IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn't - <AUTHOR> https://casey.github.io/iota/ <comment><USER2> While it's probably not the main problem with IOTA I must say that the ternary logic is probably the most amusing and baffling thing about it. This kind of hubris is something I would expect from a very junior developer without much real world experience who already thinks he's got everything figured out.

How can one rationalize starting a super ambitious cryptocurrency project and _on top of that_ decide to reimplement their own crypto using ternary logic for some vague theoretical benefits that would only pay out if IOTA ever becomes mainstream enough (and the benefits large enough) for people to create not only dedicated chips for it but _entire industrial processes_ to make ternary logic silicon.

It's also completely misunderstanding the current state of IoT, chips capable of doing high grade (binary) cryptography in a reasonable amount of time nowadays are worth next to nothing and their consumption is almost negligible. It's not premature optimization, it's too-little-too-late optimization.

Doing that as a fun week end project to learn about ternary? Sure. As the foundation of your multi billion dollar cryptocurrency set to revolutionize IoT? Come on.

<comment><USER3> This is even more amusing when coupled with the thoughts of IOTA followers: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/73w6i7/why_ternary_ar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/73w6i7/why_ternary_arithmetic_in_iota_by_using_a_ternary/)

The two most voted comments are as follows:

>It's a little overwhelming seeing IOTA do all of these things so far beyond other crypto projects. Blockchain tech is already bleeding edge but then add in ternary, quantum resistance, DAG, infinite scaling, free transactions, and AI resistance... It can be a lot to soak in for the average blockchain investor. But that just means time is even more on IOTA's side as it slowly proves itself :). This coin is going to turn the crypto space upside down.

>IOTA is thinking ahead into the future but people seem to think their decision to go Ternary is "stupid" not realizing they are just that far ahead in their vision.

<comment><USER4> In other words, people are trying to pump up the price of IOTA.

<comment><USER5> Less cynically, the reason we have to warn people about crackpots is that it's human nature to believe them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This quote applies especially to IOTA:

"Cryptocurrencies are nothing except the marketing power of inventors, financiers and others who love the idea of buying a black box (which is obviously empty) for the price of a Kia and dreaming that it will turn into a Mercedes. There have been times recently when this dream has materialized within hours. This is not just a bubble. It is not just a fraud. It is perhaps the outer limit, the ultimate expression, of the ability of humans to seize upon ether and hope to ride it to the stars." \- Paul Singer, Elliott Management

IOTA's tech is shitty but they've convinced enough people that it's worth something that it's now worth something. Maybe that's all a crypto needs? I was honestly expecting all of this to crash and burn back in December- but it hasn't yet. Maybe these cryptocoins really are the future.

<comment><USER7> Those Singer quotes almost killed me: "limitless ignorance of swaths of the human race". He's absolutely correct, but, deep down, secretly a little upset he did not purchase Ripple at 2 cents

<comment><USER8> There is perhaps a bit more to cryptocurrencies that Singer gives them credit for. I've recently been reading some of the original stuff from Szabo / Satoshi eg [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit- gold.html](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html) and [https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf) that partly explain why they have worked and not collapsed 9 years later. A lot of it is much clearer than the hype which has followed.

<comment><USER7> There are several thousand of those articles with the same points scrambled, filled with millions of comments with the same points scrambled.

It's bait for people to jump in a pool with sharks. People like Singer and Buffett are driving by in a boat and looking in with binoculars. Hopefully enough people do not jump in that there ends up being a tidal wave.

<comment><USER9> Szabo is not another cryptocurrency talking head. He proposed smart contracts a decade before they became a reality.

<comment><USER10> Who hasn't proposed smart contracts decades ago? We used to talk about formalizing the legal system so it could be processed by computer while sitting around the undergrad common room. You can't read, e.g. Asimov, without being exposed to such ideas. Not to mention the numerous times such an idea came up on usenet, slashdot, or here whenever some corrupt human-in-authority abused some legal system. Every one of those discussions, however, ended with the lightbulb that, unless you have AI that can comprehend _intent_ , it is as impossible to write a smart contract as it is to write code without bugs. And if you have an AI, then laws written in English are all you need anyway. Coming up with the idea of smart contracts isn't a sign of unrecognized genius, but believing it to be a valid solution is a definite disqualification.

<comment><USER9> I'd love to see some formalised non sci-fi works on smart contracts that existed before the mid 90's if you can point me in the direction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the biggest issue here is that even though this post is well researched, most people don't care, because they haven't invested in IOTA (or any other cryptocurrency for that matter) with the intention of using the features.

The large majority is in it for the trading. Unless there are huge issues such as the network crashing, they don't care. It's just a line chart on an exchange to them. That's also why there are no repercussions for people never delivering on ICO promises.

It kinda scares me.

<comment><USER12>
      Whether or not IOTA's ledger is "tamper-proof," the entire
      IOTA network went down in November, and was completely
      inoperable for about three days. That this has never
      happened in Bitcoin or Ethereum suggests the extent to
      which the IOTA network relies on the "coordinator"—a
      single point of failure—and is not truly decentralized.

The network did crash when IOTA pulled its centeral authoritative 'coordinator' server offline causing all other nodes and clients to go offline.

This was during a patch from an exploit discovered by MIT researchers. IOTA later denied the flaw existed, even though they took the network offline to patch it.

[https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/iota- response/](https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/iota-response/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this the same coin that has both incredibly rude developers and one that claims to have invented time travel?

<comment><USER14> Wow, really? Do you happen to have any sources? I'd be curious to see. Thanks!

<comment><USER13> Yeah it was on his domain at [http://come-from-beyond.com](http://come-from- beyond.com), unfortunately since last month he's not renewed it and wayback just loads a blank page.

Shame, I'm going to see if it's available anywhere as it was a riot. Technology NASA is making him keep secret until this countdown he had going.

<comment><USER15> There are some snapshots on archive.is. One is of the about page and another is of a blog post.

1\. [http://archive.is/GebOA](http://archive.is/GebOA)

2\. [http://archive.is/KoPRm](http://archive.is/KoPRm)

<comment><USER16> That's surely some attempt at humour, I mean, noone can be _this_ insane right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here we go again. Iota has never been one of the coins to answer any concerns without either saying "this is planned for the future" or creating sock puppets to try and drown the thread in low quality comments.

<comment><USER10> Ok, so it'll be huge, like Mongo then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is also a somewhat amusing IOTA write up on shitcoin.com "IOTA: Cannot be used for IoT. Loss of funds may occur." [https://shitcoin.com/iota-cannot- be-used-for-iot-loss-of-fun...](https://shitcoin.com/iota-cannot-be-used-for- iot-loss-of-funds-may-occur-e45b1ed9dd6b)

<comment><USER18> The writer of the article essentially admitted it was bullshit and wrote it just to manipulate the market: [https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965910847645212672](https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965910847645212672)

<comment><USER19> Where is the part where he admitted it was bullshit?

<comment><USER8> Indeed "Our short of #IOTA on @bitfinex has closed at a profit of over 30%. Who said writing doesn't pay?" could open him to criminal prosecution if it was bullshit. It's legal to short something and make legitimate criticisms but spreading lies to drop the price is not.

<comment><USER20> Article probably didn't have a dent on price; the whole market dropped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The main thing here is that IOTA is not a _decentralized_ cryptocurrency.

Given that there are centralized cryptocurrencies in circulation, it makes more sense to compare IOTA to something like Ripple or Stellar than to compare it to Bitcoin. In that light, most of the other objections go away -- censorship resistance is not an advertised feature; double-spends are only detectable when the coordinator milestone; fungibility is only effective after a milestone, etc.

The "post-quantum" cryptography is interesting to me personally not because of the quantum aspect, but because the tractability of discrete-log based cryptography is up in the air, and a vulnerability found in a year, or ten years, could have profound impact reaching back into the past. Hash-based one- time signature schemes seem to be a much more robust approach that will not fall to the discovery of better algorithms (even non-quantum) for approaching the discrete log problem.

The notion of using a DAG is also very interesting, and one of the nice things about IOTA is that it does not try to be anything other than a currency. Alternatives such as Byteball are, in my opinion, overreaching by attempting to be some sort of global computer that has the net effect of making clients much more complex and thus vulnerable to strange forking effects if client implementations diverge too much.

<comment><USER22> [https://iota.org/](https://iota.org/)

> Scalable, Decentralized, Modular, No Fees

<comment><USER21> Hmm... I did not mean for my reply to be an apology for IOTA, though reading it now I can easily see how it looks like it.

I'm not trying to rewrite history and say that "IOTA was never intended to be decentralized". I'm saying, as the article points out, that IOTA is effectively centralized, and the plan for moving to being decentralized is fatally and irretrievably flawed.

I also think the rhetoric about being a currency for the "Internet of Things" is a nonsensical claim at best. The fact that the coins does not deliver on anything it promises does not mean that it is worthless, because it still delivers on other things that people find useful.

I'm not sold on IOTA (I have no holdings myself) just as I am not sold on the other big centralized competitors (Ripple or Stellar), but I don't think it's significantly worse than either of those in terms of what it delivers.

<comment><USER23> IOTA is centralized

IOTA is more decentralized than any blockchain crypto that relies on 5 pools of miners, all largely based overseas. Furthermore, coordinator isn't a central server all transactions pass through, contrary to popular misconception. It is just normal actor who adds transactions to the tangle, which other nodes can use as milestones, if they wish. It's a shepherd, you could say, which the herd can follow so they don't go astray (following some malicious nodes or whatnot). The Monte Carlo Random Walk algorithm is what will create consensus in the herd when there is no shepherd any more. It will be comparable to every sheep calling out while also following the sound of the call of the rest of the herd. That way they can all tangle up together.

Referencing the coordinator is also optional.

Also, if you research and understand how IOTA intends to work without the coordinator, it's easier to accept it for now as training wheels. I suggest reading pg 15 and on of the white paper analyzing in great depth how the network will defend different attack scenarios without a coordinator. For the past several months, IOTA foundation has been using St Petersburg college's super computer to stress test IOTA and learn when they can turn the coordinator off. There will likely be a blog about the results soon.

This is another great read covering double spends on IOTA without a coordinator: www.tangleblog.com/2017/07/10/is-double-spending-possible-with- iota/

This too: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7eix4a/any_iota_guru_t...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7eix4a/any_iota_guru_that_can_explain_what_this_guy_is/dq5ijrm)

Also this correspondence with Vitalik and Come_from_Beyond [https://twitter.com/DavidSonstebo/status/932510087301779456](https://twitter.com/DavidSonstebo/status/932510087301779456)

At the end of the day, outstanding claims require outstanding evidence and folks approaching IOTA with a "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude is completely understandable. It's all about your risk tolerance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not to mention that the central consensus mechanism is completely broken.

You cannot have a trustless consensus without a mining incentive:

Quoted from my post linked below:

o) Network hashrate is the overall power of the network - in bitcoin, this is the computing power needed to generate a block.

o) Bitcoin employs a mining reward which creates a competition between miners to produce a block and claim their reward for doing so. Slower miners lose out to faster miners, but they still participate in the competition to produce a block because they stand a chance of winning occasionally.

o) This mining subsidy provides a positive incentive to miners to play by the rules, and encourages them not try to double spending, because they might as well claim the mining reward instead of trying to double spend which is often much more difficult than producing a single block.

o) The mining subsidy also encourages all miners to participate in the mining process, which gives an overall metric for total network hashing power, which you can then use to give an estimate of when it is safe to accept a transaction of a given size, as confirmed, because (on average), the block reward is equal to the electricity cost of mining that block. That means that when your transaction has been buried under enough blocks that the mining subsidy equals the transactions size, it is more or less safe to accept that transaction as confirmed.

Now, imagine the situation with no mining reward.

o) Instead of participating in a competition to win the block reward, miners have no positive incentive to participate anymore. They now are left with the negative incentive to try and double spend.

o) Since these miners are not contributing their hashing power to the network anymore, the overall hashrate of the network in unmeasurable, since these miners are quite likely to leave their ASICs in sleep mode until they want to double spend

o) With the network hash rate unmeasurable, there is no way to put an estimate on when it is safe to accept a transaction as confirmed.

When there is no way to estimate when it is safe to accept a transaction as confirmed, that currency is now useless because any transaction can potentially be reversed.

This is why both byteball and iota use trusted third parties to secure the network, but at that point, you might as well be using VISA.

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1799665.msg20108439#...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1799665.msg20108439#msg20108439)

<comment><USER25> > You cannot have a trustless consensus without a mining incentive

This is not true, Proof-of-stake creates a suitable incentive to verify transactions and maintain the network. It's a legitimate alternative to proof- of-work.

<comment><USER21> I have yet to see a convincing argument that proof-of-stake can be made trustless. The only designs that I've seen that seem realistic rely on some notion of checkpointing to prevent large scale chain rewrites.

While it may be possible to make that checkpointing distributed, the only way that I'm aware of is to use proof of work. The easier path is to just checkpoint in the client, so that the trust comes from the github repository that pushes the client, or gets trusted updates from some trusted authority.

That's not to say that trustless consensus is necessary for a currency. I used to be a very strong believer that that was a necessary component, but I've begun to question that belief. The notion of censorship-resistance is an important part of why I liked Bitcoin in the first place, but may turn out not to be sufficiently valuable to people to impact coins that don't have that property.

<comment><USER8> "Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol" ?

([https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13134363](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13134363)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/52qfwl/provably_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/52qfwl/provably_secure_proof_of_stake_algorithm/))

<comment><USER24> It requires a majority of trustworthy nodes to be online - it cannot deal with a force majeure, such as a massive power cut.

<comment><USER26> What can though? If a large fraction of Bitcoin miners went down you'd need less hash rate to double spend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a lot of letters in that article. Here is a lot less:

It is a scam

<comment><USER27> damn so did Bosch get scammed too? [http://www.businessinsider.com/robert- bosch-bets-on-iota-201...](http://www.businessinsider.com/robert-bosch-bets- on-iota-2017-12)

<comment><USER28> Bosch just wants to have press releases that contain the word "blockchain". It doesn't make the technology any less broken.

<comment><USER27> as far as I know Bosch is a private company. A lot less for them to gain from PRs with 'blockchain' in them.

From the AMA Bosch did[1] it certainly seems like its more than just a blockchain PR and that they are actually putting resources towards this, but its hard to tell from the outside

[1][https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7sxgx0/bosch_ama_janu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7sxgx0/bosch_ama_january_25th/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What do smart people think about NANO (Formerly Raiblocks)? It also uses a DAG scheme and has fast transactions with no fees, and it's already decentralized.

<comment><USER30> Important to note is that Nano isn't really a DAG, but rather a block lattice - essentially every account has it's own chain of transactions that are verified by nodes. Additionally, each transaction is actually two, a 'send' and a 'receive', each mentioning the other address, amount, and preceding block to prevent double sends/receives. The only problem in this article shared with Nano is the ability to spam the network, but there is a small PoW associated with each transaction to slow this down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I want to critique one particular point made in this article, becuase it's incorrect:

 _> IOTA uses cryptography that cannot be broken by quantum computers. The use of such cryptography, specifically Winternitz signatures, leaves IOTA users vulnerable to loss of funds if they ever reuse an address. This attack that has already been seen in practice, with one user reportedly losing $30,000 USD worth of IOTA.

As quantum computers large enough to threaten existing cryptosystems do not exist and may not exist for many decades, this use of post quantum cryptography comes with no tangible benefit._

"No tangible benefit" is a gross overstatement and simplification. I wholeheartedly agree that 1) novel cryptography should not be adopted before it has been well-studied, and 2) threat models for motivating novel cryptography should be rational and pass a cost-benefit analysis. However, if and when quantum computers can practically break classical cryptosystems, they will be able to do against everything cryptography is used to secure today, not just going forwards. This is a stonger argument for encryption and confidentiality, but it nevertheless also applies to signatures and authentication. As a tangential point: while they aren't perfect (in terms of efficiency), Winternitz signatures are very well studied. Given what's available, it's not a bad choice.

I think a lot of IOTA's specification is pretty suspect, especially since it does utilize novel cryptography without an apparent track record or notable expertise among its team. But I also absolutely believe new cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects should be preparing for quantum computation now, if it's possible. More pertinently, I don't agree with the way this point was presented, because it can be interpreted as the claim that post-quantum cryptography is a useful heuristic in determining if a project has "issues". In reality all cryptography should be suspect, and the use of post-quantum cryptography should not be dismissed immediately as a waste. With IOTA in particular, I'm weakly on the side that they shouldn't have bothered with Winternitz signatures. But in general, I'm happy to see any project at least giving it serious consideration.

<comment><USER2> Don't you think IOTA is trying to do too much at the same time? Maybe I'm underestimating the risk but it seems like practical quantum computer attacks are still a few decades away, maybe it would make more sense to focus on getting the rest of IOTA to work and plan to switch to different cryptographic algorithms later once things have settled a bit.

If I get this right IOTA is trying to:

* Move away from PoW

* Have a cryptocurrency that scales well to a very high transaction frequency

* Implement quantum-resistant cryptography

* Use ternary logic to theoretically minimize power consumption

That's a lot for a single project I think.

<comment><USER31> Right, so there's the problem. I consider post-quantum cryotography to be more important than everything else on that list aside from transaction frequency. It should be, at the least, a serious consideration for any new cryptocurrency, even if they don't ultimately move forward with it after a cost-benefit analysis.

The threat model is more nuanced than "decades away." The attacks may be decades away, but their targets will not necessarily be. Assets and communications secured today will be fully seizable and transparent in the future, you just don't know exactly when. In other words, old ciphertexts have to be disposed of or re-encrypted, and addresses need to upgrade to pq-secure signature schemes.

This all takes for granted the idea that quantum computers will ever feasibly break classical cryptosystems (I'm weakly pessimistic it will happen in the next 100 years). But if you do accept that premise, you either implement post- quantum cryptography now if you can afford it, or you implement it on top of legacy software in the indeterminate future. The latter option is a legitimate decision, to be clear. But I can also virtually guarantee that some cryptocurrencies will footgun themselves in the process of upgrading when they're more established.

I agree with you that IOTA is taking on a lot, but I really don't think Winternitz signatures are exactly the deciding factor in that, based on how packed that list is already :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nice writeup. Though you might want to proof read it a few (more) times.

"since The Coordinator is the current the arbiter of truth in the IOTA system"

"Similarly, transaction outputs that appear in a snapshot [6] are more valuable than those that have."

And a couple more like these.

</comment><comment><USER33> When we post things like this, can we at least put a summary of what this thing is about? For those not already familiar with IOTA, there is nothing in the first paragraphs of the article that actually explains what it is and why I should care.

</comment><comment><USER34> What about NANO then if they share the same kind of tech as IOTA? Any thoughts on that?

<comment><USER35> Completely different project. Nano seems closer.

Despite the negativity here I think iota will likely become production ready too, but the timeline will be longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> 1.1 is a weird way of presenting that issue. Its discussed in length with explanations of why it exists now, and how they plan to remove it. It's not something required for the technology, just in its infancy.

<comment><USER37> Sorry, but that sounds like bullshit from the IOTA team to me. "We're totally gonna be decentralized in the future, honest!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Time for some FUD Copy Pastas: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7j81tq/fud_copy_pasta...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7j81tq/fud_copy_pastas/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Isnt it correct that IOTA is not meant to be tradet by humans?

<comment><USER39> The vast majority of entities currently trading IOTA are humans. The designers have claimed that it is somehow designed for IoT devices, but no such application currently exists, and it is unclear how their design is supposed to enable such a usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> as interesting iota is so they claim, my bet is on lightning network for high scalability transaction and machine to machine payment

<comment><USER41> A mesh network that requires YOU to be online to receive funds. Also you must have funds to open a channel. So in order to receive funds you must have funds already.

It seems like a really big step backwards in big big scheme of things bitcoin. All of the above problems can be solved by increasing the block size. I'm not saying it's the definitive solution... but right now it is a better solution.

A good talk about really big blocks on bitcoin and what the ramifications are; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJm2ep3X_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJm2ep3X_M)

<comment><USER42> No, you dont need funds to receive them. An unfunded node can receive and transact over a peer funded channel.

There are services like strike that offer custodial lightning channels, and will aggregate and send onchain tx's: [https://medium.com/@ACINQ/introducing- strike-a-stripe-like-a...](https://medium.com/@ACINQ/introducing-strike-a- stripe-like-api-for-lightning-c84762f4f634)

While the network has such low fees as today, there is no need to increase the blocksize. Increasing the blocksize (or time) effects scalability in epic ways -- ie: Ethereum requires at least 500GB SSD to run -- so the minimum cost of entry is at least $300. Meanwhile 10m/1MB blocks still runs on $20 RPis.

I am not against mods to consensus to increase the block size, but there are more critical problems like solving tx malleability and new tx format (segwit) that provide more value today.

Dont be an ignorant big blocker. Look at the smartest people in this space. The real technical folk. What are they saying?

<comment><USER43> > Dont be an ignorant big blocker. Look at the smartest people in this space. > The real technical folk. What are they saying?

I'm seeing them zoom in on the key technical problem: at no point has LN fixed the key technical issue, how to route.

 _Every transaction invalidates the routing path, because it changes the amount of liquidity available in the channels._

Rick Falkvinge nails this point. Key bit from 10:00 on, though the rest is well worth your time (and I say that as someone who hates watching videos on YouTube):

[https://youtu.be/Ug8NH67_EfE?t=600](https://youtu.be/Ug8NH67_EfE?t=600)

LN proponents explicitly compare it to BGP - but BGP is a completely _trust- based_ protocol, where a lot of telecoms engineers have an agreement that they'll keep the network going no matter what, and bad actors are dealt with by hand.

Trust-based and fixing problems by hand is the diametric opposite of the cryptocurrency model.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rust as a Language for High Performance GC Implementation [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~steveb/downloads/pdf/rust-ismm-2016.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> The paper describes the design and implementation of a Garbage Collector in Rust:

 _" We show that our Immix implementation has almost identical performance on micro benchmarks, compared to its implementation in C, and outperforms the popular BDW collector on the gcbench micro benchmark. We find that Rust's safety features do not create significant barriers to implementing a high performance collector._

 _Though memory managers are usually considered low-level, our high performance implementation relies on very little unsafe code, with the vast majority of the implementation benefiting from Rust's safety. "_

Partial source for the authors' implementation is contained in the paper's appendices rather than in a repository, other implementations mentioned in the paper:

A reference counted type with cycle collection for Rust: [https://github.com/fitzgen/bacon-rajan-cc](https://github.com/fitzgen/bacon- rajan-cc)

A simple tracing (mark and sweep) garbage collector for Rust: [https://github.com/Manishearth/rust-gc](https://github.com/Manishearth/rust- gc)</comment>


Ask HN: I'm Malaysian, I want to be a Hollywood actor. Options? - <AUTHOR>

Not sure if HN is the right place to ask this, but, because of the high quality of responses in HN, I really don't want to risk overlooking this place for feedback.
I'm 25 years old this year. I did 3 years of college -- actually, undergraduate law school in the National University of Singapore, itself a top-10 law school in the world. I didn't graduate, left school, and ran a small software business for 2 years (up until now). I have sizeable savings to self-fund my education.
I graduated from Raffles Institution, possibly the best high school in the whole of Asia (source: WSJ). My SAT I/II scores are 2,310/2,400 and 2,400/2,400 respectively. They were taken in 2007, however. My high school grades were superb, too -- I graduated top 5% of my class. I maintained a full scholarship throughout college till right before I left.
I want to go to Los Angeles, California, by hook or by crook on a student's visa. I don't care if it's a community college, 2-year college, apprentice school, drama school, anything -- I just want to be in Los Angeles legally as a student. And then go for casting auditions whenever I have the time while I pursue my education on the side.
I'm self-funding, so cost is a major issue; unless there is some financial aid scheme I might qualify for, I'm looking for a cheap school. Prestige is almost immaterial. Bottom line: I'm looking for a cheap and easy-to-get-into school to study acting in Los Angeles, California.
What options do I have? Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Forget about moving to Los Angeles. The culture shock of simply changing countries will take more than a year to get used to, and during that period you'll be uncertain about your decision, uncertain about your sustainability in expensive LA, not knowing the city there is a strong likelihood you'll move into an unsafe area, and you'll get crazy lonely in this large place.

Exactly when you need the most confidence, you won't have any.

Plus, let's say you do move, and you get extra parts and take some acting lessons... "acting" is performing someone else's script, ideas and emotions. If you really want to be a successful Hollywood actor, you don't begin in Hollywood. You begin right where you come from, and you start making your own stories.

You have a unique life story, with hopes and dreams and trials and crisis. Being a successful Hollywood actor is "nothing more" than being able to communicate the life experience though your filmed actions. However, that is extremely hard. And "Hollywood" is not very consistent at communicating the life experience well. That's the whole point behind the award shows: so much disposable media is created, when the few that actually convey our trials in life are released we celebrate because that successful communication is so rare.

I recommend you start creating your own short films. You can shoot on a mobile phone - TV shows and at least one feature has been shot on a mobile phone (www.olivethemovie.com).

Now here's the difficult bit: you do this, regardless of feeling embarrassed by your family, friends and environment; regardless of not having the money or the skills to create your own shorts. You do this because you have to or you will die inside. Seek out people in the Malaysian media industries, see how productions are created by being a non-actor gofer, and learn how to create productions yourself. And start creating them, even before you know how. Just do it. Iterate again and again. Develop your writing, production creation, and acting all at once, and do it locally where you are today.

If and when you develop your skill as a story teller and actor, and you are honest in your stories about the human condition... Hollywood will come to your door and ask for you by name. Honesty and the ability to communicate that is what causes Hollywood to take notice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks a lot for your feedback. I really appreciate it.

I do have specific reasons of wanting to move to the US; the creative space in my country is simply too restrictive to do what I want. I'm also publicly known in my country (long story -- hence this throwaway). There's also a reason why we don't have a successful film industry; the government intervenes way too much, and any talent worth her salt would go overseas anyway.

I once produced and released, well, questionable creative content (porn) in my country. I got slapped with criminal charges for that. Hence the need to move out ASAP.

I have started making videos, not exactly short films, but I have a YouTube channel with 12,000 subscribers. My first video was posted in January this year. I have been learning as much as I can about filmmaking: equipment, techniques, angles, lighting, sound, editing, production, etc. I own 2 DSLRs, with which I've been experimenting.

I'm also halfway through my first feature screenplay; doing 3-4 pages consistently every day. In many ways, this screenplay indeed is my "unique life story, with hopes and dreams and trials and crisis", which I hope to put into production, locally from where I am first.

Embarrassment is not an issue to me. I've developed a thick skin over the years.

With this new information, would you still recommend me to move to the US?

<comment><USER3> The US won't allow you to enter if there are pending criminal charges against you in your own country. You could lie on the paperwork and hope they don't check, but if they find out, you could be deported.

<comment><AUTHOR> I also have charges against me on the grounds of free speech. Would that qualify me for asylum?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have no experience with Hollywood but heres some general advise on switching industries:

1) Build a portfolio before you look for a job (film shorts starring you with your friends before moving).

2) Engage with the industry as much as possible before moving, read blogs, follow industry folks on twitter, etc.

3) Plan excessively. Pick a few areas you could feasibly live in in LA. Try to line up roommates. Start tracking interviews you would go to now so you know how to find them. Maybe check into who they end up casting so you can get a better sense of what the ads are looking for.

Benefits of this approach include: having provable experience, familiarizing yourself with the industry, possibly having a network to tap, at least knowing some people in town.

Enjoy LA.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not an actor, but if you watch The Kevin Pollak Chat Show it might give you lots of info. They talk about the highs and lows of the LA and NY acting scene.

Here's one: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Qj_...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Qj_ua3xjBiI#t=1093)

And this one: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UU1Jnt2IJ5HWjaYz- EPzglbg&f...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UU1Jnt2IJ5HWjaYz- EPzglbg&feature=player_detailpage&v=t3-6Btd609w#t=246)</comment>


Show HN: Read ArXiv Papers on Semantic Scholar as Responsive HTML Documents - <AUTHOR> https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Self-Paced-Deep-Learning-for-Weakly-Supervised-Obj-Sangineto-Nabi/1a5151b4205ab27b1c76f98964debbfc11b124d5/read <comment><USER2> Hi HN,

I'm an engineer on the Semantic Scholar team that worked on integrating this feature into the site.

Here's a blog post that talks a bit more about what we're doing: [https://blog.semanticscholar.org/announcing-a-new-way-to- rea...](https://blog.semanticscholar.org/announcing-a-new-way-to-read-papers- df0dec59d53b)

I'm around to answer questions / discuss the approach. We're super excited and would love to hear your feedback!

<comment><USER3> Feature idea 1: perhaps you could make references section in the bottom render links, at least for references that provide and arXiv identifier.

Feature idea 2: better/shorter URL structure, the current URL [https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/{title}-{authors}/{uui...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/{title}-{authors}/{uuid}/read) ends up quite long and unreadable (may be good for SEO though). If you're rendering mostly arXiv papers you could setup a short URL scheme that mirrors the arXiv url paths: e.g if original URL is [https://arxiv.org/abs/XXXX.YYYY](https://arxiv.org/abs/XXXX.YYYY) your URL could be [https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/arxiv/XXXX.YYYY](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/arxiv/XXXX.YYYY)

Good stuff!

<comment><AUTHOR> (I also work on the Semantic Scholar team)

1\. Totally agree. We know how we can / will do this and plan to do so given enough interest in the MVP reading experience.

2\. The url structure is indeed for SEO purposes. (We get a large majority of users discovering our paper pages through organic search)

<comment><USER4> The proposed shorter format could maybe be a redirect then? Quickly being able to turn one link into the other would be quite useful.

<comment><USER2> Definitely, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very nice! I like how the HTML rendering is responsive and allows you to read on narrow screens.

MathJax seems to handle most things, but not 100%: [https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Quantum-Broadcast- Chan...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Quantum-Broadcast-Channels- Yard-Hayden/8be3e848c2b69982150a3220674801e43c943ea0/read)

What are you using for parsing the LaTeX --> (HTML+MathJax) conversion?

<comment><USER5> The main workhorse is [https://dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML/](https://dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML/) as you can find once you reach [https://github.com/arxiv- vanity/engrafo](https://github.com/arxiv-vanity/engrafo).

LaTeXML converts tex to XML by running latex ("only latex can parse latex") and working on the DVI output.

But nevertheless this is a hard job so I will loook into the engrafo code soon because I want to apply this to a book we have written.

<comment><USER2> Yup, @kpsns nailed it. LaTeXML does the heavy lifting in converting TeX to XML. From there some post processing does the job of converting it to a nice responsive template (that's done by Engrafo / the ArXiv Vanity team).

We love OSS at AI2, and are looking to collaborate with the Engrafo / ArXiv Vanity team as we expand the functionality.

<comment><USER5> So I digged into the code (engrafo repository) and was quite surprised that -- contrary to the suggestive title -- the method inherits all the problems LaTeXML already has. This is the fact that (for instance compared to the TeXLive distribution), tons of widespread sty files miss a LaTeXML integration and thus the conversion fails for a wide range of papers. Converting a TeX document to XML with LaTeXML really requires a lot of debugging and ideally starting from a plain LaTeX paper/book and compiling with pdflatex and latexml at the same time, making sure nothing breaks.

<comment><USER2> Yea, it's tough work. We're hoping to invest more in the conversion library (and support the Engrafo's team to do so).

It's going to take a lot of time and elbow grease to get it to where it needs to be!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In what ways is this different from arxiv-vanity? (Just append "-vanity" to "arxiv" in any arxiv link to get a rich html version)

<comment><USER2> It's not that different, at the moment. The only real difference is that we're pre-computing the HTML so it's faster (ArXiv Vanity runs at request time).

We've talked a lot with the ArXiv Vanity team. If all goes well and our users love the feature, we have an opportunity to support (and contribute to) to their efforts at improving Engrafo and LaTeXML and maintain the front-end facing portion of the system. That way they don't have to worry about hosting / providing a functioning front-end, which we're happy to foot the bill for (and maintain)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would recommend that rather than copying "arXiv-Vanity", your team should focus on improving and contributing to "Engrafo" since there are many errors in the HTML conversion. And, leave everything at "arXiv-Vanity" since there is no point of having 2 different places doing the same exact thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> We plan to do both. We want to give back to Engrafo where it makes sense, but we also have a unique opportunity given our other semantic features along with the paper metadata from our corpus to build upon this experience. This release is an MVP reading experience, but in the future we plan to add a number of things like: user highlighting, direct linking to authors and citations, and collaborative commenting.

<comment><USER2> +1 to what @undefined said.

If all goes well, we hope to act as a front-facing host for the Engrafo engine. That'll enable the ArXiv Vanity team to focus their efforts on improving the conversion process (which is what they'd like to focus on) while we can handle the logistics of serving this up to users (as quickly as possible).

I'm really excited about the opportunity to collaborate and support the ArXiv Vanity / Engrafo team!</comment></comment></comment>


Chris Dixon on Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.posterous.com/amazon

<comment><USER2> "Everything Else" also includes their cloud infrastructure which may be the product line with the most room for _profit_ growth.</comment>


Ask YC: What precautions/steps does a site take before getting TechCrunched? - <AUTHOR>

Upgrading servers/memory? Just being on standby and monitoring usage? I've heard so much about the so-called TC effect, just wondering how to mitigate risks. Purely hypothetical of course ;-) <comment><USER2> Search google for techcrunch effect, and google blogs. It turns out it actually isn't that much of an effect for most startups. So I wouldn't worry about it unless you really can't handle any kind of spike.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't worry about it. There really isn't a TC effect like there's a slashdotting or digg effect.</comment>


Joe Rogan Experience #1350 – Nick Bostrom - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c4cv7rVlE8 <comment><USER2> Painful last 45 minutes or so. Joe not being able to connect the probability point and "what if we're first and just haven't created a simulation yet" was frustrating to listen to, but I think Nick could have explained it a bit better as well.</comment>


Reflections on startup life: Week 63 - <AUTHOR> http://timbull.com/reflections-on-startup-life-week-63

<comment><USER3> This post made me think about the differences between something that has been launched where there are users playing around with it around the clock and something that is still under development.

Rather than a defined list of tasks I have more of a large list of things that need to be implemented at some point before we can get into a full beta. Because of the ambiguities of how some things should work and how some things fit together with others I have found that switching often when I get stuck is more productive than sticking to the one task and really struggling to flesh it out in the absence of other supporting features which will be able to better define the task down the track.

It seems sometimes that I can lay the base for an entire new feature in the time it takes to really get into the nuts and bolts of how a few buttons will behave.

</comment><comment><USER4> Couldn't help thinking of the similarity between what you advocate and the process switching model in OS course. Hope to remember your advice - <USER2> switch has an overhead - clearly.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Some important things will go undone."

Probably the best advice I've gotten all month. Thank you for helping me achieve this realization.</comment>


Satellite footage of a rocket launching from the Gobi Desert - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/10/17840770/rocket-launch-video-onespace-china-private-space <comment><USER2> Here is the footage as originally posted on Chinese social media site Weibo: [https://m.weibo.cn/status/Gyh7m9j4a?refer_flag=1001030103_&j...](https://m.weibo.cn/status/Gyh7m9j4a?refer_flag=1001030103_&jumpfrom=weibocom#&video)

</comment><comment><USER3> Given that the observing satellite was traveling at around 17,000 MPH, one wonders how they managed to get such stable footage of the liftoff.</comment>


The Next 6 Months Worth Of Features Are In Facebook's Code Right Now - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/facebook-source-code/ <comment><USER2> This mostly seems to be a bitter rant about the time Facebook tricked TechCrunch by rolling out a new feature that only TechCrunch staff could see.

See the results of the prank here: [http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/10/facebook- now-lets-you-fax-y...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/10/facebook-now-lets-you- fax-your-photos-i-have-no-idea-why-anyone-would-want-to-do-this/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Uh, yeah. Is it really that unimaginable that they want to A/B test (or beta test) the features before they roll them out to everyone?

And keeping the media away the new features is just common sense. They're going to publish a huge story about a new change... Once that isn't complete and isn't ready for everyone. That just can't end well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Being able to turn on and off features based on login or randomness seems like a pretty common feature when you get big enough for it to be meaningful to do tests on portions of your userbase, or have multiple tests running at once.

Disqus have open-sourced a similar system for Django-based sites, Gargoyle: <http://code.disqus.com/code/projects/gargoyle.html>

You basically stick if(abc-is-active)s throughout your code, and then it has a fancy frontend for defining when abc should be active, based on user, ip, randomness, etc. They showed it off in their PyCon 2011 presentation, at about the 10:00 mark: [http://python.mirocommunity.org/video/4256/pycon-2011-disqus...](http://python.mirocommunity.org/video/4256/pycon-2011-disqus- serving-400-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Big whoop. All the websites that deal with similar scale have a six-month (or longer) pipeline, and almost all of them test code "live" in one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER6> Which means Facebook is not pressed by competitors as of now. They hold onto a bunch of cool features ready to swith on, just in case competition strike. Any competitor will face doubly uphill battle -- both against the network effect and against a fresh reserve of new features, enabled as soon as the Facebook notices them.

My take-away from the story -- little competition results in slow progress.

<comment><USER7> Oftentimes, these features are in "reserve" because they're conducting experiments to measure the effect on user behavior, or because various parts of the fit & finish aren't done yet, or because there're still serious open questions about certain edge cases. It's usually not the case that they're waiting for the competition to press them; at that point, you just risk losing your reputation as an innovator.

The first prototypes of Google Instant were done in 2000 or 2002, I think, and Yahoo had a demo ready in 2006. Yet it wasn't until 2010 that a production implementation could actually launch. You could argue that the code existed back then, but there were a bunch of blockers in capacity, user experience, and user experience that prevented it from being a launchable feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe that Google uses a similar development methodology with Chrome to separate the channels out. Everyone works on the Chromium trunk, and features are enabled/disabled depending on which channel they are appropriate for. Single trunk development makes a lot of sense when you make a product which doesn't rely on distinct version releases.

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't help but ask "so what?" I know the media likes to fascinate themselves with facebook, but adding websites does not really make the bog standard concept of not-yet-released products news.

After wondering why they're reporting on this, I assumed that they might be drawing some conclusions or commenting on what this actually means. They have 6 months of code in the pipe, are they still testing? can't handle the volume of change? think their users can't handle the volume of changes? or just are happy enough in the market that they're comfortable sitting on a few things that are ready to go live? Anything?

Nope. The story came across with the voice of a schoolgirl giggling "he he he, facebook mentioned us." With trite reporting like this, who can be surprised they've implemented the level of control to blind techcrunch at will?

<comment><USER10> I can't see the news-worthyness of this either. Facebook has 6 months of stuff in the pipe, but hasn't been deployed to the general public.

Is this important? It's impossible to tell. It all depends on how they quality control and implement changes. Facebook is very interconnected and giving it a third leg might cause a complication in how it runs. How it appears, given that my wife's facebook can be on a server down for maintenance and my account works perfectly fine, is that it might be in the facebook backend, but it could be taking them months to safely roll it out without downing their entire network.

Furthermore, who knows what will get released. I could have 3 blog posts in the works, but I might drop one or two if it becomes irrelevant before posting. I don't get why facebook is seemingly not allowed this courtesy, maybe it isn't in Facebook's best interest to create a segregated network when whites/blacks men/women dogs/cats can't access each others profiles or send messages to each other. However, it might have a good idea, IE the ability to block people who are harassing or spamming you.</comment></comment>


New York to London in an hour - by train - <AUTHOR> http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelligent-energy/new-york-to-london-in-an-hour-by-train/16456?tag=nl.e550 <comment><USER4> As a longtime gamer, this article really struck a chord with me. _Dragon_ magazine used to print playable adventures, and in August 1981 (I just went and looked it up), there was a Gamma World adventure called "Cavern of the Sub-Train."

The player characters in their post-apocalyptic world come across a abandoned series of tunnels they can't explain, but which are described for the game master in the notes:

 _The system once spanned the North American continent and was used primarily as a method of high-speed transportation of freight. The sub-train system is something like a 20th-century subway system, in that it consists of a self- propelled train moving through an underground tunnel. Unlike the 20th- century system, however, the "trains" moved through a vacuum while being supported on super-conducting magnetic rails at very high speeds._

<comment><USER5> Thanks for your post. Having big dreams of the future is crucial to making that future happen.

Many posts below are trying to prove how smart they by focusing on near term impracticalities. Sure it's impractical today. That's already proven by the fact that it is not already under construction.

The surest way to be wrong is to say something can never be done. I'm not even advocating this is a good solution. I have no idea if it will ever be possible. But I enjoy seeing that some people are thinking big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good luck holding a vacuum under the ocean. I read stuff like this and I think, "Gee, I don't think these people have actually built anything." because if they had they would realize that if it costs $1M a foot too build subways [1] in cities with moderately skilled labor, its going to cost $10 - 25M/ft to build something like this. That's half a quadrillion dollars (448 trillion dollars). What sort or rate of return do you think you would need to make that feasible?

I'd love someone to actually do a credible cost analysis of an evacuated tunnel train. Unfortunately I don't think Oster did.

[1] [http://secondavenuesagas.com/2010/01/14/the-costs-of- second-...](http://secondavenuesagas.com/2010/01/14/the-costs-of-second-ave- construction/)

<comment><USER7> Indeed, there's already a vacuum we already have above our heads that could be used for this purpose... i.e., suborbital space flight.

I can't imagine it'd be more expensive than tunneling 3000 miles under an ocean.

<comment><USER8> I doubt it is a tunnel. I imagine it'd be more like this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersed_tube>

(San Francisco's rail connection across the bay uses this technique)

<comment><USER9> At a fixed depth, so probably more like this: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Submerged_flo...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Submerged_floating_tunnel)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A much tastier version: Maciej's "Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel": [http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda- weehawken_burrito_t...](http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda- weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm)

</comment><comment><USER11> Another megaproject supporting my theory there's a market for promoting - <USER2> building, just promoting - projects so large, expensive and outlandish that a small team can make a decent buck thereon. A miniscule percentage of half a quadrillion dollars nets a few million for research, marketing & salaries.

</comment><comment><USER12> This idea's been proposed on and off for some decades, and is definitely intriguing. The crucial problem, though, doesn't seem to be the technology per se (though there are undoubtedly large risks there, too), but the back-of-an- envelope economics being anywhere _near_ sensible enough for someone to dedicate serious money to it. Before anyone is going to build a London-to-NYC line, my guess is that you'd have to first show some kind of much smaller- scale demonstration, like how there were test maglev lines built.

In a quick Google Scholar search, I turn up a 1974 article on "Surface-guided transport systems of the future" (<http://dx.doi.org/10.1049/piee.1974.0277>, unfortunately not open access), where evacuated-tube transport gets a mention, but under this less-than-enthusiastic banner:

 _A brief mention is given of other less likely transport systems, such as travel in an evacuated tube beneath or above the ground._

</comment><comment><USER13> Link to the BBC article instead of the blogspam: [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120601-high-speed- pipedrea...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120601-high-speed-pipedreams)

Also, easy terrorist target.

<comment><USER14> What makes current train system a more difficult target than these tubes?

<comment><USER15> Strikes me more that the potential for damage is higher here. A pretty small explosive charge would compromise part of the tube, and then what happens to the pods zipping along at 2,500mph inside them when the air comes rushing in? For that matter, if they did have an underwater tube connecting London and NYC, the _water_ would come rushing in and you know that's not going to end well.

It sounds pretty cool - it's the kind of sci-fi thing I'd love to see in the real world, but I can't believe it's as easy or as cheap as they're making it sound here.

<comment><USER16> We already have underwater tunnels for trains, such as the one between England and France - water would come crashing in regardless of whether there is air or a vacuum in the tunnel.

It's not _actually_ Futurama, the tunnel won't be train-sized and made of glass.

<comment><USER17> The chunnel is technically under rock, not under water. It's not exposed to the ocean.

<comment><USER16> Surely any tunnel built will be surrounded with rock/concrete as its structure, ultimately it will still be a case of people surrounded by solid material surrounded by water.

<comment><USER15> They aren't going to dig a tunnel through rock all the way underneath the Atlantic - that's many times further than the Chunnel, and that was a serious undertaking. The article implied it'd be underwater.

<comment><USER16> The tunnel itself will be formed of solid material, they don't need to go underneath the sea bed they will put their own construction in. That is what the tunnel will be, it's not just a vacuum in the middle of the water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I never have understood people's fears about getting on an airplane... this though I'd be scared to death of. You have any unfortunate shift in the tectonic plates (which happens daily and unpredictably) and you could be dead in an instant.

<comment><USER19> Here's how the Japanese high speed trains deal with earthquakes: They have emergency break systems (I think its small ceramic globuli or something of the sort) and a really good forewarning system. 2011-3-11 all Shinkansen were at a halt when the big one hit and noone was harmes on them. I don't see why you couldn't do the same here.

<comment><USER20> Because if the rail line cracks (which probably did appen in Japan), water floods into your tube. Then it becomes a question of "can they rescue you before your air supply ends" (since they would require an air supply for the vacuum)?

<comment><USER19> Oh, this post was in reply to the underwater part? Yes, I also think that this one isn't feasible for quite some time. My reply was in response to vacuum tubes over sea level. Right now we can't even have floating tubes anchored to the sea ground yet; storm waves rip every anchor we can build apart (it has been tried for wave power generators).

Vacuum tubes could probably be built deeper down where the waves aren't strong. I actually think that earthquakes wouldn't necessarily be a problem at that level, since everything would have to be quite flexible anyway. In order to elevate security, I could imagine making tube sectors detachable and having safety shutters. This way, if one sector is breached it could be sealed and detached such that it floats to sea level. The train could even be inside if you can control the pressure differences well enough to not kill everyone inside (something that is well understood for jet planes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My first reaction to this was that they'd never be able to engineer a sturdy/safe tube across the ocean. Then I thought about the transatlantic telegraph cable (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable)-> it was first built way back in 1858. That blows my mind.

</comment><comment><USER22> Much cheaper to go the suborbital flight route. Anywhere on earth to anywhere on earth in 2 hours. Less infrastructure required. (And today anything requiring massive governmental infrastructure commitments is doomed to fail)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-point_sub- orbital_spac...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-point_sub- orbital_spaceflight)

<comment><USER23> Cheaper? You have much greater energy losses from atmospheric drag, firing hot gas out of your back end is far less efficient method of acceleration than electromagnetic propulsion, and you can use regenerative braking.

In theory setting this up should be much cheaper than high volumes of suborbital flights.

Of course neither is actually feasible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The book title _A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!_ has stuck to my memory. It's a 1972 SF (alternate history branch) novel by Harry Harrison, featuring a vacuum/maglev system.

More at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel>, including reference to Goddard patents on the subject.

<comment><USER25> _Transatlantic Tunnel_ is a 1932 SF film about a strong-willed engineer determined to complete an underwater train route from London to New York.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027131/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There was already a proposal to do this in Switzerland. A Maglev train driving in vacuum. Unfortunately they are not really progressing because of money and politic reasons.

General: <http://www.swissmetro.ch/en/home> Technology: <http://www.swissmetro.ch/en/content/technology>

</comment><comment><USER27> I live in NJ, about 4 miles away from my office in Manhattan and I have a 45 commute. Can anyone figure out how to solve that problem? It's a lot of fun to kill the afternoon talking about something that's never gonna happen. In the meantime, millions of people are wasting days a year crawling to and from work.

<comment><USER28> Get a pushbike. Persuade everyone you know to get a pushbike. Make them persuade everyone they know to get a pushbike.

Start a campaign for people to only use their cars if they i) Have to or ii) are travelling over 10 miles.

Make workplaces have facilities for cyclists. (Perhaps going as far as treating car-parking spaces as a taxable perk). Make schools have facilities for cyclists. Make shops have facilities for cyclists.

Persuade the bad cyclists to stop being idiots. etc.

<comment><USER29> There is a river in between. You would need to bike up to the George Washington assuming he lives in Hoboken and commute to Midtown. Either way you go from a 45 minute commute to maybe a 2-3 hour commute if you are lucky. Even worse since now using a bike his commute is ~20 miles instead of the 4 in the first place.

<comment><USER30> Excuses... I don't even live in NYC and yet it took me 1 minute to find a better option: take the ferry (bikes are allowed). <http://goo.gl/maps/ssB0>.

I bet on a good day you can cycle this route under 30 minutes including the ferry ride.

<comment><USER27> That'll cost 3x more than the bus, and it doesn't scale.

<http://www.nywaterway.com/hoboken14throute.aspx>

There are hundreds of thousands of people who cross the river every day. Thanks for taking 1 minute. Can anyone solve the real problem?

<comment><USER30> Monthly bike pass is surely cheaper or comparable to whatever he is paying for parking. I solved his problem.

<comment><USER27> You are responding to me, the person whose problem you think you solved. I take a bus that costs $98/month. The ferry is over $300 for a monthly pass. If I want to take the ferry tomorrow, with my bike, for example, it'll be about $20 for a daily round trip. My best option would be to taking a folding bike so I can take a train. That would work on nice days.

However, what I'm really asking for is to solve the problem for the millions of commuters. It's crazy that people waste so much time commuting.

<comment><USER28> Cycling does not work for you because of your weird river situation.

Cycling is a solution for the millions of people who have commutes of 4 miles without rivers in between. It's a solution for most people in most other situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I remember seeing a Discovery documentary named "Extreme Engineering: Trans- Atlantic Tunnel" that precisely details this concept. It's available online in five parts:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frYWTrEfPRs>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKaVQ5Tt_Zk>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zci_6AOCAo>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2c6vzcmULU>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoPI2doRkgA>

</comment><comment><USER32> The Concorde made day-trips US/Europe possible, but had to face the fact that there simply is no satisfying market for such high prices. And submarine vacuum trains would be much more expensive than a plane on steroids.

</comment><comment><USER33> if we can't get our shit together to connect SF to LA with what amounts to 40-years-old-bullet train technology, what makes this people think they can get this crazy stuff done between NY and LA?

sounds a lot like my research group meetings. Lots of fascinating stuff. Zero chance of ever making it out of the lab in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER34> > In the BBC story, Oster says the train could be ready in less than 10 years.

Haha! No chance. We might not even see the new link between London and Birmingham (HS2) before 2035, never mind one to New York!

</comment><comment><USER35> I feel that the headline would be better if phrased as a question.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is just like Gene Roddenberry's old show Genesis II from 1973. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_II_(film)>

I saw it when I was a kid and I thought it was awesome!

<comment><USER37> Yep, globe-spanning underground maglev/vactrains, which in the future-history of _Genesis II_ (1973) and _Planet Earth_ (1974) had been built in the late 20th-century and survived world war to be still working over a hundred years later.

The sci-fi of the past was way too optimistic about giant-scale engineering projects at the same time it was blind to advances and trends in communications and computer-mediated collaboration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm absolutely fascinated by the difference in responses I see on HN versus talking to my friends (liberal arts). They were concerned with the future implications for cultural integrity as well as how it would effect labor forces and capitalism as a whole. Any thoughts?

I, for one, think this technology is awesome and think it could follow the progression that the train system went through in the US (transcontinental railroad, expanding, webbing out, lightrail, subways, trams, metros, etc) and see this as a possible next step in the evolution of transportation.

<comment><USER39> What is "cultural integrity"?

<comment><USER38> the idea of maintaining your cultural identity, rather than completely assimilating to a dominant culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> No mention of nuclear-powered "subterrenes"? I am disappointed ... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterrene>

</comment><comment><USER41> It seems the media blitz in the west has had the intended effect when so many people respond to such an idea with "but turrerists!". Driving cars on the highway is a much higher risk to your safety than terrorists ever were or ever will be. Don't give up on the future because of paranoia and irrational fear.

</comment><comment><USER42> Doesn't a gravity train actually seem more appropriate here? It doesn't need to go through the center of the earth in this case, and is shorter distance than a tunnel. The only problem is it probably takes a lot longer to build.

</comment><comment><USER43> Oh Dear! Does this mean I can no longer have quality time listening to music, reading, watch birds etc.. during my long distance journeys.

</comment><comment><USER44> Oh, sweet, a chance to link to xkcd: Researcher Translation again :D <http://xkcd.com/678>

</comment><comment><USER45> I wonder how they'd deal with crossing between the continental plates - <USER3> movement of the plates, the magma, etc.

</comment><comment><USER46> When that breaks, it's going to make a mess. 6 humans in, various bits of popped human coming out...

<comment><USER47> At 4000 MPH? There probably wouldn't be anything left. The kinetic energy in a train going that fast would likely have military scale destructive power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Wouldn't transporting humans at 2,500 - 4,000 mph kill them? It seems like the body would not react well to beginning or ending transit at such velocities.

<comment><USER49> Velocity is imperceptible, since it depends on a frame of reference. For example, I'm traveling at about 700mph around the center of the Earth because of the Earth's rotation.

Acceleration is perceptible, because it is felt as a force. So it really depends on how quickly people are accelerated to 2500mph. If you accelerate at 22mph per second, this is equivalent to 1G, which could be relatively comfortable. It would take 2 minutes to reach 2500mph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER51> I've met Daryl Oster, the guy behind ET3, even contributed a few ideas crudely sketched out on a notebook -- stuff I'm sure somebody involved had already considered. Anyway, he seemed nice, smart, legit. I really love the basic idea and goals of ET3. I was a little bit concerned that it wasn't farther along in terms of implementation versus theory. But he did say that he's worked with folks in China and they were generally much more receptive to it there, whereas in the US there's more bureaucracy and legacy inertia. There's right- of-way issues, NIMBY, legal stuff. I think all the edge case scenarios are riskiest -- those need to be addressed in the design, if they can be, things like what happens if a tube is pierced, what happens if a passenger has a crisis and needs to get out of it quickly, etc. But the basic physics of it are pretty attractive because of the efficiencies and economies of scale.

</comment><comment><USER52> Considering all the problems BP had plugging one hole during Deepwater Horizon oil spill at the depth of only 1,100 m, I'd say this project is currently science fiction.

</comment><comment><USER53> gem 'maglev', '2.3.1' gem 'vacuum', '0.2' gem 'unicorn-skittles', '3.1.4'</comment>


My Hackerday contribution: a video on posting to Facebook using ASP.Net/C# - <AUTHOR> http://www.markhagan.me/Samples/Grant-Access-And-Post-As-Facebook-User-ASPNet

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it isn't much, but I was inspired by this post: [http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/6111/i-am-hacking- this-w...](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/6111/i-am-hacking-this-weekend)</comment>


Node.js based Sandbox game, WIP - <AUTHOR>

Since leaving the current YC batch due to inter-personal issues, I've been working on a (so far) terraforming game in node.js. This is just a super early version, when it's done it will have actual game elements (like AI and collision detection). Check it out and let me know what you think!
Long-term goals for this project are to turn it into a gaming platform where anybody can make their own world and host it, complete with optional micro-transactions and optional subscription fees.
Screenshot: http://imgur.com/Ea9O7 Demo: http://zyu.me/ <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://zyu.me/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I don't know HN as much as I thought I did :(

<comment><USER3> Links don't work in posts, someone has to reply with it. By etiquette, usually someone other than the submitter.

It's a bit non-intuitive. I think it's intended to cut down on linkback spam.</comment></comment></comment>


China says facing flood of online info distorting party history - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0ZM0DT <comment><USER2> They should talk to the Democrats, who are facing the same issues here.</comment>


Cell phones at the table are now a way of life; deal with it - <AUTHOR> http://www.devilsadvocategame.com/blog/2015/8/2/cell-phones-at-the-table-are-now-a-way-of-life-deal-with-it

<comment><USER2> God I hate arguments that resolve to "well that's the way it is."</comment>


Show HN: Spry – Build Ecommerce with Google Sheets - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, Jay (memset) and Len here. We've built Spry (https://spry.store), a tool that allows you to create an ecommerce site just using Google Sheets and Stripe. We think it's easier to use than the alternatives and priced so you don't spend more than you make on a side-hustle.
Jay has been selling music notebooks online for over a year. His biggest pain point was the initial toil of researching ecommerce options, comparing pricing and features, and all of the sheer configuration he had to do just to get the notebooks online. We set out to fix this.
Spry is simple:
  1) sign in with Google
  2) add products to a sheet
  3) poof they appear on your site
We see people using it as a way to list personal items, dropship items, or as their first ecommerce site. Let us know what you think! <comment><USER2> Maybe I missed it, but your landing page could use a couple of example stores built with your tool, and a better description of the features/personalisation options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

We have an example store here (checkout isn't configured for the example): [https://example.spry.store/](https://example.spry.store/)

You can currently customize the store name and subdomain. Custom domains is something we've considered. We're open to other ideas!

<comment><USER2> It looks very clean, well done. What I meant though is to have a link (or some pictures) on your main page so that people see what the result looks like before having to sign on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, we'll add a link for people that don't want to sign on. Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How did you arrive on that pricing?

<comment><AUTHOR> We want this to be affordable for new businesses - people who aren't willing to commit to $30/month when first setting up. It shouldn't be a painful decision to decide whether or not to get started. We hope people who want to create an online store have less friction taking the plunge.

<comment><USER4> Loved the idea, I am a fan of using spreadsheets to make things easier for the end user.

You might want to think about a next tier, and grow with your larger customers. I get the point that you want to make it easy to start off with, but you also want to attract larger users (who have their own domain).

There is no harm in a "coming soon" higher tier.

Also showcase the process of setting up a store, basically how easy it is via Spry, just add products to a sheet to get started, I think you can do it in a 30 second video too.

<comment><AUTHOR> All fair points. Showing a "coming soon" tier for larger customers would show the direction we'd like to go and a video would drive home the simplicity. Appreciate it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mailbox for Mac Desktop beta invites - <AUTHOR>

I've got 3 beta invites for the Mailbox for Mac desktop app if anyone is interested. Post your email below or email me at jtuson at my company domain. <comment><USER2> Yo

<comment><AUTHOR> Er, what's your email address? Or have you emailed me?</comment></comment>


German tanker with wind turbines goes out to sea, fills up with hydrogen - <AUTHOR> http://thepowergeneration.blogspot.com/2009/09/hydrogen-challenger.html

<comment><USER2> Good point raised in one of the comments: why not have a giant wind platform out at sea to generate the hydrogen, and have tankers come and offload/replace the hydrogen tanks on a continuous basis ?</comment>


How to prevent content theft using Apache mod_rewrite or F5 iRules - <AUTHOR> http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2008/10/21/how-to-prevent-content-theft-using-apache-mod_rewrite-or-f5.aspx

<comment><USER2> I've enjoyed some of the posts on the f5 devcentral site but this fell short. The premise of the article is flawed. The 'solution' presented tackles hotlinking only and doesn't prevent someone on your site saving an image to their hard drive and then uploading that image to their own site later on.

The solution tackles bandwidth theft, not content theft.</comment>


New Bill in Congress could allow robocalls to mobile phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3035

<comment><USER2> Meh, sounds good, as long as the do-not-call list is still applicable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I bet people who elected Rep. Lee Terry are proud.</comment>


Deep Sea Trash Revealed with ROVs: Debris Discovered 7000 Feet Below - <AUTHOR> http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/7352/20130606/deep-sea-trash-revealed-rovs-debris-discovered-7000-feet-below.htm

<comment><USER2> I don't dispute the trash count. I dispute the problem. Its ugly; so don't look at it. Other than that, what is the problem?

Its 1/4 metal (including an entire semi-trailer container! in the video) - I've seen metal used for artificial reefs all over the world. So this 'trash' metal is inferior in some way? In the videos animals seemed to cluster around the trash, often attaching themselves to it or even living in it.

They say in the article that the plastic can last for decades. Good! Shelter for fish spawn, housing for crustaceans, permanent and cheap - heck, it was free.</comment>


Why the Phrase 'Late Capitalism' Is Suddenly Everywhere - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-capitalism/524943/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I thought the phrase was "late stage capitalism" – implying that capitalism is a disease like cancer.

<comment><USER3> I've seen some people and some attitudes out there that believe it really is. Some of the same people have no problem biting the hand that feeds them, it seems. Or rather, biting the hand that they're asking "please sir, can I have some more" of.

<comment><USER4> I think the fundamental reason people latch onto it as "Late Stage" is because they see the future of this way of building a society as very grim. And I am inclined to agree with them.

Capitalism is one thing, but fundamentalist capitalism, which is preached in the US (not followed, mind you, we have lots of monopolies and very closed markets), is something of a horror show of awful virtues. The trick is, capitalism in the US has ALWAYS been a horror show. This country was literally founded on the ideals of slavery and not paying taxes. England wasn't cool with slavery when we founded this nation, but we sure were. If this country wasn't founded on slavery, then the 3/5ths compromise would never have taken place, and we'd have ended the practice at inception.

It is a good thing that we now no longer have an actual price tag on the heads of human beings in this country, but is it really so difficult to see such a thing coming about again, with corporations as the "owners," and individuals as the investment properties? Apple was colluding to keep employee pay down, a few years back, showing this type of behavior already fomenting again.

"Late Stage Capitalism" refers, really, to early stage capitalism as it existed in the US: that view that money is more important than human life. That the only reasonable pursuit of humans is money. It beacons to the hollowness of the American life, where your job defines you more than any other single attribute.

Yes, there is no real alternative in our modern world. The term "Late Stage Capitalism," however, insinuates that there is a solution out there, and we'll be moving on to it sometime in the next couple of decades. What will that be? I personally feel as though we'll splinter into border less societies with their own crypto currencies, populated by people who live in the real world societies as ghosts, without tax-paying jobs or rent paying housing. Some sort of reputation-based world like a Doctorow novel, but with the real government still in place, but being ignored and circumvented by people in a million ways.

Think of this like a game of Civilization. You start as a dictatorship, but you can research better forms of government. Civ always stopped at Democracy, like that was the be all and end all. But that's just because humanity hasn't yet discovered the next good way of organizing large groups for mutual protections. We will, some day.

<comment><USER5> I'd love your feed back on my proposal for a kind of post capitalism. It seems to propose some of the things you expect: [http://skilesare.github.io/immortality](http://skilesare.github.io/immortality)

<comment><USER4> Well, I can certainly see you've put a great deal of work into it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Late Stage Capitalism is the realization that mankind produces enough material wealth to satisfy the bottom two tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for every single person in the world and the frustration that we haven't bothered to try.

<comment><USER7> And the ignorance about the fact that distribution and management of said material wealth has always been and will always be a difficult problem to solve. Yes, we produce enough food in the world such that no one should go hungry. No, we don't have the infrastructure (actual, political, economic) to distribute it.

Organizing people is hard. Dealing with corruption is hard. Nothing suggested by Late Stage Capitalist meme spreaders even comes close to solving those problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This term is a combination of spin and wishful thinking by Marxists. Capitalism isn't going anywhere.

<comment><USER9> Capitalism will never go away. Just as monarchism still exists on various corporate boards in some form. And just as anarchism still exists in some form in a capitalist society.

But capital allocation will cease to be the dominant protocol for social organization.

<comment><USER8> I don't see any realistic alternative. Capitalism creates wealth more efficiently than any other system, and over the long run even the poorest people in a capitalist country will be wealthier than people in countries with command economies.

The problems we're having today result from corruption, which can happen with any system.

<comment><USER10> What if, and this is a big what if, computer science could solve the efficiency problem of a centralized economy.

<comment><USER11> It seems to me that would just make the programmer the central planner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm looking forward to most of the comments here being variations on this comic: [http://i.imgur.com/qM9ZJv3.png](http://i.imgur.com/qM9ZJv3.png)

As it turns out, one can in fact criticize something they participate in (especially when participation is necessary to survive).

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not a new term. It's everywhere because socialist and social-democratic ideas are getting fairly popular in the US.

</comment><comment><USER14> >"Mandel did warn about the forces of automation, globalization, and wage stagnation, and feared that they would tear at the social fabric by making workers miserable."

Funny. Most people are living better lives today in the era of High Capitalism than they ever have in the past. As technology growth - spurred by the incentives capitalism generates - continues, and new products and services are created by the capitalist system, people's lives will continue to improve.

What's beautiful about capitalism is that it, through automation, is eliminating drudgery and danger from people's work. Eventually when we reach very high levels of automation in society, we may be able to transition to an economy in which people don't have to work (much) but still get to own things through universal basic income or some other sort of scheme.

So no revolution needed to get us to the promised land folks. Capitalism is taking us there.

<comment><USER9> Capitalism is taking some there. Not all. Most. The averages look good. When you look outside a standard deviation or two there is intergenerational suffering with no end.

So, you're right. As long as you can plug your nose and ignore the people at the very bottom, everything is pretty good!

<comment><USER14> Under capitalism the people at the very bottom have it much better than they ever have had it, just like the rest of the population. And things continue to improve.

In fact it's plausible that as automation picks up it's the people at the bottom who will stand to gain the most.

<comment><USER9> I assume you're talking about bottom income bracket. I was not. I was talking about bottom in terms of power. Income is only one form of power. The people truly at the bottom are being held there by triangulated cultural practices. Capitalism is not seeking to lift them up because they serve a crucial purpose as a warning to those who might question the social order.

I am thinking of people at the intersection of some combination of poverty, domestic violence, addiction, racism, gender politics, etc. One or two of these issues can be overcome, but when you pile several into one family you get a machine that can be permanently stuck in suffering.

<comment><USER15> "I am thinking of people at the intersection of some combination of poverty, domestic violence, addiction, racism, gender politics, etc."

Have you ever met any of these people? Domestic violence, addiction, poverty; anyone with that trifecta is probably not a very pleasant person to know, much less employ. Giving people with an addiction more resources is not going to help them unless you're talking about opening up a methadone clinic, which is plenty compatible with capitalism.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rent-a-sister: Coaxing Japan's young men out of their rooms [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-46885707/rent-a-sister-coaxing-japan-s-young-men-out-of-their-rooms <comment><USER2> Also interesting:

"Substitutes: Japanese men woo silicone sex dolls to overcome loneliness" [RT, 26 min, 2018]

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

<comment><USER3> People have a tendency to laugh and ridicule these things. But there is a growing trend of single males in Asia.

For China [0]:

> in a country with 34 million more men than women...

For India [1]:

> has an excess of 37 million males...

The mind absolutely boggles at this combined amount.

Necessity is the mother of all invention as they say. Remember the first mobile phone or remember the first car? Primitive to say the least. Now look at what they can do.

I would wager we are 25-50 years away from deus ex machina bots. I hope to see it in my lifetime.

[0]: [https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/leftover- men...](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/leftover-men-china- get-married-gender-imbalance-one-child-policy-10485358)

[1]: [https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long- reads/arti...](https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long- reads/article/2142658/too-many-men-china-and-india-battle-consequences)

<comment><USER2> Re: China

"Millions of single Chinese men desperately seeking a wife" [France 24 English, 26 min, 2017]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboNzluN6Nc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboNzluN6Nc)

I caught both this report and the one in my parent comment around the same time. The Chinese solution looks to be divided between sex dolls and importing women (though leaning more towards the latter) while the Japanese solution is about sex dolls and rent-a-families (possibly leaning towards the former).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yep turns out all you need is a friend. This is a draw back and advantage of city life. if you want to be isolated, you can

<comment><USER5> Rural and sub urban areas can be way more isolating. I don't think it's a city phenomenon.

<comment><USER6> Speaking only from my own experience I'd have to disagree, to isolate yourself in a rural area you have to become the weird person with the curtains closed 24/7 that people talk about

In a city you simply cease to exist if you don't leave your apartment

<comment><USER7> Some rural areas are so isolated, or neighbors so unconnected, that nobody is talking about you or even aware of you. There may not even be anyone near who would be a candidate to discuss you.

For example, my friends who live in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. They moved from the Midwest and rented a 60 acre plot. They have yet to meet any of their neighbors after about 10 months. They've vaguely gotten to know people who work at the hardware or grocery stores, but these people don't think about them outside of work. Since default is to stay at home and have no contact with anyone, they'd have to go out of their way to have social contact with people in the town.

This is not nearly as remote as some areas I know, either. And even more remote areas, if your neighbors talked about you at all, it might just be like "oh yeah, there's some guy that lives down by 45 with the truck" and they keep you in mind in case they have an emergency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how different this is from therapeutic companions [1], once you strip it from its "something weird that happens in Asia" trappings. A companion is sometimes used in Western countries for people who have mental disorders or difficulties (sometimes very serious, like Schizophrenia), sometimes as an alternative to internment. They are often very expensive, unfortunately. These "rental sisters" don't look bizarre when looked through this lens.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6741585](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6741585)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this the future of every society?

<comment><USER10> I'm curious where this question is coming from. If depending on the understanding that Japanese society is, in general, futuristic relative to other societies, I don't believe that's the case. Otherwise, I see no reason why this specific phenomenon might be in the cards for other societies, at least anecdotally speaking.

<comment><USER11> Is there reason to believe that the problem is specific to Japan? The video says it's also known to be happening in the US, UK, Italy, and South Korea. Those are 5 very different developed countries, on 3 different continents, and together make up nearly 10% of the earth's population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also look up family rental service.

<comment><USER13> Asian Boss made a video some time ago about it [1].

Conan also made one, a bit more on the humorous side [2].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEhYMirs7fk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEhYMirs7fk)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzaXw2ztCqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzaXw2ztCqU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How about addressing the cause instead of focusing on the cure? After WWII they adopted a view of masculinity as toxic. And women have a big part on this phenomenon.

> In a 2011 poll of Japanese boys aged between 16 and 19, 36% said they were > not interested in having sex; > the figure for girls in the same age group > was at 59%.

[https://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/01/13/no-sex- please...](https://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/01/13/no-sex-please-were- young-japanese-men/)

<comment><USER15> Why are you blaming women exactly?

Japanese men seem afraid of women in general and have a need to infantalize them so they can consume them. There is a big culture of illustrated child porn there, it's out in the open, everywhere and normalized like no where else. It's retweeted on twitter by otherwise normal seeming illustrators/people, though it would disturb most people outside of Japan. The culture of cute, kawaii things is just as obvious in it's sex industry as it is in everything else, although in a very horrifying way.

<comment><USER16> Your theory is that the reason why there is a gender difference where 36% of men but 59% of women in the age group of 16-19 wanting sex, is because of illustrated child porn? Does that not sound a bit like an extra ordinary claim which might need some supporting evidence?

Gender roles and norms is normally used to explain gender differences, and is often one of the first area that people explore. If the data had been reversed and 36% of women and 59% of men wanted sex, what would we normally claim to be the cause?

<comment><USER17> I think you read that backwards. Those are the respective percentages who don't want sex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm sure our kids will laugh at this and will spend much less times on their phones or in their rooms than we did.

<comment><USER19> [https://www.wired.com/story/why-teens-arent-partying- anymore...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-teens-arent-partying-anymore/)</comment></comment>


ImpuestoCorrecto (YC W18) Built TurboTax for Latin America Without Code - <AUTHOR> https://airdev.co/post/impuesto-correcto-tackles-the-universal-pain-of-filing-taxes-1526331100099x574466958642005950 <comment><USER2> I use Bubble everyday for my work developing web apps. While there are many limitations, it's been surprisingly flexible and has been able to support most my needs</comment>