The Marriage Decision: Everything Forever or Nothing Ever Again (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/marriage-decision.html <comment><USER2> The "deal breakers" checklist skirts the true issue.

I have been married longer than most HN members have been alive, which is no accident. So I'll temporarily be arrogant enough say my peace on the theory that someone might find it useful, and then duck and cover.

There really is only one thing that matters: You and your partner must share the same value system, or at least if not identical, then there must not be core values in conflict.

Why? If you agree on core values, then any disagreements (and there will be many) will be about _implementation_ , not about the desired end state. Those are healthy discussions, even if stressful. It is possible to both be "on the same side of the problem" \-- it is the two of you against the problem, and the disagreement is about how to get from point A to point B.

On the other hand, when a core value is in conflict, the only way one person can be happy is if the other person gives up a part of themselves. That is at the very least the seed of resentment, and can't help but be a wound that will not heal.

So.. Step 1: Clarify in your own mind your own values. Until you have done that, you have nothing to go on. Step 2: Get to know your potential partner well enough that you both understand each other's core values. Make sure they are compatible.

I wish I could say I did this, but in all honesty I had been married for 20 years before I understood it. I just happened to get lucky -- growing up under similar circumstances as my bride has given us common touchstones.

<comment><USER3> The problem is people often change in fundamental ways. It is difficult to choose a partner in your early 20s who will retain the same value system throughout their life. Both myself and my ex are very different people from what we were in our 20s.

There are many factors that contribute to a successful marriage. I'd say commitment is one - you have to _want_ the marriage to work. You have to accept that the other person is an individual and accept that they aren't your twin and also that they are free to grow. You may disagree, for instance politically, yet you have to respect them and allow the differences. It's tough to run a 3 legged race for 30-40 years.

<comment><USER4> I find that people who marry young grow together. The post about core values hits it right on the head in my years of experience.

Nothing has come close to ruining my marriage as much as that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> <Ctrl-f>divorce

Hmm.. no mentions in the entire article? I think the author has something to address.

Keep in mind when you get legally married you are signing a legal contract that entitles that other person, in most states, to half of everything you earn during the marriage. They also earn an entitlement to continue that support for something like half the duration of the marriage, or more, if the marriage falls apart.

I spent 19 years married in California to a spouse to refused to work for the final 10 years of the marriage. I now have to pay $40k/year indefinitely after losing half my savings and retirement. I had to sell my home to pay her share. Now, on the flip side I have a girlfriend who is half my age and I'm finally free of my ex which is worth every penny, but starting over at 42 just sucks. The state has no concept of a spouse refusing to work. They assume that because she wasn't working it must have been my decision to force that upon her. By the way, we don't have kids. My friends who have divorced with kids? $7k+/month.

It is especially important to keep this in mind if you are a well paid earner. I know a lot of engineers making big bucks who let their spouses stay home or pursue goofy home based businesses or careers as 'artists'.

<comment><USER5> This is a perfectly reasonable setup for these agreements. If your spouse is not working and you are married, it is either through mutual agreement or inaction. Fundamentally a marriage is about mutual navigation of life. If you are failing at this, a divorce is an option, as are other avenues (marriage therapy, etc). The point of a* marriage contract working this way is exactly the flip of it: to go extreme, if you are abusive in the relationship and will not let your spouse out of your joint home, and they eventually manage* to get a divorce, they are now attempting to operate without the last N years of work history. How does your spouse get back on their feet now? The person who is taking advantage of the marriage can be the breadwinner, and the breadwinner (if there is only one) provides the means of survival.

Marriage is a life plan. You say that jointly and indefinitely, you will navigate life together. This means both of you are (should be?) planning with both of your current and future states in mind. If one isn't working, they are planning on the other's income to continue life. It's perfectly reasonable for the baseline of a marriage contract to be shared income and a reasonable time to adjust to the loss of shared income should you get divorced (and that this reasonable time grows the longer you are married). You might say, half of the duration is too much! Then propose something better, and adjust the contract accordingly. You might say, that jeopardizes my wedding, it seems like I don't love my future spouse! If this is important to you, that is something you must work through.

Now, it's also an emotional thing, so it can be hard to abandon ship and get a divorce when it's clear your life plans have utterly diverged; I'm not trying to trivialize that decision. But for the default case of marriage to be "you have understood your mutual obligations and the fact that you are embarking on a mutually navigated life" seems perfectly reasonable to me. As for kids… Kids cost money and time, which our society for better or worse equates with money. So of course kids add to the number.

Engineers who make big bucks and "let" (!?) their spouses stay home or pursue careers as '"artists"' (?!?) are _making that choice_ , either explicitly or by not having the conversation. If you don't steer your life, you let your life happen to you. And if you let your life happen to you, sometimes it will happen poorly. If they _are_ having the conversation, then there's mutual agreement that this is what's best for the family, and no one is _letting_ anyone do anything. It's absurd to talk about anyone "letting" their spouse stay home as if they have some sort of ownership over them, or passing judgement on the value of an artistic career choice from the outside.

Is there a human aspect to this, a fuzziness to it all? Of course. But feeling incensed on behalf of others because their marriages are operating in a way you don't approve of because of how you got burned… I don't know how useful that is.

<comment><USER6> > It's perfectly reasonable for the baseline of a marriage contract to be > shared income and a reasonable time to adjust to the loss of shared income > should you get divorced

You are positing a right without a responsibility. Why should a spouse with no earning power be given a free pass on having obligations?

The only answer I would readily accept is that one partner is responsible for earning and the other is responsible for children, but outside that the situation is hard to justify.

> How does your spouse get back on their feet now?

Claiming that being married disqualifies someone from the workforce is a relic of an era that is long past. In the absence of some hefty commitment (ie, children) it isn't true.

<comment><USER5> Your spouse does not have a free pass, you and your spouse have agreed that the family has one of you working and one not. It doesn't require justification beyond that being the mutual agreement, and mutual agreement is how marriage moves forward through time.

Being married doesn't disqualify someone from the workforce, but not working for an extended period of time through the above mutual agreement does leave them with little work history, possibly reduced education, certainly reduced experience, etc. They made those decisions in the context of a reality that is changing due to divorce, and that change can have radical life results. As such, having a default agreement whereby that change is not abrupt and immediate is perfectly reasonable.

A prenuptial agreement modifies this by setting different expectations up front, and allowing everyone involved to adjust their decision-making process.

<comment><USER7> I think you might be missing something that 01100011 experienced, which frankly sounds a lot like what happened in my case as well. My ex became very mentally ill and had no desire to do anything about it - because she knew that either I would suck it up and carry on for the good of the kids, or that in the case of a divorce that she would walk away with anything she wanted anyway. So she had no incentive to go back to work, to get out of bed, or to do anything at all. Your words sound much like multiple lawyers I consulted, that somehow it was my fault because I was complicit in not forcing her to work. And like 01100011 said, how the eff was I supposed to do that?

<comment><USER8> Mental illness is obviously a whole different category.

Would you also slam her as lazy if she got crippled in a car accident?

Have you tried to get her help, in the form of therapy?

That's actually what "in bad times" means. It's probably okay to discover you're not up to the task, but it's not okay to diss her on message boards.

<comment><USER7> You are using hyperbole and are reading into the discussion your own meaning. You are being deliberately insulting and using a personal attack, whereas both the parent poster and I experienced a similar behavior from our spouses and faced the same legal dilemma.

<comment><USER8> I'm taking your very literal expression "mentally ill" at face value, as I do your other words. I haven't assumed a single thing, nor have I been injecting "my own meaning".

I'm sorry your marriage ended badly, I'm sure that can be very stressful.

But the only insults here are yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Society, in most parts of the world, doesn't like when a relationship lasts > too long. To society, a relationship is simply a testing ground—an incubator > that prepares you for The Decision. And if too many years go by in a > relationship without The Decision being made, society decides that something > must be wrong. To help right the wrong, society will begin to apply pressure > on the couple, from all angles.

In polyamorous circles, this is called the "relationship escalator" \- the idea that a relationship must escalate up to marriage or be considered a failure. In the polyamorous context this is considered a fallacy, because you can still have another live-in, child-raising relationship while this one ceases to escalate; but in a monogamous context there are real reasons to "fish or cut bait" other than just social pressure. If you're looking to have a married-and-settled-down life and that's not happening with the current partner, you need to pursue that end-state with someone else, and monogamy requires you to break up the non-escalating relationship before you can do that.

</comment><comment><USER10> To quote the comedian Chris Rock:

You have two choices. Single and lonely. Married and bored. Ain't no happiness anywhere.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6X0Qqxx3f0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6X0Qqxx3f0)

</comment><comment><USER11> I found this article to have zero value and zero cogent information because he boils the whole thing down to "gut check" (instinct — no real information here) plus "dealbreakers" (a nebulous category that he makes clear is always changing for everyone so there's not really any useful info there either).

This reads like a long hemming and hawing written by some dude who probably shouldn't marry his partner but he's trying to convince himself it's a good idea and seek validation for his bad decision by writing a long abstract post justifying it.

Pro tip to the author, if your relationship prompts you to write a long article justifying your decision-making process about whether or not to marry your partner, then your partner has failed the gut check and you shouldn't marry them.

4/10 article, interesting concepts but zero actionable or new info that isn't already common/universal knowledge in western societies.

It's also just plain weird that he would write an article that long which is clearly based on his life experiences but not share any of his specific life experiences or anything about him. Maybe he thinks subtracting the self from the article makes it "more universally applicable," but really his decision not to include any info about his personal relationship history just makes it less relatable and thus FAR less applicable to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lot of interesting ideas here. I would just add a few points.

On listening to your gut when you are a brain person, this is actually trainable, check out the book Focusing by the University of Chicago psychologist and philosopher Eugene Gendlin.

On deciding, it seems to me the two most important things are if the two of you have reasonably common values about how you want to live your lives, and if you trust the other person's moral character and ability to act rationally, at least when it comes to something really important. If the two of you have these, then you can probably work out the difficulties.

Thirdly, you stand a much better chance of settling problems small and large if you take a course in interpersonal relationship and conflict resolution skills. See for instance Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.

Lastly, you need to have some larger philosophy or religion to keep things in perspective and as basis for personal value beyond how much your mate loves you, otherwise you will either be their puppet or try to be their master.

<comment><USER13> Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg changed the way I thought. However, it, ah, doesn't matter at all if both parties don't buy in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting to me that people in the U.S. (maybe all the West, I just have experience with the U.S.) spend so much effort trying to find a marriage partner. But it does not appear to me that folks are happier in their marriages than in countries where some form of arranged marriage (not necessarily a "big A" arranged marriage, but maybe a "little A" arranged marriage) is common.

I suspect:

1) We're not special and in fact there are a wide range of people we'd be relatively happy being married to;

2) It does not take that long to figure out whether our partner falls into bucket (1);

3) To the extent that initially happy marriages sour, it's because of changed circumstances, and there is little you can do at step (1) to prevent those.

<comment><USER15> Strongest possible agree. My wife and I were together for 3 weeks before we eloped in Reno (we both broke up with previous partners to be together). We're celebrating our 20th in a couple weeks. And for about half that time we've also worked together.

There's a dude on this thread who has apparently been married longer than I've been alive and my 20 years makes me a marriage piker, but I suspect the real secret is that a marriage is something you build, not something you discover in some godawful dating treasure hunt.

<comment><USER14> Congrats!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have trouble understanding why people buckle to social pressure in this day and age. If you aren't Amish or JW risking your entire livelihood and social circle... is it really that hard to tell you're relatives you just aren't ready to be married?

<comment><USER17> In most of the US, if a relationship lasts long enough, it doesn't matter much whether you "get married" or not. As far as the state's concerned, you _are_ legally married.

<comment><USER18> What are you referring to? Common law marriage? That's only valid in 8 states and DC (California is not one of those states, FYI).

Edit: Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and the District of Columbia are the only US districts where one can enter into a common law marriage today. Such marriages are, of course, recognized by other states, but you won't end up "accidentally" married by doing nothing in New York, for instance.

<comment><USER7> Add Washington state to your list. There is case law here whereby if you live together or demonstrate that you are in a domestic partnership, you can be liable for spousal support, using the same guidelines as divorce. And this is without signing any documents or anything "official" to mark the partnership.

Edit: in fact, to make this even more messed up - Washington state had a domestic partnership law, then got rid of it. So now there is a giant legal grey area where the courts have basically said "we know it when we see it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some quick stats on marriage in a cynical thread:

1) Only 40% of marriages end in divorce these days.

2) Divorced people are much more likely to divorce multiple times, so first marriage success rate is closer to 75%.

3) In job cross splits, software developers have much lower divorce rates than the general pop.

As an unmarried HN reader, you probably have a an 80% chance of lifelong marriage.

<comment><USER3> Just anecdotal evidence, but during my divorce 2 other SW engineers I know also got divorced and another one asked me for advice on how to get it started. I know lots of SW guys with stories of horrible divorces and insane legal bills which took decades to pay off. Maybe it's because I'm in Southern California where the divorce rate is something like 75%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is the kind of thing everyone _should_ think through post- highschool/college/in their 20s -- glad someone's written it out. I would love another guide/write-up like this for friendship -- it seems like people my age (late 20s/early 30s) and younger are in this world where "friendship" means so little (as used by Facebook) and yet so much (as used by your actual friends who you make efforts to see and enjoy spending time with).

Finding people that have actively thought through many of life's quandaries (should you eat meat? how should governments be run? what do you want out of life?) and have formed opinions backed by mostly fact but who are ready to change in the presence of new data is so difficult though. I have a hunch I'm not looking in the right places but even in my late 20s I run into so many people who just haven't thought about most of the important shit and are just looking to glob onto someone for the rest of their life. Like sure, listening to music and digesting memes is great, but if you can't align or at least come to reasoned disagreement with your partner on shit that really matters, what is everyone doing.

</comment><comment><USER21> > I'm not an expert on this, nor am I married—but I've read a lot about it

Ooookaaaay.... Sorry, but you have lost what little credibility you might have had right there.

<comment><USER22> That's where I stopped reading, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just marry someone who a) deals with their shit and b) doesn't drive you crazy.

If you're not sure your love interest is doing "a", find a mouthy asshole you trust and mention things about your relationship to them. If they don't convincingly criticize your love interest (or you) then you're probably ok to get married.

If you don't yet know what drives you crazy: stop. You are too young to get married.</comment>


µBlock – An efficient blocker for Chromium-based browsers. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#%C2%B5block-for-chromium

<comment><USER2> Author here (I was planning to submit myself a "Show HN" but oh well.) I ran benchmarks to compare against other popular blockers:

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#benchmark](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#benchmark)

</comment><comment><USER3> A lean HTTP Switchboard fork, very welcome :)

</comment><comment><USER4> oh its an adblocker.</comment>


Show HN: Mailswipe, the tinder for emails – IMAP / Gmail  (iOS and Android ßeta) - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mailswipe/id942392819

<comment><AUTHOR> Android ß available on the play store here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.teammate.ma...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.teammate.mailswipe)

All feedbacks (pros and cons) are welcome for both version!</comment>


Om Next – David Nolen [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByNs9TG30E8& <comment><USER3> Quite amazing. This talk is not just about Om Next - its also about ClojureScript.next. Featuring:

      1. AMD, CommonJS, ES6 module support
      2. CLJS in CLJS (yup, that works - including the standalone nodejs based REPL)

Thise in combination are especially huge.

With core.typed being an option as well (once your system starts growing and the design solidifies) looks like the clojure ecosystem is really positioned to be one of the technically strongest available for web development.

And of course, replacing that awkward REST mess seems painfully obvious now (except for duplicated data which seems like something that might yet need solving). Hindsight is 20/20

<comment><USER4> Does 1) mean we can make use of advanced optimizations (like dead code elimination) on libraries written in one of these formats without any additional configuration?

If so, that would resolve what I consider to be one of the biggest barriers for CLJS/JS interop.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's what swannodette said in the talk. Skip to 33 minutes, or see [https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/wiki/Google- Summer-...](https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/wiki/Google-Summer-of- Code-2015) and the blog posts at [https://mneise.github.io](https://mneise.github.io)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Swannodette never disappoints. If you're interested in this approach, you should check out re-frame: [https://github.com/Day8/re- frame](https://github.com/Day8/re-frame). The README is a great resource, regardless of whether or not you intend to use the framework.

<comment><USER6> And for anyone who'd like to jump right in:

[https://github.com/Day8/re-frame-template](https://github.com/Day8/re-frame- template)

Includes Figwheel, and (optionally) Secretary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He mentions getting rid of cursors, but I'm not clear how he would replace the modification side of cursors. i.e. I can see how a system like he describes supports nicely querying data, how do it help a component that needs to trigger modifying data?

<comment><USER6> I imagine you would trigger something like a datomic transaction, which returns a new version of the database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > 41:15

Pretty sure Apple won't approve of being able to update iOS apps outside of their regular release cycle. If they don't care, I should be doing that now with my HTML5 app.

<comment><USER8> Actually it may be fine, if it falls under this exception:

      3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework, provided that such scripts and code do not change the primary purpose of the Application by providing features or functionality that are inconsistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application as submitted to the App Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clojurescript in Clojurescript is demoed in the last 5-6 minutes of the video. I think this is an awesome way to ship a repl with applications.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, that was a great talk.

I really want to try out Om Next. I've been building a bunch of stuff in Om lately and the Falcor/Relay/GraphQL/Om Next stuff is really going to be great to have at my disposal.

The clojurescript compiling clojurescript stuff looks great too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why does the idea of having frontend guys directly query the db without any kind of interface scares me ?

Seems like going the nosql to sql route once again( nosql is great until you realize query language and schema constraints are actually a good thing).

Having some kind of pipe structure and interface between your db and your GUI that can be used as a contract,or as an intermediate level to do data rearranging, and can be documented, without having to know all the db schema internals really seems like a sound approach. Now of course some people tackling very special problems may reach the limits of such an approach, yet i hope it won't become mainstream too soon.

<comment><USER4> > Why does the idea of having frontend guys directly query the db without any > kind of interface scares me ?

I don't think giving frontend a direct path to the db is what the talk is advocating.

You still need a backend in front of the db, even in the special case of using Datomic as the db, to handle things like auth. The difference seems to be that instead of having the backend serve a messy web of REST endpoints for the clients to consume and compose individually, the backend would serve a single endpoint that can speak this new query language. The client can then declaratively request exactly the data it needs in the shape that it needs it in, eliminating an overwhelming majority of network related boilerplate on both the backend and client.

I'm personally extremely excited to see this become mainstream. So much of the front-end code I write on a day-to-day basis involves fetching data from various endpoints and shaping it into a logical structure for my components to display. It's tedious work that provides no intrinsic value. I can't wait to not have to write any more of that and focus my time on solving actual problems.

<comment><USER12> How does caching work in this scenario? Caching REST responses is fairly straightforward but caching arbitrarily complex queries to a single endpoint seems much more difficult.

Sorry if he answers this in his talk. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.

<comment><USER13> One solution is to not cache queries, but cache data, as in the case with Datomic.

<comment><USER14> Of course then you're sacrificing some of the authentication, potentially.

<comment><USER15> It's worthwhile watching Nubank's talk on how they manage these things with Datomic on the backend [0] - providing a "complete" (filtered) database to the client, http caches for queries based on tx-time, and syncing mobiles data via transactions-since. Takes care of said concerns nicely - I'm just implementing this stuff today however, so I'm not sure how well it'll work in practice.

[0] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lm3K8zVOdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lm3K8zVOdY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, in principle I like everything with David's new approach... the main question I have is "How well do 'recursive queries' work when the data relationships between my components is really complex?" I think I will only be able to answer that question by trying this approach myself and seeing how it performs for my needs.

(Another question is: "How am I going to use this when my server's database is a blockchain and not a conventional database [1] like datomic?" but I know that's a niche question I'll have to figure out for myself.)

[1] Just kidding (mostly)

<comment><USER3> Thats indeed something that doesn't seem to be discussed much, even if you look at graphql's presentation - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQLzZf34FJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQLzZf34FJ8) there seems to be a lot of redundancy when "my friends including their events" is fetched.

I imagine that a scheme based on an UUID and deduplication would work - <USER2> constructing the response an object repository is kept and if an object with the same uuid appears twice its replaced with a reference to them.

Going against the "don't extend JSON" best practice, that would be:

      {
        "friends": [{
          "name": "Name",
          "events": [#uuid1, #uuid2]
        }, {
          "name": "Another name",
          "events": [#uuid1, #uuid2]
        }],
      }
      #{
        "uuid1": {"name": "MyEvent", "description": "..."},
        "uuid2": {"name": "OtherEvent", "description": "..."},
      }

And it can support cyclic references too, as a bonus. Ignoring best practices is so... liberating.

Ultimately this is just compression though. Its possible that gzip will be quite sufficient for most cases.

<comment><USER16> Transit [1] can do this for you.

[1] [https://github.com/cognitect/transit- format](https://github.com/cognitect/transit-format)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am skeptical about "component knows what data it needs". For example, I have a component with two combo boxes: in the first combo box I select a country and the second combo box is filled with cities of that country.

Now I need a similar thing: in one combo box I choose car brand, and the second combo box is filled with models of that brand. Can I reuse my existing component? If the component knows what data it displays, it can not be used to display different data.

<comment><USER18> If you need a generic component, then make a generic component. No one is forcing you to specify dependencies in all of your components.

<comment><USER17> OK :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I personally built my entire framework on top of Om, so always good to hear what David has to say:

[https://github.com/zubairq/coils](https://github.com/zubairq/coils)

</comment><comment><USER20> I guess the Gregor Kiczales slides are here: [http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~gregor/papers/kiczales- oopsla-07-for-v...](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~gregor/papers/kiczales- oopsla-07-for-viewing.pdf) (page 16)

</comment><comment><USER21> I was thinking about this the other day and the web just magically solved all my thoughts and wrapped it up into a perfect video.

Really excited about building my project in this (and learning clojure and Om Next).

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there a description of how react avoids event listeners? How does it observe changes in a model? I've never heard that aspect associated with react before.

<comment><USER23> It doesn't avoid them. You listen to events, and then you change your model. Based on new model view is rendered using the code you provide (one way rendering - model to code). Then React compares the two instances of rendered view (before the event and after) and renders the changes if there are any.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Has anyone an idea how pagination would work/look like with the presented query syntax?</comment>


Ask HN: Which of your original ideas was already implemented by someone else? - <AUTHOR> More than once I thought i head an awesome original idea for a product, and in the end it existence already. I prototyped something like airconsole, and a password manager that generates password by hashing the site domain predictably.. what were your ideas that happened to already exist? <comment><USER2> I did a lot of work on things like stitching aerial photos and generating 3D models of cities in the early 2000s. Then Keyhole/Google Earth came along around 2004 and mooted all of it. Within a few years, Google and Microsoft had achieved all of my vision. All the 3D earth products have now far surpassed my wildest imaginings.

Then I did a lot of thinking and prototyping around grammar-based procedural generation. I'd noticed that all the research on this stopped at simplistic academic models. But I'd realized that _all_ industrial design is intensely grammatical, so why couldn't I easily whip up a 3D model of a toilet or the Pixar lamp with just a sentence? Well, a few years ago a professional architect turned programmer noticed this too, and turned that dull academic research into a sophisticated and expensive Unity asset: [http://www.archimatix.com/gallery](http://www.archimatix.com/gallery)

I worked on a GPU accelerated OS shell in 2003, before Vista did it. Mine was actually 3D though, which never caught on.

I'm working on a thing right now that I believe will be ubiquitous in games and especially VR. I've scoured the web and haven't found a single word written about it. It's sufficiently ahead of its time that although I have a very clear understanding of it, and have no trouble saying a lot of words about it, it's very hard to communicate the value to others. And no I'm not telling what it is, unless you're an angel investor :D

</comment><comment><USER3> Once I had the idea to hide information inside images using the least significant bit, all made sense in my head, got home a searched for something similar and discovered it was a well-known steganography technique.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had an idea to use the gmail API to create reminders based on a user's inbox. Google implemented it before I attempted it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I came up with the idea of combining roof shingles with solar panels back in 2012. Now here we are in 2018 and Tesla is making it happen.</comment>


Guess What? Everyone Was Wrong About Tesla - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2018/10/28/guess-what-everyone-was-wrong-about-tesla <comment><USER2> Current talk is that Musk's (Boring) LA Tunnel project is mostly hypeware, that he cannot hold the promised date at all. Opening should be December 10. That should have been the 2 mile Hawthorne along Interstate 405 to Westwood segment, but it looks like it's just a short 3/4 mile segment to the Dodgers stadium. [https://electrek.co/2018/10/22/elon-musk-boring-company- laun...](https://electrek.co/2018/10/22/elon-musk-boring-company-launch- tunnel-december/)

Will see how that will affect Tesla and SpaceX.</comment>


Ask HN: How do we get something we can show on our YC application? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys. We're trying to start a company with an idea we think is promising, a developer-friendly payment gateway for Latin America. We already have 13 clients who have said, in a written document, they're willing to pay for our product. Our landing page was up for 3 weeks gathering emails with AdWords and we got around 380 applications.<p>The problem is that we require some "serious" capital to start and we can't bootstrap it. I say "serious" because we can't bootstrap it ourselves, and due to the nature of the product, we'd need to hire some extra developers, travel expenses to meet with banks all over the continent, etc. We don't see how we can create a functional demo of the app., and we don't think a bunch of static screen captures would be enticing to our users. What do you think we could do to get something resembling a demo or to something we can show in our YC application? <comment><USER2> I'm not related to YC in any way, but why would they take you and tie you down in the Valley when you have so much running around left to do? On the other hand, they might call the banks for you and get you in where you couldn't have. But again you're focusing on Latin America, so I am not sure how much pull they have in that region.

On one hand it seems like you have a very strong application, on the other hand I see them passing on you by saying "they need some more time out there in the wild, we will take them in the next cycle or the one after."

However, they have stated in the past they don't care that much for ideas, they invest in people not any other thing, so I guess if you show to them that you're the right team for this project then they might talk to you.

Either way, nothing is the end, except death or disease, and you seem to be onto something great, so use phones and emails when you can't travel, or just work locally. Grow organically by narrowing your scope and then fueling growth with the cash flows. Easier said than done, I know.

Good luck my friends!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words abbasmehdi! To move forward we need:

1) Money (to hire lawyers and to get access to the different banking systems). 2) Connections (to be heard within the big companies).

We think an incubator can provide both of those.

We have relevant experience in this specific business and we think we're pretty nice people so we hope that gets us noticed.

Thanks again for the input, we really appreciate it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why just Latin America. I'm in Canada and I'm tired of using Paypal as the most developer friendly gateway. WePay is only for USA, BrainTree also and Stripe is still in beta and will be focused on USA. If you could develop something like that for Canada I guess you will have hundreds of developers interested. Beside that you can exclude the complexity of taking many countries and banks.

<comment><USER4> This X 1000. When we decided to take NextProof from a US-only service to international, it was impossible to find a multi-currency merchant that allowed third-party payment aggregation. PayPal was out only choice that didn't require us keeping a physical office in Australia/Europe.

If you can crack that for just a dozen or so Latin American markets + US/Canada, you'd be huge.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Needless to say, if you're in Latin America and you can't find a payment gateway to cover your weekend project or your new startup, we'd love to talk to you. Feel free to write me at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> How much capital do you need (roughly) ?

If you've got customers willing to pay for it why not get a loan/investment from them ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We were thinking of something between 30k and 60k.

Most of our prospective clients are either startups or developers who make from $300-$4000 monthly on their webapps. We don't think they're the right audience to provide the initial funds :)

<comment><USER5> Have you considered applying to Startup Chile ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We did, sadly their conditions on business travels and subcontracting are a bit more strict than what we're looking for. We left it as a last option and haven't discarded it yet, but right now we're looking for a bit more freedom.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cutting a Square Cake - <AUTHOR> http://datagenetics.com/blog/january82019/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> For extra credit: show how this can be done with a DNN.</comment>


Emoji is dragging us back to the dark ages – and all we can do is smile - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/may/27/emoji-language-dragging-us-back-to-the-dark-ages-yellow-smiley-face

<comment><USER2> > 72% of 18- to 25-year-olds find it easier to express their feelings in emoji > pictures than through the written word, according to a survey for Talk Talk > mobile.

This says it all. Emojis are good for communicating feelings/emotions succinctly and narrowly, and in pretty run-of-the-mill conversation. I.e. they're used to quickly get something across like 'that makes me happy' or 'I'm angry about that' without having to write the words each time, which frankly would be awkward and cumbersome. I suppose the in-person analog is supplementing speech with body language and facial expression.

I'm fairly sure UX studies have shown for example that ratings systems are better used when people can rate their feelings toward something via facial expressions (frown -> smile) than numbers. It's more intuitive and can serve as a supplement for extra, more detailed, written review information. From this perspective things like emojis actually augment and advance the power of a language, rather than being a 'step back'.

In any case, they are _absolutely not_ useful for, or intended for, general language/communication and I'm pretty surprised that the author seems to be implying this, or that anyone could think this.</comment>


Ask HN: can I borrow (or buy?) your Google Glass for a pitch? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
I'm attending an entrepreneurship program here in the Valley called Draper University (http://draperuniversity.com/) and we have a pitch day June 6th.
While here I've developed software to run on Google Glass as my business that I'd like to pitch. However, I do not own a pair myself. I would like to borrow (or buy) your pair so that I can port my existing code in time for my pitch day.
My background: electrical and computer engineering, Android dev, web dev. Favorite project: Unix-like OS in C. Aged 21. Canadian if it matters.
What can I offer you: I'd love to help hack on your side project(s) for a few days! Open to other creative ideas.
Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com
Thanks <comment><USER3> Isn't lending/selling a Glass against it's terms of use?

[http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/04/google...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/04/google-may-remotely-deactivate-glass-if-you-sell-it-or- lend-to-a-friend/)

<comment><USER4> If I'd pay $1k for something I no longer need and someone want to buy it - <USER2> much TOS can hold me from selling it?

TOS issuer might not be happy about it, but besides that TOS is as important to me as a softness of a paper it's printed on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess in the end it should not cost more than an Ipad: [http://buy-google- glass.com](http://buy-google-glass.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> Surely Tim Draper can hook you up. And shouldn't you have asked sooner?</comment>


Improvements Coming to the Google Analytics Desktop UI - <AUTHOR> https://analytics.googleblog.com/2016/10/improvements-coming-to-google-analytics.html <comment> angry-hacker I hope they tune out from their material UI, on smaller screens there is just way to too much space wasted. Especially on custom boards.</comment>


STM in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/the_newinwheezy_game:_STM/

<comment><USER2> I do think this example [http://computationalthoughts.blogspot.se/2008/03/some- exampl...](http://computationalthoughts.blogspot.se/2008/03/some-examples-of- software-transactional.html) is a lot better than the one in the article.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a complete Haskell noob, I'm wondering about the push in this snippet:

      startDownload = do
        file <- atomically $ do
            f <- getQueuedFile
            push f currentDownLoads
            return f
        startDownloadThread file

How can that push be non-side-effecting and still do something sensible? If the snippet is replayed, won't multiple pushes happen? This may be a question only joeyh can answer, if this is something specific to his code base...

Naively, I would write something like (again, my Haskell not so good):

      startDownload = do
        file <- atomically $ getQueuedFile
        push f currentDownLoads
        startDownloadThread file

<comment><USER4> push doesn't have to be non-side-effecting. You are allowed to modify shared state, as long as it is a TVar (shared memory that supports transactions).

<comment><USER3> Right, of course. Thank you. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Chinese forces prepare to use 'giant fork' on Hong Kong protesters - <AUTHOR> https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/terrifying-giant-fork-chinese-forces-18947059?bustcache=1565964839768 <comment><USER2> Politics aside. While seeming scary, this kind of device is actually widely deployed in China, especially in schools. It proves to be very effective for police use:

1\. Dull tipped, won't penetrate bodies. 2\. While in use, no direct body contact between you and the other. 3\. Effective, since human doesn't really have much strength in the chest / stomach area.

I don't think Mirror chose a good picture for the use, this one's probably better: [http://news.china.com.cn/txt/2010-04/30/content_19937607.htm](http://news.china.com.cn/txt/2010-04/30/content_19937607.htm)

Honestly better than guns and more effective than shields.

<comment><USER3> People pinned down by these things could have their heads slammed against pavement.

<comment><USER4> The police can slam your head against the pavement just fine without tools, and in any case usually carry sticks that can achieve much the same effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >giant fork

Not a man catcher?

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

<comment><USER6> sasumata

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Potential injuries include burns, puncture wounds and welts

yet

> repeatedly do this without long-lasting identifiable physical traces, makes > them a favoured tool of torture

if i understand this correctly it seems that the risks are either pretty low or the artifacts don't last very long.

anyway, is the mechanism similar to e.g. Taser? if so seems much ado about nothing here, American cops have been getting off on using those for decades

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if these might be safer than e.g. American crowd control tools.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the bigger news is that China state media actually mentioned Tianamen Square yesterday and how the response to Hong Kong won't be a repeat because they have better tools now

and this is the tool?

what a twist!</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a good library for allowing users to build their own forms? - <AUTHOR> In our latest web based project we are looking to allow the users to create their own forms via the browser. Is there a decent javascript library that we can use? <comment><USER2> dobtco's formbuilder is what we used: [https://github.com/dobtco/formbuilder](https://github.com/dobtco/formbuilder)

It might take some tweaking to make it work for your use case, but it's a start. The nice thing is it outputs JSON, which you can parse when you're rendering the resulting form.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! will have a go at it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What libraries have already been considered?

Why weren't they used?

<comment><AUTHOR> We haven't looked at any libraries yet. We are at the very early stages but will be investing some time looking at what is available and I will update the thread</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is a survey anonymous if an entity can easily identify the person? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently working at an IT school department. We have a intranet where all students and teachers are registered and manage the school bureaucracies.
By law, at the end of the year, we have to ask everyone for feedback, so we can improve things. This survey is advertised as anonymous.
To make sure everyone has answered, the system creates a simple relationship in a database, between the person (identified with the school number) and their answers.
After that, our team exports this data and hands over to a person to interpret it.
I don't think this is anonymous, but this person says it is, because "I won't identify" and "no one else in the public can identify it".
Is that so? <comment><USER2> It's not anonymous; even if the intended user can't identify anyone, the people above them can (as they have access to the infrastructure). It would be a bit different if the survey was hosted on a neutral third-party's infrastructure. Furthermore the simple fact that the data exists means it can leak by accident later on down the line and this would apply to both in-house and third-party surveys.</comment>


A backlash against the herbicide Dicamba - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/this-miracle-weed-killer-was-supposed-to-save-farms-instead-its-devastating-them/2017/08/29/33a21a56-88e3-11e7-961d-2f373b3977ee_story.html <comment><USER2> This situation is a result of small farm consolidation and commoditization imho.

My grandfather was a small farmer.

He farmed about 120 acres in his retirement when I knew him and it was enough to keep his family well fed and well funded until the day he died.

He knew everybody in town. He went to all the farm shows. He bought the best animal breeds he could find and had a whole host of different animals, fruits, vegetables and legumes living happily on his farm at any given time.

Cows, chickens, ducks, wheat, peaches, onions, etc.

I remember he used to feed ground up eggshells to his chickens because he swore it made the strongest egg shells which could be shipped into town unscathed.

He fertilized his fields with manure.

And when a crop was lost to locusts... he didn't spray the entire field with insecticide.

He invited me out into the crops with a torch and we burnt it all down to the ground in order to kill off their eggs.

He lived where he farmed.

I couldn't imagine him ever agreeing to use the world's most dangerous herbicide in order to grow a crop that did not want to be grown where his farm was located.

What would his neighbours think? Where would his livelihood come from if he somehow poisoned his land?

Nowadays when most farms are 10,000+ acres in size and overseen by absentee landlords... I'm not surprised in the slightest that they are tossing around dangerous chemicals like candy without a care in the world.

Shame on them. And RIP Grandpa ;)

<comment><USER3> The techniques your grandfather was using would have (and likely did) leave him at a terrible competitive disadvantage when trying to compete with those megafarms growing the same crops.

It's good to remember the past, but don't sugarcoat things either. Modern techniques grow more food, more cheaply, with lower economic footprint, less land used per output, less energy spent per calorie, etc...

And sometimes they mess up and poison soybeans, which sucks. But feeding chickens eggshells isn't the fix you want.

<comment><USER2> >Modern techniques grow more food, more cheaply, with lower economic footprint, less land used per output, less energy spent per calorie, etc...

Right now, that is true.

But what happens when Dicamba stops working?

What happens when the next Dicamba stops working?

We will be forced to return to the old ways of farming eventually whether we like it or not.

And by old ways I'm talking about polyculture and basically just growing what's right for your region.

<comment><USER4> > Right now that is true

It isn't though.

> lower economic footprint, less land used per output, less energy spent per > calorie

Small farms are actually a lot more efficient than large farms in everything but man-hours.

Think about it like this: If you had a 10 meters by 10 meters garden vs someone who had a 1km x 1km field. You would make sure every square cm in your garden is irrigated properly, that no insects are munching on your plants and each plant has the right amount of space and correct soil treatment for maximum yield. On a large farm, you cannot possibly do that. The total yield is a lot higher but the plants are not as healthy and are not living under optimal conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of you on here from previous comments know that I spent 20+ years as a fertilizer agronomist before changing careers.

Drift is the scariest thing out there to a commercial applicator. We had well trained drivers, took them out of the field when the winds came up. But there's pressure to spray all the fields in a 4-5 week window and you'd always lose days to rain. We didn't have drift cases every year but it was impossible to avoid.

I got burned early with Dicamba and refused to spray it under any conditions when soybeans or other susceptible crops were out of the ground nearby.

Heard about its new formulation and talked with a buddy about it. He said that they'd licked the problems with drift. I said have you seen it demonstrated in fields in your area? He said no, I said have you ever had a chemical rep stretch the truth about the capabilities of a new formulation? We had a good mutual laugh about that one.

This was a preventable tragedy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Monsanto has waged war against independent farmers for years. If your neighbor planted Monsanto seeds and they germinated into your crop, Monsanto sues you for stealing their IP. They now own your crops because your crops contain their intellectual property.

This is not a joke. Monsanto has sued hundreds and hundreds of farmers and driven them out of business.

Farmers who have worked hard to keep Monsanto's IP out of their fields are at a serious disadvantage in crop yields.

But now there's a new twist. It isn't pollen and germination agents drifting on the wind this time. It's deadly herbicide. This time, the contamination doesn't benefit the neighbors; it kills them. Well, first it kills their crops. If only those hundreds of farmers were still around to turn the tables on Monsanto. Too bad there aren't hundreds and hundreds of family farms that could each take a multi-million dollar chunk out of Monsanto.

Maybe we can take advantage of this moment to adjust the rules. If your intellectual property blows through the wind and contaminates your neighbors, you should be liable, not them. That should be true whether the IP kills their crops or whether it increases their crop yields. In all cases, they should not be liable--you should.

<comment><USER7> > If your intellectual property blows through the wind and contaminates your > neighbors, you should be liable, not them.

More importantly, seeds should not be considered as intellectual property. In particular, it's ridiculous that you are not allowed to replant seeds from your harvest.

<comment><USER8> >More importantly, seeds should not be considered as intellectual property

why? Most farmers do not replant their seeds (wouldn't work because the seeds are hybrids). do you oppose patenting lifeforms on principle?

<comment><USER7> > Most farmers do not replant their seeds

And many do, for seeds where it works.

> do you oppose patenting lifeforms on principle?

I oppose applying patents in a way that violates a "first sale doctrine" kind of thing. That is, once you have sold me seeds, they should be _my_ property, and you should not have a say in how I use them. (Edited to add: Even if, yes, in a certain deliberately technical sense, the DNA in those seeds amounts to "derivative works" or "copies" of the DNA contained in what you sold me.)

If that makes patents on lifeforms worthless, that's fine with me. But no, "no patents on lifeforms" is not the principle I start from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Like most problems at this scale, this is a complex issue with many causes.

First off, Dicamba is not a new herbicide. We've had it for many years and knew the challenges associated with it. Most farms didn't need to use it because glyphosate (aka Roundup) was just as effective and far easier to use thanks to Monsanto developing the compatible GMO seed over 20 years ago. Since then, two things have changed: roundup is off patent (so Monsanto's profits are being challenged) and many common weeds have developed their own resistance to the glyphosate mode of action.

This leads Monsanto searching for a new product they can sell, and farmers searching for a more effective herbicide they can use. Pressure from both sides.

Monsanto and the other chemical companies have a powerful lobby. They told the EPA that this new formulation of Dicamba was less prone to drift and somehow got that through without much field testing.

The drift issue is a great thing for the chemical/seed companies if they can keep the product approved for use. Here is why: everyone will have to buy their GMO seed. Not even because they want to use the Dicamba product, but because the need the resistant seed as insurance against damage from their neighbor. There is a LOT of profit on the line for Monsanto and Dow/Dupont and unfortunately they have the ears of the regulators and they have great influence over the "independent" farmer lobby (American Farm Bureau).

I'd like to propose that consolidation of farms is not driving this issue, but rather consolidation of seed and chemical companies. We have a massive oligopoly in the seed and chemical industry and it is only getting worse as the "Big 6" are becoming the Big 3 through M&A (Bayer/Monsanto, Dow/Dupont, Syngenta/ChemChina).

About me: My family has been farming for 6 generations, my dad, uncle, and brother all actively farm and I am the founder of FarmLogs (YCW12).

<comment><USER10> I wonder if removing patent protection for herbicide resistance genes would slow this cycle down.

At the very least, it would make it more difficult for monsanto to sue organic farmers because monsanto gmos contaminated the organic crop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Summary: The herbicide dicamba can evaporate from where it was applied and drift to nearby fields harming plants that are not resistant to it.

This is causing a disaster for those farmers, and an ecological problem in general.

The manufacturer claims the new dicamba is less like to evaporate and the problems are from farmers using old stocks. Others don't agree. Lots of noise and wind, little hard data - (the lack of data it itself part of the problem).

<comment><USER10> 20M acres of dicamba soybeans have been planted, and it is well documented that drift damaged at least 4M acres of non-dicamba soybeans.

The 4M is a lower bound. It is also known that dicamba drift is killing other crops and wild plants, but there is no tracking of acrage for that other (also definately large) die off.

Also, the scope of damage spiked with the introduction of new dicamba.

How is this not hard evidence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This new dicamba formulation was quietly approved by the Obama administration right after the election.

[https://www.rt.com/usa/366812-epa-monsanto-dicamba- herbicide...](https://www.rt.com/usa/366812-epa-monsanto-dicamba-herbicide/)

</comment><comment><USER13> The best way to avoid weeds...

Hydroponics inside of greenhouses farmed by robots.

Ultimately that's just costly, but the shortest path to reducing that cost is more affordable energy.

Until we get to sealed greenhouses maybe exotic solutions like poison resistant Genetically Modified (Organisms?) should be avoided as food and industrial sources.

<comment> King-Aaron I'd rebuff your hydroponics idea, and add that it's worth considering aquaponics. You drastically reduce the amount of growth and nutrient additives, as the system becomes effectively a closed-loop with fish (and aerobic bacteria in the growing medium) creating the nutrients required.

Setup costs are generally large, but aquaponics scale very well.

<comment><USER14> So, if such a system is feasible and profitable (at scale), where are the farms that are killing off 'traditional' farms left and right?

I'll tell you where all the aquaponics farms are: in bankruptcy court, because very few of them have managed to figure out how to make this system work at a scale bigger than home production, and even less how to do so while still being economically competitive. It's not a coincidence that most tilapia production is not in aquaponics farms. And it's not like it hasn't been tried; people try to do so every day and have been doing so for 30. But saying "but aquaponics scale very well." just screams 'I read some blog posts about this so now I know they scale well', because the technology simply isn't there.

<comment> King-Aaron I've been running aquaponics on a hobby farm scale for more than a few years now, but thanks.

<comment><USER14> Also, it's unlikely anyone will ever still see this, but coincidentally this research paper came out a few days ago about this exact issue: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144860917...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144860917300821) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related story:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=531272125)

</comment><comment><USER16> I hate headlines like this.

Remember when headlines used to be informative rather than trying to get you to click?

<comment><USER17> What's dishonest about it?

<comment><USER18> It is also saving farms too:

Critics say that the approval process proceeded without adequate data and under enormous pressure from state agriculture departments, industry groups and farmers associations. Those groups said that farmers _desperately_ needed the new herbicide to control glyphosate-resistant weeds, which can take over fields and deprive soybeans of sunlight and nutrients

\--

So a more honest headline would be:

"This miracle weed killer is saving farms as well as sometime devastating their neighbors"

<comment><USER19> The primary focus of the post is the negative effects of the pesticide that was allowed through _because_ it was able to be pushed through the typical protocols. It's a breakdown of the very regulation meant to protect people.

> A better title would be: "This miracle weed killer is saving farms as well > as sometime devastating their neighbors"

Maybe the intent of cramming this pesticide to market was to save farms, but perhaps doing so was a bit hasty. Should we prioritize profits over healthcare and safety?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


James Allison Has Unfinished Business with Cancer (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604086/immunotherapy-pioneer-james-allison-has-unfinished-business-with-cancer/ <comment><USER2> I found out this week that my dad has metastatic cancer, with tumors up and down his spine. It's probably prostate cancer, will find out for sure on Monday.

The National Cancer Institute (cancer.gov) and the American Cancer Society (cancer.org) have _great_ websites. They don't presuppose you know anything about cancer (I didn't), but yet they get you into advanced topics pretty quickly. It will be interesting to see whether effective immunotherapy emerges for prostate cancer. There are lots of trials right now, but it's true--most of them seem like variations on a theme. Pembrolizumab has emerged as effective if PD-1 is expressed ([https://www.icr.ac.uk/news- archive/asco-2018-major-trial-is-...](https://www.icr.ac.uk/news- archive/asco-2018-major-trial-is-first-to-show-benefits-of-immunotherapy-in- some-men-with-prostate-cancer)). PARP inhibitors (e.g., olaparib) also seem promising for a subset with other mutations ([http://www.cancernetwork.com/prostate-cancer/synthetic- letha...](http://www.cancernetwork.com/prostate-cancer/synthetic-lethality- parp-inhibitors-prostate-cancer)). What's striking is the binary nature of immunotherapy. When the genes are expressed, they work; when not, they don't.

The large-scale "platform" testing that Allison is testing seems like a great application of data-driven science.

<comment><USER3> > What's striking is the binary nature of immunotherapy. When the genes are > expressed, they work; when not, they don't.

Antibodies and the hypervariable regions of the T cell apparatus are the van der Waals equivalent of a socket wrench: it either fits or it doesn't. That's what makes them so attractive for drug development. We can design the code, insert it into a bacterium or phage and then make as many socket wrenches as we want using little more than the principles and equipment used for brewimg beer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a really nice article

If you are a tech / software engineering person, and have any sort of inclination towards biology or medicine, there are some amazing opportunities in biotech for smart and energetic people.

Most of the big pharma companies today -- Roche, Merck, Pfizer, Etc -- have been around for over 100 years. They are still by far the dominant groups in pharma. It's like if GE and IBM were still the dominant tech companies, because they bought Google / FB / Apple / Amazon before they got big, then ruined them

Their R&D models have not evolved for decades, and they have basically squeezed all possible juice out of those processes. Their return on R&D investment is approaching 0, and they are buying startups to replenish their dying pipelines

Pharma companies spend over $200B on R&D per year, and in 10-15 years I bet a lot of that R&D will be replaced by startups that are founded today

VCs (who start most biotech companies in house) have developed some pretty effective methods for improving R&D productivity, but the scale is orders of magnitude lower than big pharma. The main constraint is talent

Beyond the high level economic opportunity, there are tons of interesting engineering problems to work on -- although you really need to do the work to understand basic biology. There are tens : hundreds of thousands of smart young biomedical engineers working in academia, but not as many working on solving engineering problems related to translational research (although many are) -- ie developing medicines and bringing them to market. These are brilliant people with biology and engineering chops, learn from them and ask what software / data bottlenecks they are facing

I am a non-scientist but have been working in early stage biotech my whole career. If you want to learn about biology, I'd suggest you 1) read a lot of papers on fields you are interested in, even if you only understand 5% of it, 2) look up every term you don't know, and 3) talk to as many scientists as you can about the papers you read. I find this gives you better yield of useful info per unit time than reading textbooks, of course this will vary based on your learning style. Sort of akin to learning to code by reading a textbook vs just diving into a project -- personal preference to an extent

As a forcing function, try investing in early stage biotech stocks (though invest like you would in bitcoin -- only invest what you can afford to lose and expect a wild ride). Putting your money on the line will incentivize you to learn fast. When I talk to scientists about the non-scientists they know who understand biology well, many work in biotech finance

I'd also really encourage you to find a friend who works in a wet lab, and just follow their work real-time on a particular experiment. Ask them to describe the design in detail and rationale for each choice. Then follow up with them every week to see how the experiment is going, what they did, what went wrong. This is the closest you can get to troubleshooting biology without access to a wet lab, and it is a huge part of what scientists do</comment>


How to use Elm at work - <AUTHOR> http://elm-lang.org/blog/how-to-use-elm-at-work <comment><USER2> For those unfamiliar with elm:

I would sum it up as:

-) a stripped down, simplified version of Haskell

-) with a good concept for side effects

-) that compiles to Javascript

-) gearded towards writing type safe frontend code for the Browser

-) strongly nudging you towards a clean, well architected app structure (see 'the Elm Architecture').

I think it's on the tipping point right now:

if enough people jump on board, the language get's good documentation, and the library ecosystem grows, I see a great future for Elm.

Otherwise, it will dwindle away soon into the endless annals of forgotten languages.

<comment> david-given I really like the look of Elm --- to me it seems to hit the sweet spot of being enough like Haskell to be awesome while also being understandable by humans. It also fixes some of the rougher edges of the Haskell syntax; I vastly prefer Elm's record syntax to Haskell's, for example, which apart from being much cleaner and obvious also avoids some of the more common Haskell namespace traps.

The one piece I'm really looking for is server-side Elm, though. I've love the ability to write both my client and my server in Elm. I know there are some projects to allow Elm via node.js but they're still quite rough.

(Is anyone looking into transpiling Elm to Standard ML, so that it can be compiled to fast native code with MLton? Because that'd be, like, really cool.)

<comment><USER3> Why not just use Haskell for the backend? It's really not much harder than Elm, and it's considerably more flexible and general. Of course, it's lazy, not strict, and you're totally right that records in Haskell suck. But my understanding is that strictness for Elm was chosen mainly to overcome issues with FRP, which it's now abandoned. So I'm not sure if that difference matters anymore.

<comment> david-given There's several reasons, one of the simplest (but not the most trivial) being that I can't share code between the client and the server. For example, data validation. I did a tonne of programming on GWT back in the day, and this was something it actually did well.

Most of the other reasons boil down to Haskell not being Elm --- they work in different ways and solve problems differently. There's always going to be impedance mismatch between the two. (Do I solve this problem with monads or with state-mutation functions?) This is going to use up valuable problem- solving bandwidth which I'd rather spend making the project more awesome.

<comment><USER4> > Haskell is not Elm

A service isn't a client though. They work in different ways and solve problems differently

<comment><USER5> They also, sometimes, solve the same problem. (Cited example: data validation)

There's value in sharing code between client and server. It may not outway the costs, but there's definitely value in doing so.

<comment><USER4> Yes true. There is the option of ghcjs on the front end, so you can do both in Haskell. And ghcjs is very close to cbc. I think it even emulates the threading model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The docs / language manual is emberassingly sparse right now.

The Elm dev(s?) really need to fix the Architecture Tutorial and write a proper language handbook.

Right now, the bad docs are pretty off-putting to someone coming to the language.

It's a shame, really, because I think Elm is great.

<comment><AUTHOR> While it's a WIP right now, Evan has been writing [http://guide.elm- lang.org/](http://guide.elm-lang.org/)

I wish Evan allowed others to contribute to the official documentation. Right now Elm feels more like Evan's personal project than a project that is owned by the community.

Other then that, the community has done a good job of writing up documentation, and Richard Feldman is working on a proper book.

<comment><USER6> That is the guide that helped me start, but is a long way to go until your first elm-only app. IMO the biggest weakness in the elm package ecosphere is that there is no proper solution to do url routing.

While elm-lang/navigation and evancz/url-parser get you 80% there, the remaining 20% cause a lot of pain.

I am very optimistic that in the coming months this situation is going to improve tremendously. If we all share more knowledge, tutorials, guides, the whole community will win!

<comment><USER7> Yes, I have not found a way to do url pasting in a way that looks clean and simple. It's the main thing keeping me from building big projects with Elm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While I love Elm, after the recent release that replaced Signals, it's going to take a long time for me to bet anything with money on it. My toy app didn't have many dependencies, but when _so much_ breaks on upgrading the runtime it's a hard sell.

(Not to disparage the change or the work behind it! I think it was the right call, and again, love the language and community. Just expressing, after the last experience, that I'll wait until 1.0 since the language is still undergoing drastic changes)

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this basically the same strategy every challenger technology takes to replacing an incumbent one? The problem is your organization has to be willing to bet on Elm as a tool. What does the org do if you leave, get sick, or are terminated? In many ways choosing niche technologies with esoteric syntax or paradigms is like holding your organization hostage IMO.

Now does that mean nobody should ever choose a new language or other tool? No, but the cost of adoption needs to be evaluated. I use Kotlin where I work right now and I had to address the same questions initially. The argument for Kotlin was that it's not that different than Java and most good Java developers can pick it up easily OR Scala developers (though they might do that begrudgingly...).

</comment><comment><USER10> I still always think "Why don't they use mutt?" when a headline features elm.

<comment><USER11> For those of you who aren't getting the joke, this comment is not disparaging elm (I noticed a downvote earlier), it's a reference to later day terminal based email clients (two of which were 'elm' and 'mutt'). As in: [http://www.guckes.net/mutt/vs.elm.html](http://www.guckes.net/mutt/vs.elm.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shocked to see no mention of PureScript [0] on this thread, which is also a Haskell-like language that compiles to JavaScript.

PureScript has the notable advantages of generating mostly-readable JavaScript and working in node. [1]

[0] - [http://www.purescript.org/](http://www.purescript.org/) [1] – [http://try.purescript.org/](http://try.purescript.org/) – click "Show JS Output"

<comment><USER12> Here's an example of a PureScript React application:

[https://github.com/ethul/purescript-react- example/blob/maste...](https://github.com/ethul/purescript-react- example/blob/master/src/Main.purs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> By Elm you mean that language that changes all its core functionalities[1] every day? I've tried it some months ago, now when I was about to try it again in a new project, I discovered everything I had learn is useless.

[1]: [http://elm-lang.org/blog/farewell-to-frp](http://elm- lang.org/blog/farewell-to-frp)

<comment><USER14> The idea is really still the same, just the naming and structure changed a little bit. I'm not sure why he labeled it a farewell since the core concept is the same.

Either way, it's not like it changes every day - it just hasn't left beta yet. This change is definitely for the better, and its usually good to make big, beneficial changes as soon as possible rather than waiting for a 2.0 release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've never been a fan of doing front-end web programming because of my distaste for Javascript. Elm solved that problem for me. I like the syntax, type checking, and I've never had any code that passed the Elm compiler error out on me in production.

I also like the functional programming aspect of Elm, and the syntax is quite nice (similar to Haskell, only smaller and easier to learn).

I found this site useful for getting started with Elm 0.17: [https://www.gitbook.com/book/evancz/an-introduction-to- elm/d...](https://www.gitbook.com/book/evancz/an-introduction-to-elm/details)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish there was a way/documentation to embed in a vanilla js app ,like with IIFE or something instead of required the whole

</comment><comment><USER17> Is it me or is the bundle generated by Elm a bit too big? Maybe it's gotten better lately but I've always thought it overkill for simple apps.

<comment><USER18> I didn't remember this being too bad. I just checked with Elm 0.17 using the tutorial's [1] nesting/3-gif-pair.elm as the main. Size is 209k out of elm- make, 60k minified (closure compiler advanced), and 19k gzipped. I wouldn't use it for validating a form field but the size seems completely reasonable for a language runtime.

[1] [https://github.com/evancz/elm-architecture- tutorial](https://github.com/evancz/elm-architecture-tutorial)

<comment><USER17> I stand corrected—thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Towns want Verizon investigated for abandoning networks through neglect - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/towns-want-verizon-investigated-for-abandoning-networks-through-neglect/ <comment><USER2> One thing that I never see discussed whenever this type of topic comes up is how badly managed the traditional telecoms have been. My first job out of college back in the 80's was with Bell Labs and I worked on a task force to look at how to replace all the old electro-mechanical switching offices. The team I was on came up with the idea to use fiber optics to centralize to one or two main CO's for each state. Traditionally, the way the telecoms set up their networks is they have a CO (Central Office) in each neighborhood, the reason was because of the old analog technology from the early 1900's, the signal simply could not travel very far so there needed to be a station within 5 to 10 miles from the customer. Of course there is no need for that with fiber. Our plan would have saved billions, but they instead decided to just over lash the fiber to existing copper runs and replace the electro-mechanical switch with a digital office. It was a huge blunder in my view. If you look at which companies make money and which loose money in telecom, you can easily see the relationship, cable co's, CLEC's, mobile operators all use the centralized approach, one or two main offices per state and fiber to backhaul to those offices, the losers, the legacy telco's have 100's of CO's for each offices of the profitable companies. It is obvious to see in operational costs but they are completely blind to it. I would put this into the category of "Inventor's dilemma" type of problem.

<comment><USER3> There was a significant amount of flattening in the initial digital rollout, between SLC-96 and 5ESS remotes (GTD5 and DMS all have similar constructs) they did eliminate some very very small suburban offices. But there was not really another round of office consolidations after the last big round of mergers - with the replacement of the legacy TDM hardware with newer soft switches however this is happening.

This article however touches on an issue unique to Verizon, which is they're letting their copper plant rot in the field, as a way to force customers off of it (the railroads did much the same thing with passenger service in the early 50's) when Frontier has bought a former GTE/Verizon area, they usually have to hire a bunch more in the way of field techs, and spend millions on OSP upgrades and repairs - to the point that additional FiOS expansion in the immediate future is unfeasible due to cost.

The future is going to have a mix of wireline and wireless - and some of it will still be copper, I still believe the best architecture for the future is FTTN (fiber to the node) with a node every block (or 3-400 yards) allowing for sub 1000 ft loops. I still think this offers the best price/performance ratio.

<comment><USER2> Agreed, at this point the wired services are not profitable and they want to let the plant rot as you said. I agree, there needs to be a mix of fiber and wireless. The emphasis on wireless is because it is seen as being more profitable, however that is eroding quickly. Perhaps Google fiber and similar initiatives will spark some more activity around FTTH, FTTN.

<comment><USER3> I actually disagree that wireline services are not profitable, they are profitable, generate a very stable rate of return - but they are not generating the rate of return, and more importantly growth rates the market expects. Because of this, Verizon is trying to starve them to make its balance sheet look better - which in the short term works, but it will also hasten the demise of what is a somewhat lucrative revenue stream.

FTTN Makes the most sense in dense and semi dense urban and suburban areas - FTTH/P makes more sense in very rural places, I'm seeing movement on FTTP by CenturyLink, Frontier seems very interested in expanding its existing FTTH footprint, but is not doing so yet.

<comment><USER2> That's probably about right, the margins are just not what Wall Street demands these days.

<comment><USER3> because its so capital intensive, I don't think there is anything you can do to make the rate of return better either. That's the trouble, its a good stable business, but no longer in vogue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We have the same problem with Verizon in my Pennsylvania town. The copper wire is in such bad shape that it barely works for voice. We tried to use DSL, but our connection dropped whenever it rained. A technician told us it might be months before they could get a truck out. Customer service told us there was nothing wrong with our service. So we swallowed our pride and went back to Comcast, which chortled and said "we knew you'd come crawling back" while twirling its moustache.

<comment><USER5> Which town are you in? As it happens I own houses in both rural Northeast PA and South Jersey.

My Jersey house must be one of the lucky ones, because I've had FIOS there since about 2009. I can see why the towns are upset, they were promised fiber and now Verizon is bullshitting them with broadband cellular.

As for my PA house. I had asked a tech a few years ago when FIOS would be available here, and his response was "never". I didn't take him at his word, but I'm still getting weekly mailings from Verizon for their 'high speed DSL'.

<comment><USER4> State College -- we were never promised fiber, but the copper infrastructure is being allowed to rot nonetheless. For another PA data point, my in-laws have a house in Sullivan County where they have passable DSL with Frontier. Verizon is not available there at all.

<comment><USER6> Agreed - State College internet is dismally slow and unreliable for a town of ~60,000 college students, grads, and employees.

<comment><USER7> Curious UK resident

Does the College itself get a government/academic feed or do academic institutions have to rely on local commercial providers?

UK has janet and UKERNA.

[https://www.jisc.ac.uk/network](https://www.jisc.ac.uk/network)

[http://icannwiki.com/UKERNA](http://icannwiki.com/UKERNA)

To overcome the limitations of our domestic ADSL (6 km from exchange over solid aluminium wire voice circuit) I sometimes run queries over an RDP session to my College PC.

<comment><USER4> Somewhere in the middle, I believe. Penn State is big enough that it's basically its own ISP. They're not buying retail internet service from Comcast, but they do pay for bandwidth. Penn State is also an Internet2 node, but that's not what carries most of their traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For reference, a simple search for "Verizon" on ArsTechnica yields many similar articles.

On Verizon failing to meet its obligations to a city:

[http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/verizon-ordered- to-f...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/verizon-ordered-to-finish- fiber-build-that-it-promised-but-didnt-deliver/)

[http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/22-years-after- veriz...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/22-years-after-verizon- fiber-promise-millions-have-only-dsl-or-wireless/)

On Verizon letting their copper landline decay:

[http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/why- ve...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/why-verizon-is- trying-very-hard-to-force-fiber-on-its-customers/)

[http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/07/verizon-let-us- insta...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/07/verizon-let-us-install- fiber-or-well-shut-off-your-phone-service/)

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/verizon-union- see...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/verizon-union-seeks- government-investigation-into-network-deterioration/)

I really hate that they're the best service in my area, because I think they're scum. But then, I think _all_ the major telcos are scum.

<comment><USER9> > But then, I think all the major telcos are scum.

The solution is decentralization through mesh networks.

<comment><USER10> or we could you know, just have many ISP's instead of just a few big ones. Not that i'm against a different topology, but breaking them up is easier to ask for / implement.

<comment><USER11> The solution to this problem is extremely simple. Government runs the last mile fiber to _EVERY_ home. Then* pull it back to a central location and let ISPs compete for service there where the barrier to entry isn't billions of dollars.

 _REAL_ competition.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure I don't want all network connections going through government owned infrastructure.

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure the government can and does tap any line they want. If you think a private company owning the last mile somehow makes you more secure than if the government did, you're being extremely naive.

<comment><USER12> Well, I was less worried about the lines and more worried about the described centralized clearinghouses.

That said, although obviously the government _can_ show up with guns wherever they want and tap whatever they want, I suspect the legal situation would be much different if we're looking at government-owned infrastructure vs. privately owned infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am not trying to defend Verizon, but the goal of the FCC is to move off of copper lines. However the rules state that phone companies cannot do that if any service is interrupted which also apparently means if a customer doesn't want to move off of copper they don't have too. So which is it? Do we move people to fiber? There are many who hold on to copper lines because they have a central power source whereas fiber does not.

My other concern is, why should they pick up the tab for maintaining connections on an obsolete system if the new one will serve the area?

<comment><USER14> The problem is that they refuse to build out fiber in areas where they are unlikely to sell a lot of high-dollar, high-margin TV packages.

In rural and low-income areas, Verizon wants to let the old copper infrastructure rot, but they are uninterested in building out a real replacement. Instead, they push low-margin customers to grossly inferior wireless services.

<comment><USER15> 4G LTE that works without a single wire in your home, with no truck rolls, and throughout the USA is hardly "grossly inferior". Not preferred by some, definitely...but not grossly inferior.

<comment><USER16> 4G LTE isn't a valid choice for anyone who wants low-latency (online gamers, and it doesn't even have to be a "twitch" game), or anyone who balks at $205/month for 30gb (AT&T price)

<comment><USER17> Yes! Datacapped services are not a viable option. It'd be great to move to cell service as my phone gets faster download speeds than the fastest broadband available locally but I'd be capped at 10gb of data or be paying some outrageous amount for more and that's like 3-4 movies worth of space... ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The failure of Verizon to comply with its obligations… to provide fiber optic service throughout the State of New Jersey,"

What causes this obligation?

<comment><USER19> In the US, many telecoms operate as a legal monopoly. In exchange for a more or lesscaptive market, telecoms are legally obligated to maintain certain levels of service, among other things - such as rolling out upgrades.

This is supposed to provide a higher level of service to the consumer/citizen of the area that makes the agreement, while also meaning telecoms don't waste their massive upfront costs by having no customers. It's supposed to provide the same impetus to improve service as competition. In practice, you get this kind of nonsense.

<comment><USER20> It's not quite so simple. The whole point of the 1996 Telecom Act was to get rid of the legal monopolies and get the government out of the business of regulating them. What we have now are _incumbents_ not monopolists. However, in a low-margin industry (Verizon's wireline operating margin is 2-5%) with enormous capital costs, that's kind of a theoretical distinction.

<comment><USER21> ILEC's still have a monopoly on copper runs in most jurisdictions afaik.

<comment><USER20> They own the copper runs. But if you want to compete with them by building your own infrastructure you're allowed to do that. In most places, it's the power companies that own the utility lines, not the telcos. The problem is it's not worth anybody's while to do it to earn 3-5% return.

<comment><USER22> A monopoly doesn't require that other people be legally prohibited from competing (if they are, that's a _granted-by-law_ monopoly), it requires that you have sufficient dominance in some market as to exercise pricing power within that market.

<comment><USER20> "In the US, many telecoms operate as a legal monopoly."

I assumed we were talking about ^^^.

I'm not being pedantic about the distinction. If you're of a libertarian bent, there is a big difference between legal and de-facto monopolists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just remember that if you're ever in the position of having to press Verizon up against the wall, they're legally obligated to fix the outside plant, whether copper or fiber.

They're also obligated to provide you with non-VoIP (marketed under things like the Verizon Freedom package) phone service over fiber. The service is implemented much better, and since it's legally phone service, is obligated to meet a certain quality standard and be fixed in a certain length of time if it breaks.

In any case, it really does piss me off to see how far the telecom market has sunk. A lot of these companies have never gotten over the monopoly mindset, and really do nothing other than hold themselves back in every way possible. It's times like these, I kinda want to go buy one of these markets Verizon has effectively abandoned, and put the whole industry to shame.

<comment><USER24> > I kinda want to go buy one of these markets Verizon has effectively > abandoned, and put the whole industry to shame.

The Google Fiber experiment has proven that if you put the whole (US) industry to shame in an incredibly public way that gets covered multiple times by just about every news outlet in the country... that it will have no effect at all on the entrenched players (except perhaps causing them to lower their prices in the areas you serve in order, I suppose, to harm your income).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Remind me, why we don't just nationalize Verizon and the other telecom companies? Serious question.

<comment><USER26> Free market competition is usually the best solution to problems like this. Google and others are on the horizon offering better connectivity already. If Verizon doesn't fix its problems then they will start to lose customers which is the ultimate market pressure. While Government-led solutions often seem superior in theory, they rarely work out that way in real life. Government's most effective role, in my opinion, is to create a regulatory environment that encourages consumer transparency, corporate accountability and free market competition. One example of this is what is happening in the health care market (intentionally or not) with the move to high deductible health care plans. These plans incentivize consumers to individually comparison shop fee- for-service medical services for the first time. There is no reason to pay $1,500 for an MRI when there is another place across town willing to do it for $500. This type of mass optimization on a micro economic scale will likely result in better access to services at lower price points than, for example, the Government (CMS) negotiating a universal rate card with low, fixed copays for all patients, all providers, and all services.

<comment><USER27> >There is no reason to pay $1,500 for an MRI when there is another place across town willing to do it for $500.

Why should everyone need to individually comparison shop for every medical procedure? Why do two places in the same geographic area have a 3x price discrepancy? Shouldn't I be able to just get an MRI without having to worry that my doctor, or other medical provider, is ripping me off?

<comment><USER28> _Why do two places in the same geographic area have a 3x price discrepancy?_

Because determining the cost basis for medical procedures isn't all that easy. It's not hard to figure out what the MRI machine costs, but how about the physician and nurses? How about the building? They do a lot more than just MRIs at these hospitals/clinics. From what I've heard from people working in hospitals, the hospitals themselves have no idea what their procedure costs actually are.

What they do instead is charge as much as they can for each procedure and hope they turn a profit at the end of the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Now that people aren't forced to use Verizon's network for telecom service, Verizon shouldn't have to maintain the networks any longer.

Half of people don't have a landline--growing each year. Among those, many get their service via cable companies or VOIP. In 10 years there might not be any need for a functional landline telephone system.

And since the cost of such a system is mostly fixed, not variable, the less people use it, the more it costs per customer. Which only drives the cost up.

Only a fool would spend good money updating this stuff.

<comment><USER30> That'd be fine if this was just voice. _Unfortunately_ , they're also failing to maintain landline internet, which is a much bigger deal. You can't do your homework on a phone. You can't download updates over a phone's internet connection. You can't run a game console over a phone's internet. You can't get print forms or paperwork with a phone. It's not just internet access that's a requirement - it's _usable_ internet access, and phone internet is not incredibly usable. Tethering is an option, but it often costs something like $30 a month, and even then phone plans, even the $70-a-month 'unlimited' ones, start hitting caps at 5gb or 10gb. What the fuck can you do with 5gb? You can wipe that out with software updates _alone_.

Offering cellular is unacceptable. If they can't put in fiber, they need to maintain the copper.

(source: comcast took three weeks to fix the internet in our apartment before we just terminated our plan and switched to another provider - lucky use we weren't fucked into only having a single option - spent a week trying to survive on phone internet before putting in the work to do tethering)

<comment><USER29> It's very possible that it's not possible to deploy fiber profitably.

Remember, Verizon doesn't get exclusive franchise rights to fiber or ISP service. When Verizon rolled out FIOS to areas it thought were going to be most profitable, they ended up not making nearly as much as they thought they would. Turns out people stuck with the cable company. FIOS only get 40% of people in FIOS coverage to actually sign up.

That's why they stopped their FIOS expansion. It was barely profitable in the easy and rich areas. No way is it going to be profitable in poor and rural areas.

In fact, we've always had to subsidize rural and poor areas. The deal was originally that AT&T--which split into the current AT&T and Verizon,etc.--got to have exclusive telephone rights in exchange for making sure everyone got a connection. AT&T was legally entitled to a certain profit margin.

Now governments are expecting the same sorts of benefits without giving Verizon and AT&T the same sort quid pro quo. And they are finding out that nobody is going to build a new fiber network to rural and poor areas.

In fact, Google Fiber is capitalizing on it. The biggest concession Google gets before deploying Fiber, is that they can pick and choose which neighborhoods get Fiber. So they can cherry pick profitable customers.

I think one great compromise is providing LTE coverage without tyrannical data caps. There is no reason to data cap traffic during non-peak periods. And you don't need to tether a phone, there are wifi routers that work on LTE.

<comment><USER30> > It's very possible that it's not possible to deploy fiber profitably.

So, I have an honest question about this: why is fiber so much more expensive than copper? Is it just that the boxes the ends are bigger and more expensive? I've always heard that digging up land and running wires is nasty, but if that's the case, how were phone lines ever profitable without costing $100 a month?

> I think one great compromise is providing LTE coverage without tyrannical > data caps. There is no reason to data cap traffic during non-peak periods. > And you don't need to tether a phone, there are wifi routers that work on > LTE.

I think that I'd like to make a modification there - I can agree on capping _bandwidth_ during peak periods. _Total transfer quantity_ should never be capped ever. Unless a significant portion of the cost of an internet connection is caused by a difference in expenses running the hardware at 75% utilization instead of 50% utilization, which I kind of doubt is the case. I also don't know if we'd ever get it; the wireless providers love claiming that they're out of capacity and can't even support bigger pictures on imgur, much less people shoving Windows Update through their networks.

That said, yes, an uncapped LTE modem with wifi router and some quality-of- service guarantees would be an excellent compromise.

<comment><USER15> Elvis Presley's phone bill for local service in 1973 was $134.19. A simple CPI inflation calculator says this would be over $700 today.

[http://www.elvispresleymusic.com.au/pictures/1973-april-2-ph...](http://www.elvispresleymusic.com.au/pictures/1973-april-2-phone- bill.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>