A Window onto an American Nightmare - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/01/a-window-onto-an-american-nightmare <comment><USER2> The line that stuck out the most to me

> In San Francisco today, people who earn less than [$82,000] a year—or a > [$117,000] for a family of four—are considered low-income.

Most people outside of San Francisco would consider that a lot of money. Would a barista working at a Starbucks in the city ever earn that much? What about a public school teacher or cleaning staff? Essential services that need to be filled are worked by people who need to live somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> EDIT: ignore this comment, the reasoning is wrong, see below.

> _San Francisco officially reported 8,640 homeless residents in 2002—a > peak—and almost as many in 2019 ... San Francisco spends more per capita on > homelessness solutions than nearly any other U.S. city—three hundred and > thirty million dollars a year._

330000000 / 8640 = 38194

> _the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom in the city is now, by one > estimate, about thirty-five hundred dollars_

3500 * 12 = 42000

These numbers are surprisingly close. Moreover, 1) you need one apartment per family not per person 2) you can pay below median if you buy in bulk and aren't very picky 3) many homeless have jobs.

<comment> spaced-out Most of that money goes to getting people like the guy profiled in the article into housing, after which they're no longer considered homeless.

In other words, not all of the $330 million is for that 8,640 people, most of it is going toward housing people who would otherwise be homeless.

<comment><USER3> Wow, I'm stupid. Won't remove my comment, let it stay as a monument. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course I'm sympathetic to the plight of the homeless, and I think it's outrageous that SF isn't building more housing as as fast as possible to try to bring the prices down.

However, there's a dilemma where cities that have the best services (and climate) for people who are happy camping anywhere will attract folks who come there just to be homeless, like the subject of this story.

> He made money by hunting exotic minerals and rocks.

Did he? Or was he stealing exotic minerals and rocks from the National Parks in 48 states he camped at? (See [https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/permits.htm#CP_JUMP_547...](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/permits.htm#CP_JUMP_5479119) ) Shame on the New Yorker fact-checkers for not confirming where he got those minerals.

<comment><USER5> > SF isn't building more housing as as fast as possible to try to bring the > prices down.

If every construction company and contractor in the entire state of CA came to SF and started building apartment buildings as fast as they could, they would still only add enough capacity to prevent rates rising, at best.

No human agency can actually bring the prices down.

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Contractors_State_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Contractors_State_License_Board) says California has 104K licensed building contractors. Couldn't they build 200K duplexes housing 800K people (roughly the current population of SF) in a couple of years?

<comment><USER5> I'm exaggerating, here's the article I'm drawing on: [https://experimental- geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme...](https://experimental- geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html)

He collects and analyzes historical data going back to 1948.

Punchline: "Today's outrageous prices are exactly in line with the 6.6% trend that began 60 years ago."

Rent in the Bay Area has gone up 6.6% per year for sixty years.

> In conclusion

> San Francisco is an expensive city because it is an affluent city with a > growing population and no easily available land for development. Sonja > Trauss is right that building more housing would reduce rents of both high- > and low-end apartments. Tim Redmond is right that building enough housing to > make much of a dent in prices would change the visual character of most > streets, although the result could be more like Barcelona than like the Hong > Kong that he fears. The unsettled question is which of these is the higher > priority.

> Building enough housing to roll back prices to the "good old days" is > probably not realistic, because the necessary construction rates were never > achieved even when planning and zoning were considerably less restrictive > than they are now. Building enough to compensate for the growing economy is > a somewhat more realistic goal and would keep things from getting worse.

> In the long run, San Francisco's CPI-adjusted average income is growing by > 1.72% per year, and the number of employed people is growing by 0.326% per > year, which together (if you believe the first model) will raise CPI- > adjusted housing costs by 3.8% per year. Therefore, if price stability is > the goal, the city and its citizens should try to increase the housing > supply by an average of 1.5% per year (which is about 3.75 times the general > rate since 1975, and with the current inventory would mean 5700 units per > year). If visual stability is the goal instead, prices will probably > continue to rise uncontrollably.

> If you want to do your own analysis, the data is all available to download > on Github. Please let me know what other explanations you find for the > patterns!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Despite the alarmist headline, the story is seems nuanced and even-handed.

<comment><USER7> Not sure if this is the case here, but apparently writers often don't choose their own headlines.

[https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-writers-dont-write- hea...](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-writers-dont-write- headlines-558decd956d4/)

<comment><USER8> That is correct. Writers will usually write one (or may use one an editor provided when they gave the assignment), but typically an editor will decide on the final headline/subhead/etc.

<comment><USER9> At both TIME and NatGeo, it wasn't uncommon to focus group different headlines and covers before going to print.

This coverline caused particular rage internally amongst staff: [https://images.app.goo.gl/cGhZ8usRNCBqhcp49](https://images.app.goo.gl/cGhZ8usRNCBqhcp49)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ur-whale [http://archive.is/hm7Vd](http://archive.is/hm7Vd)

</comment><comment><USER10> > The mayor opposed the idea, but it gained support from local powers such as > Benioff and Pelosi, and passed as Proposition C. The tax has raised three > hundred million dollars annually. But, for now, that money remains > unavailable, ensnared in legal challenges from the business world.

Does anybody know about these legal challenges?

</comment><comment><USER11> Serious question. Why don't homeless people in SF and NYC go look for work in cheaper cities across America? It seems like these people with degrees and work experience can find work elsewhere and affordable housing, so I don't understand why they would continue to live in the most expensive cities in the world... I'm not American, so maybe I'm missing something.

<comment><USER12> The bit the piece touched on was that the couple it followed came to SF because it has a support system for drug addicts and the homeless. What it didn't say is that any local solution will just improve the conditions in SF, attracting more homeless and drug addicts.

SF and NYC would be better off finding those cheaper cities that need workers and showing them how to run services for the homeless. They might also want to connect the marginally homeless with these cities early.

That said, I doubt there's much work for the SF homeless. Between addiction and mental health problems, most aren't employable.

<comment><USER13> This is not a significant source of homeless people in SF. The vast majority have been living in the area, just struggling to get by. There are so many people that are one financial crisis (eg car repair) away from being evicted. It's no surprise that 1% of the population is homeless in a city where rents are not covered by entry level jobs, and where cheap rental options like SROs are being eliminated.

<comment><USER14> Is that true? Both the top people profiled in this article moved from out of state into SF and appear to have immediately become homeless.

<comment><USER15> It's not true. Many homeless are coached to respond to surveys (like the annual point in time count) with a claim that they're long time locals, since it garners more political sympathy and support. But if you talk to homeless in SF or Seattle or view news clips interviewing people in camps, it seems the majority have moved in from elsewhere due to laws that permit permanent nomadic lifestyles and open drug abuse. It is just "induced demand" in action. Incentives and disincentives have effects on behaviors.

The only statistics that should be trusted are ones that have _verifiable_ records proving the historical residency of homeless populations. Everything else is easily manipulable and not trustworthy.

<comment><USER13> > It's not true. Many homeless are coached to respond to surveys (like the > annual point in time count) with a claim that they're long time locals, > since it garners more political sympathy and support.

This is at the very best a conspiracy theory. Poll takers intentionally trying to get the wrong answers to garner political support? And what has that supposed conspiracy garnered, politically? Who gains in this conspiracy and how?

Such claims require at least some substantiation. Is there anybody who is willing to put their real name out there that has observed this?

My personal experience, in Santa Cruz, does not match what you claim. There was a recent vicious attack by a homeless person, and the police found the attacker hiding in his mother's house in town.

<comment><USER16> > And what has that supposed conspiracy garnered, politically? Who gains in > this conspiracy and how?

At least where I live, I've heard a _lot_ of conspiracy theories, many now openly discussed and not just in whispers, of a "homeless-industrial complex" where people are supposedly making bank on faux solutions to homelessness and non-profit providers are just funneling money off to the wealthy people who run the non-profits and leaving clients and volunteers hung out to dry.

As an occasional volunteer for some of those groups, I do not see this. Granted, I may not be anywhere as involved in Deep Homelessness as I might need to be in order to pull back the veil and expose the bitter truth. From my point of view, I see a shitload of people who have been dealt a terrible hand. a lot of them were people who were doing just fine before, maybe not great but were getting by and then a life event happened that, sure, from our perspectives on HN of most of us making in the low six figures to start, would have seen coming and could have planned for. But, for whatever reason, these people didn't and damn, once you fall out of "normal society," climbing back in is hard. as. fuck.

One person I helped was technically literate--we set up Yubikey auth for his Google account, for goodness sake--and had no vices besides posting up at the library to play Clash of Clans on his aging Android phone. But it still took an inordinate amount of time to get together all of the identity and proofing documents he needed to get an ID to go onto a military base to take a specialty job. In one case, he only got one of the documents because he knew a notary (me) and could have a form sworn to and stamped in under a day at no cost.

I don't think people truly appreciate just how fragile modern life is if they've never fallen out of it.

<comment><USER14> But the point is that you don't see this. SF has a $364 million dollar homeless budget, double what it was a decade ago, so the programs you volunteer for _should_ be swimming in cash to provide their services and make sure the homeless have opportunities. If they're not, then where'd all the money go?

<comment><USER12> SF spends $45k per homeless person?!

<comment><USER13> No, not quite. The 'point in time' count of 8,000-9,000 people is a measurement of flux; people enter homelessness and leave it all the time. A huge chunk (most?) of SF's spending goes to emergency assistance to prevent people from falling into homelessness when they have a financial emergency, which is by far the cheapest time to stop homelessness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Stuffing as many homeless as possible in close quarters at Moscone gives the impression San Francisco is hellbent on killing off its homeless population using COVID-19.

<comment><USER14> Do you know of a better spot to shelter them? The city only owns so much property.

<comment><USER18> There's an entire legal process for solving the fact that a city owns too little property: they can simply buy it with eminent domain, and that is precisely what they should be doing. They can ED single-family homes, rezone the properties for multifamily dwellings, and either auction them off or build on them through the housing authority. Everyone would win: the city could clear out lots of under-assessed junk, people who need housing wil get more supply, and even the owners who get bought out in the ED proceeding will get a huge paycheck, and the city needs no additional powers nor deliberations to do this, they can simply decide to do it at an ordinary supervisors' meeting. That they have chosen not to exercise such powers for the last 40-plus years tells you everything you need to know about why this problem persists.

<comment><USER19> > They can ED single-family homes, rezone the properties for multifamily > dwellings

On track, but the process you describe is overcomplicated. The whole process can be collapsed to "SF needs to upzone most of the city".

Land zoned for multifamily dwellings is worth a lot more than land zoned for single family dwellings, so the owners would have reasonable grounds to sue if the city used eminent domain to seize their property under single family zoning with plans to upzone to multifamily zoning. They would probably win and be entitled to fair compensation for assessed value as of the later zoning. So if the city were going to pursue this route it would need the upzoning first, which the city has always been able to do and has refused to do anyway.

<comment><USER18> Yes but a neat workaround is to simply ED the properties of all the people who have been lobbying against the upzoning since ~always. They demonstrably were not in line to gain from the zoning change, since they personally prevent it.

<comment><USER20> If you use previous political views as an input into the eminent domain decision I am pretty sure the courts are going to give you a hard time (justifiably so).

<comment><USER18> It's actually settled case law in California that you can declare a neighborhood a "slum" and subject it to "urban renewal" based, in part, on a high concentration of "communists". Yes that is bananas, but there you go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I see a story about man who deliberately made a series of selfish high risk decisions and continued to do so with no regard for his future or his role in society.

I've done the same, to an extent - but if I ended up homeless at any point I would not have expected society to pay for my continued foolishness.

There's no doubt that welfare in some form is ideal for a modern society, but people should recognize that willingness to work is tied to desire for survival/comfort and willingness to work for most people decreases as the welfare floor increases.

Forcing someone to work for those who do not contribute to society is theft. There is no reason to believe that the average person will commit to pursuits beneficial for the collective if his needs are guaranteed to be met regardless of his willingness or ability to participate.

<comment><USER22> > Forcing someone to work for those who do not contribute to society is theft.

This is a terrible way to think about a functioning society. Taxes are not theft, and we absolutely should be supporting those who do not 'contribute to society'.

What about folks with mental illnesses, physical impairments, advanced age, pregnancy, recovering from injuries, drug/alcohol addiction, or any other number of reasons why someone might need to have us all cover for them? Why is it any different in this case?

<comment><USER23> > What about folks with mental illnesses, physical impairments, advanced age, > pregnancy, recovering from injuries, drug/alcohol addiction

Drug and alcohol addition are definitely not in the same group as the rest.

<comment><USER24> Given how much we now know about the history of the opioid epidemic, how much we now know about how cigarettes/alcohol have been advertised throughout recent history and what the motivations were behind those advertisements, I feel like this is a particularly naive comment.

Nobody gets up in the morning and says, "gee, I'd really like to introduce a high-cost, crippling dependency in my life." Understanding that and treating drug abuse like a physical/social disease has turned out to be a surprisingly effective social policy.

It's not clear to me why addicted people should be treated differently than anyone else in any other challenging situation. Certainly once someone is addicted to a drug, there are obvious biological forces preventing them from quitting cold-turkey.

<comment><USER23> > Nobody gets up in the morning and says

They don't, yet they "drink casually" or "do drugs casually". There's a reason certain religions ban intoxicating substances. Alas, people like to play with fire, then things go wrong, yet society still thinks that it's ok to keep marketing those dangerous substances. If society actually wants to fix the issue, there is a solution, but it doesn't sit well with the greedy and foolish.

<comment><USER24> Again, you're ignoring nearly a decade of modern research into how addiction happens, and the social infrastructures that have been deliberately set up by both dealers and drug/alcohol/pharmaceutical companies to get people addicted.

You say yourself:

> yet society still thinks that it's ok to keep marketing those dangerous > substances

If you're acknowledging that society is pushing people into drugs, doesn't it kind of make sense to hold society responsible for getting them out?

\----

But even ignoring the causes of addiction, your suggestion that we ban alcohol/drugs also doesn't have anything to do with whether we should help people who are physically addicted now.

Okay, cool, let's ban heroin. It already is illegal, but whatever. We'll super-ban it. Even after the super-ban, we're still going to need to help the people who are addicted right now -- people who are suffering from both a biological and psychological dependency that is outside of their control to fix on their own.

> people like to play with fire

If you ride your bike without a helmet and accidentally suffer a brain injury, should society help you, even though you ignored safety advice? If you get distracted in your car and crash, should society help you, even though you weren't paying attention? Is your position that only people with birth defects have a legitimate claim to support/grace?

When I was a young kid, my brother and I use to go out in the woods and pretend sword fight with sticks, even though our parents told us this was a stupid, dangerous thing to do. We got lucky, nothing ever happened. But if one of us had accidentally stabbed an eye out, would we have been entitled to any kind of social support?

I still don't see anything that would make a drug addiction different from those scenarios.

<comment><USER23> > and the social infrastructures that have been deliberately set up by both > dealers and drug/alcohol/pharmaceutical companies to get people addicted.

I indirectly mentioned that in my post. There is a solution to this problem, but it doesn't sit well with the foolish and the greedy. There is a vested interest that it doesn't get solved.

> Okay, cool, let's ban heroin. It already is illegal, but whatever. We'll > super-ban it.

Should also add alcohol to the list.

> I still don't see anything that would make a drug addiction different from > those scenarios.

It's very different. In the activities you mentioned, there is a positive outcome involved, or it is a natural part of growing up (kids do stupid things, but that's where the role of the parents come in). Whereas in doing drugs and alcohol, the risk/benefit ratios are so skewed, it's irrational to engage in them in the first place.

<comment><USER24> But none of what you're saying solves the problem of what we're going to do with all of the people who have a physical addiction right now: people who can't fix their own problems without external help.

You keep on kind of dancing around this "but they deserve it" argument. But who cares if they deserve it? They're not going to go away until someone else helps them. You can't just pass a law that people will stop being addicted to alcohol, that's not how biology works. How people got into a situation where they can't help themselves doesn't matter. They're still in a position where they can't fix their own problems.

And on moralization, to go back to your own point:

> There is a vested interest that it doesn't get solved.

Do you have a plan to get rid of that vested interest? How long is that plan going to take to implement? A year? Two years? Should we just let addicts die on the street until you get around to getting elected to Congress?

If society is at least partially (and arguably largely) to blame for these people's addictions, and if changing society is a difficult, long-term process that requires battling multiple vested interests, then why is it unethical for us to use social resources like taxes in the meantime to help people that society is hurting?

You can't have this both ways. You can't argue that society is obsessed with drugs and that's why we have addiction, while simultaneously arguing that every addicted person is specifically getting what they deserve and isn't worthy of our help.

> It's very different. There is a positive outcome involved, or it is a > natural part of growing up

There's a positive outcome involved in glancing at a phone while driving? Riding a bicycle without a helmet is a natural part of growing up?

I strongly agree that kids often do stupid things. Trying drugs and alcohol is one of those stupid things. And to be honest, comparatively, riding a bicycle without a helmet is way more stupid and way more irrational than accidentally getting peer-pressured by a drug-obsessed society into a debilitating addiction.

I don't see a difference here except that one of those activities is being labeled as harmless stupidity, and one of them is being labeled as a moral failing.

Getting addicted to painkillers coming out of surgeries with badly dosed prescriptions is still a common worry for many people. I have friends that refuse to take any painkillers in a hospital specifically because they're frightened of that exact scenario. The best case scenario for people who get addicted to painkillers is for them to get 3rd-party help before they become addicted to more serious drugs. It's absurd to me to argue that their problems were caused by them being stupid or immoral, when I can directly see the role that doctors and the medical industry played in their addictions. Are those people worthy of getting help from society?

<comment><USER23> Thank you for the thought-provoking discussion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rise of "forever day" bugs in ICS threatens critical infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/rise-of-ics-forever-day-vulnerabiliities-threaten-critical-infrastructure.ars <comment><USER2> At first I thought "what does Android 4.0 have to do with critical infrastructure?"

Maybe I've been reading HN too much.

<comment><USER3> I've never heard that acronym either; I thought it was called SCADA.

<comment><USER4> The unwashed masses say SCADA. Those in the know say Industrial Control Systems. At least that's what I'm told. I'm kind of the unwashed type myself.

<comment><USER5> > The unwashed masses say SCADA. Those in the know say Industrial Control > Systems. At least that's what I'm told. I'm kind of the unwashed type > myself.

The terms are often interchanged, even if they shouldn't be. "SCADA" (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) is your secondary control and historian/logging system, and will often be in control of sending data across comms links and monitoring events. An ICS (Industrial Control System) is your front-line system in charge of controlling your valves, motors and equipment directly.

The roles have become more blurred together, especially as we move towards more general-purpose equipment and IP-based networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As long as these things don't have a wide adoption or a public facing IP address I don't see the problem. I mean plenty of company's have an windows NT box inside their network running some internal service that nobody want's to pay to upgrade.

At some point it's ok to say if a bank robber is inside the vault with a crow bar, then yea they have access to everyones safety deposit boxes. But, let's just try and keep them out of that room.

<comment><USER7> The problem with that analogy (and ICS in general) is that indeed the bank robber is outside the bank with a crow bar most of the time (harmless enough), but the safety deposit boxes are poking through the back wall into the alley.

The archaic, closed nature of these systems (and their small user bases and tremendously long refresh cycles) is precisely the source of their vulnerabilities, not a fount of "security through obscurity."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This doesn't seem to surprising to me. A lot of these systems had ad-hoc build systems such that probably nobody can build from source-code (and that's for the shops that were actually using some form of source-control).

</comment><comment><USER9> This is just one more reason why it's important not to skimp on developer testing, including unit testing (of course they need to include these scenarios in their test cases). Learn how to prevent these cases at <http://j.mp/IdJI0j>

</comment><comment><USER10> ok.. so we havethe facts. now who bearsresponsibility for damages? the company using these flawed systems instead of upgrading or pressuring their vendors..... ? at the scale of critical infrastru ture thatcomes down to contractual terms. if the vilns and recommendations have been disclosed, and thatswhat the contract required...... notsellers fwult in my book. fixes arent free, and these decisions will bebased on either a risk analasys, or blind ignorance, depending on who is involved. if products really. are eol and eos, per contract, then fair enough... your license to use them probqblyexpires anyway.

still, hardto paintthis in a good light..... smells bad.

</comment><comment><USER11> ICS == "industrial control systems"</comment>


Space Shuttle Endeavour photographed as it docks with the ISS - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2386573,00.asp

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to the NASA gallery: [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/e27depa...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/e27depart.html) (delicious 6000*4000 photographs)</comment>


The Programming Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://nickmudge.info/?post=80 When things are tough, write some more software. <comment><USER2> I find myself having the same problem with my own work. I feel like it's not at a point where I feel good about promoting it. I too would rather talk about a product I can stand behind. In addition, I fear that if I introduce it to users too early, they'll take one look at it and won't come back until many months later. There's only so many times new users will look at something in the beginning.

However, on the flip side, the fear is also that I'm building it away from what users would want without feedback. "Release Early and Release Often", right?

So I'm torn between promoting it to get feedback but "wasting" some early adopters, versus keep working on it based on what I think should go in there, and saving it until it's at a point where early adopters would have a better chance of sticking around.

What's the right balance?

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally know what you're saying. Maybe promote it a little bit, get some feedback, make it better, promote it a little bit more, get some more feedback, make it better. Promote it more based on your confidence of the site being better. That's what I'm doing. I've loved some of the feedback I've gotten, and it has been really helpful.

<comment><USER2> Do you keep promoting it to the same crowd? Or do you have a couple different places where you promote it and do a round-robin?

<comment><AUTHOR> I write blog posts sometimes. When I write something that I think might be interesting to Hacker News or programming.reddit.com I submit it there. I also submit stuff sometimes a few other places like mixx.com and digg.com. I tell friends when I add features to newsconomy. When the site is better I'll write more about it and submit blog posts to more sites, and I'll send email to bloggers and other people on the Internet I don't directly know but who I think the site might be interesting to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I found that quote interesting too, so after reading your post I took a look at your app. I wasn't able to figure out what it does in the 60 seconds I usually allot to these things. I had trouble finding the "About Newsconomy" link (hidden at the bottom), and once I did it didn't make sense to me. I'm not a baseball person so that metaphor didn't draw me in. You might consider adding a more prominent "Start Here" link or some such thing that would provide examples of cool things your app can do. Good luck.

<comment><USER4> I agree. I find it difficult to see what the next step is. How does owning an item help me (or it)? My thought is a created item would be of low value but I can set any price and that is the value. Do I buy an item to promote it? or just to have edit control over the description and title?

The items seem to be sorted simply by the order they were created irregardless of the value in lambdas. It seems like an interesting idea that is still missing a few core features.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, you can set the price of any item you own and that is its value, especially if someone else buys it for that price. When you buy an item you get the ability edit the description, the title, the tags, and the price. You can change the price on any item you own. Also, when you buy an item, it puts it at the top of lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just went there.

The first thing I thought was "These just look like stories but what's up with these lambdas and what's the deal with the Buy link?". Sadly after a minute or so I got no answer and my interest waned. You definitely need an "About" or a "What is this?" page.

One simple thing you should do is eliminate the "dead end" transitions (e.g. I press Submit and I get to a "you must login first" dead end page). If I can't submit, make the link inactive or at least take me straight to the login page.

Another thing you could do is add some descriptive tooltips so if I mouse over a link like "Buy" I'll see something more informative than "Address: <https://newsconomy.com/buy/208>".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks very much. I see that I need to make it much clearer what it is. Also, here's a list of items that give more info: <http://newsconomy.com/tag/newsconomy>

<comment><AUTHOR> I just wrote another blog posts that explains some uses of newsconomy. Hopefully it makes it clearer what it is about: <http://nickmudge.info/?post=81>

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I wasn't sure what lambdas were, and wasn't sure what 'buy' was on first glance. However, after reading that you can "do stuff" to news that you "buy", and putting it together with the name "newsconomy", it comes together in my mind.

You're basically using capitalistic model to better rate the "value" of a news item--hence an economy/market based on trading(buying/selling) news, instead of using a basic democratic process modeled after political organizations (which is what digg/reddit/yc is modeled after).

I think it makes sense for those that understand basic supply/demand and capitalism ideas, such as "decentralized market determines price", "invisible hand", etc. But for those that don't, they'll have a hard time with understanding why they're buying web links with no inherent value with virtual 'dollars'

I assume lambdas are unit of exchange--price. You might want to call it something that people can infer are money...like "rupies", "newsdollar", etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Linus Torvalds: x86 versus other architectures (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.yarchive.net/comp/linux/x86.html

<comment><USER2> I find it confirmed today also. One month ago by an Intel engineer: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15iaet/iama_cpu_archit...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15iaet/iama_cpu_architect_and_designer_at_intel_ama/c7mpcn6)

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly it seems like the the advantage boils down to two points:

(1) x86's baroque encoding is actually a data compression mechanism, making code size relatively small. Code size killed RISC and VLIW.

(2) A _lot_ of work has been done to make x86's cache very, very good in order to compensate for its small register file and other minor shortcomings. This in turn resulted in the whole issue being sidestepped in a way that yielded better overall performance.

There's also kind of a third, broader point:

(3) There are all kinds of exotic architectures that could theoretically be faster with a very smart compiler, but that very smart compiler never materializes. This is also an issue with arguments about high level languages potentially being as fast as C. The mythical super-smart compiler never materializes. On the x86 angle, x86's "hacks" made it very fast for the kind of code real-world compilers generate, which makes it perform well on real workloads instead of just contrived benchmarks.

Interestingly, x86 even beats vanilla ARM for code size.

[http://vanshardware.com/2010/08/mirror-the-coming-war-arm- ve...](http://vanshardware.com/2010/08/mirror-the-coming-war-arm-versus-x86/)

But ARM has an encoding called Thumb-2 that turns the tables. Hence the upcoming ARM/x86 war. It really seems like code size is one of the big parameters affecting a CPU architecture's performance.

What's interesting though is this: now that code size is comprehended to be the huge issue it is, could we see new experimental architectures that do radical things in that department such as the use of actual data compression algorithms in instruction encodings?

<comment><USER3> >What's interesting though is this: now that code size is comprehended to be the huge issue it is, could we see new experimental architectures that do radical things in that department such as the use of actual data compression algorithms in instruction encodings?

I'm not sure that's going to result in that much improvement. Linus points out in one of the later emails that instruction fetching and decoding ends up being the major bottleneck on high-performance code, especially when the architecture contains optimizations like out of order execution. Higher compression means more cycles to decompress, and you still need cache space to store and cache the decoded instructions, so you don't get multiple hits for running the same instructions in a loop.

The additional prefetch hit can certainly be mitigated by additional pipelining, but it's still more silicon every instruction needs to go through.

Realistically, I think the best approach may be more RAM and larger onboard caches.

<comment><USER4> Pardon me, I'm not a CPU architect but I have a couple of questions.

Why would prefetch and decode affect out of order execution?

Prefetch and decode is done on the frontend of the chip, so you'll have prefetch happening on L3, L2 and L1, along with decode and u-op breakdown. This is a matter of memory throughput getting instructions from the bus into the caches.

The out-of-order execution should be a matter of issuing to the backend execution units.

It is true that the backend will be stalled if we don't issue quickly, but that's where you have staging and prefetch on the front end side.

At least the above is what I thought to be the case. I could be very wrong. Please educate if I've gotten something wrong.

Also we do have the matter of throughput vs completion of an instruction, basically a tradeoff. Deeper pipelines so can have more throughput but take the hit of longer completion times. Again might be bad for certain tasks, but going through more sillicon isn't necessarily always bad.

Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fred Wilson: A Lesson From Morty - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/06/a-lesson-from-morty.html

<comment><USER2> When I first saw a term sheet from Fred, he explained it, item by item.

Yet another reason I am thankful for the opportunity to work with him.</comment>


The Pirate Bay Verdict Won't Affect File Sharing - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2345431,00.asp

<comment><USER2> No matter what the studios or the RIAA (et al.) like, file sharing is the future. They will be forced to monetize it at some point, but it just ain't gonna go away.

People have been more resistant to having their computers controlled by large corporations than anyone suspected, I think. And thank the FSM for that.

</comment><comment><USER3> >"Regardless of the Pirate Bay verdict, the lesson here is clear: Don't try to fight technological revolutions with clumsy, antiquated legal actions. Harassing customers, threatening Web sites, and standing in the way of progress are doomed to fail."

The author's argument comes down to "it won't work, because it won't work".

Like it or not, fining people and throwing them in jail does create some incentives. I am not so confident _a priori_ that enforcement mechanisms are doomed to fail. Then again, maybe I just need to replenish my kool-aid stock.

One thing is certain: if I were a passionate file-sharing advocate, I would _check my premises_ about what events can and cannot happen.

</comment><comment><USER4> The job of a distributer is by definition obsolete in the face of the internet. Most intelligent people I've met agree that fighting the ability to copy content has no future. Distributors may not be dead yet, but they are in the ER hooked up to monitors, with lawyers running around trying to defibrillate them with lawsuits.

For the most part they can't change either, because they are often under contract to provide content to certain channels and certain times. They can't just start offering a pay or advertising based torrent service. If they ever had that chance I think the window has closed.

In terms of producing movies, music or other kinds of content, the only real value that remains in the studio model is financing. That is, someone pays to make your movie based on how excited you can make them in 10 minutes. With distribution being replaced, there may yet be a business model in production financing. Maybe "get enough people on facebook to like your script, and we'll give you 60 million dollars to make it...." or "hey everyone vote up our spec album"

Well I can dream can't I?

<comment><USER5> _In terms of producing movies, music or other kinds of content, the only real value that remains in the studio model is financing. That is, someone pays to make your movie based on how excited you can make them in 10 minutes. With distribution being replaced, there may yet be a business model in production financing. Maybe "get enough people on facebook to like your script, and we'll give you 60 million dollars to make it...." or "hey everyone vote up our spec album"_

That sounds more like a nightmare to me.

I've got a lot of friends who lack the ability to distribute themselves well. Actually, it's almost all my friends. Most musicians I know aren't good at publicity. In a scenario without effective distribution, the viral scene favors not the best work, but the most easily digestible work. That means a trend away towards complexity, which is _not_ necessarily a trend I'd want to see.

Trent Reznor seems to be the flagship of this attitude of "a musician ought to do everything himself and publicize himself to death." That's great for him to say, but what about the people who can't do that as well as he can? I mean, NiN isn't particularly a brilliant band; it's good, but there's a lot better out there. Reznor is iconic not because he's the best but because he's the most savvy. Again: not certain that's a good thing. Not every talented person is good at promotion; we'd lose a lot of meaning for the sake of a lot of fluff. Distributors aren't a perfect solution, but they at least act as a sort of safegate. They do the work other people can't.

If I saw the opening 10 minutes of 2001 I wouldn't be excited. Ditto Blue Velvet and every Lynch film, ditto most Coen brothers films, ditto pretty much every movie I love that isn't made by Edgar Wright. You're asking people to judge a book by its cover, and that's not exactly fair.

The crowd sucks. The crowd is stupid. Look at Shirky's recent article about #amazonfail. Individuals become stupid when they become part of a mass. That's why the best producers and distributors tend to work alone or in small groups: because crowdsourcing doesn't work when it comes to finding good things. I don't trust even my handpicked Facebook friends to like good things, so I don't know why I'd trust the rest of the users on Facebook any more.

<comment><USER6> _In a scenario without effective distribution, the viral scene favors not the best work, but the most easily digestible work._

Maybe. Do you suppose that's why there's so much more good music available now than there was 20 years ago, before we built the internet, as the most effective distribution mechanism in history?

The thing that I fear favors the most easily digestible work is the hair- trigger social voting sites like Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, etc. But I think those _depend on_ effective distribution, rather than being undercut by it.

 _Not every talented person is good at promotion;_

Yeah, and that's a big part of why so many of them get ripped off by music- industry slime who _are_ good at promotion. I for one am happy to be in an environment where fans can do the promotion these days.</comment></comment></comment>