salaries/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because they can. Law of offer and demand. Lot's of geeks looking to prove themselves, few jobs. I am training as an electrician. Screw tech</comment>


Show HN: Distance Calculator (weekend experiment) - <AUTHOR> http://distancecalculator.me/

<comment><USER2> Doesn't Google Maps already have this feature?

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't work. Shanghai, China -> NY, United States</comment>


Dynamic Pessimization: Shaggy Dogs and SpiderMonkey Unwinders - <AUTHOR> http://tromey.com/blog/?p=927 <comment><AUTHOR> The pioneering prototype based object oriented language Self [1] solved the problem of debugging JITted code way back in 1992 with a technique called "Dynamic Deoptimization".

[1] Self: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_\(programming_language\))

That made it possible to set source level breakpoints in optimized code and examine the stack frames that would have been generated had the code not been optimized.

It also makes it possible to handle programming changes during debugging, and change a running program and immediately observe the effects of the change.

Dynamic Deoptimization is also useful for purposes not related to debugging, like throwing away code with invalid optimistic optimizations.

Self led the way to Sun's HotSpot JIT Java compiler, which led the way to JavaScript's JIT compilers, but some of Self's original important original ideas got lost along the way, and are now being rediscovered.

My hope is that this time around they'll call it "Dynamic Pessimization".

[2] Debugging Optimized Code with Dynamic Deoptimization: [http://bibliography.selflanguage.org/dynamic- deoptimization....](http://bibliography.selflanguage.org/dynamic- deoptimization.html)

[3] PDF: [http://bibliography.selflanguage.org/_static/dynamic- deoptim...](http://bibliography.selflanguage.org/_static/dynamic- deoptimization.pdf)

By Urs Hölzle (Stanford University), Craig Chambers (University of Washington) and David Ungar (Sun Microsystems Labs).

Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN '92 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, pp. 32-43, San Francisco, June, 1992.

Published as SIGPLAN Notices 27(7), July, 1992.

Abstract: Self's debugging system provides complete source-level debugging (expected behavior) with globally optimized code. It shields the debugger from optimizations performed by the compiler by dynamically deoptimizing code on demand. Deoptimization only affects the procedure activations that are actively being debugged; all other code runs at full speed. Deoptimization requires the compiler to supply debugging information at discrete interrupt points; the compiler can still perform extensive optimizations between interrupt points without affecting debuggability. At the same time, the inability to interrupt between interrupt points is invisible to the user. Our debugging system also handles programming changes during debugging. Again, the system provides expected behavior: it is possible to change a running program and immediately observe the effects of the change. Dynamic deoptimization transforms old compiled code (which may contain inlined copies of the old version of the changed procedure) into new versions reflecting the current source-level state. To the best of our knowledge, Self is the first practical system providing full expected behavior with globally optimized code.

Conclusions: Global optimization need not impair source-level debugging. The SELF system increases programmer productivity by providing full source-level debugging of globally optimized code. To the best of our knowledge, SELF is the first system to do so; other systems either compromise on debugging functionality or severely restrict the kinds of optimizations that can be performed. In SELF, the compiler can perform optimizations such as constant folding, common subexpression elimination, dead code elimination, procedure integration, code motion, and instruction scheduling without affecting debuggability.

Two techniques make this possible: lazy deoptimization and interrupt points. The optimizations performed by the compiler are hidden from the debugger by deoptimizing code whenever necessary. Deoptimization supports singlestepping, running a method to completion, replacing an inlined method, and other operations, but only affects the procedure activations which are actively being debugged; all other code runs at full speed. Debugging information is only needed at relatively widely-spaced interrupt points, so that the compiler can perform extensive optimizations between interrupt points without affecting debuggability. Our debugging techniques is not specific to SELF and could be applied to other programming languages as well.

[5] About the dynamic de-optimization of HotSpot: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20522870/about-the- dynami...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20522870/about-the-dynamic-de- optimization-of-hotspot)

[6] HotSpot Performance Techniques:[https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/HotSpot/PerformanceTec...](https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/HotSpot/PerformanceTechniques)

Deoptimization is the process of changing an optimized stack frame to an unoptimized one. With respect to compiled methods, it is also the process of throwing away code with invalid optimistic optimizations, and replacing it by less-optimized, more robust code. A method may in principle be deoptimized dozens of times.

1\. The compiler may stub out an untaken branch and deoptimize if it is ever taken.

2\. Similarly for low-level safety checks that have historically never failed.

3\. If a call site or cast encounters an unexpected type, the compiler deoptimizes.

4\. If a class is loaded that invalidates an earlier class hierarchy analysis, any affected method activations, in any thread, are forced to a safepoint and deoptimized.

5\. Such indirect deoptimization is mediated by the dependency system. If the compiler makes an unchecked assumption, it must register a checkable dependency. (E.g., that class Foo has no subclasses, or method Foo.bar is has no overrides.)</comment>


Touché by Disney Research brings touch control to everyday things - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/05/touche-brings-touch-controls-t.html <comment><USER2> There's also more important applications for this, for example detecting common postures and grips on fallen asleep drivers or knives that know when their not being handled properly. Additionally a world of possibilities opens up for the blind and disabled if you can inform them of objects they are touching in a room. I find these applications (and surely many more I am not enumerating) much more appealing then controlling a phone, but alas, that's what sells.

Lets hope the eye-candy stuff propels the technology so that the really useful stuff can be built at a lower price.

<comment><USER3> Totally! I actually found it really surprising how boring the potential usage examples in the video were compared to what's possible with some of these ideas.

<comment><USER4> The jarring switch from "show amazing new tech with countless possibilities" to "you can train your child how to eat cereal!" made me question whether the whole video was really a clever parody.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like an important step towards the fabled "Computronium"(1) allowing our environments to compute. Heavy handed regulators should pay very close attention to the consequences of monopolies granted around these ideas. One misstep allowing the patenting of "controlling stuff with touch" instead of allowing only the much more restrictive specific methods of detecting that touch could prune an entire branch off our technological development tree for decades to come.

(1) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium>

</comment><comment><USER6> What the hell is that part about kids and breakfast?! "Could be used to monitor and train kinds to use the right implements to eat breakfast". That is just messed up.

In all seriousness this is freaking awesome tech. Will definitely be huge, unless they fuck up the licensing or patent it to death.

<comment><USER7> > What the hell is that part about kids and breakfast?! "Could be used to > monitor and train kinds to use the right implements to eat breakfast". That > is just messed up.

Messed up? You're just looking at what it's doing, not how it can be applied. The ability to monitor a child with special needs with this sort of application is pretty amazing. Suddenly, this information can be transmitted and used to assist with therapy. Knowing how often a child uses a spoon/fork rather than his hands due to real data rather than parents recalling is powerful.

It also provides powerful feedback. A system setup to remind them child if they stop using their fork/spoon by showing a picture to remind them. This is already used in training. Unfortunately, it can't be automated. Tools like this would allow for that, and the potential is staggering. We are clearly years away, but this has the great potential to really help people.

<comment><USER6> That is a really great point! I was really only appalled by the specific application of audio feedback used in the demo. And as such I blatantly discarded the whole idea of feedback systems. But when I think about it, that area is huge. I really want one of those sensor plates with an arduino interface!

<comment><USER7> > And as such I blatantly discarded the whole idea of feedback systems.

That happens far too often. You have to disconnect yourself from only looking at one element though. Generally, you have an interaction taking place in the form of Event > Action. Something occurs, and then something happens. In this case, the method of eating is the event. The sound happens to be the action. However, you can always replace the Action with anything else (you can also replace the event with anything else.

Basically, this is how you should approach demos. Not as the end, but as the possibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to see this applied to guns where you have to make a much more intentioned grip for the safety to be disabled.

a gun that senses it is being held in a weird way will not fire.

I think the first application will be on a mouse. A mouse that has multi- dimensional touch features would be great.

This will also make creating an interface to control things like the whole house very easy. Basically enabling complex control of a full building's BMS easily.

<comment><USER9> Is that a big problem? Why don't the gun owners who perceive that as a problem use the safety or buy a gun with greater trigger pressure? If they don't do those things, why would they want to pay to add this feature?

<comment><USER8> Drunks cleaning their gun, kids, poor training. All factors in fatal shootings.

I am not saying it will solve all this - but if this can be applied, it may easily reduce it.

<comment><USER10> > but if this can be applied, it may easily reduce it.

Or, it can result in more dead people.

Guns that don't go off when the trigger is pulled get people killed.

FWIW, "cleaning their gun" is usually cop for "the family doesn't need the stigma of a suicide ane needs the insurance money if any".

There's also some evidence that a lot of the "kid found a gun" are successful murders (by parents) or, at best, depraved indifference. The families that have them are usually "interesting".

<comment><USER11> Can you site some sources, please?

<comment><USER10> IIRC, the stuff about kids is in Gary Kleck's "Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America" although there was probably some stuff in Philip Cook's "Gun Control".

I stopped reading the research 10-15 years ago, long after it became clear that the research didn't have any effect on people's positions.

<comment><USER10> The other good source is "Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms" by Wright and Rossi. They were tasked by the Carter administration with gathering the available research to prove that gun control worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This needs to leap into the marketplace as soon as possible. The music player concept is brilliant, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

I wonder about the potential of a screen-less touch vocabulary, such that you could type a text message without taking the phone out of your pocket. (Siri is nice and all, but it requires the user to yield control to the Cloud and pray that it responds accurately.)

<comment><USER13> Indeed. Pair this with Google's Project Glass and you can avoid the awkward (in public) voice commands.

<comment><USER14> And then combine with a motion capture system for your hands to be able to manipulate virtual 3d objects that give haptic feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of this awesome rant on the future of interaction design where the author compares the "picture under glass" model of traditional touch interfaces with the amount of interactivity we have with a sandwich: [http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Good! Finally we'll have the technology to train children to properly eat cereal!

</comment><comment><USER17> This gonna fuel so many designers brainstorm. It seems to sit at the right level of abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER18> Mysterious how HN submissions get picked up... I submitted this yesterday via VentureBeat: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3931173>

<comment><USER19> The title makes the difference. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know how this works in detail?

Also I never understand capacative sensing. Does the human have to be grounded for it to work? Why not?

<comment><USER21> This site provides a nice, simple overview: [http://www.analog.com/library/analogDialogue/archives/40-10/...](http://www.analog.com/library/analogDialogue/archives/40-10/cap_sensors.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I suppose this puts the tech in Minority Report to shame. Now I'm thinking Google Goggles/Glasses + Touché.

</comment><comment><USER23> that's awesome. in this application it would be hard though to sense the position of these gestures i.e. where in the liquid you touched. but combined with other sensing technologie (like optical or traditional capacitive) that would be a HIT.

</comment><comment><USER24> What about the feasibility, commercially?

</comment><comment><USER25> Worst pun ever.

<comment><USER26> It irks me whenever a company takes a common word in a language and turns it into a name or a brand. It feels like the language is being pillaged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Disney just won a lot of respect by me (and probably by millions of others); the awesomeness of this is staggering.

<comment><USER28> By funding a university research department?

<comment><USER27> Yeah, and many more: <http://www.disneyresearch.com/labs/index.htm></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The Portfolio Website I Submitted with My Stanford Application - <AUTHOR> https://www.nathanhleung.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I'm a high school developer who just went through the college admissions process. Along with my Common Application, I submitted this website to Stanford to show them a little bit of what I've done with technology over my high school career. The site was built over three months last summer with Webpack and React.

It's among one of the best websites I've built to date, and even though they were unfortunately unable to offer me a place in their class of 2022, I thought you guys would be interested.

I hope you like it, and please feel free to leave any comments or questions -- I just recently added a mobile version as a result of feedback on my previous submission, and I'm always looking for ways to make it better.

Nathan

</comment><comment><USER2> Not a bad effort - a little heavy on resources, but I suppose the point is to showcase a lot of things and a bit of bling is not out of place.

I like the candour of your text, esp "dont have any customers" \- nice to see!

When linking to your other website, there is a 404 on the todo app [https://www.leungenterprises.com/work](https://www.leungenterprises.com/work)

Also, those three divs might like a gap / border between them as it currently looks a bit muddled.

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER3> Your simple website is completely broken with JS off. It requires 614KB of JS in 2 different request. Also 2 CSS files.

Also the whole thing looks like a cheap template.

It's not bad for a high schooler, but you can do better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. The JavaScript is essential because the entire site is built in React (it's pretty much an SPA), but outside of that what would you suggest I change? I haven't taken any formal design classes so pointers in that direction would be appreciated!</comment></comment>


It's time for doctors to apologise to their ME patients - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/12033810/Its-time-for-doctors-to-apologise-to-their-ME-patients.html <comment><USER2> I've suffered with ME / FM for 25 years and it's my firm opinion there are no clean hands in this debate. Doctors, frustrated by an ability to find a conventional diagnosis and thus treatment for their patients, want to try to blame it on psychology. Sufferers, afraid of losing access to medication, or simply due to their own negative opinion of psychological conditions, insist vehemently that their ills have no relation to mental health at all.

Of course, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. ME / CFS most certainly encourages depression in those who suffer from it (both physically and mentally), and depression leads to behaviour (such as spending daylight hours indoors, engaging in minimal activity, poor eating habits) that aggravate ME / CFS symptoms and lead to a downward spiral. The best treatment currently available addresses both the physical symptoms and the mental fallout, and it's my firm belief that therapy and CBT is integral to managing ME / CFS, at the very least to allow sufferers the best quality of life they can have under the circumstances.

<comment><USER3> MD here. I agree with this completely. I will also add that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is unlikely one disease although we are not smart enough yet to know to divide them more specifically.

I've "fixed" cases like this by diagnosing and treating rare rheumatological and sleep disorders. However, most patients clearly have psych or personality disorders. Is the mental illness a cause or effect?

It's my job not to give up and blow off patients. Just realize that there is a ton about medicine that is unknown still--we are scientists searching for answers too.

<comment><USER4> Sleep disorders are notorious for bringing on mental problems as well, including (but not limited to) severe depression. Meanwhile depression can cause sleep issues all by itself.

Teasing out cause and effect for patients like this must be a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm excited about lots of research that is breaking down the 'separate mind & body' delusion that seems to have gripped medicine for the last couple of hundred years. Doctors could perhaps do more to embrace the scientific method, an inability to measure something is not proof it does not exist.

There also seems to be institutional resentment of any patient that does not respond to a prescribed treatment, as if it was a personal failure to respond in the way they imagined. I have direct experience of the treatment of patients, as empressplay puts it, there are no clean hands.

One particularly shocking consultant came up with a treatment plan, when I enquired whether we would see them again to evaluate the outcome he was quite specific that it was not of interest, as the 'expert' there was nothing more to learn. I patronised the chap by outlining in a step by step manner how in my industry we integrate a program of continuous review in order to determine the effectiveness of the solutions we implement, but no, his belief was so strongly held, the actual experience of the patient was of no interest.

<comment><USER6> __Doctors could perhaps do more to embrace the scientific method, an inability to measure something is not proof it does not exist. __

This is contradictory. Perhaps you just mean doctors should be more open minded?

<comment><USER7> Not contradictory. But yes, for some definitions of the scientific method, open-mindness is a different concept that does not take part in it. I'd just like to point that those definitions do not work. Being open minded is a requirement for creating good science, as much as checking one's hypothesis with experiments.

About that "contradiction" word, do not confuse "inability to measure something" with "measuring something and detecting it's not there". Those are too completely different situations, yet many people act like they were the same.

<comment><USER8> > About that "contradiction" word, do not confuse "inability to measure > something" with "measuring something and detecting it's not there". Those > are too completely different situations, yet many people act like they were > the same.

I'm reminded of Semmelweis who figured out an empirical germ theory and beat Pasteur to it by about a decade. Thanks to doctors who "knew" better, he ended up dying in disgrace.

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

That's not to say I'm anti-doctor, anti-medicine or anything like that. But I am anti-arrogance, especially when people's lives might hang in the balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article was written by "Dr Charles Shepherd medical adviser to the ME Association" and is not entirely unbiased.

<comment><USER10> What biases would someone from the ME Association have other than wanting to be able to treat the condition?

<comment><USER11> Total and utter rejection of any possibility that some cases of ME could be helped (even a little bit) with a psychological therapy.

<comment><USER12> This mindset is unfortunate, and detrimental to patients. There have been a lot of studies on CBT/GET, and there isn't really any doubt that they are moderately effective. The only issue I have with the treatments is that the theories behind them (deconditioning and abnormal illness beliefs) don't really have any evidence. I suspect they work for other reasons. However, that shouldn't be a reason to completely reject them.

I was speaking to someone recently who recovered from CFS (after being mostly bed-bound) through CBT and lifestyle changes, and she is now completely recovered. In her case there were a lot of recent traumatic experiences which contributed to her illness, so CBT was very helpful in addressing those issues.

Some charities, such as Action 4 ME, seem a little more open-minded about CBT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Discussion of conditions with certain attributes always seems to be a can of worms. By _attributes_ I mean characteristics such as highly variable or difficult to describe symptoms, association with anxiety, depression, pain and other "subjective" states, and where the patient's state crosses over poorly defined boundaries of "mental" and "physical" domains.

As commented by tudorw, an issue is "mind-body dualism", a philosophy often associated with Descartes. Dualistic belief is not exactly delusional, but certainly it's not in accord with contemporary scientific work. The problem stems from our modern materialistic disregard for the immaterial mind vs. esteeming the tangible body. Dualism remains a principle source of stigma against acceptance of conditions involving difficulties integrating emotion, thought and action.

Adopting a scientific approach is assuredly optimum for health professionals, but given dualism is the predominant view in Western societies, the prescription to replace dualism with monism gets little uptake. The problem as it exists among physicians only mirrors the broader culture, it must change in both subsets to have any effect at all.

As I recall the myth of "objective reality" has been discussed many times on HN. "Embracing the scientific method" is more problem than solution in this context. That is, equating science with a distorted version of objectivity is a basis for the trouble dealing with FM, et. al., in the first place.

In a way, exposure to the class of illnesses like FM evokes responses somewhat like we'd expect on first hearing about quantum physics. It's confusing to people, it doesn't compute, doesn't make sense, doesn't follow the rules we are used to. Mind == body? Wait a second, you mean there literally is no _mind_? When we're ready for that, then and only then will we begin to make progress.

</comment><comment><USER14> One of the most unusual and, frankly disturbing, accounts of the onset of an illness that I have ever read is by author Laura Hillenbrand about her falling ill with CFS/ME. Alas, it is now behind a paywall at New Yorker.

A Sudden Illness - [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden- illnes...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden-illness)

</comment><comment><USER15> The comments are even more interesting than the article.

<comment><USER12> The comments are always like that for CFS articles. The only difference with this one is that there appear to be a couple of people trying to introduce some scientific sanity, whereas normally it's just the "CFS is physical, any other suggestion is heresy" crowd. Best avoided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder when software developers of the world will apologise for systematic under-evaluation of time required to finish the project, failing projects, state of end-point security, software patents.

Sincerely yours, software developer.

<comment><USER17> I've been trying, for years.

That, in my opinion, is one of the main objectives I have in using "agile development". Instead of looking over a project and providing the business with an inaccurate estimate of how long it will take, I offer the business a rough relative sizing of different features, and real-time insight into the pace at which we are progressing. Then the customer can form their own opinions on whether the next feature is "worth it" or not, and what to do if the project appears not to be meeting its objectives.

You also raised issues of end-point security: a very valid point I have no answer for. And you raise software patents, but there I think your concern is misplaced: as far as I can tell, software developers of the world have been quite vocal in explaining the harm done by software patents -- but the legal and legislative communities do not seem to be listening.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, we do what we can, as good as we can.

But I'm imagining that medical community also tries their best to a) push state of knowledge forward b) safely apply known best practices while curing patients, thus acting in patients best interest. This two goals are compatible in long term and conflict in short term: you can't really apply experimental treatments or "experimental diagnosis" to patients outside of research programs, even in case when it could potentially be in patients best interest. Do authors expect researchers to push boundaries faster or maybe they expect practitioners to apply unchecked knowledge?

Article tone and title are, in my opinion, very unreasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there a more arrogant profession (collectively) than medicine? From the article, a mere 60 years later:

       ME is not a psychological problem.

And a wish:

       Jose Montoya, professor of medicine at the
       University of Stanford, said: "I have a wish
       and a dream that medical and scientific
       societies will apologise to their ME patients."

Any bets on if and when that apology will happen? Have doctors ever even apologized for bloodletting? E.g. they killed George Washington:

       By the time the three physicians finished their
       treatments and bloodletting of the President,
       there had been a massive volume of blood loss—half
       or more of his total blood content was removed
       over the course of just a few hours.[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_washington#Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_washington#Death)

<comment><USER19> > Is there a more arrogant profession (collectively) than medicine?

Surgery?

<comment><USER20> Oh god.

I was playing hockey a few weeks back with some new guys and at the end of the games, we started shooting the shit. I asked the goalie what he did for work: "I'm a doctor". "Oh cool, my brother is a doctor as well."

"Where?"

"<some hospital>"

"Oh, I work there as well. What department?"

"<the department>"

"Oh, haha, I'm a surgeon"

I lost it laughing.

<comment><USER21> I don't get it.

<comment><USER20> There is a hierarchy among medical professionals. I just couldn't help laughing at the way this guy said "oh, haha, I'm a surgeon."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How JavaScript closures work under the hood - <AUTHOR> http://dmitryfrank.com/articles/js_closures <comment><USER3> I've noticed that a lot of people (though not the author of this article) confuse the terms "lambda expression" and "closure". Perhaps this confusion is worth taking a moment to address here.

A closure, as explained in the article, is a pair of a code pointer and an environment. It is an object "inside the machine" that exists at runtime.

A lambda expression is a syntactic entity, a piece of source code: something you can see on the screen.

A lambda expression _evaluates to_ a closure, just as an integer literal (a string of digits) evaluates to an integer, or a 'new' expression evaluates to an instance (object).

<comment><USER4> A closure is a procedure that captures its free variables where those free variables are resolved in the lexical context.

A lambda procedure is just an anonymous procedure.

A lambda is not necessary a closure and a closure is not necessary a lambda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can't talk about closures without mentioning this excellent piece [http://mrale.ph/blog/2012/09/23/grokking-v8-closures-for- fun...](http://mrale.ph/blog/2012/09/23/grokking-v8-closures-for-fun.html)

<comment><USER6> Funny how all these articles make me think that lambda/closures are a very very nice syntax to create linguistic friendly structure. Automatically embedding of lexical scope avoid unnecessary names, assignments and side effects. Similarly to this talk [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3717715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3717715) where the author demonstrates how often we write classes with a bit of state, a constructor, and a single method [1].. which is a what a function does for us.

Some programming classes takes some time to describe this habit of unnecessary wrapping[2]. From

        ```
        if bool_var then true else false
        ```

, to theses functions-written-as-classes, or even, depending on the language you use, function that wraps other functions disguised as operators

        ```
        map(function add(x, y) { return x + y }, list)
        // aka `map + list` in deeply functional languages
        ```

[1] Java had many single method interfaces that can now be replaced by lambdas

[2] see Dan Grossman proglang on Coursera (taken from his original classes at UoWashington)

<comment><USER7> There is technically a pretty significant difference between

        +
        function add(x, y) { return x + y; }

in general in strict, effectful languages. The transformation is called "eta expansion" (technically, I performed two eta expansions and an un-currying) and we really would like it to be valid—it implies conceptual freedom to introduce and eliminate abstractions, but it rarely is. The issue being that it introduces thunks where computation or effects can hide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lua uses a concept called "upvalues" to refer to variables from enclosing scopes. The main observation here seems to be that you can statically determine a unique index for all local variables in any enclosing scope. I'm not sure exactly how the details work in cases where there are sibling scopes, but anyway it seems like a useful concept and i am surprised the concept/terminology is not more common.

<comment><USER3> This technique is very old -- it goes back at least to Pascal, IIRC, and probably to Algol 60. It certainly was used in Scheme implementations in the late 1970s. I haven't heard the term "upvalue" before, though.

<comment><USER8> That's sort of my point. There seems to be some established knowledge about how you can address "upvalues" within closures but very little shared terminology or literature about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 Every implementation of a closure I've encountered creates a new Capture class which stores references/copies of all variables the closure uses. I think they do this even if the closure doesn't reference any local variables - <USER2> class-level ones. In this case, wouldn't it be better to just implement it as a local function of the parent class instead of creating a new class? Or does it not matter because the cost of calling this.foo is negligibly similar to this.parent.foo?

</comment><comment><USER9> AFAICT Closures are still much faster than Function.prototype.bind.

([http://jsperf.com/bind-vs-closure-setup/44](http://jsperf.com/bind-vs- closure-setup/44))

Could anyone who knows more about the implementation details point to an explanation of what's going on under the surface?

<comment><USER10> In case you are interested, `Function.prototype.bind` in V8 is implemented here:

[https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/9fddd83cf9adf505bce2e237...](https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/9fddd83cf9adf505bce2e2373881df0c4d41b261/deps/v8/src/v8natives.js#L1763)

[https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/9fddd83cf9adf505bce2e237...](https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/9fddd83cf9adf505bce2e2373881df0c4d41b261/deps/v8/src/v8natives.js#L1659)

<comment><USER9> That's vert interesting. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Designing interview questions - <AUTHOR> I find designing good in person interview challenges non-trivial. It is hard to know, until it is too late if your question is appropriate. Many challenges have I come up with have clever solutions, that bias my expectations.<p>What process do you go through to develop appropriate challenges for interviews? (I'm especially interested with in person challenges) <comment><USER2> You don't. You ask your candidates about what they have done in the past and let them talk. You don't want puzzle solvers, you want people who can do concrete, useful things. If you want to check if the candidate knows about a particular area, you just ask him/her about it and then dig a little deeper. Of course you must know the area yourself, otherwise the judgement won't work appropriately.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you find that you are able to get sufficient information when limiting your material to the candidate's domain?

<comment><USER2> Why do you think you can't ask candidate about what _you_ need in this interview mode? Sure you can. Just don't expect he (let's stick with this pronoun) will know very much -- it's not his domain, he didn't work with that.

What you get out of hearing the candidate talk about his past project(s) is the knowledge how he approached problems and if he actually completed anything worthwhile, even if it was internals refactoring and there was no thing visible outside.</comment></comment></comment>