Why Do Americans Stay When Their Town Has No Future? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-23/why-do-americans-stay-when-their-town-has-no-future <comment><USER2> its really hard. I imagine company hiring practices (their growing dependence on recruiting firms) also doesnt help.

For instance, the best way to go to a new geography would be to land a job there prior to moving there. Even in data science, supposedly hot job market, I wanted to get a job in san francisco or seattle, but I was living in philadelphia. you hear stories about people graduating from cali universities and companies jumping through windows to get to them, but even though I graduated with a masters in CIS from Upenn ... crickets. I think because most of them recruit through agencies which filter by geography. I had to reach out aggressively to the recruiters themselves, and bypass a lot of the blockers, which took 2 years. Had I not done that, my talent didn't mean as much as where I was.

Now, imagine a small towner trying to do the opposite, get a job after they make a move to say, one of the urban centers. most people dont have a lot of savings to begin with, and what would last them 6 months where they are would be depleted very quickly in one of the larger cities. even getting an apartment is harder, you dont have a job? reject.

its not impossible, its just really difficult.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is difficult to uproot your family, take a huge risk, and relocate to a place with better employment and educational opportunities.

Just ask the tens of million of immigrants in this country who have done exactly that.

In a sense, it's unfair that native-born Americans are forced to compete with people from all over the world who are highly motivated and have an extremely high tolerance for risk. But it's also what has actually made this country great.

<comment><USER4> You're contrasting the people whose forefathers built the country, with the people who came later, after it was already built and there was no risk to be taken.

How much risk is an immigrant really taking on, when there is a safety net in terms of social services available to them, that pays multiples of their yearly earnings back in "the old country"?

Meanwhile, the native-born Americans have too much assets (even if in a crappy location, it still disqualifies them) to qualify for that same assistance...

<comment><USER5> Most US immigrant visas (h-1b etc) are conditional on not becoming "a burden to the state" so you would be deported if you tried to claim unemployment etc.

<comment><USER6> > Most US immigrant visas (h-1b etc)

H-1B is a non-immigrant work visa.

The only relation it had to immigrant visas is that, as a dual intent non- immigrant visa, it's not illegal for you to enter on an H-1B with the intent of applying for an immigrant visa without departing in between.

> are conditional on not becoming "a burden to the state"

That's not exactly true. The condition that actually exists in law relates mostly to the _future likelihood at time of admission_ of becoming a "public charge".

> so you would be deported if you tried to claim unemployment etc.

No, but your I-864 sponsors (whose income and assets are considered in making the public charge decision at admission) will have to pay back any payments you get from certain federally-funded public benefit programs. You can be deported for you not paying back your debts for certain other benefit programs in a specified time period, but very few benefit programs create the kind of debts that relate to that.

Unemployment, as an earned benefit, isn't actually an issue at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A big factor here is a loss in self-confidence. It takes faith to move."

When I first started dating and generally getting to know other American families on a more adult and intimate level, it often shocked me how low everyone's confidence and motivation levels were. There was always some looming fear of failure, of being wrong, or getting hurt, it was paralyzing.

Our culture, the media, the education system, it all cultivates fear, doubt, helplessness, and dependency. Without exceptional influences, we generally produce scared consumers.

My parents are both immigrants, and it's had a substantial impact, good and bad. Confidence, motivation, willingness to take on challenges and risks, are not problems for me. But the flip side of that is I'm often quite frustrated by my contemporaries, as I tend to expect the same. These traits seem like part of the bare minimum of being an adult from my perspective, and the average American just seems like an overgrown child in this context. It's quite frustrating.

edit:

Just wanted to add; one of the things I've most enjoyed about working at tech startups is how effectively they tend to filter out these people.

<comment><USER8> People don't want to die it's true. If you fail you die in America. Period, end of story, game over man.

<comment><USER9> > If you fail you die in America.

This made me chuckle. There are a lot of countries where this is true, but the US is generally not one of them. Sure you might end up loosing all your assets and living in a homeless shelter, but at least we have homeless shelters. Yea, you're probably better off indigent in much of northern/western europe, but the social safety net here in the US, while imperfect, is a heck of a lot better than much of the rest of the world. A big part of why immigrants "fearlessly" launch themselves into the unknown and immigrate is because where they're from, if you fail you actually do die. Soon. Painfully. There may be instances of that in the US, particularly in cases involving drug use and.or mental illness, but it's hardly the norm. Moving for a job you don't have yet to escape an economic backwater is certainly a huge financial risk, but it's hardly a life and death risk.

<comment><USER8> Ok, completely discount my experience. Thanks. I've been to other countries too. Yes we are lucky there isn't a war breaking out right now. It's not funny. It's real and raw suffering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My armchair guess would be that debt is keeping people chained to particular locations. If you live in a town that no one wants to live in, who will buy your house?

If you go bankrupt or have a foreclosure on the record, it can be hard to move to locations with better opportunities. Many jobs require credit checks, so leaving the job you don't want can be a hassle.

<comment><USER11> Despite popular myth, US households are in good condition when it comes to debt.

The US household debt to income ratio is far lower than in nations such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Australia, South Korea, Britain and Canada (see: [1] [2]).

US household debt service payments as a share of disposable income, are near a 40 year low. [3]

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-economy- debt/canad...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-economy-debt/canada- household-debt-to-income-near-record-high-home-sales-fall-idUSKCN1GR1RD)

[1a] [https://i.imgur.com/XRJIDbi.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/XRJIDbi.jpg)

[2] [https://data.oecd.org/hha/household- debt.htm](https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm)

[3] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP)

<comment><USER12> This doesn't cancel the concerns, though.

You can have bankruptcy and have little to no debt for years. A foreclosure, repo, or eviction can happen for various reasons. Maybe you simply got sick and were missing work. You can owe money on your house - a reasonable amount - and be stuck because you can't sell your house nor afford to both pay the current house mortgage and live somewhere else.

Some of the "debt" things are special to being poor. Lose your job and can't pay the final cable bill? Collections. Can't pay the $600 hospital bill? Collections and eventual judgement. It doesn't take a large amount of debt to have it affect your life negatively when a flat tire puts your electricity at risk of being turned off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe because it actually makes economic sense to stay. Cost of living, mainly for housing, in high-paying regions means that after a certain age you won't realize the benefits of the higher wages since you won't be able to pay off your mortgage before your career ends. In fact rent or mortgage interest may capture all of the salary bump and more.

Working a menial job in a depressed area makes a lot more sense when a house there only costs $125,000.

I understand that those open to education can have a life transformation in a new city by acquiring new skills. But that's a small number of people.

Most people work to live and not the other way around. Some just want three hots and a cot, family, and friends. And that is perfectly alright.

Just for fun I searched Bloomberg for this phrase: "why do upper middle class people continue to live in overpriced cities despite having all their needs met". The second result was this one: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-12/only-45-p...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-12/only-45-percent- of-upper-middle-class-households-are-saving-money). Maybe we are more alike than we realize...

<comment><USER14> > Just for fun I searched Bloomberg for this phrase: "why do upper middle > class people continue to live in overpriced cities despite having all their > needs met". The second result was this one: > [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-12/only-45-p...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-12/only-45-p...). > Maybe we are more alike than we realize...

The article is paywalled, but AFAICT it's not particularly true or relevant. The article you posted is from 4 years ago, and is based on the Fed's annual "Economic Well-Being" report. The most recent one was just released ([https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-repor...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-report- economic-well-being-us-households-201805.pdf)), and it shows that ~40 of non- retired adults think that their retirement savings are on track. This comfortably encompasses the upper-middle class.

The 2014 report is here ([https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/2014-report- econo...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/2014-report-economic- well-being-us-households-201505.pdf)) and shows worse numbers for savings (the metrics seem to have changed, so I can't make a simple apples-to-apples comparison). AFAICT, the main changes have been to economic optimism and liquidity, both of which are better indicators of the contemporary economy[1] than they are of actual financial stability or level of savings. This is hardly surprising, given that we were still not that far out from a shaky economy in '14.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a broad response to a lot of comments here (and the HN perspective in general), there are many dozens of thriving cities in the US that are not San Francisco or New York City. Moving to a city for opportunity does _not_ mean moving to one of the 10 most expensive cities on the planet.

It doesn't even necessarily mean moving to the trendy, increasingly expensive cities, like Portland or Denver or Austin.

It can mean moving to places like Charlotte, Nashville, Madison, Lawrence or Savannah. Or maybe Santa Fe, Columbus, Provo or Bend.

For most Americans, there is a growing city with colleges, trade schools and unemployment rates below the statewide level within a couple hours drive.

<comment><USER15> Chicago. Chicago is an honest-to-goodness world city with skyscrapers and trains and everything. A luxury condo in one of them can run you less than be down payment on a rundown shack in a far-flung Bay Area suburb. Unfortunately the tech scene there is mostly in the old-school business IT tradition and in suburban office-park hellscapes.

<comment><USER16> The winters are also... bracing, to say the very least. If you like feet of snow, it's great, otherwise maybe not so much. I love to visit, but I wouldn't last a year.

<comment><USER15> Winter is a tooling problem. The tools are straightforward and Chicago is well-practiced in their use. You put on a coat. The city plows. You drive a 4WD car carefully. It works out.

Compared to paying half your "upper middle class" salary for living conditions that most Americans would identify as poverty (roommates, paper thin walls, 1970s fixtures, no dishwasher, garbage disposal, laundry, or parking, etc) due to game-theoretically intractable politics, it's nothing.

<comment><USER17> > You spend as little time outside as possible for several months.

That's a big fuckin' problem for me. In fact, it's the exact same reason I can't live in the south. Y'all have heaters; they have AC. It all still means I'm trapped indoors and miserable much of the year. No thanks.

<comment><USER18> Proper winters are AWESOME. Skiing, winter hiking/camping.. Lots of things to do.

Year-cycle puts a nice rhythm in life. November is time to bring out tea, books, warm socks and reflect the year that is about to pass. Then first signs of spring comes, everybody is out celebrating and there's a deep-rooted feeling that rough time has passed and now you can relax for a bit.

I couldn't live somewhere without proper 4 seasons. I did stay in non-snowy areas for extended period of time more than once and it's just.. sad. On the other hand, it's probably upbringing&culture.

<comment><USER19> Moved to Montreal from Vancouver and this is exactly what I noticed. There's something the seeps into the people that live in regions with a proper 4-seasons that doesn't happen elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have family in this situation, of all ages, and I think it's a lack of knowledge about what exists out there. It takes a lot to break with family, tradition, history, and everything you've known, to go to a new place.

</comment><comment><USER21> > According to a new Brookings Institution report, the largest metro > areas—those of 1 million or more people—have experienced 16.7 percent > employment growth since 2010, and areas with 250,000 to 1 million have seen > growth of 11.6 percent, while areas with fewer than 250,000 residents have > lagged far, far behind, with only 0.4 percent growth.

So, clearly most Americans don't stay behind when their town has no future. The article should add the qualifier "Some" Americans to avoid a misleading impression.

<comment><USER22> That quote doesn't say anything about the movement of people though; just the economic situation of urbanites versus rural residents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not from around there but this sounds like a sense of place or a feeling of belonging, perhaps tribalism. From the outside this phenomenon looks a bit odd and will need some explanation from the locals.

<comment><USER24> Some people are content with what they have in life and are not driven by a need to always strive for more. For these people, feeling like you "belong", in a place with your family and friends are nearby is more important than better career opportunities. I don't know why this is regarded as such a mystery.

<comment><USER14> If you read the article, one of the primary things it focuses on is: to what we should attribute the _decline_ of geographic labor mobility. If you're going to claim that it's obviously "wanting to feel like you belong", you need a simple theory for why the desire to stay put would have increased, especially during a period when the incentives to move have grown dramatically (i.e., the "opportunity gap").

In particular, the article quite obviously isn't wondering why every single resident of rural Ohio hasn't packed up and moved to Manhattan. They're wondering why (to take the county they focused on), a smaller chunk of the 64% of unemployed adults in Adams County, has left than would have in the past.

Not to mention the fact that we're not talking about striving for more: in most severe cases, the individual economic issues aggregate to municipal ones, which can affect quality of life fairly significantly. Just off the top of my head, the article mentioned increasingly understaffed gov't, plummeting school funding, and an increasingly strained law-enforcement and judicial system.

Again, if you actually bothered to read the article, it's not a question of why people aren't striking out from their cozy suburban life to take their shot in the big city. It's focusing on why the number of people willing to leave dying local economies has declined so sharply. As part of the article puts it, there's been a reversal in the correlation between poverty and geographic labor mobility, from positive to negative.

Again, I recommend reading the article posted (it's the link at the top of the comments page), and maybe you'l understand a little better what's being discussed here and what the "mystery" in question is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I grew up poor, but I was able to move away to San Francisco and get good jobs in tech, and ultimately became successful, and by some standards here, even "rich".

But you know what? The relationships with friends and family I left behind definitely suffered. I now feel distant from everyone, and unfortunately some of my best memories are still from old times when I lived close to these people. I have very few friends here in the city, most my interactions day to day are simple and transactional. I wouldn't blame anyone for staying behind in their town. I've always figured I could move back when money was no problem anymore, but I don't think that day will come soon, and sooner or later I'll have to decide where I want to plant roots and start a family, and I doubt any woman here will want to go back to my old town after living in SF. Don't know what to do really, just hanging on.

<comment><USER14> I'm sorry to hear that; I was in a somewhat similar position for different reasons some time ago. The bright side is: because of the large number of transplants, this is probably one of the easiest places to make friends. It's not a skill that's particularly natural, since most people are used to having a community instead of having to build one from scratch, but it's pretty vital in an increasingly socially-atomized world. I don't want to be bossy, but I really really really recommend investing actual time in it. I can tell you from experience: it's just not healthy to not have a social group around you.

I moved to San Francisco with a handful of friends, but I had a facsimile of your problem due to some unrecognized health issues that made my social life wither away, along with some bad luck with the timing of people moving away. I had to start from scratch to build a friend group here, but it turns out there are tons of people doing the same thing, and it couldn't be easier. Even if you just go to social Meetups to meet people, it can be very easy to get a good group around you just by repeatedly putting yourself out there. It does take work: there were times when i felt lazy but would force myself to go to some random outing to foster a friendship with someone who I got along with, or saw movies that I wasn't all that crazy about, but it really paid off in spades.

The closest friends from the group I've built up over the last three or four years from nothing are basically like family to me at this point, and the feeling is mutual. They're the kind of friends whose house I can drop by on a weeknight more or less randomly (assuming they're not out), and just hang out until everyone falls asleep/I go home.

Even if you decide that this is not where you want to put roots down, having a more casual group of solid friends is really valuable, at the very least so you have people you can depend on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _"The American dream is kind of to stay close to your family, do well, and let your kids grow up around your parents," he says._

This, I feel, is telling. The dream is becoming the hope that your children can live as you did. It's not about each generation doing better; it's about not doing worse. It's about maintaining.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's becoming more like Europe. Once everywhere's been settled it's more expensive to move around. A new frontier is needed.

</comment><comment><USER28> Cause when they pack up and move to a city everyone moans that they are 'gentrifying' and should move back we're they came from.

<comment><USER29> Can't win with this one. Either you're the modern day segregationist for wanting to live in a nice neighborhood, or you're gentrifying by not doing that.

Fortunately there's also a large number of people, probably a majority, who don't give a shit about this political nonsense and just want to go on with their lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> _consternation among economists and pundits, who wonder why Americans ... lack their ancestors' get-up-and-go....loss in self-confidence._

Nothing valuable about friends, family, community, environment, culture ... so far as these guys can see.

And, just maybe, Americans look back a couple of generations to their immigrant ancestors, and see what that was _really_ about.

"A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!"

</comment><comment><USER31> I looked through the comments, and a lot of interesting ideas are presented, but I have to speculate about two additional issues:

1\. A lot of people are tied down by responsibilities to others, such as parents and relatives who need care.

2\. If a young person from a rural town has acquired a portable skill such as programming, it's quite likely to be because they already left that town -- to attend college.

<comment><USER32> In times past and in other cultures, someone might migrate solo and later bring their family over. I've read stories of European migrants doing this to Australia. Sometimes, it would be years later.

Were people then more willing to leave partners or kids behind? Or elderly parents?

I don't think I'd ever entertain the idea of moving without my partner and children like that.

Even in a very connected world, my partner is not interested in being away from her circle of friends for any serious length of time, let alone a major career/lifestyle move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why Does Everyone Assume 300 Million People Agree About The Idea That Money Is A Virtue?

<comment><USER34> It's probably because 99.5% of the population relies on money to live in a house and to buy food.

PS: Why Do You Type Like This? It's Very Hard To Read.

<comment><USER35> He wrote in headline style as his comment is a "translation" of TFA headline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Inertia. Fear of change. Cost of living, moving. Friends. Satisfaction. Myopia.

<comment><USER37> Home.

<comment><USER38> I think this gets overlooked a lot. "Why don't you move?" "Uh, because I live _here_."

<comment><USER37> Community is important. Friends, way of life, values, food, out doors living, fishing, hunting, days at the river drinking beer, a support system in place with neighbors helping out. So there are good things that can keep you in a place. But there is also that when you have little, all those things are harder to give up. Find yourself in a city where no one knows you, no one cares, and the things you found easy before, aren't easy anymore. Poverty presents so many barriers that it really hard to see the inertia it presents.

<comment><USER39> Given the sort of value judgements on this list, one might expect that a boom town will be over-represented with a mix of people who have no fear, nothing to lose, or no strong attachments (a superset of "people who don't give a shit about anybody else").

Some of those traits are maladaptive for long term stability of the town and its industries. Now I wonder how this feeds into the boom/bust trope...

<comment><USER15> Isn't it pretty normal to have "no fear, nothing to lose, and no strong attachments" as a fresh college graduate? Those are more phases of life than character traits. Graduate, explore, slowly put down roots, then stay rooted until your own children leave the nest and start to do the same.

<comment><USER40> No, it is normal for graduates with rich parents as a safety net to play act these traits. I think the comment mean actually having no fear, nothing to lose and no strong attachments.

<comment><USER15> Is having a 22-year-old living at home any more expensive than having a 17-year-old? Presumably their bed is still there, the marginal cost of an extra portion in each recipe was already accounted for, and they don't outgrow clothes as quickly. The safety net of moving back in with mom and dad does not require mom and dad to be rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Incidentally, the recent tax cut bill removed the individual deduction for moving expenses when moving to a new job. So the financial costs of relocating have increased.

<comment><USER42> You have to account for the different brackets and larger standard deduction.

People that would have deducted high bracket income using the moving expenses see increased costs. People that probably weren't itemizing will see decreased taxes whether they move or not.

<comment><USER6> > You have to account for the different brackets and larger standard > deduction.

Not to address the _marginal_ costs of moving, which is where the (dis)incentive comes from.

<comment><USER42> Like majormajor below, I think the flexibility from increased income is going to be just as much or more of a factor as the tax incentive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is it even worth it to post now that this article has been up for a few days? Funny how all of these comments just sit there on a server somewhere. Produced. But what value does it add? Will anyone even look at this?

For me it's about the job but I'm sure everyone has their own reasons. I'm secure and don't have to struggle. I apply for jobs and don't hear back, interview and don't get the job, etc. I'd be willing to move somewhere new if I knew I had a job lined up. While savings is good, it's stressful and scary to have no income. It's like holding your breath and eventually panic sets in. Doesn't feel good. I'd love to move to a bunch of different cities but many of those places don't seem to have jobs that fit my background. I'd jump to a new career but not sure I could float the expenses while also saving for the future.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe these people don't want to leave their families & communities and be complicit in destroying their home town just because they can make some more money by doing that, and some economists and journalists they don't know insists that they all have no future.

</comment><comment><USER44> The elephant in the room here is politics. A better chance of employment is a lot less appealing if it's in a city where you know nobody, there is no sense of community, most people are not at all like you and think people like you are backwards hicks.

<comment><USER45> There is truth to this. As a rural Illinois boy I traveled to Chicago to intern and it just wasn't my cup of tea...plain and simple. People are different, culture is different. In my town in the "sticks" we have brown people and immigrants--plenty (will come as big shock to some who think we're all just inbred corn eaters out here). _That_ is not the difference...to get that mandatatory political correctness dance out of the way. Rather it is simply the way people relate to each other, attitudes, community or what passes for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> If you grew up in a town, and maybe have seen a couple of cycles of better and worse, growth and decline, it's hard to really believe that this time is different. You think, "This will be kind of bad for a while, but we've been through that before. We'll be all right" \- because that's all you've known.

</comment><comment><USER47> A lot of similar things were said about San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

This is one of the reasons behind the rise of Los Angeles in the early 20th century. Also of note is that after they (temporarily) figured out the water problem, they were able to lure movie investment seeking to escape Edison's patents on the east coast.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have lived in several countries and I know I would have a terribly difficult time emigrating from the US and living elsewhere, even if things got really bad. It's probably the local version of the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Judging from the comments here, there is a real US _ism_ which I find fascinating. It looks like one that is so obvious to the locals that it is err obvious.

<comment><USER49> Yeah, Europe is established. The US is not. I have a German friend whose town (Liepzig) celebrated it's 1000th anniversary recently. It has a _book fair_ that is 400 years old. The city that I live in (Portland, OR) was a forest 150 years ago. We're still figuring out where all the permanent settlements are going to be and how many people will live in each one.

<comment><USER42> The numbers of people living in European cities has changed quite a lot. The population about doubled since 1900.

They also likely benefited (as cities) from the rebuilding that was necessary after the World Wars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Cost of living due to rampant NIMBYism in the most economically dynamic cities, as well as the feeling of community that would disappear if they were to move.

<comment><USER51> They gave an example of the coal plant worker who found a high paying job at a somewhat isolated dam in Washington state but moved back to Ohio for a much lower paying job because he, his wife and kids missed their relatives and had trouble making new friends, so it was only the community if one can call it that and more a trouble with adapting to a new place that would happen with any move. It feels like if that family had help with adapting that move could have stuck permanently.

<comment><USER52> > The landscape of central Washington state was more desolate than they were > prepared for. The nearest Walmart and McDonald's were almost an hour away. > Flights back home were expensive. Tiffany had almost no contact with other > adults when Randy was at work.

To me, that sounds more like the high paying job was in the middle of nowhere.

<comment><USER53> It also seems she is used to the sort of place where it is normal for one income to support a family. There, she'd have neighbors to visit with during the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

</comment><comment><USER55> Really good article - didn't come across as preachy and condescending as a lot of "big media organisation interviews poor white people" stories tend to go.

I myself would love to buy a house in a small town. It's a much more realistic option for me than buying in a city. And I'm sure as a programmer I could find a job. But then what happens when - or if - that employer shuts up shop? It's a massive risk.

<comment><USER56> I've spent my almost 20 year career as a developer in a rural area and found that there are plenty of places trying to hire developers, not to mention that remote work is also available. I personally have never seen it as being all that risky.

The very worst case is that you move back to the city, which is exactly where you'd be if you never left.

<comment><USER55> What sort of places want developers in rural areas?

<comment><USER56> There are lots of tech companies, relatively speaking. But also I've found software developers in some less obvious and surprising places. For instance, the mom and pop funeral home in town maintain their own software. My first development job was at a warehousing business on their inventory management system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Because: [http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses- househ...](http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-household- finances/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> inertia

</comment><comment><USER58> If this article had been published in 1992 when NAFTA, free trade and immigration were actually being debated, it would have been ridiculed by the establishment as backwards and probably racist anti-globalization propaganda. Even now, questioning the govenment economic policies that directly resulted in this mess lands you on a professional blacklist at 'respected' publications.

<comment><USER59> It wouldn't have been written in 1992 because interstate net migration rates were near their historical highs. See, e.g., Figure 1, page 41 in [https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201130/201130p...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201130/201130pap.pdf)

<comment><USER58> That's not what the article is about. Its about whole cities becoming unemployed as a result of factories moving overseas, and unfair trade deals signed in the early 1990's. The people in that figue moved because they found work somewhere else, not because their entire community was terminated overnight.

<comment><USER59> The decline of the Rust belt began in the 1970s, and by the 1980s you already had movies like Gung Ho

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_(film)

dramatizing existential crises of factory towns in the face of manufacturing off-shoring.

Factory towns are nothing new, and neither are factory towns disappearing overnight. What's relatively recent in modern American history is the reticence of Americans to move, thus the _title_ of the article. But this reticence is probably a regression to the mean, much like everything else about the post-post-WWII economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I can leave cheaply, hustle remotely, and use my (technically - thanks, Solo 401K!) low AGI to go on Obamacare. Why should I get a "career" in a major city and live hand to mouth while never being able to afford real property?

<comment><USER60> If you're in tech there is no reason to live hand to mouth in a major city. Maybe in San Francisco that's the case, but I make a very decent living in Atlanta (not suburbs) and save a huge chunk of my income. I'm sure I'm not the only one and that this isn't the only city.

<comment><USER35> I'm a cowboy. Hence the hustle. Even if I passed a corporate sniff test, could I put away 60% or more of my income every year? And why would I want to live in Atlanta or someplace like it? I hate commuting. That's a major reason I work from home in a small city and take whatever remote gigs I can wrangle.

<comment><USER14> Fwiw, this is definitely possible. I've saved about 80% of after-tax income for the last decade or so in SF. I don't consider my life very ascetic either; in fact, it's pretty awesome. If I wanted to cut down further for some reason, the number of wonderful free/cheap things you can do in popular cities is insane.

(Though bear in mind that I'm not yet in the phase of life where I have a kid, where this stuff gets a lot more complicated)

<comment><USER35> Yeah, I have a six bedroom four bath house because of the kids. Bought it for cash. I shudder to think what that would cost in SF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I attribute the loss of confidence and the old "get up and go" attitude of our ancestor Americans to the complete failure of the culture and the K-12 education system in most rural counties around the country.

This trait is now more commonly found in immigrants coming into the United States.

<comment><USER62> >>This trait is now more commonly found in immigrants coming into the United States.

Just want to point out that your ancestors were once immigrants coming into the USA.

<comment><USER63> Agreed, I think the population sample is biased- inmigrants are by definition people who got and and left a place in an attempt to find a better one, and most current USA ancestors were immigrants.

<comment><USER64> Well, all current USA residents had immigrant ancestors, even if they came over via a land bridge more than 10kya.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Noticed, recently state or fed money was given to tear down old abandoned factories in small towns in PA. post election. I believe they are trying to bring work in. However, I also believe they don't want the middle age people telling the younger generations that's where gramps worked and earned a livable wage back in the golden era ( Demand Side Economy ). I caught the tail-end as a kid. The factory towns were nice then. I have family members who won't even visit their hometowns, they get sad at the run down appearance and hopelessness 40% unemployment for working age men , tend to believe it's higher. A good job is with a gas lease, timber but not much else.

</comment><comment><USER66> These are mostly elitist concerns. The ordinary folks on the ground often turn out to be pretty happy. They have a routine life, friends and community and they simply dont care about opportunities at that point.

<comment><USER67> ...what? Flyover country doesn't care about their jobs and their economies?

Suicide rates[0] and drug abuse statistics would suggest otherwise.

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm)

<comment><USER56> Ohio, featured in the article, is only slightly above the national average. Is that significant?

<comment><USER67> Ideally we'd have more granular data. Not all of Ohio is dead--it has several major metropolitan areas. And, likewise, the Central Valley in CA probably isn't doing that great, but it's outweighed by the California cities.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: First reference of Bitcoin on HackerNews? - <AUTHOR> Is there is a way to know what is the first link about bitcoin posted on HackerNews? <comment><USER2> This kind of does it, but I have a feeling it's missing some results: [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=all&query=bitcoin&dateStart=1225411200&dateEnd=1262390400)

If this is accurate, then the first two are:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852)

</comment><comment><USER3> 10 years ago - "Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency."

Heh

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well, this is very good, that confirm for me that HackerNews is a good source of innovation. Thanks.</comment>


Steve Bannon's far-right Europe operation undermined by election laws - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/steve-bannons-rightwing-europe-operation-undermined-by-election-laws <comment></comment>


The Thompson M1A1 Submachine Gun - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/war-is-boring/just-call-this-submachine-gun-the-annihilator-fd9c067846ab?src=hn

<comment><USER3> I got to fire one of these at a range in Vegas while I was at a bachelor party a couple of years ago (Everyone else went for the Desert Eagles and AR-15s things like that, but being a history buff I picked the Thompson just to see what it was like.) The first thing you notice when you pick it up is just how damn heavy it is - the thing is incredibly dense. The range owner explained that the weight of the thing was what made it so effective - especially in the hands of people with little training, the "kickback" of a normal gun would make it hard for someone without a lot of training to keep fire concentrated over a sufficiently small area, but the heft of the Thompson makes it "drop" back into place very nicely after the round is fired and the recoil kicks in. Sure enough, when we pulled the targets back, mine was the most accurately shot round-for-round (no one there was very experienced with firearms), which I found to be pretty impressive since everyone else was shooting modern weapons and I had this old brick - but the range owner said that was what made the thing so effective. You could put it in almost anyone's hands and make them fairly dangerous with little to no training.

<comment><USER4> Just curious, do you know what someone with training would do differently with a modern weapon? I imagine there's more to it than hold it tight or wait between taking shots.

<comment><USER5> I've had machine-gun training, with UZI, MP5 and M16. [http://www.donath.org/Defense/Guns/LFI- IV/DCP01305.JPG](http://www.donath.org/Defense/Guns/LFI-IV/DCP01305.JPG) Probably the biggest factor is simply spending time practicing, becoming comfortable with the power & behavior of the weapon, and developing the nuances to compensate. Modern ones are significantly lighter weight, subject to muzzle rise (recoil makes point-of-aim move up) and just general jumping around. Very recent ones better address such movement, both in balance of action and by using significantly lighter (weaker) ammo designed for penetration over power (lots of tiny holes vs a few big ones). Addition of a silencer helps by mitigating muzzle blast & recoil. Old or new, it's having spent enough time shooting it to grow accustomed to the behavior; what seems overwhelming & uncontrollable at first becomes predictable & manageable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My Dad used to own one and it _was_ fun to shoot, but I could not imagine dragging it and a few hundred rounds of .45ACP ammo around. Very heavy. He also had a "mini" one that someone had made that shot .22 caliber ammunition. Much less expensive to shoot and much lighter.

That said, it is more the legacy of the 'machine pistol' (which the Thompson is, given its pistol ammunition) which found service in special forces and security services around the globe, that is interesting to me. Looking at different defense manuals it is amazing just out deadly a modern warfighter is, against a wide variety of opponents, compared to the folks who carried one of these into battle. Like the gap between a cutlass and musket.

<comment><USER7> > warfighter

Just out of curiosity, when did this word crop up? To me it seems like some kind of odd DoD invention to supplant more traditional words like "soldier", but I don't know anything about the etymology.

<comment><USER8> Marines are not soldiers, but both are "warfighters" (at least if they're at the sharp end of the stick); ditto SEALs. Perhaps the word is used to avoid getting Marines angry at you ^_^.

<comment><USER7> Ok, fair enough, but it seems recent - I don't think I've ever seen it in connection with anything about, say, WWII. But I'm not exactly knowledgeable about the armed forces beyond listening to the Vicenza base's radio station every now and then :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Russians in WWII used a submachine gun, copied from the Finns, to great effect in the urban battle of Stalingrad, the Germans reacted by developing the assault rifle, later copied by the Russians, and eventually by everyone else.

The Tommy Gun was the pre-war glimpse of what was to come. It used pistol ammunition, not rifle ammunition, and thus was suitable for close-in fights.

I, for one, am glad that large scale war with millions of human combatants, appears to be diminishing in likelihood.

<comment><USER5> IIRC, the options for ammunition were, at least on a military scale, severely limited. Using the standard .30-'06 ammo would have been impractically heavy and powerful. Lighter rifle ammo suitable for combat was practically nonexistent. That left .45 ACP as the only viable option, hence it's use - <USER2> the suitability for close-in fights.

Possibly interesting subsequent history... In 1934, USA practically banned sale & possession of machine-guns (a $200 tax (equivalent to $6000 today) on a ~$50 product). In 1986, that became an actual ban (for post-'86 products). As such, the market incentive to develop modern & sophisticated automatic weapons pretty much ended with the M16 (the USA having by far the largest civilian market for firearms). A few non-USA automatics have been designed since (FN P90 and HK MP7 are of note), built around very lightweight ammunition and high capacity magazines in very compact platforms; these point to what could have been developed & available domestically, but was stifled for want of a market to experiment in. Should the bans be lifted, we may see some remarkable developments follow pent-up demand.

<comment><USER10> _In 1934, USA practically banned sale & possession of machine-guns. ... As such, the market incentive to develop modern & sophisticated automatic weapons pretty much ended with the M16_

Even the M16 (AR-15) is an outlier after the 1934 NFA. And consider that it was designed in 1957. Contrast this with the USSR's AK47, designed in 1947. Taking the small private developers out of the gave seems to be big reason why the Soviets got there a decade before the USA.

Thus, it appears to me that the limitations on gun ownership in the USA is a liability in terms of national security. We can debate about how much it handicaps, and how important that is, but the effect is certainly there.

<comment><USER11> Out of curiosity, what do gun ownership limitations have to do with US national security?

<comment><USER5> Here's a very relevant analogy:

The massive .50BMG rifle ammunition was developed around 1910. Its primary use was established in WWII as an anti-aircraft machine-gun round, intended to throw a lot of lead in the air fast with little concern about accuracy.

In the 1970s, precision long-range rifle shooters were looking for something that could fire with interesting accuracy at very far targets, 1000-2000 meters. They repurposed the .50BMG ammo, built large long rifles to fire it, and put it to a completely new use from its original intent. In 1980, the Barrett M82 semi-automatic rifle was created - something that the military had no interest in the development of, and which was created solely by the civilian market.

The military suddenly took notice of this hard-hitting very long range rifle that used standard military ammo, and suddenly military snipers had a new tool - thanks to civilians - to enhance US national security using this one-man gun which could take out significant targets a mile away.

Had there been a ban on civilian ownership of .50BMG guns, which some groups have been pushing for hard for decades, the M82 would never have been developed, and a lot more military targets would have been taken out with far more expensive missiles with far more collateral damage & casualties.

<comment><USER12> Actually, soldiers had been using scoped M2 HMGs as sniper rifles since Korea.[1] After Hathcock's success with one, Barrett decided to build a real sniper rifle around the cartridge.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning#M2_as_a_sniper_rif...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning#M2_as_a_sniper_rifle)

<comment><USER8> There's a big difference between a sniper being issued a 30 pound rifle he can carry, and the mode in which Hathcock used M2s, by borrowing the use of one if it was handy (128 pounds with tripod if not mounted on a vehicle).

<comment><USER12> I agree, which is why Barrett made those rifles. My point was that the .50 BMG had been recognized by the Army as an effective long range marksman's round, to the point where they were procuring and issuing scopes for the M2, 30 years before Barrett made their first rifle.

<comment><USER5> But the military did nothing beyond procuring scopes for M2s, effectively keeping the powerful .50BMG out of snipers' hands as the M2 was a heavy crew- seved weapon (vehicle or tripod mounted), unsuitable for a lone sniper to haul for miles. Sure, Hathcock et al could make amazing shots with it, but only from where it could be little farther than driven into position. It took the civilian market to translate it to the true sniper's rifle prevalent today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Thompson wrote in a 1918 memo to firearms designers.: "I want a little machine gun you can hold in your hands, fire from the hip and reload in the dark. You must use ammunition now available and I want it right away."

While not of the same magnitude of the actual moon landing, that must have seemed like quite a moonshot in 1918.

</comment><comment><USER14> "capable of firing more than 800 rounds a minute—in some models"

No -- in no models. Cyclic rate of fire != number of rounds you can put through the weapon within one minute. Even if you figured out a magazine that could reliably put 800 rounds through without a stoppage, you'd melt the barrel at about round 200-300.

<comment><USER15> I'm not a gun expert, not clear what you're saying, but is it like saying that a downhill skier isn't going 120mph unless they travel 120 miles in an hour ?

<comment><USER5> Sort of. It's the understanding that a skier may travel 120MPH, but we understand that he's not going to do it for an hour - both because there isn't a suitable slope 120 miles long, and because his skis/legs/boots/whatever will self-destruct well before the hour is done. An M16 can fire at a speed of 800 rounds per minute, which it would do IF it didn't literally start melting the barrel in the process (I'm trying to find a recent video where someone actually tried to fire 800 rounds thru an M16 as fast as possible, and the barrel actually burst around 500 rounds).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Medal of Honour for a feigned surrender? Oh dear. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy)

<comment><USER17> To be fair, he was just responding in kind. Clearly the enemy soldiers had done the same thing while he was gone.

<comment><USER12> Overpowering your captors, even if you allowed yourself to be captured, is not the same thing as feigning surrender. Once you are taken into custody you are allowed to try to escape. There are no restrictions on taking your former captors prisoner in the process.

In a feigned surrender you never get taken into custody.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps he initially did _genuinely_ surrender, only to launch an escape seconds later, but claimed otherwise after the fact because it made a better story. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Gen John Thompson should know better about how to hold a weapon. If you don't mean to fire the weapon your finger shouldn't be anywhere near that trigger.

<comment><USER20> That's a (very good but) modern rule. I can't say for sure, but I suspect it originated as a specific weapons safety rule with Jeff Cooper in the late 80s or so.

The concept of "the gun is always loaded" or "never point it at anything you don't want to shoot" is an old one however. But it took a while for the belt- and-suspenders approach to become popular, and historically people seemed comfortable enough with their finger on the trigger. (It's rare to see anything else in historical photos.)

A fair reminder for today, but nobody'd have told the General so at the time.

<comment><USER8> It was a rule long before then, at least by the late '60s when I first started learning. Can't remember when Cooper codified his rules, but I'd suspect it was earlier than the '80s.

However I was taught by my father in the hunting domain, where Rule 2 rules, "Never let the muzzle cover something you're not willing to destroy", i.e. keep it pointed in a safe direction. That was because you never knew if a twig or the like might pull the trigger (see the problem with holstering striker fired handguns which catch e.g. a windbreaker cinch tie), and you don't trust safeties. The iffy history of the Remington 700 underlines the importance of Rule 2 (known to fire upon manipulating the safety).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Also has a song about it (kind of)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvTv-I2Y390](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvTv-I2Y390)

</comment><comment><USER22> The thing about these guns is they used to be all over the place. In Ireland, and Lebanon, and Palestine, and Berkeley.

<comment><USER23> They're still all over the place.

But these specific firearms are (artificially) worth so much you'll never see them.</comment></comment>


Robber Barons Would Have Loved Facebook's Employee Housing - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/03/robber-barons-loved-facebooks-employee-housing/ <comment><USER2> What a ridiculously overblown article. "The robber barons built entire greenfield company towns with a paternalistic controlling agenda! Facebook plans to build less than 400 housing units and obviously won't be able to do any of the controlling things we just described, but WHAT IF THEY DID?!" "What if every single Facebook employee lived here, which they don't, and what if they all voted as a single bloc, which they wouldn't?! CRAY CRAY TIME AMIRITE?"

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it interesting that in creating this mimic of real life, they are effectively removing any chance of real innovation coming out of these companies. And I'm not talking about innovation coming from these companies, but from the people working there. Their perception of what life is like on a daily basis will skew it toward the people they surround themselves with.

Essentially, as an outsider, it seems like going to work there is asking to be sheltered from the real world. I cannot imagine it fosters much creativity.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree with this. It is often said that, "constraint drives creativity." Therefore, if everyone is bound by the same set of constraints, you limit the possible set of creativity.

<comment><USER5> And so the cycle continues. AOL was an innovative place to work at some point, I'm sure.

<comment><USER6> Facebook is not likely to end up as bad as AOL did.

<comment><USER7> Why not? Microsoft did. Lots of once-innovative companies lose their edge, stop attracting top talent, and just become body shops shuffling to the graveyard.

<comment><USER8> I don't think Microsoft is a good example here. They're doing some pretty innovative stuff. Open sourcing much of the .NET stack, F#, and Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi.

Even at their worst they never really stopped acquiring top talent, and their revenue hasn't stopped growing [1](it's also about 7 times what Facebook's is).

[1] [http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002...](http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002-20131.png)

<comment><USER9> I'm not going to address whether or not Microsoft innovates, but open sourcing existing projects is possibly the loosest application of the term I've ever seen

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this any different from living on a military base? Government employees get cheap shopping, entertainment, restaurants, social services, and decent neighborhoods with playgrounds and pools. It does seem more noble to be patriotic than loyal to a company, but is it really any different? I rarely hear service men and women complain about base conditions, they're usually fairly nice.

<comment><USER11> Is the military trying to make a profit off servicemen and women?

<comment><USER10> Are you implying that private corporations are more motivated to take advantage of their employees for profit, rather than just trying to keep them happy and productive? I doubt tech companies care much about the profits from these endeavors to risk losing employees through shenanigans. The motivation for both private and military seems to me to just keep happy, committed employees who will be productive for the cause.

<comment><USER12> "Are you implying that private corporations are more motivated to take advantage of their employees for profit, rather than just trying to keep them happy and productive?"

I'd say yes, of course they are, apart from very few exceptions. Isn't the illegal wage-fixing move by Apple, Intel and Google a prime example of that?

<comment><USER10> DoD members get screwed as well, as seen in several high profile instances, but you can't just point to a couple cases and think that indicates a trend. I'm sure surveys of large tech companies and the DoD would show that professionals choose their current employer because they're treated well. We have enough mobility in this country that large scale mistreatment would be met with mass exodus and ultimate failure of the employer.

<comment><USER11> _We have enough mobility in this country that large scale mistreatment would be met with mass exodus and ultimate failure of the employer_

This is only true when the economy is booming as it is right now. No one was saying this in 2009.

<comment><USER13> The economy's only booming for those of us in tech. That's why there's all these wildcat labor actions, you see, which have _finally_ resulted in wages growing across-the-board for the first time in _decades_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That headline really needs to be toned down. Yeah company cities have been tried before, but this isn't anything Pullman would have liked. For one Facebook can't afford to turn cannons on its own workers and without cannons attacking your own workers, you just can't be a real robber baron.

<comment><USER7> Employee mobility matters. Most people working at Facebook could take their skills and easily get a job somewhere else. The story was different for the company town workers of a century ago.

<comment><USER15> The only way this turns Facebook into robber barons is if they're able to drive developer's salaries down as a result. But the only way to do that would be to build many thousands of units. The housing situation in SF isn't just a little bit short, it's a lot short on supply. And even that would probably just bring developers salaries down from the heavens to more normal levels rather than somehow magically making them all indentured servants.

<comment><USER7> That really only applies to staff not already living in the Bay area (who can presumably afford wherever it is they live), and staff willing to live in whatever kinds of apartments they're providing. That way lies the army of H1B mediocrity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, the basic problem is that the city councils of Valley "cities" (ie: overgrown, egotistical suburbs) keep refusing to build the kind of dense housing, mixed-price developments, and mixed-usage buildings that make _real_ cities function. In fact, they often explicitly refuse to build any new housing at all, insisting that transplanted tech employees just _find somewhere else_.

So the companies have to build their own damn housing.

Welcome to the outcome of NIMBYism.

<comment><USER7> Menlo Park is determined to protect its "village feel". They don't _want_ to be a "real city". They won't even allow buildings over two stories tall in the quaint little downtown area. Trying to overlay dense housing and mixed-use buildings onto a wealthy "village" is incredibly difficult, and some giant corporation muscling the city council is likely to provoke the residential antibodies.

<comment><USER13> And precisely this is why I'm adamant about never, ever moving to the Bay Area. It's full of tech companies to work at, neat people to hang out with, and has an excellent climate with plenty of nature to bike through... and the local governments do their damnedest to ensure nobody will ever be able to afford any of it except for them.

<comment><USER16> My issue with the Bay Area is that _and_ the baseless professional downgrading that's usually involved with that move. Because you didn't do it _in the Bay Area_ , they shave one or two ranks off your title and your salary suffers (and, presumably, you don't get the best projects). Sorry, but I know more than your VPs about technology and how to build a company, and so I'm not going to take a junior role for the "privilege" of living in California. If winter gets to me, I'll take two weeks and go to Mexico or Bonaire; problem solved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I need to visit the Bay Area tech scene and see what's going on. From the outside, via media and this site, it seems like it's drifting away from the real world into its own cultural bubble... but maybe I'm just hatin'</comment>


Ask HN: What is the least "sexy" field in Computer Science? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Does embedded systems count? It's sooo broad it's unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would go with network calculus

<comment><USER4> Isn't that what Feynman used to prove that the Connection Machine only needed a queue depth of four?</comment></comment>


FLAC.js, Aurora, and the Future of Web Audio - <AUTHOR> http://badassjs.com/post/25174050115/flac-js-aurora-and-the-future-of-web-audio

<comment><USER2> This is exactly the kind of thing I would've been working on if my boss hadn't said "it's a great idea, but let's just use it if somebody else does it". I worked on converting JSMad to use entirely typed arrays last summer (fun!), so I'm especially glad to see that all fixed up in the refactoring for Aurora.

Now, what I'd _really_ like to see is a similar project for a) container formats and b) video codecs. I've been experimenting with using JSMad to display waveforms from decoding MP3 files that are the audio tracks of videos (for assisting with subtitling), but it's kinda annoying having to download a separate file for generating waveforms rather than just extracting it directly from the same video that's playing anyway.

<comment><USER3> We do support multiple containers, and it is reasonably abstracted (but it is slightly leaky right now).

The support for multiple streams isn't there yet, it is something I would love to do, but it is reasonably complex and I have been researching about how to best support it, but I am not really sure what models works best in a browser.

If you want to add some input about it, I would love to hear it. (#ofmlabs on freenode, or send me an email)

Ps. We managed to get Typed Arrays to work with JSMad, so that stuff is in now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome news :) For the mp3 demo, what is the song encoded at? Also, is there a way to listen to the same tracks encoded with the various encoders to compare? I come up with my own encoder / decoder a few years ago and ran a MUSHRA test against various other popular codecs; I wish I had this tool back then!

<comment><USER3> It is 128kbit in the MP3 demo, I think I used LAME to encode it, but I am not sure, could have been the one in OS X. It plays 320kbit files fine though.

<comment><USER5> It sounds _really_ bad in Chrome on Ubuntu 12.04. Choppy, I don't think the speed is right, etc. I didn't see a link to the original, though, so it might be just _really_ crappy music.

<comment><USER3> <http://email@example.com>, but it shouldn't sound 'choppy'.

We have had some problems on Linux where Chrome(ium) for some reason reports the wrong sample-rate, but that usually just changes the playback speed.

Does it use high amounts of CPU too?

<comment><USER5> Yep, that sounds normal. It uses about 12% CPU for Pulse and 12% for Chrome (this is a Core 2 Quad).

<comment><USER3> Could you please add an issue with some more precise information about your browser(s)/sound server at <https://github.com/ofmlabs/aurora.js/issues> ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Naming it "Aurora" might be confusing, since that's what Mozilla calls the Alpha builds of Firefox. <https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/channel/#aurora>

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but it had the name before Mozilla called their stuff Aurora, and it stuck.

But yes, it is slightly confusing, we know; we're just out of imagination and if something as nice pops up, we might rename Aurora.js to lessen the confusion.

<comment><USER6> Oh didn't realize your project was older. :) Anyway I doubt most people would really confuse the two.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but when developing it ends up being confusing sometimes since we're often targeting Mozilla Aurora, it is also why I prefer to call it Aurora.js.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the kind of news I am interested in.

</comment><comment><USER8> I tried it, but I heard only a single 1/2 second sound randomly in the track (different spot each time). I tried all three decoders mp3 and flac made that sound, alac was totally silent.

Firefox 12.0 on Linux. I have noscript and flashblock installed but I set noscript to allow all.

Also, some runs I would get a time number for the length (a negative number - I assume it's supposed to be that way?) and sometimes it would be 0:00.

<comment><USER3> Could you try and see if any of the demos at [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API#Working_Audio_Data_D...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API#Working_Audio_Data_Demos) work?

If so, could you please add a github issue at <https://github.com/ofmlabs/aurora.js/issues> with some more information about your OS/Sound Server so we can replicate the issue?

(The negative number on the right is the time remaining)

<comment><USER8> Most do work, some don't. But the ones that do make my browser extremely unhappy. The whole thing becomes very unresponsive - almost unusable.

I have a 2.8Ghz I7 CPU, FF 12, on linux using native ALSA output. I'm pretty sure my webgl doesn't work though, which may have caused some of the issues.

It's hard for me to say for sure what does work since I'm not sure what some of them should look like.

Regarding your code, the time remaining number did not go down when it played - is it supposed to? (Another one of those things where I'm not sure what it is supposed to do.) Is the 0:00 at the start supposed to change? It didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great. CPU is higher than native, but not too bad (especially considering it's an initial release).

I was getting 10% each on Chrome and a Chrome Renderer process. I paused to switch over to Cog to check its CPU usage, then switched back and it was hovering around 6%. For comparison, Cog spiked to 15% for a second then settled in at around 1%.

I'm on a 2010 Core 2 Duo MacBook Air.

<comment><AUTHOR> The CPU usage seems to increase while the audio file is being downloaded from the server as well, which might explain why it was initial 10% and then dropped to 6%. We'll look into that more. When decoding from a local file, I've seen flac as low as 3.5%.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, after the initial spike while downloading (7%) mine settled down to about 1%: <http://i.imgur.com/iFijI.png>

This is on a 1st gen Core i5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Works perfectly in Chrome and Firefox here, but both browsers exhibit 30%+ CPU usage on a mid-2009 MBP. This is an outrageous figure that makes me wish NaCl gets standardized.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, it runs at about 4% to 5% CPU in Chrome here. Did you have the dev tools open? That seems to disable a lot of the JS optimizations that Chrome has.

<comment><USER11> Nope, just fired both browsers to test since I mainly use Safari those times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome. I'd also love to see a Ogg Vorbis decoder - the Web Audio API is coming to Safari (both Mac and iOS), and it only plays the patent- encumbered AAC normally, without support for Vorbis. So that would fix Safari leaving only IE without support. Also, it might pressure browser makers to add native support for Vorbis - if their browser plays the files anyway, just slower than other browsers, why not move support in to the browser?

</comment><comment><USER13> In Chromium on Ubuntu 11.04 with an old E4500 Core2 Duo CPU, MP3 and FLAC work flawlessly but ALAC doesn't play.

CPU usage goes from 6/8% (the base level with 3 Vim instances open, a couple of nautilus windows open, the update manager window open and two tabs in chromium) to 20/24%.

That's very cool.</comment>


Story Worth – privately collect and share family stories - <AUTHOR> https://www.storyworth.com

<comment><USER2> I've used StoryWorth. It's a great service and definitely not a social network. Your family members respond to questions via email with stories and the service stores them. Then they're safely stored. Great for older family members who don't really understand anything besides email.

<comment><USER3> Isn't their response already stored in your email?

<comment><USER4> It is indeed, which makes for a nice backup. In fact, a lot of our storytellers never visit the site, interacting with the service entirely over email.

It's still great to have a copy online for backup, editing, sharing with new family members (e.g. spouses), or ordering printed books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great service, big fan of StoryWorth!

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi everyone, I'm the founder of StoryWorth, AMA!

</comment><comment><USER6> StoryWorth is a YC (W11) co.

</comment><comment><USER7> "private", on the network? Somebody's still using that hook? Does it work?

<comment> luke-stanley Maybe some old people still think things are private online - even if they've seen about PRISM (etc!) in the news they may forget.

They have an example of some possibly illegal activity being spoken about by an old guy recanting putting a car into the deans office of at Yale law school. Can you say honeytrap? ;)

<comment><USER4> Haha, that "old guy" is actually my dad, but I won't tell him you said that :)

I think it's very understandable to be skeptical of online privacy these days. There is no such thing as perfect privacy, but there's a wide spectrum between a fully public Twitter account and a Gmail account secured with 2 factor auth.

Where you strive to be on that spectrum influences your product decisions, and that in turns affects the interactions your customers have. In our case, the goal is to encourage meaningful conversations between close family members, rather than broad public sharing.

More info here: [https://www.storyworth.com/privacy](https://www.storyworth.com/privacy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> oh great another social network.

<comment><USER9> It's not even that. You're limited to a max of 15 people per $99-per-year account.</comment></comment>