Ask HN: What shell do you use? - <AUTHOR>

There's a couple different shells available at the moment, the most popular being ZSH[0], Fish[1] and Bash[2].<p>Which one has your preference? And how do you deal with different environments and shells (e.g. SSH into a server and you're using Bash i.o. your own preferred local shell)?<p>[0] http://zsh.sourceforge.net/<p>[1] http://fishshell.com/<p>[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/ <comment><USER2> Good old fashioned bash. zfs is newer and probably better, but you use what you grew up with.

</comment><comment><USER3> bash for it's the most standard. That helps management a lot.

</comment><comment><USER4> zsh (oh-my-zsh)

</comment><comment><USER5> Emacs shell.</comment>


Rootbocks, raising funds for the Charlottesville Nazis, removed from it's host - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/RootbocksDotCom/status/897508534493085697 <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone involved in Rootbocks is reading this. I reported you to your host last night.

You will be treated like sites hosting malware, with hosts themselves severing ties ASAP before you taint their IP space.

Cheers.</comment>


Results of Applying K-Means Clustering to Magic: The Gathering (Part 2) - <AUTHOR> http://www.datastuff.tech/data-analysis/magic-the-gathering-meets-data-science/ <comment><AUTHOR> So after the previous article, some people wanted to see what the results were. Here are some of the insights I could get. Let me know what you think!</comment>


Show HN: Twickr – open-source Go tool for sending tweets of interest to Slack - <AUTHOR> https://www.netlify.com/blog/2015/04/12/send-tweets-of-interest-from-twitter-to-slack-with-twickr

<comment><USER2> A neat little tool :)</comment>


American Exceptionalism Is a Dangerous Myth - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/american-exceptionalism-is-a-dangerous-myth.html <comment><USER2> > More specifically, U.S. foreign policy has more consistently reflected the > economic interests of American capital than it has the ideals of > republicanism

In my travels to Vietnam and reflecting on recent history there, it's more clear than ever that nations (not just the US) operate along self interested and power, not principles:

\- the US alliance with an unpopular dictator in the south to counter communism, against Vietnamese independence (their revolutionary war)

\- China invading Vietnam (another communist country) with US support after the war to counter soviet influence

\- both China and the US supporting the pol pot to counter Vietnam

\- Vietnam once unified begins skirmishes in both China and Cambodia, flexing its newfound military strength

If there ever was a principled nation, I'd guess that they are either irrelevant or we're conquered by a more practical one.</comment>


Show HN: How badly is your genomic privacy affected by your aunt's 23AndMe test? - <AUTHOR> http://santeperso.unil.ch/privacy?hackernews <comment><USER2> Perhaps at the beginning the "target" must be selected at "you", because I guess it is the common case. It's nice that if you forget to select the target there are suggestions at the top.

It's not very clear than when you add a person, you later must click another button to indicate s/he has been tested. I also didn't initially understand how to add my grandparents without adding my parents.

If I have a partner, I can't add a children that one of them had with a previous partner. (For example if two divorced persons with children get married, and then they have another children. I think this is a very common. Perhaps someone can make a sitcom about this.)

Gender has a very specific meaning, and I think you are asking for XX/XY instead. Also, there are no options for LGBT marriage (It doesn't affect the outcome here, and makes the UI more difficult. But it's important for people, so you will get complains.)

I hate surveys. Is it opened automatically after some time or did I accidentally click the survey button?

<comment><USER3> @gus_massa, thanks for your feedback.

we do not pre-select the target because we want to know what people are interested the most in (their privacy or the privacy implications of their acts for others); we ask that in the survey

you cannot add your grandparents without adding your parents.

the case of divorced persons is very relevant indeed. our evaluation tool can handle it but not the UI (yet). we mention it in the FAQ.

we understand that the lack of option for LGBT marriage can be frustrating. yet, since the tool focuses on kinship and not on filiation, we let users specify birth parents only.

the survey is automatic (it triggers after some criteria are met including time and tests of the tool). we understand the inconvenience but it is very important for us to collect feedback to help people protect their privacy in an optimal way and reach out to an audience as broad as possible.

thanks again for taking the time to try the tool and give feedback!

<comment><USER2> A feature request: Can you show the privacy number in all the persons in the family tree?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> ...And how badly would your nephew's genomic privacy be affected by your own 23AndMe test?

Authors here:

Your genome can be largely deduced from those of your relatives. Conversely, the genomes of your relatives can be, to some extent, deduced from yours. We built a tool for estimating this loss of privacy. Check it out! ;-)</comment>


Stripe adds multiple subscriptions - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/multiple-subscriptions <comment><USER2> It's awesome this feature is supported (I've seen some cases where it's needed) and that Stripe is so responsive to their customers. FYI Recurly supports this as well.

Just remember, if you have customers on 2 subscriptions, you're losing 30¢ by charging them 2x instead of one. If you find yourself with lots of customers on 2 subscriptions, it might be worth it to rethink how your plans are structured.

<comment><USER3> Does Stripe not combine the charges for multiple subscriptions into one charge? I think that would be pretty smart.

<comment><USER4> For the v1 of multiple subscription support, we don't combine subscriptions into one charge. Hopefully we didn't get a biased sample, but we asked some of our beta users about their preference here and the consensus was for keeping each subscription separate -- per-subscription invoices, and thus per- subscription charges. At the very least, this is likely the simplest thing to reason about, in terms dunning and various unpaid / past due states.

I could definitely see us allowing lumping subscriptions into one charge, at least as a configuration option.

One thought is that the right solution might be to support specifying at creation time that a subscription's billing cycle should 'snap to' another's, leading them to be invoiced and billed jointly going forward. Would definitely be happy to discuss these use cases more -- jim@stripe

<comment><USER5> I am a new Stripe user who is just about to finish implementing a workaround for the limitation of one active subscription per customer. I was excited to see this news, but my excitement was tempered when I read that billing for multiple subscriptions is not consolidated. I would love to see consolidated billing support with multiple subscriptions (configuration option is fine). Until then I will keep my workaround since it does what I want for my customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> John's tweet is a pretty accurate summary: [https://twitter.com/collision/status/430772656523063296](https://twitter.com/collision/status/430772656523063296).

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there anywhere (other than the HN front page ;-)) that offers a comprehensive list of changes as Stripe develops?

For example, this page[1] on the Stripe site suggests that UK businesses can charge in three different currencies and convert where necessary to pay them out to a UK bank account. If that can also now be done using the same Stripe account just by putting in the desired currency value for each charges/plan, that could be _huge_ for us, and I had no idea any progress had been made in this area.

(It's also not entirely clear from the page in question whether this is in fact the case, or whether UK businesses can use any of those currencies but still have to chose which single one we're going to work with for a given Stripe account. Quick note to the Stripe folks reading this thread: clarification on that page would be welcome.)

[1] [https://support.stripe.com/questions/is-stripe-available- in-...](https://support.stripe.com/questions/is-stripe-available-in-the-uk)

<comment><USER8> Not from stripe, but from looking at my own account and the documentation - You can charge in any of those three currencies (where a additional 2% conversion charge is added between different currencies) but need to choose which single currency you're going to be sending those payments to. You can do so just by making the charge and specifying the currency you want to charge in.

There is an additional feature for US customers that allows paying out to arbitrary bank accounts, but this isn't available in the UK yet.

[https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending- transfers](https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending-transfers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very very useful update to support scenarios where customers can purchase multiple subscriptions in parallel. In the past I basically rolled my own instead of many of the workarounds, like creating a subscription for the combined prices (ugly IMO).

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks great for placing the same customer on different subscription plans. If the same customers needs multiple subscriptions, use the quantity property of the subscription object to keep everything on one bill.

</comment><comment><USER11> Kudos to Stripe for being responsive to customer feature requests: [https://groups.google.com/a/lists.stripe.com/d/msg/api- discu...](https://groups.google.com/a/lists.stripe.com/d/msg/api- discuss/a2FQseolEPA/niFvt5sPbBUJ)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure this feature was in the backlog since day 1. Was it pushed off due to keeping Stripe as a minimum viable product, or were there some deeper complexities in implementing this?

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting, I am drawing a blank when a subscriber will want to purchase two subscriptions on the same website... ? Is he or she purchasing the additional subscription for someone else?

<comment><USER14> Say you are a cloud hosting company like Heroku.

Your customers could have different levels of subscriptions for all kinds of things: CPU ('dynos'), databases, backups, monitoring services, etc

<comment><USER15> Yes, but ultimately you'd probably want to bill them all in one go every month, because otherwise you're paying far more in card processing fees than you need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a non dev, i love the simple Stripe approach for providing first class payment solutions

</comment><comment><USER17> Spam</comment>


A free cookbook for people living on $4/day - <AUTHOR> http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/ <comment><USER2> I think it all comes down to what type of meal recipes or what one already has in stock.

Do u already have complementary cooking resources; powder, garlic, oil etc? These often overlooked in a buck a day meals.

One thing with western dishes is the attempt to give food an aesthetic appeal. In places where people live on a dollar a day, they tend to be more concerned with getting full and not the appealing or garnished outlook of food.

Also, in places like Africa,food is stored! I cant emphasize this more. A peanut soup or chicken soup could last a span of 3 days to a week. It cab be served with rice, bread, or other dough meals. After taking servings, the soup is warmed and placed back in the fridge and can be eaten another day. This to me is what frugal cooking is. It is easier to tweak frugal eating this way than shopping fresh groceries every other day.

NB: Pardon my incoherence :)

<comment><USER3> I'm cooking for myself all next next week, not for the usual collection of hungry people, so I shall be making a large pot of vegetable stew. Might try pot of peanut soup as well! Oatmeal/porridge for breakfast as I have that a lot anyway.

I think the idea of providing storage times in the fridge is a good one.

<comment><USER3> Phase one: ratatouille

Bought two large aubergines (egg plants) and four courgettes (zuchinis?) and three red peppers, a couple of cans of tomatoes and a can of kidney beans from local corner shop[1]. Cost less than 4 pounds sterling.

Cut and salted the aubergines for 20 minutes and rinsed the bitter liquid. Chopped the courgettes and peppers. Put in large oven dish with four table spoons (60ml) of olive oil. Roasted on gas mark 8 (230C, 450F [1]) for 45 min, stirring once.

Added canned tomatoes and beans and a couple of garlic cloves and cooked for a further 30 min at gas mark 6 (200C, 400F).

5 meals...

1\. Served a small portion with rice (cooked in my one button rice cooker). Rest allowed to cool and stored in fridge. Rice is bought in 10Kg bags from local shop for Pounds 7.50

2\. A small serving cold on fresh thick white toast for breakfast

3\. Fry onion in heavy frying pan and add ready made Rogan Josh sauce from the corner shop. Add substantial serving of the ratatouille. Served with rice with Tumeric/Haldi and naans from the local nan man (1 pound for four naans fresh cooked at local street side bakery). Yoghurt and cucumber (50p per half) dressing.

4\. Pasta bake: boil old leftover pastas from various jars. Drain. Stir in 100g (4oz) of cheap grated cheddar cheese (£3.50 for 750g from local supermarket). Spoon in ratatouille from fridge into base of oven dish. Top with the pasta and cheese mixture. Serve with cheap Italian wine (5 pounds and let it breathe)

5\. Liquid reserved from the ratatouille plus a few courgettes used in final stages of stir fry of cabbage and mushrooms (50p and 1 pound from local supermarket). Served with rice.

Next: peanut soup but I'm looking for a non-chi-chi recipe. Another local shop oriented to African Caribbean community sells yam and cassava as well as tapioca. They have harissa as well, but I find that hard to digest (burns twice &c).

[1] [http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/spicy_lentils_recipe.html](http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/spicy_lentils_recipe.html)

[2] [http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/equiv.htm](http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/equiv.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On $4/day you should avoid being vegetarian, get cheap food with as many calories as possible. Better value for money.

EDIT: I get lot of down votes, so just to clarify:

I am objecting to being _exclusively_ vegetarian. People on $4/day have other problems. I am not saying you should buy junk food. There is lot of reasonable quality meat, for example fish if you live near sea. Also vegs such as rice or potatoes are cheap and high on energy

<comment><USER5> Is this true? I was always under the impression that meat was considerably more expensive than basic vegetarian food. I know some vegetables can be expensive but I'm pretty sure cereals and pulses are cheaper than any meat.

<comment><USER4> I live in Europe, so I can not really say for US. For 1 burger you need like 4 pounds of vegs, so the meat is cheaper here.

<comment><USER6> I think there might be a misunderstanding about a typical vegetarian or vegan diet. Do you believe that most vegetarians and vegans eat primarily vegetables like broccoli and cabbage? Myself and others I know tend to eat a large amount of beans, grains and root vegetables as this is typically necessary to get the required daily amounts of protein and calories.

<comment><USER7> I'm vegan and I eat super cheap. Lentils / black beans in a soup or burrito gets you very far. My luxury meal items are fresh bread or tortillas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice looking book so far.

I think a "preservation" section might be useful, however, advising how long things tend to keep so that people can have a better idea of what stuff can stay in the pantry for weeks and what stuff should be devoured quickly. One of the primary pitfalls of my spending habits is buying fresh produce that I end up throwing out because I don't eat enough salad to go through the entire box of spring mix before it starts to wilt.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I cross-posted this from Reddit (where it originally blew up) figuring that a bunch of us might benefit from the recipes. I sure did; they're amazing. But now I'm wondering if I should've let the author submit it instead, so that she could be here to answer questions or get feedback immediately (like "you should make the PDF pay-what-you-want because I'm throwing money at my monitor and it's not reaching your wallet").

Would anyone send her a tweet that her book's being featured on HN? [https://twitter.com/leelb](https://twitter.com/leelb) Thanks!

EDIT: And thank you to the mods for moving this comment chain to the bottom! Wish I could've done it myself. I hesitated to even write this comment since it was offtopic and didn't want it to become the top one, but letting her know her book was on HN seemed important.

<comment><USER9> Why not do it yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have an account since it'd probably just stagnate. I guess I could create a throwaway, but I have no idea how twitter works or whether she'd even get a tweet from a brand new account (spam prevention). Figured it's better to leave it to someone who knows what they're doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> from a quick skim this looks nicely done. The only thing that missing is <time required> next to price per serving/total.

Maybe you can make pierogi for .2$ apiece, but especially if you're not experienced it will take you hours, so if time is part of the equation they become vastly more expensive than, say, green chile & cheese quesadillas.

<comment><USER11> I think this is very important for the market they're targeting as well (people on food stamps). An often overlooked aspect of poverty is how _time consuming_ it is. Instead of clocking off work at 5, going home, cooking and relaxing, you've got to work multiple jobs, leaving far less time to cook, and far less incentive to cook well. This leads to a downward spiral of overspending on faster to prepare, but more expensive food (e.g. fast food, ready meals), and thus a relative loss of income.

<comment><USER12> That is a very popular and heavily promoted belief for cultural reasons. And of course people like that DO exist. None the less, the "big news release" late last week / early this week was 1 in 5 American households have no one living in the household who is currently employed. At all. And labor force participation rates as a percentage of population, and adult labor force population, continue to crash from a peak a long time ago. Of the households where at least someone in them is employed, not all have multiple full time jobs etc. And at the higher end I can afford the leisure time / I enjoy cooking to my specifications and tastes. So figure an absolute minimum of 1/2 the population could participate in slow cheap cooking, which is a large target market.

There are people in a hurry. There is also a statistically provable much larger group who given the choice of starvation or homemade bread from scratch clearly have the time and motivation, although maybe not skills, to make homemade bread from scratch. They'd be better off eating a salad anyway, but you get the idea.

It is highly likely that the two groups need two cookbooks.

Someone poor and in a hurry needs to buy a $10 slow cooker, that is something I can say from experience.

<comment><USER13> This cookbook seems ideal for someone on retirement or disability benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So awesome! Would love for there to be an option to pay what you want for the PDF. I wouldn't mind giving a couple bucks if you offered the options.

</comment><comment><USER15> Congratulations on shipping!

This reminds me a lot of budgetbytes.com (in particular the $X total, $Y/serving nomenclature), alas without my favourite feature of pictures _throughout_ the cooking process.

I found those extremely valuable by removing the vestigal risk at trying a particular recipe, as well as inspiring confidence throughout the process and finally in identifying things I shouldn't attempt yet.

</comment><comment><USER16> Perhaps not your intended audience, but as a college student with close-to- zero cooking ability, this looks amazing.

<comment><USER12> I would second this obvious suggestion to merely re-market to create something like a "first cookbook"

As a criticism (and a minor one) decades ago I worked thru school at a retail food store and WIC program women would come in with a long list of very specific required products. I'm told this program still exists. So pregnant poor women must buy precisely 2 pounds of dried navy beans per week. Not 3 pounds, not lima beans, not canned, 2 pounds dried navy beans per week. Ditto cheeses and rice and specific canned fruit juice for vitamin C. My point with this anecdote is coordination with that program might help guide further recipes in the book, assuming it hasn't already been done to maximal ability. Perhaps similar coordination with food banks to match whats typically donated with recipe ingredient lists.

A non-coincidental observation I can make is the cookbook is highly non-paleo and that correlates with poor people who aren't literally starving tend toward obesity. So a bit more salad and a bit less bread products might be a healthy idea. A stir fry never killed anyone and they don't cost much of anything unless you put fancy stuff in. More recipes like the carmelized bananas and less like the cookies. Less pizza more veggies. Less noodles more salad.

<comment><USER17> > I would second this obvious suggestion to merely re-market to create > something like a "first cookbook"

On the same site the author has a vegetarian cookbook targeted at people "people just becoming comfortable in their own kitchens".

[http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/](http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks/)

<comment><USER12> The other book also contains good recipes.

However, some (most?) of the recipes in the first veg cookbook are both healthier and probably cheaper than some of the recipes in the poverty cookbook. (some are the same, at first glance)

And re categorizing the other way, aside from offending vegetarians, in a first cookbook, it wouldn't hurt to transplant the roast chicken from the poverty book into the first cookbook. Other than cross contamination its pretty hard to screw up a roasted chicken, so its a good place for kitchen noobs to start.

On a small scale, all appears awesome, only on a larger scale is it debatable exactly which recipe belongs in which book and how much of each kind of dish belongs in each book. An editor-class of problem more than an author-class of problem. I can find no author-class problems to complain about, so far, which is impressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would simply caution that $4/day is an on-spec ingredient pricing[0] and does not account for actual cost to make these meals. A trained cook in a professional kitchen could do it, given the acess to storage and ability to re-use ingredients via a well-structured menu. But the paid-for overhead would be masking a variety of costs that weigh heavy on the target audience.

> Frequent re-supply and cost-effective quality control of ingredients

> Zero-cost re-application and limited spoilage of non-consumed minium > purhcase portions

> Abundant prep space, intermediate storage/refrigeration, and sanitary > control

</comment><comment></comment><comment>===

Quickly glancing this book, Kale Salad on p 16

Hidden costs: Most of the nutritional of this salad comes from dried bread (1/2 loaf), leaving (1/2 loaf) in the pantry. Likewise, Fresh parmesean ($10/lb+up), anchovies ($2/tin), and dijon mustard ($3/per) leave most of their value in the pantry as well.

Hidden Nutrition: Most of the calories for the salad come from the bread, not the kale. Meanwhile, a 15% protein diet needs ~70-80g protein a day/person[4]. The only material protein in this "dinner" salad is 1 egg yolk, and 1 anchovie split by 2x people. That is 3-4g of protein per head, when a typical dinner should have ~30g (off by an order of magnitude). Twice as much protein actually hides in the cheese garnish. But to increase the protein to reasonable levels, Its tempting to double or tripple portion the cheese...thus driving up the food cost of the recipe. 4 oz of fresh-grated parmesan is at least $2.50. That would give you 25g protein/head out of the meal, but the cost for the salad would be $8 for 2x portions, blowing the daily budget in just one meal.

In any event, this is an increasingly interesting area for cooks and food authors[3].

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Yields-Purchasing- Professiona...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Yields-Purchasing- Professional/dp/111812250X)

[1] Assume 2000 kcal/day, 15%=300kcal. 80g protein is 320kcal, 70g is 280.

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

<comment><USER19> I'm inclined to agree with you, but various hyperboles in your comment make it harder to do so. Some points you make are made by the author in the introduction, which also reduces my confidence in your criticisms.

p.5, emphasis added:

> This isn't a typical budget cookbook, _nor is it a nutritional guide_ , it's > a collection of recipes that happen to be inexpensive. Pricy ingredients are > wonderful, but so are cheap ones—in fact most of our favorite foods can be > had for pennies—the raw ingredients don't cost much. _Your time and skill > add the value._

p. 9, emphasis added:

> In order to encourage fruit and vegetable consumption, _the recipes do not > feature large amounts of meat._ Many recipe collections created for the > American audience use meat as the central feature of most meals. My recipes > celebrate the vegetables rather than the meat.

The $4/day figure is from SNAP, and so only represents food costs anyway -- yes, obviously labor costs matter too, but SNAP isn't very fungible. Few of the recipes really require much in the way of equipment or space. It's safe to assume that the typical American family in poverty has a refrigerator, stove, and microwave [0].

Regarding your analysis of kale salad, I'm unclear why you imply the value of the other half of the loaf of bread, the rest of the cheese, and etc., are lost. The author addresses minimum buying requirements by recommending that people amortize the cost of expensive ingredients. (All of the expensive ingredients in this particular recipe remain unspoiled for months, and in particular the cheese has an exceptionally graceful failure mode.) On a different note, the protein RDA for an adult male (female) is 56g (46g), not 70-80g [1].

You really lost me when you tried to double or triple the cheese. Have you ever tried to eat 4 oz of parm at once? Gross.

To recap, I think it's easy to inflate the "actual cost" of any meal when one fails to amortize costs (of all sorts) and assume unused ingredients are never eaten. I feel that the cookbook represents a meaningful and feasible improvement in the average quality of the American diet in general.

[0] [http://www.census.gov/hhes/well- being/publications/extended-...](http://www.census.gov/hhes/well- being/publications/extended-11.html)

[1] [http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/protein.html](http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/protein.html)

<comment><USER18> This is a lot of pedantic "correction". My basic point remains

(1) If I source the ingredients to "kale salad" at retail, it doesn't make the budget.

(2) If I eat 1/2 of it for dinner, its not a meal.

You can argue all you want about caveats, but people in the market for $4/day food are going to be reading for things at face value. I understand the market is not people like me--but then again, I've actually food-costed somewhat extenstively. One of the lessons of that exercise is that making a nuturtionally unsound "meal" is trivial and doing it "cheap" is even moreso. Brushing aside the major constraints of the exercise is missing the point.

The comment about parmesean is also telling. Retail for fresh parmsean--which I assume is $10--is more realistically higher. And 4 oz split 2 ways is 2oz/head. While you might "gag" at this, its not uncommon for a risotto finish to be 1/oz a person. And decent product is quite fine to eat 'straight', its quite normal actually. Parm is actually a generous assumption here because its protein density is so high per/oz. But that is precisely why it is a costly ingredient.

Lastly, pantry items are not "lost"\--another mis-understanding. The issue is that they have spoilage and a cost-of carry that is not insignificant. A pro- kitchen can cost these out as overhead. A consumer kitchen on a real budget needs to pony up the working capital, and then needs to keep a speadsheet of inventory to re-use the ingredients. EG, we have 3/4 of a anchovies pack and 1 egg white now in the fridge...where does that go? In a resturaunt it will get used with 100% certainty...and most trained chefs will easily find a way manage that. Most people trying to slog out $4/day migh not have a plan for what to do with "pantry leftovers" in the same way. This is quite common affliction for people who don't cook regularly--eg college students, people with irregular schedules--etc. This is another reason why many avoid "scratch" cooking altogether as a strategy to "save money", because of food wastage issues.

Lastly, fresh ingredients are in fact quite expensive. How many calories are in an 8oz container of mushrooms? 100? for $2? A jar of Pickles? A $4/day book needs to average 500 calories per dollar. Whilst this is easy with starch, and with flour/bread, its not so easy with other types of "fresh food". Proteins and decent vegetables in particular.

Lastly, in any kind of urban environment this is doubly so. Outside of chinatown or the mission, even at farmers markets, the prices for fresh foods are typically marked up quite a bit more than preserved foods. Again, this issue is not faced by a resturaunt cook, but it is faced by the home cook who has to pay transit/taxi or time to go shopping to source ingredients in a way which makes efficient use of working capital.

None of this is personally directed at the author--it's more the nature of this exercise is that many published works in this class take certain amounts of privledge for granted.

<comment><USER19> > (1) If I source the ingredients to "kale salad" at retail, it doesn't make > the budget.

This isn't actually a point you made. You never questioned the author's pricing scheme (which would have been a good point, by the way -- her methodology is n=4).

> (2) If I eat 1/2 of it for dinner, its [sic] not a meal.

It is completely common for people to eat salads of this size and this protein content (before doubling or trebling the cheese) as a meal that is also a part of a healthy diet.

I'm not really sure what to make of the rest of your comments. There's some good points here somewhere...?

<comment><USER18> Eating a dinner with (lets call it) 8g of protein leaves you to source (lest call it 60/per day) 52g of protein in breakfast and dinner.

Lets say our bunhc of kale is $3, bread $4 other stuff is "free". This leaves us with $7/2=$3.50 food cost. So we get about $1 to split for extra stuff for lunch. We can easily make egg/toast for breakfast, for $.50 cents (egg and a tbsp of jam), and get 5g protein. So now, we need to eat our lunch: 1/3 loaf of bread, 3/4 jar of sardines, and some mustard. Mix in the olive oil and its a reasonable amount of food. But there is only 15g of protein /per 100g in preserved anchovies. So, lunch plus breakfast is ~20g and 1/2 salad is 8g, total of 28... In other words, you are missing your protein intake by 50%. So, the price for eating kale salad while sticking to $4/day--even with generous assumptions--is that the rest of your meals need to make up for it. This is only realistic with a certain level of culinary sophistication. The type of basic re-purposing of ingredients illustrated above is much more likely in reality. And the tradeoffs there are you have to stomach a sandwich that some may condsider an aquited taste (although with 1/2 a lemon and some parsely not so bad) for lunch. But the real issue is scalability ans sustainability: over time missing 30g protein a day...is no problem for one day...but it is a problem as a lifestyle.

If you have the skills/education and priveledges needed to access cost- effective fresh ingredients, whilst maintaining an active pantry...and/or you are the type of person to do spreadsheets of food cost...life isn't so hard...but one is assuming away many of the difficulties that face the $4/day folks on food-stamps, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> These are amazing looking cookbooks! I love the layout and photography. I am going to have to try a couple recipes! Congratulations on publishing!

</comment><comment><USER21> Thank you for this. It is very helpful to think of all the combinations I can make cheaply or quickly, with only a few ingredients. Reminds me that we don't need to go overboard to make something tasty.

</comment><comment><USER22> 4$ is expensive.

I eat only white bread and cheese. Sometimes with a tomato. Those are the only things that parents buy. (Also meats but i'm vegetarian).

Potatoes are good and cheap (0.3$ per kg), but:

\- I won't eat anything that I touched with bare hands, so I would have to buy some single-use gloves.

\- Right now I don't have my own pot. And I'm saving for a phone so I don't want to spend 10$.

\- It takes more than hour to prepare them.

I recently added multivitamin tablets to diet. Almost all vitamins, for 0.1$ per day.

<comment><USER23> what? i'm having a hard time even understanding what's going on here. there's no logic behind not eating anything that you touched with your own hands, doubly so when they're to be cooked. you need your own pot to boil water in? potatoes take some time but not an hour. multivitamins aren't a replacement for a poor diet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This looks really good. I'm currently eating for 5-6$ a day and am vegan so I'm looking forward to trying this out.

</comment><comment><USER25> I came across this site years ago ([http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/](http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/)) and it serves the same group. Easy recipes, as low cost as possible to feed familes.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is useful, but a good portion of these recipes aren't useable in an office environment. Curious if anyone has something similar, but where are you limited to, at most, a microwave and/or toaster oven.

<comment><USER23> making a large quantity of burritos at once can be inexpensive, last a long time and they're easy to heat up in the microwave. salads are easy to make at the office as are sandwiches. most leftovers from home can be brought in. i guess i've never seen the office as a place to get your cook on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nicely done. A buck a plate is entirely doable, but there's been a lack of resources convincing people of it.

...even has a recipe for Poutine (a defining Canadian appetizer)!

<comment><USER28> Poutine is a meal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nutritional info would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER30> ... although telling people to caramelize onions as part of a snack is some kind of evil.

</comment><comment><USER31> I get a 403 on Good and Cheap pdf.

<comment><USER32> Try this one: [https://googledrive.com/host/0Bxd6wdCBD_2tdUdtM0d4WTJmclU/be...](https://googledrive.com/host/0Bxd6wdCBD_2tdUdtM0d4WTJmclU/beyond- rice-and-beans-small.pdf)

It's what's shown on the mailing list signup

<comment><USER31> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> That's a very good idea!</comment>


Ask HN: How to actually build a multidisciplinary career by self-study? - <AUTHOR>

Traditional education is dying, I need help on how to actually build a multi-disciplinary self study curriculum <comment><USER2> Depends on the disciplines you want to put together since courses, projects, and activities will vary significantly based on the combination.

Also the level at which you want to develop this curriculum (e.g. Undergrad, Masters etc).

I would also consider what you want as the end goal coming out after the self- study is completed? a degree? certification? These can all be factors on how robust your program will / will not be.

Can you give more guidance on what you are looking to develop?

</comment><comment><USER3> From other humans: learn by doing by joining at least two communities of doers with open docs and a formal mechanism for good work to be identified and promoted.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Multidisciplinary" means two different disciplines side-by-side. You could be a computer programmer and also a salesman, for example. "Transdisciplinary" or "interdiscipinary" means combining tools without regard for disciplinary boundaries. If you've ever read _The Lean Startup_ you can see how computing and sales might be combined into one problem-solving method as opposed to being two separate functions that just happen to be done by one person.

The key to the latter is to have _an interesting problem to solve_ and then look for methods, rather than starting with a couple of methods and then looking for a problem. So my advice to you is, figure out what problem or opportunity you want to work on. Then look for tools in any discipline that will help you.</comment>


Revival of the Ice Canoe: Lost History and Wild Delights of a Quebecois Sport - <AUTHOR> https://www.vqronline.org/reporting-articles/2018/03/revival-ice-canoe <comment><USER2> Disappointed this wasn't building canoes out of ice. That sounds more fun.

There was actually a plan to build ships out of ice during WWII, and then they came up with a better material which was wood pulp mixed with ice. It was stronger and took longer to melt. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk)</comment>


Hacker News API is not well designed - <AUTHOR> Last night, I thought why not develop a HN clone in react and when I looked at API, Oh my goodness. It is not well designed at all, like passing 400 ids, just ids. And to get posts we have to make requests to get single post detail to show 10 or 20 posts on a page. Well, react helped me a bit like storing ids in array and using splice to get next 10 items and so on. <comment><USER2> You're right. We'll eventually make a new API that doesn't have those limitations.

It wasn't carelessness, btw, but technical constraints we were under at the time. We've slowly been removing those.

<comment><USER3> Will you guys also be updating the arc-lang forum?

<comment><USER2> Not sure. HN's code has diverged a lot from the Arc forum, so updates can't propagate without a lot of extra work.

<comment><USER3> Need a helper?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like the website, it doesn't have to be "well designed", it's enough that it works.

<comment><USER5> If Hacker News was submitted to Hacker News it would be ridiculed for many of the reasons it otherwise gets praised for - the archaic layout, poor typography, inconsistent navigation, lack of features, and _especially_ having a badly designed API.

Let's just be honest, bad design is bad design. No slight to PG or anyone working on the site now, and the fact that HN uses flat files rather than a relational database probably limits the API's capabilities in ways that wouldn't be worth the effort of changing. But it's still bad. People just accept it here because they fear anything better might attract the normies.

<comment><USER6> > People just accept it here because they fear anything better might attract > the normies.

I disagree. Even if HN had the best API you've ever seen in your life, what difference would it make?

The product here is all about function, not form.

> If Hacker News was submitted to Hacker News it would be ridiculed for many > of the reasons it otherwise gets praised for - the archaic layout, poor > typography, inconsistent navigation, lack of features, and especially having > a badly designed API.

This says more about the audience then it does the product. At a certain point, criticism stops being useful and just becomes a way to flex a superiority muscle. Again, what would making hacker news "prettier" accomplish?

<comment><USER5> >The product here is all about function, not form.

Why do you believe a better designed API would not be about function over form?

Was the bug that caused links to "time out" if you didn't click on them fast enough also a preference for function over form?

Is being able to change the color of the top banner function, not form?

Are the colors chosen for the site function, not form?

Are folding threads or reversible votes or vouching form over function?

No, the product here is as much about form as function. The design of Hacker News is as aesthetic expression. It's meant to be appealing and attractive to a certain demographic, what PG considered a "good hacker."

The site would _function_ better with an updated layout. It would load faster without complex, nested tables, and it would work better on mobile. It would be more readable with better typography, and more usable with features like new comment prompts. People don't want that, not because they wouldn't be a functional improvement, but because they believe such things would violate the site's anti-modernist aesthetic, and people don't want Hacker News to look and feel like a modern forum.

Viewing anything but the status quo as mere cosmetics, as if the site in its current state had somehow already achieved perfection, is a preference for form over function.

<comment><USER7> There is a famous saying : "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." [https://www.inspiware.com/design-is-how-it- works-steve-jobs/](https://www.inspiware.com/design-is-how-it-works-steve- jobs/)

<comment><USER5> Fair enough, but tell that to everyone who dismisses design as eye-candy and frivolous nonsense whenever someone complains about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You may want to gripe on the arc-language forum:

[http://arclanguage.org/forum](http://arclanguage.org/forum)

</comment><comment><USER8> I heard 10 months ago that HN was developing a new API, no update though.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16720397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16720397)

<comment><USER2> We're inching our way there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't think it was that bad, free to use and everything has an ID right? If you want details l, query the ID, seems like a super simple base to work on to me.

There's actually a whole [1] list of opensource Hacker news clones that you can look at to see how they do it...

[1] [https://hnpwa.com](https://hnpwa.com)

<comment><USER10> > I didn't think it was that bad, free to use and everything has an ID right?

My take is that the API forces the N+1 query problem on clients that start with an empty repository.</comment></comment>


It costs $1,800 to get an engineering job offer - <AUTHOR> https://beamjobs.com/blog/underlying-cost-getting-new-engineering-job <comment><USER2> "Based on some rough calculations (which are detailed below) it costs the average software engineer $1,814 and 1.7 vacation days to get one job offer."

That is, unless you're currently unemployed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. In that case, it still takes time but I imagine the opportunity cost isn't quite as high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Calculating opportunity cost for time spent based on wages is pretty meaningless for salaried jobs. I might make $X/hr at my day job, but I don't actually have the ability to work an extra hour and get an extra X dollars.

<comment><USER4> These are funny thoughts actually. I have full-time job and also do freelancing. The last part is pretty flexible. I can always do more work and later bill it. This makes everything I do in life computable in monetary terms. I watch TV for an hour? It costs me 100usd - example, not my actual hourly rate. And I do not really get tired of work or coding, I just really want to watch that TV show. But it is weird to think that it costs me 100usd. This aspect actually made me hire a cleaning service and always order food in, because I can spend the time working instead of cooking, shopping and cleaning. Which I of course enjoy more as well. Not only is it temporary financial gain, but any extra time spent coding will be an investment towards mu future to make me a better coder. Of course it is a double edged sword. Hanging out with my girlfriend? 500usd. I also spent my last vacation fully freelancing. Of course I have goals to achieve financial indepence asap though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1800 dollars for a 5+% salary bump, a new work you're interested in, and perhaps a shorter commute. Seems worth it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow: "An average developer will need to do 12 phone screens (the first stage of the interview process) to get one job offer"

That means a lot of companies are leaving a whole lot of talent on the table.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't agree more. The first interview is usually with a non-technical person (like HR), so at the first round candidates are often rejected for things that have no real bearing on job performance.

<comment><USER7> I've had multiple calls where the interviewer obviously didn't look at my resume beforehand and rejected me for not having enough years of work history or previous experience of a specific technology. Both are fair reasons but it's insulting and representative of how little they respect engineers' time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah! The joys of a labour system where everything is about money!

It costs me nothing to get a new job and if I have to move for an interview I could even ask a refund for the expenses...

</comment><comment><USER9> That's probably a low figure but yeah

</comment><comment><USER10> that's a bargain</comment>


OpenBSD binpatches and package updates - <AUTHOR> https://stable.mtier.org/ <comment><USER2> What this means:

Some people wanted bin-patches apparently, openbsd is heavily focusing on using its resources as efficiently as possible and doesn't provide them, a reliable 3rd party stepped up providing them for free, charging for binpatches for older versions (a service model built on top of open source software, nothing wrong with that)

A few points:

-) since mtier here tries to basically sell you something, they make it sound harder than it seems, checking the errata page, writing a 20 line script to get notified if the page is updated, that's enough

-) not every bug found is critical towards your own security, not every bug does need you to update (you can decide on an individual basis)

-) micro-managing (as one comment stated) is pretty much the opposite of what you do with openbsd, openbsd is secure by default, if you want to have anywhere near the same amount of security with some other OS have fun reading tons of documentation to harden the box yourself (and you still won't have all the same security mitigations)

-) updates are trivial: update, re-compile, reboot, if the bug is not critical for you then don't, or use -current (rolling release "development branch"), or use the bin-patch by mtier

-) I doubt some of the people here criticising "having to use" 3-rd party binpatches practice the same scrutiny in day-to-day life regarding it-security (seeing how other OSs deal with security they would probably be using openbsd by now then if they were)

-) considering the size of the openbsd project and how many critical pieces of security-focused utilities they maintain (openssh, libressl, opensmtpd, ...), how many security mitigations they implement, how well they do in regularly auditing their code and actually addressing bugs across multiple architectures quickly with patches provided (especially compared to so many so much larger projects), it's somewhat ridiculous for an outsider to criticise how they spend their time or resources (because in my opinion and in the opinion of many others, they actually do hell of a great job!)

<comment><USER3> The issue of official binpatches is not a critical problem, but it is still a problem. It is a security and usability issue simply not present in the vast majority of nix systems, and that should be acknowledged rather than downplayed, as this facet of OpenBSD is usually an unpleasant surprise for potential converts.

Repeating "secure by default" seems rather disingenuous when a freshly- installed system needs extra attention, and cannot automatically fetch the latest security updates.

Updates may be "trivial" to you, but they are still clearly more complex than the average system, as they require individual attention and recompilation. These speedbumps to security are not what "secure by default" implies.

Alternatively, relying on a third-party tool (and having to vet that extra party) is not "secure by default" either.

Your final points are distracting from the issue and verging on ad-hominem. Firstly, first-party binpatches are so prevalent that noticing their absence is hardly significant scrutiny. Secondly, just because OpenBSD is very good in some areas doesn't mean we can ignore deficiencies in other areas.

<comment><USER2> OpenBSD does not try to be everything for every person and I think it's fair to put some things in context. Just because other systems provide binary patches for security issues (and I haven't so far named and will continue to not name other OSs, but many have a lousy track record of doing so to begin with), that does not make them automatically more secure than OpenBSD, which has so many active pro-security measurements built in from the start and where updates are provided, but not officially via binary patches. I think a lot of the comments did not acknowledge the circumstances and see the greater picture and my sense of a need for some further context was justified.

But your original comment was: "Does it seem a little embarrassing to anyone else that this is necessary? OpenBSD is supposedly the most secure nix platform available, and yet users have to resort to third-parties to get functionality that is available on nearly every other nix system by default."

So no, I don't consider it to be embarrassing for a little project that does so much in so many ways (part of it being that every single security issue is addressed and patched swiftly across multiple architectures, full disclosure is practised et cetera) to not provide binary patches while having an experienced community accepting of this. This last part actually what makes OpenBSD such an efficient catalyst for innovation, since people accept breaking backwards compatibility, turning on security mitigations while it might brake some stuff here and there, et cetera...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ___" Keeping your installed OpenBSD packages up to date is hard and time- consuming."_ __

I find it very easy. I follow stable and upgrade every six months. Upgrades take about 30 minutes max.

<comment><USER5> You are talking about base, they are talking about packages (and -current base).

<comment><USER4> I mean the system in general. I get new ports (like everything else) every six months. And when security flaws are discovered in third party software, they are fixed in the -stable branch of the ports tree.

[https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html#PortsSecurity](https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html#PortsSecurity)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does it seem a little embarrassing to anyone else that this is necessary? OpenBSD is supposedly the most secure nix platform available, and yet users have to resort to third-parties to get functionality that is available on nearly every other nix system by default.

<comment><USER6> The OpenBSD project doesn't have the resources to provide this so m:tier employs a couple of OpenBSD developers to provide this option for people who want it. Not sure what is embarrassing about this.

<comment><USER7> If openbsd developers do it, why don't they make it official and provide it from openbsd.org? They could still plaster "this is thanks to funding from mtier" on the site prominently.

<comment><USER8> The OpenBSD developers are unwilling to do anything that makes some architectures better than others, and M:Tier is unwilling to build stable updates for everything. Perhaps this will change one day as hardware continues to consolidate, but that's the way it is for now.

[http://www.openbsd.org/plat.html](http://www.openbsd.org/plat.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Are American Kids So Spoiled? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/02/120702crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all <comment><USER3> I admit to being a former spoiled teenager. I didn't even do the basic things required to take care of myself (even being nagged to take a shower), nevermind the chores around the house. Now, over a decade later, I now do the things that others would consider part of being a responsible adult.

What changed? A trial-by-fire in autonomy in college that I failed.

Basically the story is that I wasn't responsible enough at the time, and it came back to bite me very hard. I returned home with my tail firmly between my legs.

But for the first time I had a taste of true freedom. No nagging, no schedules, no authorities telling me what to do. If I didn't want to go to class, nobody was going to make me. If I didn't want to do laundry, then I had a big pile of stinking clothes. If I didn't want to cook, then I spent money on eating out. I painfully learned what it took to take care of myself as an adult. Hell, I'm still learning.

Freedom is weird like that. On the one hand, it's the greatest feeling ever. The whole world feels like your oyster. On the other hand, it has a MASSIVE cost in both time and money. Rent, showering, work, food, car, gas, insurance, phone, computer, internet, etc. If you want that kind of freedom, you damn well better earn it.

Autonomy is a kind of freedom that I believe we don't give to children here in America. We don't trust them with that kind of freedom, so we swoop in and guide their every move and every minute. This is an enabling behavior because it doesn't allow for children to take responsibility, and yet we want them to magically have it. In fact, I would argue that kids don't even think about the basics because the parents magically take care of it for them, or nag them until it is done.

If we want our children to be autonomous and responsible, we need to give them the space to fail and face the intrinsic consequences of that failure without swooping in to help.

<comment><USER4> I can relate to some degree.

Parents often have good intentions, but by attempting to control everything it creates a dysfunctional environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a parent, I look at the samples provided and think, "WTF?" At 13, your kid "might finally be able to accept the responsibility of taking the trash out"?

I love my kids, but I know a critical part of raising them is pissing them off on a fairly regular basis (also known as saying "No" :). My 13 year old daughter _really_ likes that.

More importantly, it is better to raise them to understand their real place in the world (which is not "everybody gets a medal for participating"; I really want to punch whoever decided _that_ was a good idea). Life is hard, people will piss on you. If you've been coddled your whole life, that is going to be a painful experience when it happens.

On the other hand, if your parents have 1) given you a strong foundation of love and self-respect and 2) positioned you to know you have to work your way up, you'll usually do OK.

(Note: I'm not saying I'm perfect. There are things I'd do differently and my fourth is getting a different parenting experience than my first, but, overall, with various crap they've all had to deal with, they are continuing to do well. So far, it's success.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to hear some anecdotes from non-Americans currently raising kids, especially if they've also got some hands-on experience with American culture. Are American kids truly spoiled, or is the issue universal? If American kids are spoiled, what are you doing differently?

<comment><USER7> I'm Russian, and I brought my 9 (now 11) year old daughter to the US. This process was (and somewhat still is) pretty painful for everybody, especially my wife. Russian women are often called 'sitting hens' back home because of their extreme hyper/over/megacare about all things, especially children. And the whole system is built around this - teachers don't talk to kids, they talk to parents (usually mothers), kids opinions are quickly dismissed just because they're kids "I don't care what you think, tell me what your mother says". Kids adopt to this (they're kids) and sit idle waiting for next command from the upper management. But at the end it turned out to be much easier for the daughter than to my wife. She felt like she suddenly lost control of her child - "what if she gets under the bus?!?!11 what if the will fall from the tree?!! what if she will drawn in the pool?!11", etc. My daughter adopted quickly (again, she's the kid) but in a funny fashion - she's very independent in the school and in the company of her classmates, but still very dependent at home (because it's much easier to manipulate your mother to iron your shirt than to do it yourself, you know). I can't say that American kids are specifically spoiled. There's fierce competition, who's cool and who's not. In their school it is cool to be cool AND also get into the advanced math class. Pretty tough objective, I'd say :-) Back home (we went to a very good school too) the relations between kids were much more relaxed, but there was much more physical abuse. All cultures have their benefits and drawbacks, but overall I like it here better. In particular because it's cool to be in the advanced math class :-) And because she was very disappointed to learn that there would be no advanced computer class in 6th grade. And because she wants to go to the summer camp in Stanford to learn special effects in video, etc. But I live in a pretty upscale neighbourhood, one of the best school districts in California, blah-blah. That's definitely offsets perspective.

<comment><USER8> «very independent in the school and in the company of her classmates, but still very dependent at home» seems to be very typical of young people here in Russia, good point.

<comment><USER7> Alas, that's purely our fault, parents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I encounter this attitude a lot with the local moms, including my wife.

My anecdote... our baby was a year old or so and waking up once or twice a night crying. Wet? no, hungry? We fed her a lot before going to bed, so unlikely. I recommended a few times that we let her cry herself back to sleep, and get some rest ourselves.

Barring an emergency, my philosophy is that a child will be better served in the long run by happy, well-slept parents for 16 hours a day than harried, miserable ones 24 hours a day. Pretty simple really. The wife disagreed. It wasn't until another month or two later when our old-school pediatrician recommend the same thing in different wording--"you're part of her routine," that she agreed to try.

By the second (maybe third) night the night-time crying had stopped /permanently/ and we went on to live happily ever after. Later, another mom we know was having the same problem, and my wife gave her the advice. "I don't believe he (the pediatrician) said that!" she replied incredulously...

Do you know she laid down with her son every night for an hour until he went to bed, and then got up twice a night for the last two years? (And we're the crazy ones).

There's a good bit by George Carlin called, "Child worship" that is good commentary on this mindset. The sooner it goes out of fashion, the better.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just try showing your child some discipline in public and somebody will drop a dime on you and you get a visit from child protective services in the next few days...

<comment><USER11> I think you're conflating discipline with violence.

<comment><USER12> Sadly, that seems to be common. Is amazing how many people still believe that a kid who isn't spanked is undisciplined.

<comment><USER13> Spanking a kid has never killed anyone, as far as I know. I was spanked as a kid and when I was, I did deserve it and it was a good way to show that there are limits not to cross. I don't really understand the popular mindset now that education should be done entirely without touching your kid. There's a clear line between spanking and domestic violence. Let's not call a squirrel a rat.

<comment><USER12> As someone else here said, you need to watch some super nanny, violence is not the most effective way to discipline children. You can do better without hitting them. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

<comment><USER14> "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

Spanking is not "violence". Spanking has been done since the beginning of time. I fail to see how you can support your argument by the way by quoting Super Nanny (which I have watched many times and find entertaining..) Super Nanny is a TV with cherry picked families that are pre-screened to insure they are on the dart board (and parents are off the dart board) with respect to the techniques she uses. There is definitely a place in some families for what Super Nanny does. But that is not to say that there isn't a place for spanking of children.

<comment><USER12> > Spanking is not "violence".

Yes it is.

> Spanking has been done since the beginning of time.

Irrelevant. Slavery has existed since the beginning of time, that doesn't justify it. Racism has existed since the beginning of time, that doesn't justify it. Appeals to tradition are not a sound argument.

<comment><USER13> What do you define as violence exactly? Pinching is violence too? Do you let your boys be #violent# during the recess? Because most kids are way more violent with other kids than just spanking. Do you do anything about that or just turn a blind eye to it?

Spanking has been around forever and has never had life threatening or civilization threatening implications. Why dont you compare spanking with nuclear weapons while you are at it?

<comment><USER14> "Spanking has been around forever and has never had life threatening or civilization threatening implications."

Thanks for making the point better than I did. The movement against spanking as being bad in such an absolute way is fairly recent. And, afaik, science has not backed this up.

I'm going to open a new thread with this old post on a spanking research by Carl "the numbers guy" Bialik in the WSJ a few years ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4161784>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A very nice article. Amongst our Indian friends it is common that NOONE hires a babysitter (that word does not exist in their dictionary), so when you invite someone, you are inviting their children and we see a lot of obnoxious children. It goes without saying that the parenting is to blame, and I think this article is right on, over emphasis on grades, softness of parents on basic things are to blame. Parents will say no, they don't mean it, and then kids learn from that. They are very clever and really take the meaning of an interaction, not just the words. Parents are a bit foolish that way to just go by the words.

</comment><comment><USER16> In general that happen whens there is too much luxury. The person doesn't know the value of things, what others get after a lot of work and difficulty.

If you know how difficult it is to buy even things like food, clothing and shelter. How hard you have to work to get them, you will have a lot humility in using them. There are a lot of people in the world who would do anything just for 3 proper meals a day, a livable home, clothes to wear and some basic health care.

In my country India(People still live in subhuman conditions) and some would do anything to even have one proper meal a day. They don't have the luxury to be spoilt.

US to me looks like a land of extreme consumerism. People seem to buy all sorts of stuff, even if they have absolutely no need for it. Eating at fast food restaurants, going on vacations, changing cars every now and then, loans, debt and other spending even if you never need it at all. Also US attitude toward the rest of world is frightening to say at the least. I mean I get the patriotism, but most US politicians talk like as though any other place outside is shit. The infrastructure looks like tall buildings, clean roads and all that all designed richest people on earth.

You also have this history, bombing every other nation that says 'no' to you. Invading so many countries and mercilessly pounding them with impunity. Granting aids to other nations like you offer alms. Or having economic sanctions.

All this gives a feeling that US is some form of invincible entity whose dominance on the world scene will last till eternity. And you can do whatever you like and you have free pass.

I think all this counts and gives you a sense of extreme confidence and arrogance that you will get what you demand. And such a run will never end.

</comment><comment><USER17> It was only a century ago when the norm for American children was to receive modest gifts like paper dolls, penny candy and homemade dresses for Christmas. Nowadays, most middle class parents feel guilty if they don't cram a mountain of expensive plastic crap under the tree.

<comment><USER18> We really have forgotten that a pile of computer paper and a box of crayons can keep kids entertained for hours.

(Are we still allowed to give kids computer paper, or do they now sell special paper with rubber edges to prevent paper cuts?)

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I have heard the same thing many times: kids are often more entertained with the cardbox than the content itself :) Most of the times, gifts get abandoned after playing a few hours with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If any American parent tried raising their kids like the tribe in this article they'd be immediately sent to prison, probably for several decades if not life. And if any of the kids tried acting like the kids in that tribe, they'd also get sent to prison just as fast.

<comment><USER20> Not quite as young as the kids in the article- but by age 6 I was handling a pocket knife, building camp fires (with supervision), and cooking over said camp fires (hot dogs on a stick, etc).

<comment><USER19> Yeah, but you can't take a machete to school and build a campfire on the playground, nor can you go on vacation for a few days and leave your kids to wander around downtown LA with only a machete and some matches.

<comment><USER9> Why would you want to do things in the city that only make sense in the jungle? While partially correct, I think you are overstating the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Spare the rod, spoil the child I'm from El Salvador and beatings are a regular thing for us. It's normal for us to start working at 12.

Now that's the extreme, but this whole don't hit your kids movement is an epidemic.

<comment><USER22> Hitting your kids is parenting for amateurs or dummies. Anytime I catch myself with the urge to hit I remind myself I'm a lot smarter than those little shits (whom I love immensely) and its just a matter of calmly reminding them of their incentives, both negative and positive. The same holds true for yelling. I find that having them look in my eyes and speaking very quietly and calmly accomplishes a lot more. YMMV.

<comment><USER13> Kids better take their hits from their own family first. They get used to the violence in society later this way, and get stronger through the process. I'd like to see you vindicate your view that adults raised without "physical" education end up being better adults. The trends in society certainly don't seem to indicate your are right.

As long as it's not abusive, disproportionate, and done in the proper circumstances and for the right reasons, there's nothing wrong with that.

Please note I'm not advocating beating up your child for no reason whatsoever. It should be the last resort to educate. But just like the experience of fire is necessary to fear it, the experience of authority through a variety of means has value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I get that americans enjoy this self bashing, but aside from being guilty of perpetual war, this is more of a global phenomenon.

I remember hearing how Slavic kids are being kids till late 30-ies, and pretty much it goes the same way as stories in this article. Usually parents would tell their spoiled kids in like 20-ties or so, that american parents around 16 or 18 just show their kids a door. This sounded harsh and cruel to me, as our parents would never kick us out.

Criticism in this article is spot-on, however you can't blame only americans for it, it is a symptom of different requirements life has from people in northern hemisphere or what is called western civilization.

I think it is OK to care and be affectionate with your kids, we just need find better ways of showing it.

What do you think?

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I suspect "What's the matter with kids today?" is a matter of fundamental psychology.

<comment><USER23> reading through other comments and opinions, I get a sense that it might be consequence of having fewer kids

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich." - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER26> _That the abused don't feel abused doesn't mean they aren't being abused. It just means they're rationalizing or denying..._

There should be a name for this particular kind of ad hominim fallacy. "Fallacy of the Retreat into the Subconcious", maybe.

Eg "The fact is"---always start with "the fact is..." so that your assertions cannot be doubted---"that they are really very severely traumatized by that violent swat on the rump they got when they were three and trying to punch their mommy, even if they say they're not. They just don't realize it because it's subconscious trauma."

</comment><comment><USER27> As I read this I thought about social welfare: well-meaning and often counter- productive.

Another corollary would be dog training.

<comment><USER28> Snarky response of the day: Seems like quite the trend to compare the poor and unemployed to children and animals. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How many people on HN have kids?

</comment><comment><USER30> Are they?

</comment><comment><USER31> Um, because their parents spoil them?

</comment><comment><USER32> Board an airplane in America, and all will be revealed. We are ridiculously entitled people, and by extension our children are precious special little gemstones who shouldn't have to be impinged upon by such trivial things as the entire rest of the world. I haven't spent enough time in other countries to know whether we are unique in this regard, but I know it is true for us, and it's honestly pretty disgusting to me.

<comment><USER33> If by entitled you mean enslaved, sure.

Americans are being boiled alive in the giant nanny state, and are treating their own children like the government treats them, no coincidence. Adults now rarely possess the virtues that are being questioned about the children, and that's where it stems from. Self reliance? Independence? Who needs it, the state or mommy & daddy will take care of whatever is wrong. It's the gimme gimme gimme generation, they want their cake and they want to eat it too.

Boomers were the worst generation of parents (so far) in American history. And so it passes down.

Fortunately, it's all burning to the ground and will be forced to change. Nature doesn't allow such absurdities to exist for long.

<comment><USER34> Where's this magical place where the government takes care of you? I've never been there. More like, if you get injured and can't come up with enough money, go die. If you can't afford food to eat, go die. If you can't find a job, it's cause you're lazy, go die. If you can't afford a car to get to work, we will not provide a bus, go die. What on earth are your generalizations based on?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why is the _New Yorker_ such a terrible magazine?

<comment><USER35> Sigh. My point was they're begging the question in a headline like that, namely " _Are_ American kids spoiled?"</comment></comment>


Deploying a basic Ruby application in Windows Azure - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tconte/archive/2011/03/24/deploying-ruby-in-windows-azure.aspx

<comment><USER2> Why not let the platform be agnostic, or allow native deployment outside of windows land?

Case in point, running mysql needs a separate web role and costs >$80 where SQL server is $10 (old prices?).

If your building on top of .Net then take advantage of all that native goodness. Otherwise you face an uphill battle in terms of getting it to just work and pricing.

Don't let this ruby carrot fool you...

</comment><comment><USER2> Notice how no one gave a rats a$$ about this post. M$FT should take note that in the long run they're loosing a high quality pool of developers.</comment>


Irssi - The IRC client of the future - <AUTHOR> http://irssi.org/documentation <comment><USER2> Is that news? Irssi has been around and well-known for quite a long time...</comment>


Ask HN: What are your thoughts on one-page-scroll web sites? - <AUTHOR>

I would like to know your thoughts about UX when regarding one-page scrolling. (Example: http://www.thepetedesign.com/demos/onepage_scroll_demo.html )
The fact that it blocks normal scroll bothers you? Would you use it on a company site?
Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> This example is done quite well, but still suffers from the major flaw that all these types of sites suffer.

On the 2nd slide, I can see that their is some code at the bottom of the page, but I can't see what it is because my browser windows is too small. When I scroll, it goes to the next slide. I know I'm missing content, but I can't scroll to it.

Therefore, you've broken the most important thing about your website, showing me the content.

I much prefer the standard scrolling window where content is just broken up visually, but it doesn't control the scroll. (my resume is an example [http://pedalpete.github.io/resume](http://pedalpete.github.io/resume))

</comment><comment><USER3> It bothers me horribly. I'm used to my mouse wheel skipping ahead a certain amount when I scroll and this robs me of that control. For example, if I've been to the site before and know what I want is going to be at the bottom, it will still take me a long time to get there because I can't just flick the wheel quickly.

</comment><comment><USER4> They bother me as much as 1000px high headers. Which is incredibly high.

</comment><comment><USER5> these sites are being done _incorrectly_ at present... (and yes, this incorrect implementation is very sucky.)

but there are tweaks that can improve them considerably, where you get the best of two worlds, whichever you like.

i'll be writing up my research in the very near future. (it's wordy to justify the recommendation i've come to, but it's one which is actually very easy to implement.)

-bowerbird</comment>


Engelbart's Law - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbart%27s_Law <comment><USER2> Is this just a function of comparative advantage?

I read the link but am not sure what it is saying beyond what seems obvious to any economics student.</comment>


IBM Reveals Proof of Concept for Blockchain-Powered Internet of Things - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/ibm-reveals-proof-concept-blockchain-powered-internet-things/

<comment><USER2> I'm about over the term "internet of things" \-- it's starting to irk me like "information super-highway" does.

<comment><USER3> How about "Network of Non Human Data Publishers"?</comment></comment>


Group of Googlers announce support for Dragonfly - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/google-dragonfly-letter/ <comment><USER2> _"...Dragonfly is well aligned with Google's mission. China has the largest number of Internet users of all countries in the world, and yet, most of Google's services are unavailable in China. This situation heavily contradicts our mission, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"..."_

Ignoring the rest of the logic and values questions involved, a mission is _what you want to see happen_ , not what you're going to do. You may do nothing -- and that might be the best thing you can do for your mission to succeed.

Missions are not to-do lists. They are statements of value that are supposed to be more important than the entity stating them. People die on important missions. The mission is what the important thing is, not how you fit into it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's too easy to judge without ever living in China. People should always look at both sides, and try to understand the whole situation.

Ofc people in China strive for a service which would be able to compete with their current search engine. And Google in China would probably be way better than the current one.

Of course it's kinda sad that Google would need to censor results, which kinda conflicts with their missions - but apparently it's the law in China, and every company there needs to follow the law.

Google is a business, and it would kinda be not rational to skip the business they could make in China.

<comment><USER4> There are businesses that virtue signal their values. Patagonia just donated a tax break ($10 million) to global warming groups.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-28/patagonia...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-28/patagonia- donates-10-million-trump-tax-savings-to-green-groups)

Should Patagonia fire their CEO? It's kind of outrageous that they aren't out to make as much money as possible, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's important for these voices to be heard. Despite a couple thousand signatures on the other dissenting memo, there's no evidence that a majority of Googlers are willing to actively vandalize/cannibalize revenues, while Microsoft, Apple, Amazon etc. make all exceptions demanded by China, and bolster their revenues, market-cap.

Dissenting Googlers need to understand that Google doesn't operate in a vacuum, where rules apply differently for the rest of the market, and dissenting Googlers get to guilt trip their patent company into leaving billions on the table, for feelz

<comment><USER4> Tim Cook set the standard when he smiled and shook the hand of a dictator that presides over the execution of homosexuals. In the future Google, Apple, and Amazon can build software to help them identify and execute homosexuals.

The revenues will be incredible.

<comment><USER6> If we feel this is incompatible with our values, I strongly think that diplomacy and national level polciy is the place to take action. We cannot leave it up to individual companies to dedide these actions, whilst at the same time holding a national polciy that holds these countries as close allies, and most favoured trading partners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess an argument to make in Dragonfly's favor is that if we leave it up to the government an even more draconian solution will be given to the Chinese people. Google offering their product gives them the opportunity to provide more information access than the people would otherwise get. There is only so much that can be censored, after all, and perhaps the massive information access will overwhelm any possible attempt at censorship.

<comment><USER4> This argument is repeated over and over again as if Google is magical and the Chinese government is incompetent.

Technogy does not create democracies and free societies. China's belt and road project is going to create further economic freedom. Western values aren't needed when you have job opportunities, can send your kids to great schools, take a vacation, and buy a nice house.

<comment><USER7> Where did China get the ability to do all those things?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where there's money to be made, nice words will be found to make it sound not- completely-morally-corrupt.

</comment><comment><USER9> >Just this week, a public memo written by current Google staff urged that Dragonfly should be dropped because it "aids the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable." 20th century rhetoric aside, I can see no way to massively censor the internet that will not be adopted shortly in its own flavor by every other country hand wringing over the latest overblown 'social crisis'. ""...can't you just make us a general purpose computer that runs all the programs, except the ones that scare and anger us? Can't you just make us an Internet that transmits any message over any protocol between any two points, unless it upsets us?"" \- Cory Doctorow "Can't you make a search engine that will allow access to any information located on the web, unless it's something naughty in the eyes of the government?"

</comment><comment><USER10> i wonder what will happen first - china's panopticon draconian state being adopted by everyone in the world or the chinese government being taken down by a foreign state for "acting up" as they are wont to do.

<comment><USER4> China's belt and road project is going to project Chinese power and values over Eurasia.

I'm sure a lot of companies,like Google, will want to help them do that in exchange for some profits.

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

<comment><USER10> maybe if china wins the next world war,doubtful otherwise

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How many of these low-level workers are receiving second paychecks from national governments? We can be reasonably assured that at least some SREs are; what about the anonymous purveyors of these sorts of letters?

I think people view this very much as an us-vs-them, but the "us" is easily polluted with those quietly receiving additional compensation to further their (second) employer's interests.

<comment><USER5> Just empty accusations, and frankly insulting to anyone who disagrees with dissenters. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. are all following China's data policies, but when a bunch of Googlers want the same, you accuse them of paybacks?

<comment><USER11> No, I am sure that there are at least a sprinkling of both US and foreign intelligence assets within the ranks at Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon too. Why wouldn't there be?</comment></comment></comment>


Why Facebook's video theft problem can't last - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/7/9114149/facebook-freebooting-video-copyright-infringement

<comment><USER2> Youtube and Facebook aren't even the most fucked-up video thieves.

Just look at major media portals. For example, Spiegel Online regularly "republishes" youtube videos on their website, prefaces them with unskippable 30+ sec. ads and doesn't even LINK to the original source, they just credit with a video overlay "youtube/$username". Original content creator doesn't even get clicks because most people are too fucking lazy to copy-type 30+char user names or because the uploader has changed names or a typo happened...

And they're not the only ones, it's a widespread problem in German news sites.

</comment><comment><USER3> facebook as a platform and business is hollow, but very few realize it. this is similar to Enron, Madoff, the financial crisis, Groupon, etc. history has shown that 99.99999% of people totally miss these business models that are built on a MASSIVELY fraudulent or hollow foundation.

When the music stops thousands and thousands of gallons of pixels will be spilt trying to explain how nobody saw their collapse coming and why they are not to blame.

Here are two videos that succinctly introduce the reality of facebook's mirage:

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g)

</comment><comment><USER4> No mention of the DMCA in this? A lot of the anxiety of content theft has been silo-ed away with the DMCA. Really people have to earn the right to get upset over intellectual property theft when we have mechanisms in place like the DMCA</comment>


How the US government taps fiber optic cables for the NSA - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/politics/20submarine.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> I wonder if any other intelligence agency is spying on the NSA, even if it is American. That would add such an interesting twist, and their justification and legal process for it would be no doubt rebuked by the NSA in a very hilarious fashion of not being able to take their own medicine.

I can only hope.</comment>


Is Google Plus shutting down the prelude to something bigger? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.onyxbits.de/is-google-plus-shutting-down-the-prelude-to-something-bigger-757/ <comment><USER2> Total shame. The idea of "circles" was really innovative. Hope, Facebook will implement it.</comment>


Native Analytics: Embedded charting done right, by Keen.io - <AUTHOR> https://keen.io/native-analytics/ <comment><USER2> Love seeing Keen IO go further and solve even more embedded analytics headaches. The embed button sounds like a real win, not having to write any JS could save a lot of time.</comment>


Trending stories from the world wide web - <AUTHOR> http://occasionaljunk.com <comment><AUTHOR> I'd love any advice I can get regarding how to scale the site etc. Email me on firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


My concept for a spatial video conferencing UI to combat "Zoom fatigue" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@adamfishercox/group-video-chat-and-the-need-for-fun-physical-interfaces-431b7dbef924 <comment><USER2> Me and a couple of friends having been working on similar ideas for the past few weeks!

[https://gather.town](https://gather.town) & [https://theonline.town](https://theonline.town)

There are a lot of people exploring this idea recently, you might be interested in trying them:

\- [https://cozyroom.xyz](https://cozyroom.xyz)

\- [https://www.calla.chat/](https://www.calla.chat/)

\- [https://party.mookerj.ee/](https://party.mookerj.ee/)

\- Phillip Rosedale (Second Life)'s High Fidelity

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks!</comment></comment>


How to get paying customers before you start writing code - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reemer.com/how-to-get-paying-customers-before-you-start-writing-code

<comment><USER2> One question on this- how many of the committed buyers actually pay, or at least subscribe for a minimum period of time?

I could imagine a significant # committing and then pulling out later on. I'd like to see some stats on that as a conversion rate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Getting customers is not tough if you have a solid idea that sells, This article was worth a read, Helpful enough. But should we all expect our customers to pay first before writing a code? I think that's not always possible.</comment>


Austin City Council Adopts Anti-Ridesharing Rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.texastribune.org/2015/12/17/austin-city-council-approves-new-uber-regs-uber-th/ <comment><USER2> "Officials with both companies have criticized fingerprint requirements as overly burdensome and unnecessary. Drivers working fewer than 20 hours a week are critical to the reliability of their services, they say, and requiring them to visit an office to be fingerprinted dissuades many from signing up."

Is there any legitimate opposition to fingerprinting? We are required to visit a government office every now and then to do lots of things. Got a driver's license? You visited an office for that. Got a passport? Same thing. Got your car smogged/safety inspected? You visited a government approved garage/office for that.

This idea that somehow visiting a government office will cause the world to stop is a beyond far-fetched. It sounds like some weird anarchic wetdream.</comment>


Best practices for password hashing, storage, and SASL - <AUTHOR> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-whited-kitten-password-storage/ <comment><USER2> I'm a bit confused by the title of the document.

draft: It's a draft

Whited: Name of author

Password storage: It's about password storage.

But "kitten" ??? what does that mean in this context? Is it "small cat"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, KITTEN is the short name for the working group. It's the IETF, probably best not to ask… :)

EDIT: I just realized it's probably a joke, the working group _should_ be CATNG if it were using its acronym, so the next generation of a CAT is a KITTEN, presumably. As you can tell, I wasn't around when the WG was started.

<comment><USER2> aaah, ok, so an internal joke then. :)

Thnx for clarifying.</comment></comment></comment>


Aurora Innovation Raises $90M, Adds Reid Hoffman, Mike Volpi to Board - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2018/02/28/aurora-on-the-rise-robocar-startup-snags-90-million-adds-reid-hoffman-mike-volpi-to-board/#4352872c2f33 <comment><USER2> I'm bullish on Aurora's potential in the robotaxi space. The cofounders are powerhouse in the self driving world. Sterling Anderson was the director of Autopilot for Tesla. Drew Bagnell was head of autonomy at Uber, and Chris Urmson was program manager for Google's self driving car project (now Waymo). One thing they all have in common is that they left their previous employers due to C-suite bullshit tripping them up.

I started to suspect Waymo was making poor executive decisions back in 2015, and the suspicion was confirmed by an email from that time, revealed in the Waymo v. Uber lawsuit, from Urmson to Larry Page and Sergey Brin in which he wrote "Over the last six months we have stopped playing to win and instead are now playing to minimize downside"

Aurora has managed to secure an integrated partnership with VW, another promising one with Hyundai, and one with startup Byton (which may or may not turn out to be another Faraday Future, we'll have to see). These are the sorts of arrangements Waymo should have secured years ago, but the executives felt they could hold out for a better deal, and now Waymo doesn't have a straighforward answer when you ask them "Who's going to mass produce your Robotaxis?"

The common perception is that to make a successful Robotaxi operation the Autonomous OS is the secret sauce, the hardest ingredient to get a hold of. While developing an autonomous OS is still an unsolved (or barely solved problem), and mass vehicle production is a well understood problem, mass producing cars is still harder than developing an autonomous OS.

Going forward, it's the legacy carmakers who have the strongest competitive moat. I mean, there are at least a half dozen Autonomous Operating systems being developed that are showing good progress, but in vehicle mass production Tesla is the only successful new entrant in a century, and they're still tiny and unprofitable. Aurora respects this, and I believe they will do well because of it.

Also, if you've got talent and passion in this field and want to get shit done, and work with the best, Aurora is the place to be. Talent is super important.</comment>


Rise of Streaming SQL - <AUTHOR> https://www.datanami.com/2018/06/15/streaming-sql-for-real-time-analytics/ <comment><USER2> "Patterns. Finally, let's assume that we want to continuously detect whether the temperature has changed more than 20% within any five-minute period. This query is impossible to do efficiently with standard SQL."

This is completely untrue. SQL is more than capable of pattern detection. For example Oracle MATCH_RECOGNIZE clause: [https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/DWHSG/pattern.htm#DWHSG...](https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/DWHSG/pattern.htm#DWHSG8965)

But to make thing clear, we need to move on from SQL-89 mindset. SQL is really powerful Turing complete language. Row pattern recognition is part of SQL standard (ISO/IEC TR 19075-5:2016) [https://modern-sql.com/blog/2017-06/whats- new-in-sql-2016](https://modern-sql.com/blog/2017-06/whats-new-in-sql-2016)</comment>


Tom Perkins's (of KP) Giant Yacht Sails to San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/a-giant-yacht-sails-to-san-francisco/

<comment><USER2> Quote: ""The issue of length is important to all these guys, and the way you know that's the case is how often they tell you that length is not important," said Mr. Kaplan, who sailed on the Maltese Falcon on its maiden voyage from Istanbul, where it was built, around the Greek Islands to the French Riviera."

In a lot of ways, this story should be right up my alley - I am a hacker, I'm very interested in starting my own company and finding someone to finance it, and I have spent many days sailing on my dad's sailboat. Sailing is a wonderful pastime - something I'm sure most hackers would love to do (you have to work within a set of strict parameters in a given system, but you can beat the system - temporarily - with the smallest adjustments to your equipment.) That's cool - and very hackerish (imho.)

But I'm sickened by this boat. As cool as it is - and the technology behind the sails is damn cool - it's just a disgusting waste of money. Do you really think that Perkin's gets his value out of this boat - or do you think it's just another exercise in Who-Has-The-Biggest-Dick?

We all want to have the biggest dick (excuse my language), but it's very important to recognize who you have to step on to get to that point. How many companies got shit term sheets because Perkins had to finance a boat that can never be fully enjoyed? (Larry Ellison wants to sell his megayacht because he can't even park it in normal harbors - he has to use industrial marinas to dock up.)

I think it's extremely appropriate that this boat is sailing into an American harbor for the first time as our financial system is going through one of the biggest moments of turmoil in decades. You can't make up that kind of stuff.

Personally, I hope it sinks.

<comment><USER3> This boat is a great advertisement for progressive taxation; under more extreme progressive taxation Perkins would still have the biggest boat (which is all he really cares about), it just wouldn't have be nearly so big or wasteful =P.

<comment><USER4> The only federal taxes that about half Americans pay are for their retirement, and even that is subsidized by the other half.

Of the "not retirement" taxes, the vast majority is already paid by the "rich", with a huge fraction coming from the top 5% alone.

How much more progressive should the system be?

And, in Biden's words, shouldn't the rest of America be patriotic, ie pay taxes?

<comment><USER5> When the communists took power in China, mobs would go from house to house in what was euphemistically called "people's courts" The mob would bring out the capitalist, demonstrate all of the rewards of their work. Usually they would be whipped into a frenzy, the idea being that there was no way anybody needed any of that wealth.

Either you understand how deeply immoral that is or you don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They had a tour of the boat on 60 Minutes during a profile of Perkins. Really high tech, it's almost completely automated with custom software. Another interesting bit is the amount of carbon fiber, Perkins claims that besides the Airforce he is the largest purchaser of CF.

[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/60minutes/main3442...](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/60minutes/main3442193.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER7> If I needed some other job, I think I would want to be a captain or crew on a mega-yacht. Looks like they have a lot of fun (swimming with whales!):

<http://www.symaltesefalcon.com/log.asp>

</comment><comment><USER8> I think Jim Clark wins the Big Dick contest with Giant Yacht + Supermodel.

<comment><USER9> I thought Ellison had a supermodel for each day of the week. Is he cutting back?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pssh. Ballmer has a submarine.

<comment><USER11> ...So does Tom Perkins.

<http://www.symaltesefalcon.com/submarine.asp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Video of the Maltese Falcon in SF Bay:

From small boat #1 (0:14):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3nASo9FB78>

From small boat #2 (0:35):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP3YPxEpXNA>

From small boat #3, chasing astride with horns blowing as Falcon transits under bridge (1:58):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OENpqkU6Ihs>

From Marin Headlands (with song Hotel California) (3:29):

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

From the deck of the Golden Gate Bridge (1:52):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWp-sqM2tDM>

From small boat #4, with view of helicopter (1:04):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuCUhs45Udw>

From small boat #5 (0:19):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaHfLC2SMaE></comment>