Beijing is planning world's longest rail tunnel to link Taiwan to mainland - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2158271/strait-ahead-how-beijing-planning-worlds-longest-rail-tunnel-link <comment><USER2> > […] rising political tensions between the self-ruled island and Beijin […] > mean that the scheme is unlikely to come to fruition any time soon. However, > some researchers said it was possible that Beijing would start work on the > project in a unilateral, and largely symbolic move.

Sometimes I wonder if we're nearing a time when we'll see China simply _do a Crimea_ and annex Taiwan when geopolitical circumstances mean no outside interference is likely to occur — outside of the vehement disagreements and strong protests of course, but no military action; nor anything more than token sanctions.

But at least the Crimeans got a new bridge out of it…

<comment><USER3> The US never quite supported Ukraine the way they support Taiwan, they will be forced to have an response.

US will surely impose tough sanctions on China, which would be much more disastrous to them than the sanctions US imposed on Russia after Crimea.

EU will likely join in.

What will China actually gain from this? Not much besides scoring some political gains at home which they don't need anyway.

<comment><USER4> From a military perspective, Taiwan is a extremely important to China because of where it is located. Their fear is that the US would use Taiwan as a base of operation to refuel and attack China. It's in their best interest to reclaim that land.

Like all politicians, domestic policies are usually harder to gain political points vs foreign policies. It is also much harder to fix when problems arise. This is why head of states like the US president have traditionally spent more time on foreign policy. All leaders think about their legacy. If Xi can reclaim Taiwan, he will be remembered for decades. That is powerful motivation for any leader, especially one that is elderly.

The US is currently run by a lunatic. Are you so sure Trump would impose sanctions? Most of his decisions are made in a fit of rage, rather than thoughtful thinking. The fact he met with Kim, should tell you something about his decision making. The problem is Americans has played this big brother role for the last 50 years, but now there is a potential contender on the playground. I am not sure the US can do much here considering China is cash rich to withstand any sanctions you impose on them. China can use Trumps playbook too if they wanted like subsidising farmers, but they haven't cause they don't need to.

<comment><USER5> The US has South Korea, Japan and Guam. Taiwan isn't of military strategic importance to the US nor would it likely serve as a base for any assault on the mainland.

<comment><USER4> I said strategic importance to China. Not the USA. South Korea, Japan, and Guam are a drop in the bucket compared to China in terms of military might and economy, unfortunately.

<comment><USER5> Those all host US military bases, Guam isn't even a nation it's a US territory.

I suggest you look up US deployments and see why Taiwan while is of a huge cultural, political and ideological significance isn't that much of a strategic significance in a conflict there are a lot of assets in theater already and the US while being a military backer of Taiwan limits its presence and support in order to never make them significant enough to justify an invasion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This feels like a forced marriage. Where one side is willing and the other side is forced.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hehe, an underwater tunnel huh?

How about to build an underwater tunnel between the mainland and Hainan[0]?

Oh wait somebody mentioned it[1] at 2010, and someone else did it[2] again at 2018.

Well, then good luck to that tunnel.

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

[1] (Reference) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiongzhou_Strait#cite_note- Soh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiongzhou_Strait#cite_note-Sohu-1) (2010)

[2] (Reference) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiongzhou_Strait#cite_note-4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiongzhou_Strait#cite_note-4) (2018)

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of British fears of a Nazi chunnel being dug to invade the island. Apparently it could have been used to transport 300,000 men per day.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/britain-feared-nazi- chunn...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/britain-feared-nazi- chunnel-1417370.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Taiwan would be stupid to agree to this.</comment>


Show HN: WOPR – A markup for rich terminal reports - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yaronn/wopr <comment><USER2> For now I'm categorising this (mentally, I mean) under "awesome, but idky useful".

I'd love to be told I'm wrong though. It's the best thing when you discover how to usefully use awesome but hitherto useless tools :p

<comment><AUTHOR> one use case is when ssh-ing machines you can see visual reports rather than text and numbers (think cpu metrics or app specific).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I am the author. Feel free to ask me anything or come up with suggestions!

<comment><USER3> Why do you decided to use XML as the basic format?

<comment><AUTHOR> XML is a standard format for markup (e.g. HTML). When XML is used where it shouldn't (object serialization) it adds complexity. Here it signals that creating a report is as simple (or at least as standard) as creating HTML. What other format you had in mind?

<comment><USER4> >XML is a standard format for markup (e.g. HTML).

XHTML is maybe the most hated incarnation of HTML, and is no longer encouraged.

<comment><USER5> You can still write xml-compliant HTML; whether it's called XHTML or not is splitting hairs. You still get all the benefits of a very rich toolset for document preparation. I work on a site that makes heavy use of xslt and works with xml-compliant HTML as input/output.

<comment><USER6> Maybe "SGML" would have been a better descriptor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Joshua: Shall we play a game?

<comment><USER8> Global Thermonuclear War

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?

<comment><USER9> Later. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.

<comment><USER10> A strange game: The only winning move is not to play. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another example is US weather map:

$> a=$(curl -Ls "bit.ly/1OuRPDJ"); curl --data "$a" "tty.zone?cols=${COLUMNS}"

</comment><comment><USER11> Very cool indeed - pair this with 'watch' and you have instant ASCII monitoring tools implemented as http endpoints.

</comment><comment><USER12> Impressive. I keep using bare xterm since it still supports Tektronix emulation (but, unfortunately, no Regis nor Sixel). This seems like a viable substitution for all three.

<comment><USER13> xterm actually does support ReGIS and Sixel graphics! However, it must be compiled with --enable-regis-graphics` (or `--enable-sixel-graphics`); and it's likely that your distro didn't compile it with those flags. If they did, you can get ReGIS support by running xterm in VT340 mode (`-ti vt340`).

<comment><USER12> Great! Did not know that, thought that only the DEC version could do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Haven't tried this. Just want to know -- what advantage does this give over using gnu plot with sixel output?

I can see the advantage over tek 4010 (this could be dynamic). If this is static (again, haven't tried yet), with multiple pages, why not just use tek 4010?

I also don't understand the admonish to use something other than xterm. What is the issue that was observed?

Ratboy

<comment><AUTHOR> this uses xterm, so it's more accessible to most users than the other alternatives you mentioned. also note wopr is not just about the graphs (like [https://github.com/yaronn/blessed-contrib](https://github.com/yaronn/blessed- contrib)) but also about having a declarative format, and even consuming it with curl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This would be useful for AWS instances where you don't want to install a desktop environment on the server.

<comment><USER16> Why would you wanna do that (install a desktop env)?!

<comment><USER17> To support graphical installers and specific service administrators that are used to using a GUI on a server? I knew an Oracle DBA once that always wanted X and and Gnome installed on the the RHEL DB servers, it was what he knew and was comfortable with when installing Oracle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is cool. I've been looking for something like it.

<comment><USER19> Very cool!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I didn't know, you could display something like that in a terminal. And why tty.zone maps to that wopr site?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a shortcut for the wopr page

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Absolutely fantastic name choice; kudos.

</comment><comment><USER22> reminds me of [http://zachholman.com/spark/](http://zachholman.com/spark/) (spark-line graphs using unicode graph chars)

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if it's manageable to build a converter to SVG with just XSLT?

</comment><comment><USER24> Long live the TUI!

</comment><comment><USER25> heh, this is pretty awesome. I literally just started hacking with blessed over the weekend. Nice work!</comment>


NY Times: Entrepreneur Troubleshoots AdWords Campaign to Save Business - <AUTHOR> http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/my-adwords-debacle-a-wake-up-and-a-fix

<comment><AUTHOR> I have never run a large-scale AdWords campaign, so this is back-seat driving, but I wonder if Google's Pay Per Conversion pricing ([http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2472713)) would be a way to attack this problem.

For example, send incoming customers to a survey. Pay $1 for customers who self-identify as non-profit or academic, $10 for customers who identify as Fortune 500. Google will go off and determine if it's more efficient to deliver you 10x non-profit customers, or 1x corporate ones.

Folks who have tried something like this, does it work?

<comment><USER2> The problem with using pay-per-conversion is that it works best (and only?) when you can get a direct response from the site when a sale is made. For example, send someone to your landing page, they buy a product online, and then call the conversion code on the 'thank you' page, e.g. /order/complete -- this can be tracked as a conversion easily.

For sites with big ticket items where the transaction doesn't take place online, it can be trickier to try and attribute the sale to a certain ad campaign.

<comment><USER3> > For sites with big ticket items where the transaction doesn't take place > online, it can be trickier to try and attribute the sale to a certain ad > campaign.

How do they do it? One method I can think of is to show different phone numbers for users that have been cookied as coming in from different ads.

<comment><USER4> The company I currently work for does exactly this for car dealer websites. We have separate tracking numbers which display on car dealership websites depending on the source.

We actually found another vendor that does this on a per visitor basis (ie. each visitor gets their own tracking number). While I think THAT is overkill, the technology is there to do this kind of thing without too much overhead.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Fiscal Truth about California - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/111398/the-truth-about-california;_ylt=AjqnonCZcwlegzI834N0MIS7YWsA;_ylu=X3oDMTE1aWQ3dHI5BHBvcwM4BHNlYwN0b3BTdG9yaWVzBHNsawN0aGV0cnV0aGFib3U-?mod=bb-budgeting&sec=topStories&pos=5&as <comment><USER2> Most of this data is for a ten year period. The US has been lucky to have a place like California for the last 2 decades, but that doesn't mean it will be on top forever.

Texas is leading most of these categories (except of course VC funding...) for the last 2 years. Winds are turning. California isn't going anywhere, but they probably wont be the cats meow for the next 10 years.

<comment><USER3> Maybe ... I can see California killing SV in one way or another, slowly or nor so slowly, but one _overwhelming_ advantage it has over every other state is that non-competes are uninformative. (And for startups, a much more recent law means you own what you do with your own effort, resources and ideas.)

A liquid market in talent, so to speak, can make up for a lot of other problems, and arguably has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> His point isn't completely off in that "California is going bankrupt" is a much better news story than the truth which is the state is just deeply troubled.

That said the problem with this article is it basically uses Silicon Valley to prop up the rest of the state. Yes there's a lot of VC money in California, yes tech companies choose to have their headquarters here and yes that pumps up the overall GDP. But that doesn't negate all the other problems we have.

As anyone knows you can make a ton of money and it doesn't matter if you spend more than you make. Right now California is doing just that to the tune of $20 billion a year.

Beyond that he is using twisted numbers. For example he uses the Tax Foundation's tax burden index but the Tax Foundation themselves say that isn't a valid comparison metric because that calculation doesn't include local taxes and...

"some states accomplish at the local level what other states accomplish at the state level, so a degree of comparability is lost as a result."

He also uses a lot of first level thinking. Like justifying the high pay given to public sector employees by quoting the high cost of living but not asking why there's such a high cost of living. Or saying how Google, Apple and Facebook all choose not to move from California without mentioning they've all chosen to build their data centers elsewhere.

Like I said people do make this out to be more than it is. You never hear about Texas' equally sizable budget deficit for example. But that doesn't change the fact that things are bad.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _California isn't going anywhere, but they probably wont be the cats meow for the next 10 years_

I don't know if the VC data includes angel investment. And, while I'm sure it's a much smaller amount in terms of total dollar figures, there have been several hundred startups funded in the Valley this year.

Granted, most of those will fail, but if even 20-30 of them succeed (10% success rate), that will be a huge boom to the California economy.

Not only that, but we're going to be seeing a number of really interesting exits/huge acquisitions in the next few years: Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Linkedin, Zynga et all... If 2 out of those 5 goes IPO, that will add tens of billions of dollars to the economy.

Companies like Google, Apple, Cisco, Intel, etc... are all doing quite well.

Nation wide, companies have an estimate of $1.4 Trillion dollars of cash on hand, and they really don't want to hire. but, as soon as the economy starts to rebound, they are going to be interested in growing fast, and merger and acquisitions are typically one of the fastest ways to do that. $1.4 Trillion buys a lot of small recently funded startups.

No, I think California is going to be doing just fine in the next few years.

<comment><USER5> Specifically, its businesses and citizens'll be doing just fine.

The government will probably be fucked up. But when was the last time it /wasn't/? I suspect even the older of HN's community'd really have to dig at their memories to remember a time when Cali's government was functioning at or near spec, regardless of party-in-power. We're pretty good at the whole revenue-generating shtick, but the governance bit seems to keep eluding us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That was quite a contrarian rant. Thanks for posting it.

I have a feeling both sides spin this issue for their own purposes. Things like total VC dollars spent take on new meaning once you realize that VCs are trending to invest in much larger companies using much bigger investments. Then the question becomes: where are all the big companies that VCs might invest in located? Which isn't the same question as: where are all the startups located?

CEO Magazine voted California the worst state to operate in. California has hundreds of thousands more people leaving than arriving. Numerous politicians from all parties have commented on what a basket-case it is. The two states have the worst credit rating? Illinois and California.

Those are also facts.

As for me, who knows? Who cares? My gut feeling says that there's a lot spin on both sides. I don't have a dog in this fight, so I'm more than happy no matter how it turns out. I'll just sit back and see what happens. I _do_ know that if the California-will-default crowd is correct, its not like it will be a secret. It will be a long drawn-out affair, will all sorts of accounting tricks, yelling at each other, voter referendums, and budget crises that just continue to get worse.

Kind of like we're seeing now.

</comment><comment><USER7> States like California and New York are mostly the victims of politicians in the 60's - 80's who deferred all sorts of costs to the future to make the books work. Welcome to the future.

Examples: "No money to give raises to state workers, cops and teachers." Solution to get contracts signed: Richer pensions, bigger benefits

"Crime is out of control. Drugs are bad. Rural economies are collapsing from de-industrialization." Solution: Build prisons.

"We're enlightened and want the poor to get better healthcare." Solution: Spend more on Medicaid. (In New York, pass the bill down to the county while you're at it)

"The Mayor can't afford a 7% raise to the Police and Fire Departments. The arbitrator will give them 6% that we can't afford if we go to arbitration." Solution: Allow employees to bank unlimited sick time that gets paid out at retirement and free healthcare for life.

Hopefully a crisis will fix things.</comment>


Why doesn't someone start a company to democratize tax loopholes? - <AUTHOR> For those of you who work in financial technology -- what's to stop a company from amassing money from a lot of people who wouldn't normally be able to afford the kinds of tax benefits available to the wealthy[1], and then using that money to do the same kinds of tax-dodging maneuvers, returning the tax savings to the users?<p>I know very little about tax law or the technology that would be involved in doing this, but it seems like it's worth a shot. If the wealthiest people in this country don't pay their taxes, why the hell should I?<p>[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/economy/for-the-wealthiest-private-tax-system-saves-them-billions.html?src=longreads&_r=0 <comment><USER2> This is basically the market TurboTax and H&R Block are going after. Each taxpayer's circumstances will be different, so it would be impossible to hire a single company to perform blanket tax-dodging maneuvers for an entire class of taxpayers, and if they did it individually, the payoff wouldn't be large enough unless they charged an amount that would be too high for lower income tax payers to justify or afford. However by taking the complex tax code and distilling it into a series of user-friendly questions, TurboTax is able to scale up to a mass-market offering that is feasible because the time spent by the filer is inexpensive enough to justify. The market in between is the market local accountants typically fill.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, the short answer is that it doesn't work that way.

As an example of a loophole, investors can buy stock in a company, hold it for five years, and currently get 0% capital gains on the appreciation.

You don't need an intermediary to do this; you can do this right now.

It's just that most regular people don't have the money to invest, and if there's no money to invest then there's no money to apply toward loopholes.

And then you have to pick winners.

Same thing with putting company investments in Roth IRAs. This tax loophole would be idiotic for any normal person, but with somebody who's not planning on using the Roth for retirement it makes perfect sense.

But, you have to pick winners or Joe sixpack just lost his retirement savings.

<comment><USER4> Just to clarify for those who might misinterpret what you said, the top long- term capital gains tax rate is 23.8%. The only people eligible for 0% long- term capital gains tax rate are people in the lowest tax brackets.

<comment><USER5> I believe the parent is referring to Qualified Small Business Stock. New issues of stock (meeting certain requirements: certain date ranges, company must be valued at less than $50M, keep all it's assets in "productive" investments, not passive such as real estate or other stock) can be completely excluded from long term capital gains tax.

[https://blog.wealthfront.com/qualified-small-business- stock/](https://blog.wealthfront.com/qualified-small-business-stock/) has a nice summary.

<comment><USER3> Or: [http://www.jeremytunnell.com/posts/a-guide-to- section-1202-t...](http://www.jeremytunnell.com/posts/a-guide-to- section-1202-tax-benefits-for-entrepreneurs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because of diminishing returns.

The tax burden follows the Pareto Principle as much as income does. When you read that rousing NYT headline, what you have to keep in mind is, these taxpayers may have well "saved" a substantial fraction off their tax bill, but it still was a mere fraction. For example, in the UK, the top percentile contributes a third of the overall income tax[1].

When you have a tax bill for a few dozen million US$, it is not that difficult to justify paying a team of accountants and lawyers who bill $1k/h each to shave 20% off the top. When your tax burden is in the thousands, you will be best served by a chartered accountant who can shave the same 20% for you, but in your case that will be several hundred dollars.

There are no "loopholes" in the tax code in the sense that the Congress didn't foresee tax avoidance techniques, or the courts are somehow ill-equipped. There are (1) tax incentives, (2) bribery, and (3) notoriously underfunded IRS. (1) scales pretty well, whereas (2) and (3) don't.

[1] [http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2107031/UK-B...](http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2107031/UK- Budget-2012-Top-1-earners-contribute-income-tax.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Because the vast majority of people pay so little taxes that the "standard" loopholes dominate any savings you might find with esoteric tax engineering.

For the average person who pays federal taxes, properly filling out their existing deductions is much more beneficial. That is already a huge business with well funded players & lots of competition.

</comment><comment><USER8> There was an article that made it to HN a few months ago about a village in Wales where the local businesses were doing this. I think it may have been part of a TV show but it's definitely an idea who's time has come. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crickhowell-welsh- town-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crickhowell-welsh-town-moves- offshore-to-avoid-tax-on-local-business-a6728971.html)

<comment><USER9> Beat me to it! Haha! Here are some previous HN discussions on that topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545626) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10600338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10600338)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's also the case that a good amount of the 'loopholes' apply to income that most Americans don't have, e.g. capital gains, capital loss harvesting, etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> Because you need substantial income flows (B2B or B2C sales), preferably not all coming from the same jurisdiction. And a reason to do something ("economic substance", i.e. come up with a good story why you need to route that money through the BVI).

Every situation is different, and offers different opportunities. Technology companies can use different techniques when compared to a retailer. Some "loopholes" have genuine reasons to exist and are hard to fix. Something as simple as corporate interest deduction comes to mind, which can be used to help grow a business through debt financing (the way most companies use it). However, if you set it up properly, it can also be used to strip earnings away to a different jurisdiction. But whether you want to use this technique depends on how your corporate structure is set up and capitalised. What works for an american company might not work for a UK company, for example.

Think of building an extremely complex custom system (where if you mess it up, you get a huge bill a few years down the line); that's essentially what tax optimisation is at the multinational level.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wondered the same thing when reading that article! From what I gathered, though, a lot of the reason why it's not more popularity has to do with the fact that you need to actually defending your claims to the IRS or in court:

      Operating largely out of public view — in tax court,
       through arcane legislative provisions and in private
      negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service — the wealthy
      have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the
      government's ability to tax them. The effect has been to
      create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several
      thousand Americans.

That doesn't sound like the sort of easily scalable thing that makes sense to folks who might save a few grand a year. In fact, it sounds very expensive.

</comment><comment><USER13> They _are_ paying their taxes, it's just that "their taxes" aren't primarily based on income. The article specifically says this.

Nothing stops you from doing it. Just reduce your income and your income taxes will drop. To make up the difference, you don't need money; you need the services that money was previously paying for.

Instead of needing income to buy a car, start a business that owns the car and takes a tax deduction for it, but allows you to use the car at no charge (reminds me of the contractor I knew who had his carpentry business buy a Corvette as his "work vehicle"). Ditto for your house, etc: a friend of mine bought a 3-family house, rented out all the rooms on the second & third floors and lived on the first floor herself while tenants paid the mortgage and she got to take any expenses as deductions.

Now, you might find out that in the end it's not worth it to you to do that, but there's nothing illegal about it, it's just business.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not to defend these loopholes, but if you allow me to proselytize a bit... Why bother with those fancy tricks with your modest income when you can get tax- free gains anyway?

OK, I exaggerate a little, but you can probably open a tax-free savings/investment account (Roth IRA (US), TFSA (CA), NISA (UK)). These usually have enough contribution room to meet your savings goals (you'll probably exceed them, but you can put those savings somewhere else, like a pension account or tax-deferred account). You can put a low-cost (< 1% of assets, per year) fund in them that owns every publicly traded company in your country/planet[0]. Now you're investing rather than getting around taxes, but your interest, dividends, and capital gains are now tax free.

0 - Vanguard's total-market ETFs, for example

</comment><comment><USER14> You can call it "KickBacker" (that one's for free)

<comment><USER15> I think you meant KickBackr

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great idea.</comment>


Freeciv WebGL 3D Updated - <AUTHOR> http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2017/05/freeciv-webgl-3d-still-improving/?v <comment><AUTHOR> A new version of Freeciv WebGL 3D has been released today. I would be very interested in feedback about the new version!</comment>


Learning with Texts (2020) - <AUTHOR> https://sourceforge.net/projects/lwt/ <comment><AUTHOR> To give a bit of the backstory, Learning with Texts was a web application written in JavaScript which allowed for a sort of computerized reading of interlinear texts. However recently, Steve Kaufmann and LingQ have decided to threaten legal action against the software (in the public domain/Unlicense previously) to remove it from public circulation.

<comment><USER2> Do you have a source that confirms LingQ filed the motion?

It seems like the most likely explanation, but I haven't been able to find much more context here outside of the update to sourceforge.</comment></comment>


TinyPNG – Compress PNG images while preserving transparency - <AUTHOR> https://tinypng.com/ <comment><USER2> Useful. Been using pngcrush on the console but it can't compress much images with alpha transparency afaik.

Do anyone know of a CLI-alternative to pngcrush that would support alpha transparency as well?</comment>


Cereal Killer needs your help - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1499648032/fat-kid-rules-the-world-0

<comment><AUTHOR> Matthew Lillard has done an AMA recently and he's pushing his project. Here's the link to the AMA: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uc94p/im_matthew_lilla...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uc94p/im_matthew_lillard_stu_from_scream_shaggy_in/).</comment>


Simple, Fast, Easy Parallelism in Shell Pipelines (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://catern.com/posts/pipes.html <comment><USER2> As stated in the post itslef, just use GNU parallel: "But wait, what about GNU parallel? Actually, it turns out that GNU parallel does give us this capability. It supports sending lines of input to commands over stdin with its --pipe argument and sending multiple lines to the same task with its --round- robin argument. And it doesn't have a 4096-byte-long line limit, and you don't need to worry about wrapping your workers with pad and unpad. So, you should probably just use GNU parallel. :)"

<comment><USER3> Seconded. This is relegated to a footnote in the OP, which is rather unhelpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ew</comment>


The Valve Way: Gabe Newell And Erik Johnson Speak - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6471/the_valve_way_gabe_newell_and_.php

<comment><AUTHOR> This has already been submitted as a one-page some time ago, but it didn't end up getting much love.

I rather enjoyed it, so I figured I'd give it another stab.

One-page is here: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6471/the_valve_way_gab...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6471/the_valve_way_gabe_newell_and_.php?print=1)

Favorite part: "Premature monetization is the root of all evil."

</comment><comment><USER2> Back in 2003, the source code for Half Life 2 was leaked by somebody in Germany.

The hacker eventually contacted Valve himself, and expressed interest in working for the company. Valve then staged a fake job interview, and tried to trick him in to coming to Seattle. There, they waited with FBI agents, and prepared to arrest him.

Fortunately, he was detained in Germany.

That story, combined with this story, raises my eyebrows, especially because Valve is trying to show off "The Valve Way".

<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/11/valve-tricked-h/>

<comment><USER3> I'm not grasping your point.

<comment><USER4> He's one of the guys who thinks Valve should have given the German guy a job, and is still upset at Valve over it.

<comment><USER5> I think he is a lot more upset that Valve tried to lure him to the US where he would have faced drastic punishment. Getting caught in Germany (where the punishment he received didn't destroy his life) was the best thing that could happen to him but Valve didn't make that happen.

That's the truly disgusting part. Valve wanted to destroy his life.

<comment><USER4> Valve wanted to punish him for crimes he commited. HL2 was a _big deal_.

As for the magnitude of what Valve was seeking? Among other things, they were probably scared; not every hacker is a friendly, innocent curious kid working alone. They should have taken his word for it? Hah, since when is it a good idea to trust criminals?

<comment><USER5> They could have cooperated with the police in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Powerful insight from Gabe applicable to startups:

"No -- we don't recruit for games. We recruit people..."

Replace 'games' with 'products'.</comment>


Find and list all your Twitter mutuals - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ejmg/help-why-cant-i-hold-all-these-mutuals <comment><USER2> `myOwnStasi = api.create_list("mutuals").id` This one caught me slighly off guard.</comment>


Aliens could harness and move stars to keep powering their civilisations - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/alien-stars-harness-power-station-space-energy-paper-a8408596.html <comment><AUTHOR> Why would advanced civilizations go to the trouble of moving stars closer to them rather than just moving themselves closer to black holes and letting gravity do the work?

If proximity to stars is so desirable, wouldn't residence in a galactic center near some super massive black hole be ideal?

</comment><comment><USER2> > Though it is very difficult to imagine what a future alien race might do, it > is likely they will search out ways of harnessing renewable energy, such as > building power plants around stars...

At Dyson sphere scales, I don't think that stars would be considered 'renewable' energy.</comment>


How will Artificial Intelligence Impact Society - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/06/13/three-impacts-of-artificial-intelligence-on-society/ <comment><AUTHOR> Over the next five years, we are about to witness the world we live in entirely disrupted by improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Children today are growing up with AI assistants in their homes (Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa) -- to the point that you might consider their mere presence an extension of co-parenting. As voice and facial recognition continue to evolve, machine learning algorithms are getting smarter. More and more industries are being influenced by AI, and our society as we know it is transforming.</comment>


Monster Energy logo as SVG and animated with CSS - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/TimPietrusky/pen/vKuja

<comment><USER2> Monster Energy has been known to be pretty... litigious at times [1]. I'd be prepared for a possible takedown notice.

[1] [http://consumerist.com/2012/07/17/monster-energy-assumes- con...](http://consumerist.com/2012/07/17/monster-energy-assumes-consumers- cant-distinguish-energy-drinks-from-fish-tanks/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I hope they don't sue me, because this is just a fan remake and I love Monster Energy drinks :D

<comment><USER3> Yeah, be careful about that. The head of brand protection at Monster is a guy that I have had business contact with. He is one of my least favorite people I have ever met in my life and I have had the pleasure of speaking with scumbag insurgents/terrorists face-to-face in a war zone.

<comment><USER4> Hah, so it's safe to assume you won't have any more business dealings with him after he sees this.

<comment><USER3> Haha, actually I thought about that as I was writing. I was going to change what I wrote a bit for that reason and then I recalled my No. 1 rule in life: "Don't be a douchebag!" and I left what I wrote as is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Off topic, kinda. Recently our company was exhibiting at a conference (of all things geared towards churches) and 3 different people came up to one of our employees and told her to stop drinking the devils drink. Apparently some people think the logo is the "mark of the beast" because each mark looks like a 6 in Hebrew.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cool

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I just love Monster Energy :D

<comment><USER6> Not gonna lie, there's something curious, if not suspicious, about your enthusiasm... ∗squints∗

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah you are right. I express my love too much D: But that's how a fan is...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks really cool. Great job!</comment>


Climate scientists say 2008 will be coolest year of decade - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/05/climate-change-weather <comment><AUTHOR> _Assuming the final figure is close to 14.3C then 2008 will be the tenth hottest year on record. The hottest was 1998 - which included a very strong El Niño event - followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002._

Doesn't this mean that we actually have a multi-year cooling trend since 1998? And more importantly, how is this cooling trend explained by the man-made Co2 theory of increasing global warming?

<comment><USER2> Yes. The satellite data shows a global cooling trend since 1998.

<comment><USER3> During this same time, the amount of CO2 production increased as never before.

But there's a link between CO2 and temperature. At least that's what they say.

<comment><USER4> If there's no immediate, overtly measurable change in temperature, then obviously the tons of CO2 aren't doing anything negative. Also, the scientists working on climate change should just stop wasting their time; can't they see that all of their results and research can just be countered with a witty remark and an observation any seven year old can make? They obviously have an agenda.

Anyway, I find it impossible to have these conversations as they are more ideology than facts. Once a political movement hijacks an idea, it stops being scientific and starts being a conviction shared by all those in the movement.

<comment><USER3> Arguably there can be a relation. We have 140 years of somewhat-quality data, and the last decade shows a counter-indication to a correlation. One could argue an increasing base with variance based on sunspot cycles. Or one could argue just sunspot cycles as the cause of change. Or carrier pigeons.

It's an interesting area of study, precisely because there are so many unknowns, sarcasm or not.

<comment><USER5> "It's an interesting area of study, precisely because there are so many unknowns, sarcasm or not."

Actually, that's why I've become a AGW skeptic.

Remember, the AGW religion is not that "mankind has an effect on climate". Chaos theory guarantees that everything has _an_ effect on climate. The AGW hysteria is that mankind's contribution _dominates_ everything else and that we're looking at massive (2C+) warming on a relatively short timescale.

Admitting that mankind's signal can be masked by natural variations already means that mankind's signal, rather than dominating, is merely one of many other signals that have an effect, and that already logically means two things: It caps the effect our signal can be having, and it means that thanks to the fact that there are "so many unknowns", it means that the hypothesis that we're hardly having any effect at all remains at a significant probability of being true.

Even admitting that our signal can be masked takes out the worst-case hysteria. "Mankind has less effect on the climate than natural vulcanism by an order of magnitude" hardly says "spend trillions of dollars and break your economies to prevent that effect" to me.

"Watts up with That" earlier this year posted the predictions made by the IPCC from a few years ago, and showed that we're on the verge of falling off the bottom of their confidence interval this year, and if next year is even flat (let alone cooler) we will. If we do fall off the bottom next year, that doesn't mean that "natural variations are masking the global warming signal". It means "You guys didn't predict these variations, therefore your models are just plain _wrong_ , and therefore your models may not be referenced for the purposes of extracting a putative 'global warming signal'."

Wrong models = wrong science. It does not equal "science that's still right if you just look hard enough". If climate scientists ten years ago couldn't predict a cooling event, then they are in absolutely no position to be predicting 100 years in advance, no matter how much they babble on. That's not just common sense, it's _science_ too, no matter how many words they throw at you.

Truthfully, judging science from the outside isn't that hard if you stick to "Did your predictions come true?" "Predictions are hard!" isn't a defense when your predictions fail; they still failed.

Keep an eye out over the next couple of years. If they stay cold or get colder, write AGW off until they radically, _radically_ improve their science. The uncertainty will simply be too low to worry about when we have plenty of real problems (like the Pacific dead zone or overfishing or...) to worry about. If AGW is false, it is _actively_ harming the environment with opportunity cost.

<comment><USER3> Great reply.

I don't know if you've played around with complex Cellular Automata models, like those used in climate modeling, but the default behavior most of the time is the runaway condition. I can't help but wonder if some really smart people aren't playing games with CA where they don't understand the nature of the beast they are working with. That would explain why every model predicts wildly increasing temps. It's an artifact of the modeling technique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Still blathering on about human induced climate change though - sigh. Climate change is surely inevitable and has always been with us.

</comment><comment><USER3> _...And 2008 would have been a scorcher in Charles Dickens's time..._

Somehow I don't think .6 degrees more qualifies as a "scorcher" For an article that attacks possible future over interpretation of the data, it seems hyperbole is okay as long as its politically correct hyperbole.</comment>


Boiling, steaming or rinsing? Physics of the Chinese cuisine - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.09912 <comment><USER2> One of these again? These are very low-quality papers compared to the food engineering journal papers you'll find that discuss more detail and even provide better overview.

This is almost a very pop-sci geared at undergrads.

Are these meant to be published because I'm curious what journals would accept them?

<comment><USER3> It _is_ categorized under the title 'Pop Phyisics'...

<comment><USER2> thanks! Didn't think arXiv had that type of category

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really low quality. A lot of the explanations aren't even remotely correct.

</comment><comment><USER5> Which Chinese cuisine? There are several distinct cuisines represented by the land mass we refer to as China

<comment><USER6> methods of cooking in Chinese cuisine*

The abstract specifically names some scenarios which may not be readily understood:

> _What is the difference between raw and boiled meat? What is the difference > in the physical processes of heat transfer during steaming of dumplings and > their cooking in boiling water? Why is it possible to cook meat stripes in a > "hot pot" in ten seconds, while baking a turkey requires several hours?_

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "row meet", "boild meat"

Are we being trolled?</comment>


What My Son's Disabilities Taught Me About 'Having It All' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/what-my-sons-disabilities-taught-me-about-having-it-all/260479/# <comment><USER2> > "You know cognitively, he's functioning at the bottom 1 percent of children > his age," [our neuropsychologist] said. [...] "That means 99 percent of > children are doing better than he is." [...] He waited, seemingly perplexed. > "Having seen what I saw, and of course you have to be with your son all the > time -- I have to ask you, how do you have the patience?"

I'm confused, can anyone offer any insight as to how a _neuropsychologist_ would be genuinely surprised by this case? I would have expected that a rather large percentage of a general neuropsychologist's (or at least one that specializes in children) patients would be people who "function at the bottom 1 percent".

<comment><USER3> I had major problems with that story as well - I used to work as a medical tech in neurology, and half our patient load were kids.

Either the story is made up, she's misreading sympathetic commiseration for astonishment, or the neuropsych is massively inexperienced. Although the bulk of kids I saw were not like that, cases like the one in the article are not rare. One kid I saw had a left hand that was like leather because biting it calmed him down. Academically interesting, but not astonishing, and certainly not something you should be eroding the parents' confidence about. The only kid I saw that was truly unsettling was one whose throat didn't work properly and _constantly_ sounded like he was drowning in saliva. He literally could die at any time, and his mother said that you just have to get used to the sound.

The thing is, most parents with severely mentally impaired children deal with it. They kind of have to, because the choices are largely limited to "deal with it" or "let your life fall apart". Occasionally we'd get parents who would morosely define their lives around their child's problems (or even worse, munchausen-by-proxy, but that was really rare for us to see), but for the most parents it was a sense of 'life marches on'. I think the article gives a great sense of that, but the reactions of the neuropsych really disturbed me.

<comment><USER4> I get the impression that section was very much from the authors view.

Whilst I know nothing of bringing up a child with such a condition I do know other close to me that have had to care for someone full time. And to be frank most of the time they would have looked "astonished" by such a question but take the opportunity to discus the matter, see what can be done to help the situation (in case close to me, such a conversation lead to them having a outside help every once in while so the carer could have a break).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love posts like this on Hacker News!

They remind us all that what is in our heads and our hearts trumps everything else: money, stuff, conditions, and the opinions and actions (or inactions) of others who really don't matter.

Like just about everyone else here, I can add my own experiences. I'll just say that I have more of some things than I ever thought I would, but the things that I've lost remind me what's really important. Sometimes I wish I had learned this much earlier, but it's never too late...

Let's all make the most of the cards we've been dealt - one day at a time.

Thanks, OP, for the yank back to reality. Now back to work (with a smile).

</comment><comment><USER6> Quite off topic, but well worth reading nonetheless.

So often we live out lives with the subconscious belief that we'll be happy when ...[insert big goal]. The reality is though, if we can't learn to be happy with our imperfect lives as they are today, we'll never be happy.

<comment><USER7> "Happy" is such an ambiguous word and happiness such an elusive concept. While I truly sympathize with the author, this article, like many others in similar vein, seems to offer the same kind of message as that stereotypical mom-to- spoiled-kid admonition: "Eat your food, don't you know how lucky you are? There are children starving in Africa!"

I agree that the media are trying to sell us the idea that happiness is a state to be obtained by achieving whatever is the latest definition of "success" and I agree that this is bad. But if we're trying to avoid that, let's be careful not to run into the other extreme: confusing happiness with contentment.

It is normal and natural for human beings to _want more_ and strive for it. I think that the idea of "having enough" goes against our nature. Sure, I probably have more than I absolutely need for survival. Sure, I guess I "have enough" according to some arbitrary definition of "having enough". I most definitely "have enough" when you look at it from the point of view of someone who has less.

The point I took away from the article is that we should enjoy what good we have. That's a message I can agree with: even if you want more, don't forget to enjoy what you have now. But I can't take that one more step and settle down and say "That's enough." I still don't see why I should do that. Perhaps it'll come to me some day, but for now, all I can think of when people offer me that idea is this passage from Frank Herbert's "Children of Dune":

 _"[...] Tell me, Namri, are you content?"

"No." The words came out flat, spontaneous rejection.

"Then do you blaspheme?"

"Of course not!"

"But you aren't contented. You see, Gourney? Namri proves it to us. Every question, every problem doesn't have a single correct answer. [...]"_

<comment><USER3> _I think that the idea of "having enough" goes against our nature._

Our nature as _humans_ or our nature as _European-derived societies_? Plenty of indigenous peoples around the world are/were quite happy with "having enough".

Striving for more is a cultural thing, not 'human nature'.

<comment><USER8> Our purpose in life is to spread our genes as far and wide as possible. As such, it's not far off to say that "striving for more" is a facet of human nature; having more money, a fancier car, more goats, bigger muscles, etc is a great way to get more mates, and fulfill your evolutionary goals to a larger extent.

<comment><USER9> Fuck success, and all the glorification of it. I've been a slave to it (and ambition, which is just success in another guise) for _way_ too long.

Why do I say this? Because I'm not fully convinced it was always me choosing success. I was choosing success out of my own broken desire to be accepted socially, as if I had to redeem myself in people's eyes. This was a false reality I'd constructed based upon negative experiences in the past. The winning move was _not_ to become the Ideal Male Seen On Magazines, but instead to grow into my identity. I have nothing to prove, and no one to impress, ideally.

I'm not saying success is bad. I just wonder sometimes if _someone_ benefits from all the neurosis and anxiety that the trappings of success lays for people. Capitalism? VCs? Because it seems that many elements of culture are _not_ created with our best interests in mind.

Think about it.

<comment><USER10> _The winning move was not to become the Ideal Male Seen On Magazines, but instead to grow into my identity._

Sounds like you've traded one mythology for another. I doubt there was any "identity" that you pin-pointed, decided you wanted to grow into, and worked toward growing into. Rather, I think that "to grow into my identity" here means "to grow into that which I will grow into", making it self-fulfilling.

Evolution gave us pain and suffering; indeed we shouldn't glorify it. But we should also not glorify the way things are as the way things _should_ be. Can we all please deal with our insecurities in some other way than by making up a story saying _it's all okay_? The world is on fire. All is _not_ okay.

<comment><USER9> > The world is on fire. All is not okay.

I'm well aware of this, and looking for ways to contribute to the good of humanity, rather than racking up a huge bank account. That is what I choose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Every time I read a story about a kid with developmental disabilities and gut/gluten issues, I'm dying to know if they've ever tried MB12 and L5MTHF injections. God knows it changed my kid's (and my) life.

<comment><USER12> Not questioning your personal experience but do you have any scientific studies not authored by vendors of the supplements that support this. I have an autistic son, and like most parents in this situation, helping him is my number one priority. However my understanding jibes more with this NIH study which shows no statistically significant benefits. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20804367>

I'd love pointers to peer-reviewed studies in favour of this stuff, as I'd love to believe there's a simple solution like this... I just fear there isn't.

Again, not questioning that you feel your child has benefited - just asking what tipped the balance for you in trying this out and do you have any scientific studies you can point one to in order to research this more?

<comment><USER11> We were lucky enough that one of the first interventions we ever tried for him besides OT basically cured him. I can tell you that many, many parent in the online communities we're members of will tell you the "talked after MB12 shot" story.

So, no action we took was on the basis of a comprehensive and wide-ranging scientific study of studies... rather finding a D.A.N. doctor who knew just what to do.

What tipped the balance was that this is one of the least interventive things possible. Really THE least. Everything he takes can be had over the counter. We did it blind at the time because I had no clue about 677T and only found about it later.

To honestly answer your question, as I mentioned below, I'm getting the feeling (again, armchair, lay person only, but been living in communities real and online for a few years now) that autism is an overly or perhaps entirely umbrella term that's really capturing a number of diseases with similar pathologies. One of which would be 677T/1298C mutation, specifically homozygous or compound hetero. The good news is that it seems easy to treat.

I know not every autistic kid out there has the same root cause, but being the parent of one, and going to his (old) school, and seeing so many poor beautiful kids impacted that it just crushes my heart to pieces, and their poor parents trying so hard to fight through it all and get them help... I really have no choice but to be an advocate for getting your kid screened. It's a simple blood draw, find out their 677 and 1298 status. And if they're anything, even heterozygous, immediately get them on MB12/L5MTHF.

I fear for other parents, esp. those of vax injured kids, the road could be much harder, with chelation possibly being necessary etc (which is obiously fairly interventive and HIGHLY controversial). But if there's any chance that part of the solution could be such a low hanging fruit, I have to get the word out as much as I can.

<comment><USER13> I'm glad your child got better. But you are falling for _post hoc ergo propter hoc_.

If this cure is so incredibly quick and awesome, it would be amazingly irresponsible for its proponents to not run a double-blind test.

Otherwise we just get into dueling anecdotes, like [http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-autism- therapy-l...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-autism-therapy- lawsuit-20100304,0,5271734.story)

<comment><USER11> Did I say you can cure autism with B12 shots? I don't think so. I said my son was diagnosed as autistic, showed marked improvement within 24 hours of MB12/L5MTHF injections, and after the fact we came to discover homozygous 677T mutation, for which MB12/L5MTHF would have been the primary course of treatment had we not already embarked upon that path.

My post is more about how something with a very specific root cause, e.g. methylation problems, was diagnosing as autism (across multiple doctors, naturopaths, pediatricians, etc), and how it may be the case that some subset of autistic kids could be in a similar boat. From that study itself "However, detailed data analysis suggests that methyl B12 may alleviate symptoms of autism in a subgroup of children, possibly by reducing oxidative stress."

What I'm a proponent of is genetic screening (a simple blood draw + lab work) for an autistic child to look for 677T/1298C mutation. That's a known problem with a known treatment and I don't think there's anything irresponsible in advocating for that.

Autism is such a wide-net term that I would have a hard time inferring any meaning from a study that simply categorizes the subject(s) in a binary autistic/not autistic manner. e.g. which ones were vax injured, which ones have gut issues, heavy metals, yeast overgrowth, genetic conditions, etc. Many children imaginably require a multi-pronged approach so to try just one particular approach against an unqualified set of subjects seems bound to disappoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a fantastic heartwarming story that I think most of us will have something learn from. For me, the takeaway was, as Tolstoy said: "When is a man free? When he recognizes his burden", i.e. a graceful acceptance of circumstances that one cannot change. I have long proposed to have a course "Life Engineering" in schools teaching people metaprinciples of planning and enjoying life, this should definitely be one of the reading assignments (along with DFW's commencement speech, and many others).

Yet ... yet ... while I truly believe that the thoughts expressed here are a major part of individual happiness, if a significant portion of the society behaves/acts according to these principles, I may not want to live in such a society. Unending hunger for new things, although it generally brings about personal unhappiness, takes society forward faster; there are many examples of such personal sacrifices in science, literature, music, e.g. how many great poets/writers do you know who have a happy family life (came to mind, since I recently read an essay by Alexandra Styron).

On a different thread, (overgeneralizing, but only a bit) being content and acceptance is very common in "the East" and not just Buddhism's influence either, it is a common theme in many streams of Islamic thought. Something can be said about the effect of this in why these countries couldn't catch up with the pace of the "materialistic West" (yes, yes, there were a ton of other factors, but I think this may have been one of the major influences).

<comment><USER15> The Stoics were fond of saying "The inner part _cannot_ be delivered into bondage." In other words, we are free when we decide to be. Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King may have been more free while in jail than most people are on the outside as they go about their daily lives.

The upshot is that society doesn't owe _me_ (the inner part) freedom. Society can't give that to me. It can't take that away from me. Only I can do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If anyone is interested in this topic, you should check out Louis Theroux's Extreme Love series <http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01gvt26>.

Some parents seem to echo the same sentiment, but many of them don't. While larger families seem to be able to cope, and actual appreciate having someone slightly different, many single mothers are forced into having their children taken in by the state.

<comment><USER17> Louis Theroux is an excellent reporter. He really has the gift of getting in touch with the people and stories he covers. I mean, the guy spent a lot of time with the WBC and still tried to understand them instead of going crazy like a lot of people would have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I told a lady at my son's school, after I dropped him off one morning: "There's at least a billion people who would love to be wearing my shoes right now."

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice read. Nothing new, just read the old Greek philosopher Epictetus. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus>.

</comment><comment><USER20> I usually have a hard time ignoring the Joneses and feeling content with what I have, and I don't think that's a necessarily bad thing. Those who accomplish the most, from Thomas Edison to Bill Clinton, often do so _because_ of this drive to be better than the rest of us and have it all. Progress depends on discontent, and it's easy to read feel good articles and exchange "happiness" with "laziness".

<comment><USER21> I think it depends on the field and the person: in politics and business, probably.

Do you think Einstein or Gauss were driven by a desire to have it all? I suspect they'd still do what they did even if they'd "made it" and were the richest men on earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This aside has nothing to do with autism or the writer of the article. I just want to tackle the "having it all" discussion.

When people say they want to "have it all", they're not actually saying they won't be happy until they have _everything_. A life without tradeoffs is literally impossible. You can't, for example, become an expert on every subject or visit every location in the world or learn how to play every musical instrument ever made. It's impossible. Rather, they want a life full of the stupid bullshit tradeoffs that you have to deal with if they don't have resources, like having to decide between a 90-minute commute vs. living in a cramped space without a dishwasher.

Those horrid tradeoffs make it impossible for most people to achieve anything great. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. If you're losing 20 hours per week to housework, you won't have a good career. If you don't have a good career, you won't be able to afford help. You have to bust your ass during your 20s and 30s (and preferably not have any health problems or setbacks) while you can to establish momentum, and just hope that your reproductive potential hasn't declined too much by the time you're career's in order and society has thereby given you permission to have kids properly.

Tradeoffs always exist, but there are people who are richer and more established and have a higher quality of tradeoff to face. If you're debating whether to leave a high-level position for a "risky" CEO spot at a funded startup, this is a high-quality tradeoff. If "downshifting" your career means you buy a place with a view of Prospect Park instead of Central, that's a high-quality tradeoff. If having another kid means that one spouse is going to have to give up a career, that's a low-quality tradeoff. People with enough resources (not just income, but also connections; well-connected people don't fret about getting fired and don't have to work 60+ hours per week) _can_ have two successful careers and well-adjusted children.

The "have it all" rhetoric is an attempt people make to universalize the problem, because no one can actually have everything, and divert attention away from the more specific/parochial fact that they're miserable because they don't have enough resources (since no one likes a person who whines about not being rich). And if you want to actually achieve something in this world, most people don't have enough. Most people spend their lives bogged down in shitty details implementing the crappy ideas of the people in power.

<comment><USER23> Wow! Well put.

This is also the same with money. People often say having a lot of money doesn't bring you happiness. Well neither does not having money.

Besides there is nothing like total happiness. You just have levels. Having a lot of money solves a lot of fundamental problems, giving you the room to worry about other high-quality issues in life.

You can never do away with those things, but having a lot of wealth, resources and money means you continually ensure all low level issues are taken care off and you move towards bigger things.

<comment><USER15> I don't think it takes a lot of wealth either. It just takes enough wealth to meet those low-level needs.

A lot of people spend a lot of their money on things that do not contribute to their overall quality of life and happiness. We can do with less if we are not interested in one-upping everyone else. A simple car (and only one if possible), a simple apartment in a safe community, basic food, etc. don't take a lot of wealth to maintain. What is required though, as the original author points out, is changing the expectations we have in life.

Why replace a working stove? Why is it that important that you have a new one? When I rented out my house, yes we replaced the stove but that was because the oven heating element had failed, and it had other problems. We felt that the move to a self-cleaning oven would be a good thing for the renters.

Do more with less, and the rest takes care of itself.

<comment><USER23> As michealochruch mentioned. You never get out of tradeoffs. The only thing is the more you have the more freedom you get to make 'high-quality' tradeoffs.

<comment><USER15> But my point is that you can get freedom by local optimization rather than just by getting more wealth. People lose a lot of freedom by squandering what they have.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LinkedIn open sources its exposé code for iOS  - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.linkedin.com/open-source/introducing-liexposecontroller-brand-new-way-interact-ios-apps

<comment><USER2> I think this is really great. I started iOS development a few months ago and I find one of the hardest parts about making applications is differentiating the design. While I like the standard iOS design elements, to make a professional looking application you have to spend a lot of time tweaking the design. For me specifically it has been UITableView and the corresponding cells. I am glad that this gives me another option to explore and obviously I would have to customize this as well. But its a step in the right direction and hopefully other companies follow suit.

Maybe its just me but what would really make my day is some sort of equivalent of Bootstrap for iOS applications. A set of Objective-C classes that standardize and make it easy to quickly reach a certain level of quality design.

<comment><USER3> What you describe is contradictory. The default iOS design elements are there precisely to serve as a sort of "Bootstrap" for iOS applications.

Everything 'looks the same' because so many people use the (good) defaults, just like how most Bootstrap pages look similar (or the same), depending on how much work has been put into making them unique.

<comment><USER2> You are right. I realize I contradicted myself. I guess what I mean is that Bootstrap lowers the barrier for good web design substantially and shares some of Twitter's best known methods. Similarly I wish a big app development company would share some of their experiences and maybe provide some insight on the best way to customize and modify the existing Apple UI elements. For example, I can modify the existing design by using several subviews or imageviews or drawing layers but I don't know which is the best way in terms of performance or if other companies do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady This looks nice (and it's great the LI is open sourcing it) but it doesn't seem like a great alternative to the tab bar. With the tab bar you select a tab and get instant feedback above it. If you don't like what you see you can select the next tab. Two touches. With this you have to select, dismiss, and then select the next menu item. Not really a great solution for moving through information quickly especially as you have to give a second for the view present/dismiss animations - unlike tab bar.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Mobile Software Imagineer"? What is this? Disney-ification?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a little lost as to why this needs to be done with the containers in iOS 5. Couldn't you achieve the same thing using a regular UIView and some UIButtons with fancy images? Or I'm I missing what's going on here?

</comment><comment><USER6> So does this design limit me to 4 menu options like the LinkedIn app?

<comment><USER7> Nope, you can add as many screens as you'd like. Check out the sample app, which starts with 3 but lets you add/delete screens.</comment></comment>


Why trying to Out-Google Google is a search for FAIL (and how to actually do it) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2008/07/why-trying-to-o.html

<comment><USER2> I gave it a point, but I disagree.

I don't see google as a 800lb gorilla, I see google as the new yahoo - desperately trying to diversify their technology and revenue before the inevitable hits. True, with the amount of cash they have they aren't desperate, but the last few quarters of revenue have been a wake up call, (check 1 year returns on stock price google vs. yahoo - no different, in fact google seems a little bit worse).

People think google's ranking algorithm is some secret magic, but it's not, it's page rank, it's well known and public. They have salt & spices, such as giving weight to shortor domains, keyword in the domain, etc., but even these are fairly well understood (see [http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking- fact...](http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm))

As costs come down in the infrastructure space, I expect to see more people take google head on in delivering relevant search results. Cuil is just the first high profile attempt.

The software is practically already written too, Yahoo! uses and contributed a lot to Hadoop (<http://hadoop.apache.org/core/>).

And hey, the google guys started in a garage, you can beat the next big search will too.

<comment><USER3> >People think google's ranking algorithm is some secret magic, but it's not, it's page rank, it's well known and public.

A lot of good that does you: it's patented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> " it's also the reason why Firefox gained so much ground against Internet Explorer. It wasn't that smarter people work on Firefox--it's that more people worked on only the things they cared about, solving problems for themselves. The best ideas floated to the top and became part of the codebase"

This is very misleading. Most of firefox's development happened when Internet Explorer wasn't undergoing active development at all. That's the real reason they were able to pass Internet Explorer so quickly.</comment>


Ask HN: Software Patent Lawsuit Insurance for Indy Devs? - <AUTHOR>

It occurred to me in light of the recent spate of litigation against small developers that there should be some kind of software patent lawsuit insurance. Failing that, perhaps a service that allows developers to pool money in case one of them gets sued? Do such services exist, and if not, why? <comment><USER2> I'm not an expert but the only thing I've seen like that is Errors and Omissions insurance: [http://www.insurepro.net/html/errors_and_omissions_explained...](http://www.insurepro.net/html/errors_and_omissions_explained.htm)

"We generally recommend Errors & Omissions Insurance be at the foundation of every company's insurance portfolio. Usually it is wise to purchase the coverage prior to product launch, or when you have customers. It can be required by investors, particularly VC's."

</comment><comment><USER3> In general, insurance makes a lot of sense when the events that are insured against are catastrophic and statistically more-or-less independent. Health insurance is the canonical example.

Insuring against events that are likely to occur to every insurance holder simultaneously is much more difficult. AIG, for instance, collapsed when lots of people called in their "mortgage value insurances"; a more paranoid underwriter would need to sit on a huge pool of money until something happened.

Other constructions are possible, but a patent troll targeting one small developer is likely to target so many small developers that actually fighting all those lawsuits would bankrupt everyone. You'd need a few big fishes in the pool to absorb those kind of shocks, and I think the Googles of this world prefer fighting their own battles.</comment>


Required steps for investments? Can private investments be simply automated? - <AUTHOR>

Suppose I want to set up an area on my startup's homepage for pretty much anyone to invest in my company - whether it's $5 or $5,000,000 - and in return they of course get a percentage of the company proportional to their investment.  The process should be automated.  How would I go about this?<p>I've done a bit of research on the matter but I must not be using the right keywords because I haven't found what I'm looking for.  If there are already services out there like this, I'm not aware of them and would love to hear what you all have to say about them. <comment><USER2> _Suppose I want to set up an area..._

Well, to start with, you'd likely be in violation of a whole mess o' SEC regulations. I'm not a lawyer, but you certainly should be speaking to one before you go any further in your research. (The fact that you didn't mention the phrase "accredited investor" is a tip-off.)

That being said: I don't agree that "the process should be automated." It seems to me that the process would be infrequent enough, and specific enough each time, that any attempt at automation would have an absurdly low ROI.

In other words: there's a couple good reasons why you haven't found what you are looking for, and they have nothing to do with finding the right keywords.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is stock exchange not automated for the most part? People can buy and sell their stocks with pretty much just the click of a button. That's essentially what I'm looking for.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the stock market is automated-- and highly regulated.

Of course, the stock market is limited to publicly traded stocks, and there are all kinds of regulations applying to the actions of the companies traded.

If you are really interested in this area, you might want to start here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_regulation_in_the_Un...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_regulation_in_the_United_States)

<comment><AUTHOR> What if I just add a place for visitors to donate and in return for donations I offer an arbitrarily small percentage of the company that just so happens to be proportional to the donation amount? Those who donate will just have to take my word for it. :P

<comment><USER2> That's exactly the kind of thing the Securities Act of 1933 is trying to prevent.

Seriously, talk to a lawyer. Or, at the very least, start reading up on Securities Regulations on Wikipedia.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How connected car tech is eroding personal privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160809-your-car-is-not-your-friend?ocid=ww.social.link.twitter <comment><USER2> My old boss had a fancy top of the line Audi with all the trimmings.

One day a fault developed with the seatbelt sensors on the rear seats. He kept getting the warning beeps to fasten the belts when no one was on those seats.

It was still in warranty so he took it get fixed. The dealer pulled his driving logs from the on board computer/data recorder and said his driving was too aggressive and that violated the warranty.

Truth be told his driving was terrible. I accepted a lift home from him once, and only once because his driving scared the bejeesus out of me. But that being said how could that affect the pressure sensors in the rear seats?

It took some solicitors letters to get the dealer to agree to a warranty repair.

I think its inevitable that manufacturers are going to use all this data to stop you claiming under your warranty. "Oh dear you slammed your door too hard one day, I'm afraid that invalidates your warranty". Insurers will demand this data in before giving you a quote. Its also likely that there will come a time when this data will be used to help price your car if you sell it or trade it in. And of course the government will want to use positioning data to automatically issue parking fines.

And this ignores all the obvious security risks that come along with this sort of stuff, for example all those BMW keyless car thefts.

<comment><USER3> > _My old boss had a fancy top of the line Audi with all the trimmings._

I'd love to know how the dealer could justify saying a high-end Audi, a car (and company) with an established racing pedigree, was driven "too aggressively".

Look at their commercials for crying out loud.

<comment><USER4> I imagine it was quite easy, given the typical automobile dealer's complete lack of shame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IoT in general has this problem.

I live a highly automated life and my database has when I woke up, where I drive, when I get home, what TV shows I watch, how long I spend on Hacker News and when, when I enter the house it is recorded... and then more benign stuff like how long my air conditioner has been on. And and I do this voluntarily.

Overall it's a gig of data a day.

The weird thing is my wife has access to this data too and I have access to her's (which is less extensive but still there... for example, if her code is used to disarm the alarm, it is stored that way).

I also might be crazy, most people would be disturbed with this level of data.

As a side note, I store the database on my own server and I am very comfortable with the security on said server. Firewalls, tripwires, multi- factor auth, encryption, the works. Even I wouldn't trust that database with a third party.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't be disturbed with this level of data - I would be _delighted_. Being disturbed signals lack of touch with how reality works.

That said, I absolutely, positively don't want this data to be owned by third parties. It should be my data, for my perusal.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Being disturbed signals lack of touch with how reality works."

Could you explain what you mean by this? That level of data collection disturbs me for privacy reasons. I don't see how I lack touch with reality. It's interesting and I would like to have all that data on myself too but the privacy risks make it not worth it for me.

<comment><USER6> I was talking about being disturbed by existence/collectability of such data - not by collection by third parties, which is disturbing for privacy reasons. You radiate tons of data every second of your life. Your every interaction with every thing is recorded in the fabric of reality, and progress of technology gives us ways to access more and more of that information.

My point is - existence of such data should not be disturbing. How much of it is being collected by third parties - that's another story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since the company I co-founded at YC S11 (Automatic) was called out in the article, I want to share a few thoughts here.

It's absolutely true that connected cars and the wider IoT space has miles to go in terms of security and privacy. Far too many companies treat security as an afterthought, and then we see everything from Jeeps to Barbie dolls being compromised. Those same firms then treat privacy as a winner-take-all game, where they expect the customers to give them maximum access with minimal accountability. And frankly, it pisses us off.

At Automatic, we've laid out our security procedures and privacy policies incredibly clearly. No firm is perfect, but I think we've done an outstanding job at creating systems that are difficult to penetrate, and in setting precise expectations with our customers about how we'll use their data. You can read about those here: [https://blog.automatic.com/security-at-automatic- how-we-keep...](https://blog.automatic.com/security-at-automatic-how-we-keep- you-safe-bdaf3f74e00f#.xp2nb9vlh) and [https://blog.automatic.com/our-privacy- principles-4d2fd93654...](https://blog.automatic.com/our-privacy- principles-4d2fd9365489#.b11az3152)

To get back to the article - car manufacturers that hide what they're doing from consumers should knock it off. I don't think they're necessarily being nefarious, I just think they're being foolish. In this age where consumers are waking up to the risks and rewards of connectivity, obscuring the data you're collecting and how you're using it is only going to become more untenable.

</comment><comment><USER8> All cars sold in the EU come with eCall: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall)

Edit: sorry, I extrapolated too much from my own experience. It's still not legally mandatory until 2018, however some manufacturers do indeed make it mandatory today.

Due to privacy protections I don't think marketers and insurers have access to driving data, but the security concerns remain. Their back-ends can be hacked, rogue employees could listen in, etc.

<comment><USER9> It's only a matter of time before insurers get that data. They'll even have some plausible safety arguments to bolster their bribery.

For freedom, ride a bike.

<comment><USER6> Until GPS with GSM module embedded in frame becomes a viable countermeasure against bike thefts that is.

<comment><USER9> Haha, I meant freedom to ride your _own_ bike, although perhaps Proudhon would disagree...

<comment><USER10> I worry that it's only a matter of time until cyclists are required to carry transponders "for our safety" on streets full of self-driving cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _" Once cars become fully driverless they will rely_ entirely _on their outgoing and incoming data connection to function properly._ "

Not true. Chris Urmson, former head of Google's self-driving car project, before he left Google, made that point at a "connected car" conference. Google's self-driving cars don't rely on car-to-car communications. They rely on sensors. Lots of things a self-driving car needs to know about aren't "connected", and you can't trust the ones that are.

Google's own cars download their logs when they get back to the barn, but that's for debugging purposes. A production vehicle would not need that feature.

On the other hand, the Event Data Recorder in most cars isn't a big deal. It's a crash recorder. After a crash that caused airbag deployment, someone can dig into the wreckage, plug into the box, and look at the last 15 seconds before the crash. Useful for accident analysis, but not Big Brother. OnStar type systems are much more of a concern; they run all the time and have GPS inputs.

<comment><USER12> One can imagine a data connection being used to share routing-related information (traffic, road closures, etc. -- basically, the same thing a human driver would do with Waze/GMaps/etc.) for higher level planning, but, yeah, it makes little sense to rely on such a connection for basic operation rather than route optimization and cooperative traffic management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > He says that buried deep in the dashboard is Verizon cell phone 3G hardware > that's always on.

Who pays for this? Can you pull out the radio and use it for general purpose internet access?

<comment><USER14> The manufacturer will have bought a SIM for the lifetime of the car. You _could_ potentially pull it and use it until they notice and shut you down, although it may (ought to!) be limited to a VPN tunnel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15>
        I have a taste for the secret,
        it clearly has to do with not-belonging;
        I have an impulse or fear or terror in the
        face of a political space, for example,
        a public space that makes no room for the secret.
        For me, the demand that everything be paraded in
        the public square and that there be no internal
        forum is a glaring sign of the totalitarianization
        of democracy. [. . .] if a right to the secret is
        not maintained, we are in a totalitarian space.

(Jacques Derrida, in Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan & Co., II, p. 599.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Some of these sorts of issues are simply going to be standard and not so avoidable. I'm all for it if it means that we get autonomous cars everywhere, even better if it means that one public transportation option is to call up a pod to travel in. But regardless of the future, most of these things are still positives from a broad view.

Things such as improved emergency response (so long as equipment is upgraded), tips on how to improve your own driving (upon request) to make your car last longer, aggrevate data on different things to teach new drivers, and how common behavior x, y, and z are. I have little problem with the auto- ticketing, provided the state tests the system once a year or two to make sure it is functional (and when it is contested). This stuff makes the roads safer.

Though folks _could_ hack into his brakes or disable his vehicle, right now that doesn't happen often to actually fear, and safeguards could be put on the vehicle to keep him safe.

The bigger threats he mentions are private firms and law enforcement.

The biggest factor with law enforcement is to have safeguards to check the honesty and things like that. Make sure the laws are fair and that law enforcement isn't tempted to bend them.

Private companies, such as insurance companies, are slightly different. While I believe this could be changed with legal protections, I believe there is very little hope of such legal protections being made with the current political climate. I don't think the information is bad per se, as we could learn quite a bit about normal driving habits, but the companies could decide to lobby for things like better enforcement of traffic violations, lower legal BAC levels, and other such things to gain the same sort of safety.

</comment><comment><USER17> I predict a thriving market in grandfathered-in vehicles in the not-so-distant future. In many ways, I miss the '85 F150 I drove in high school. If there was a computer chip anywhere in it, it had shorted out long ago, but the thing just kept rolling along. It's become the truck of Theseus now, but it is still on the road, 300k+ miles later.

</comment><comment><USER13> What does "at the expense of personal driving data" mean?

<comment><USER18> It means previously you had some expectation that where and when you drive is private data that nobody else has unless they are tailing you.

Now your car is broadcasting its location at all times via cell signal, and that data may be (almost certainly is) being recorded.

<comment><USER19> How is that any worse than driving with your cellphone in your pocket?

<comment><USER6> Different set of parties having access to the car-originating data.

That, and you can always drive _without_ a cellphone if you so desire.

<comment><USER20> IMHO you can always travel without a car if you want to

<comment><USER21> Maybe in some places. In most of the non-urban U.S., it simply isn't feasible to live a normal life without driving.

<comment><USER22> This is a fact that so many people like to conveniently forget

<comment><USER21> Where I live, the closest store is 5 miles, but it's just a very basic and small general store. To reach an actual store with fresh produce and more, it's a 100 mile round trip. That may be on the somewhat extreme end of things, but variations on that are a normal way of life for people in rural areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Connected cars are going to create a much safer world .... the other month someone was in the news after a hit-and-run, the vehicle phoned the police and reported it itself. Eventually when all the cars have cameras, sensors, autonomous power to report to police things like speeding, reckless driving, hit and runs etc will go instinct as every vehicle around you is recording, reporting...

<comment><USER24> Undoubtedly some aspects of life will become safer, but the interesting question is "At what expense does that safety come?"

Just because something is the new normal, doesn't mean it is "right".

<comment><USER23> In terms of traffic control it's probably going to be mostly beneficial for people. Bad drivers will surely be annoyed, just as they were when running red lights and speeding became things that could be enforced 24/7.

If it spread to security cameras ... consequences could be a grave new world where a young Dennis Leary is caught in his very first act of subversion.

<comment><USER25> _Bad drivers will surely be annoyed, just as they were when running red lights and speeding became things that could be enforced 24 /7._

I like to consider myself a good driver, I'm mostly concerned about black-and- white application, where we had officer discretion in the past. (Discretion is hard to teach computers)

The traffic light I "ran" yesterday springs to mind. Second in line at stoplight (behind a cop no less). Light turns green, we roll into intersection. Light changes to yellow, then red, before either of us exit the intersection. An officer would not ticket me, but a computer that was not meticulously programmed probably would.

<comment><USER26> I don't know what the law is in your state, but in some states (like AZ), the law is that you only have to enter the intersection when it's green or yellow. If it turns red while you're still in the intersection, that's no problem for you, but other drivers have to wait for you to clear the intersection. So it's perfectly normal for turning drivers to enter the intersection and wait there, and then after the lights turn red and the straight-through drivers clear the way, the people turning will finish their turn, and the oncoming traffic with a green light has to wait for them to do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> All cars should come with the equivalent of an "airplane mode" switch--easily accessible to the owner--that disables all RF emissions and receptions. Since car companies are certainly not going to provide the switch voluntarily, it's probably going to require regulations to make it happen.

</comment><comment><USER28> I had the same issue with my VW where it was activated without me signing the paperwork. The official line I got from VW was that it couldn't be removed or deactivated because it is 'safety equipment'.

VW is shady.</comment>


Sony is locking Fortnite accounts to PS4 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/06/sony-is-locking-fortnite-accounts-to-ps4-and-players-are-mad/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is not only banning cross play. How this works: if you ever link your Epic account with you PSN account (even if it was created on PC), it will be locked and you will not be able to use it on Nintendo Switch for example, even if you later unlink it from PSN.</comment>