The Last Mac Pro - <AUTHOR> http://eggfreckles.net/notes/macpro/ <comment><USER2> I kinda get why "regular" users are ditching PCs for mobile platforms, but never quite got why developers are on the laptop bandwagon. Is coding in cafes and visiting conferences that big a use case? Or is this another symptom of a screwed work-life balance where using your work computer at home (i.e. in your "spare time") is that important?

<comment><USER3> >Is coding in cafes and visiting conferences that big a use case

Is that really the only place you use your computer?

I'm a consultant, working part time at an office, and I am doing a masters and generally just enjoy coding as a hobby. My use case is something like:

I develop on my couch, I develop at home, I develop on the train, I develop in the dining room, I develop in my own room, I sometimes write some quick code while on the bus during my commute, and I write code at my university. I also bring this same computer to work and use it to develop there.

Oh, and I also sometimes enjoy gaming with my friends at their place, with the same computer.

Why on earth would I restrict myself to a stationary computer when I can have a portable one that I can take everywhere I want with no hassle?

In my circles the only people that have a stationary computer are people that use it for gaming, and even then they still have a laptop on which they do everything else.

<comment><USER4> I personally can't imagine using my work-provided computer for anything other than work. Too much potential for my employer to claim my hobby projects, for viruses to compromise client IP, for otherwise perfectly legal activities done on company property to terminate your employment.

The risk / reward ratio is just too high.

<comment><USER5> Virtualbox.

<comment><USER4> Virtualbox doesn't solve the problem of performing non-work related tasks on a corporate computer. It would help resolve some of the concerns about sandboxing data, but only some.

<comment><USER5> It leaves no traces on the host, so your work is invisible. Just encrypt it and there you go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of pro audio users are doggedly sticking with the Mac Pro. Some of them don't want to lose billable hours by transitioning to Windows, others are locked in because of Logic Pro.

Pretty much everyone I know uses a rackmount kit to turn the Mac Pro into something resembling a proper workstation, with a Thunderbolt RAID array next to it in the rack. It seems absurd to me that a "pro" computer costing as much as a decent used car needs third-party accessories to be usable as a professional tool. That cute little trash can turns into an 8u monster when it's properly specced out.

The solution offered by Apple is to just daisy-chain everything off Thunderbolt, which is almost hilariously awful in practice. The supposed minimalism and elegance of the Mac Pro goes out of the window when there's a rat's nest of cabling hanging out of it. It turns out that PCIe slots and drive bays are a really neat way of expanding a computer.

[http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacpro.html](http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacpro.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've given up hope of a replacement for my 2008 Mac Pro. I'm really not sure what to do, once this thing inevitably seizes up. I've maxed the RAM, upgraded all four bays to SSD, replaced the video card three times. And now I'm hacking in the latest OS because it's no longer "supported".

I'd really like to know what they plan on accomplishing, by sticking it to the people who are developing all the software for their flagship mobile devices.

<comment><USER8> I really think they decided the desktop is dead. They're assuming developers are using MBPs.

<comment><USER9> Apple has also catered heavily to the professional artist/creative field. Large scale movie editing, massive audio projects, and especially 3D animation or arch vis will definitely leave the Apple ecosystem if they kill the desktop-grade Mac. Workflows in these fields are often pegged to the latest hardware, and the GPU/CPUs in notebooks - not to mention storage, RAM, inputs - aren't often up to the task. Not to mention, these sorts of projects are rarely done "on-the-go" so portability isn't necessary.

Things like visual design, print design, and UX are not very heavy tasks and could all be done without even a dGPU... but the entertainment industry, as far as I know it, has been Mac heavy in the past. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Remote render farms are becoming more affordable, however.

<comment><USER10> I think apple had really stopped caring about the high end professionals. The real shot over the bow was the nerfing of Final Cut.

The middle ground user is probably far more profitable and less of a headache for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My 95 year old Dad has a Mac Pro and loves it. He does a lot of 3D animation and general video work, and it meets his needs perfectly.

I understand that the Mac Pro is a tiny market though.

I also need a lot of compute resources for my work (deep learning and other machine learning to support NLP) but I use large servers on Azure, GCP, AWS, and OVH so a MacBook meets my needs.

Even for my Dad's use case, it might be better to use cloud compute resources, but at 95 years old, he wants to stay with what he knows.

<comment><USER12> So this means that after all there is still a niche for Mac Pro....

<comment><USER13> There is a niche. It's not a big niche, but it's a niche.

And if the MacPro had been an updated cheesegrater instead of an ashtray, it would still be selling into its niche.

There's a solid market for ancient but refurbed/updated cheesegrater Pros, and an even bigger market for screamer dual-Xeon monster PCs.

Considering how few media power users like Windows, Apple should own the latter. It's a shame Apple has turned its back on those users.

But I suppose the conclusion is right. Mac is now a dying brand, and Cook wants to kill it off within the next five years or so - very likely taking the soul of Apple with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wouldn't be surprised if the next Mac Pro is just an external graphics card providing a setup like the Razer Blade Stealth.

Although it would be nice if there was a Mac with normal intel RAM and CPU sockets.

</comment><comment><USER15> The 2013 Mac Pro was never viable for almost anybody, and today it's even less obvious what direction they're taking with it.

It looked gorgeous, and many people thought they were _the_ machine to have, but once you prodded the specs a bit, it seemed over-priced, and they lack of upgrades has meant it's just now a really poor buy.

Since they decided with the MBP lineup that touchbars were seemingly more "pro" than decent chipsets and more RAM, I've started looking more earnestly at getting out of the Apple ecosystem.

I have been eyeing up the iPad Pro for a while, but struggle to make the jump because once I move out of Apple, everything will go: I'll move to an Android phone, an Android tablet, and a Linux laptop.

I have already used Linux server-side (although am preferring to head towards Lambdas and "pure Go" Docker containers more and more), all the while, but in 2006 I moved to OS X for my main workstation because it was the best Unix box I could unpack from a box and just expect to work.

And then there is the household ecosystem. If I move, I'll be buying my family non-Apple kit in future as well.

In my small office alone more than a dozen developers are considering the same switch. That's $30k/year or more we spend collectively on Apple gear we're going to shift off from. In one, small office.

Imagine how this scales. It's a mess. Maybe we're too small a market, maybe if every dev with Apple kit in the World switched away Apple would barely notice the shift, but they would within a few years.

They courted Unix devs back in the early 2000s. They know if they could get the best professional developers onto Apple, they in turn would make great software, which would then make the product lineup competitive. It worked.

As the exodus picks up pace, they'll only have a few years before they realise there are only a handful of developers prepared to keep a Mac around, and the collective innovation will move from OS X and iOS to Linux and Android. That could be an interesting shift for those of us who are comfortable in both, but I don't fancy going long on AAPL long-term.

A really great Mac Pro that is best in class out of the box, some really amazing displays which Apple could make in ways that no other manufacturer has pockets to match (and the ability to use third party displays, please!), an MBP that at least holds it own, that can compete with the Dell XPS, it could add up to keeping people in the loop, and others too.

The Mac Pro stagnation was the first sign that Apple had given up on their traditional market. The MBP was an underline and an exclamation mark.

<comment><USER16> Simply a difference in opinion here but I don't share any of your qualms with the MacBook Pro. I simply like macOS too much to change to anything else.

<comment><USER17> I have a question for you about macOS: Did they fix the thumbnail view shift select issue?

I had a MBP for about a year in 2014-15, and one thing really surprised me (as I got it for iOS dev and photography) is that if I had a finder window open in thumbnail/icon view I couldn't click one icon and then shift-click another and have everything in between selected. It just acts as though you'd click- dragged a square selection area. You had to shift to list view to be able do this. At first I thought it was me, as I was new to OSX at the time, so I went a-googling and I found out that no, that was the intended behavior. I mean, even linux has what I think is a standard UI behavior.

The interesting thing was going to the Apple support forums and seeing hardcore Apple fans saying that this is the correct behavior, better than what me and a _lot_ of other people expect and, especially for working with directories of photos, needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My prediction is that if there is going to be a next Mac Pro, it will have 12 ports: All USB-C/thunderbolt only in the usb-c form factor. No power plug (and thus self limiting the power draw to what usb-c can provide).

The power button will be removed in favour of a touch strip.

</comment><comment><USER19> Just my 2 cents... At my last client they provided a computer for me, because they don't want foreign clients in their network. I got a MacPro with 32gb ram and lowest specs possible beside that. It was the first time i worked with the trash can and it blowed my mind from the first minutes. WTF is this 3 year old machine still fast. After this experience i understand why Apple seems to be so lazy here. I will not say _nobody_ needs more performance, but i think 90% of the self called pro users wouldn't notice a difference with an updated hardware. Under the consideration that the whole MacPro target is group is relatively small, it's completely understandable why this is not number one on Apple's priority list.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Apple has proven they are no longer interested in making a computer for the high-end professional"

[citation needed]

"Is updated I/O and the opportunity to buy a third-party 5K display enough to sell us on a future Mac Pro?"

I dunno, is a tiny change in sheetmetal design and slight interior tweaks enough to sell people on [future model of some car]?

Articles like this would be vastly improved if they updated their premise from "APPLE IZ ABANDONING PROOOOOOZZ" to "Apple isn't making the gear we're hoping for, here's our alternative pick and a summary of how it better meets our needs".

<comment><USER21> > "Apple has proven they are no longer interested in making a computer for the > high-end professional" > [citation needed]

No, not really. They've said and done nothing to support this market since the Mac Pro came out, therefore, it's reasonable to conclude they don't care about it.

I think the premise is fine; if you like a company and you want them to produce a product you'll use, there's nothing wrong with saying so.

It might be a futile effort, granted, but it's still legitimate.

<comment><USER22> Welcome to Apple post-Steve Jobs return. Apple smartly hasn't Osborne'd their products since then and the mood swings of some Apple fans is unlikely to change that.

>They've said and done nothing to support this market since the Mac Pro came out, therefore, it's reasonable to conclude they don't care about it.

Yes except for the fact that they continue to sell them. Apple hasn't also stated how long they'll continue to make and sell new iPhones for either.

<comment><USER21> > Yes except for the fact that they continue to sell them. Apple hasn't also > stated how long they'll continue to make and sell new iPhones for either.

Not a fair comparison - iPhones are updated every year. "We don't mind selling you this" is not the same as "we are actively invested in this."

They are clearly NOT supporting the market with the Mac Pro they have now; whether it is being actively sold or not isn't the point.

It's like Google's many many halfway-dead apps: people use them, they're online, but no new development is happening.

<comment><USER22> Wait for supply chain rumors (if they even happen given its low volume and US- based manufacturing) to find out if there's going to be a new Mac Pro. You're not going to get any official information about Apple's roadmap from them.

Anyone actually in the market for a Mac Pro is probably aware that the Skylake based Xeons won't be out until some time around WWDC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They should be embarrassed by how they have treated this model. It's ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow can you imagine the hand-wringing if they do come out with a Mac Pro next year? Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

</comment><comment><USER25> Man, that looks like a website I made back in 2001...

<comment><AUTHOR> That's kind of inevitable, considering that the website is pretending it's being displayed on a Newton MessagePad 2100, which was made back in 1997¹.

――――――

¹ — [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad#Newton_device_model...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad#Newton_device_models)</comment></comment>


Atom – Git commit messages - <AUTHOR> https://atom.io/docs/latest/contributing#git-commit-messages

<comment><USER2> Cool fun idea - I dont understand though whats the reasoning behind using the present tense.

$ git commit -m "Add email integration on /email route" sounds weird for an activity _that has been_ completed.

<comment><USER3> I thought it was very meta amusing that the author was trying to tell users how to write commit messages when the number one rule of commit messages in my book is explaining WHY the commit exists. Why does this patch change this or do that. So it was amusing when he lists commit rules without explaining why they are rules. But I was saddened when I got to the end and missing from the list is 'explain why'.

Why did you 'Add feature...'? Why did you 'Move cursor to...'?

I did stuff // Increment i by 1

Why I did stuff // Increment i by 1 to not have a off by 1 bug

<comment><USER4> >the number one rule of commit messages in my book is explaining WHY the commit exists

The commit message should say _what_ changed, not why. Comments are for explaining why the code does what it does.

Good commit log: [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/commit/?id=fb519bd...](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/commit/?id=fb519bd8313e192d6eca2e51f9f33c87e5ee883e)

<comment><USER5> The diff shows you what changed. The commit message is a comment on the diff and absolutely should say what it's for.

This enables you to easily compile release notes, for example.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it should say what it's for, but it shouldn't need to explain itself any further. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. For example, if someone refactored something, the commit log can simply say "Factorize foo", it need not explain _why_ they were refactoring in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure this isn't real or just a fun joke. Please don't consider using a :checkered_flag: emoji to indicate you are fixing something on Windows, or any of these other icons.

Or:

Please consider using these emoji, but please don't anticipate or expect other developers will have any idea what their usage means.

<comment><USER7> > Please consider using these emoji

Fine with that, but please also write longer descriptive commit messages. For example:

      > git log -1 3b5bb1501ce7af8f857af7621fc0d5f86fb4fa93

      commit 3b5bb1501ce7af8f857af7621fc0d5f86fb4fa93
      Author: Ben Ogle <firstname.lastname@example.com>
      Date:   Tue Jan 6 17:09:59 2015 -0800

         :lipstick:

Tells me nothing. Nothing! At a glance the commit messages for the atom repo are poor:

      atom > git-mean-commit-message-bytes | grep '>'
      >ALL 147

You would hope github and git users would grok the power of git's commit messages, but hey ho...

<comment><USER8> I'm guessing that's intentional. The idea is that if you are going to reformat code, it should be the _only_ thing you do in a change; in other words, don't commit a change that both changes the semantics of the code and changes the formatting.

The principle is that formatting is orthogonal to other work and therefore shouldn't be mixed in. Unless you do something wrong, formatting changes are harmless so they can be scanned past by someone reviewing a changelog.

Here's a good discussion of the practice on StackOverflow: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2214480/committing- when-c...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2214480/committing-when- changing-source-formatting)

<comment><USER7> > Unless you do something wrong

Therein lies the rub; when something goes wrong i want a commit message that explains _why_ that formatting change was made.

      :lipstick: - add missing # char, as per conventions

Would have taken all of 5 extra seconds to write and is a lot better future proofed. Remember, a commit message should explain _why_ something changed and not just _what_ changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are those emoji an attempt at vendor lock-in? Want to contribute to our project? Use our version of git. I hope this doesn't spread elsewhere.

I'd accept showing icons when certain commit/commit message criteria are met, for example "refactoring" in commit message or perhaps whitespace commit would trigger the lipstick icon. But putting :lipstick: as the first word in your commit message? What user davexunit said.

<comment><USER10> Aren't these standard? There's the beer icon showing up when using Homebrew on OSX, I guess the other ones would show up too on a `git log`.

<comment><USER11> The Unicode characters are standard.

However, encoding them as ASCII strings such as ":lipstick:" is not, and that ASCII string is what goes into the commit message. git will not decode these messages as the emoji characters, as far as I know, and I expect that Linus Torvalds would have some choice words if that were a feature request.

Sequences such as ":lipstick:" are a hack to work around the fact that PCs (as opposed to phones and tablets) are bad at both inputting and displaying emoji.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I came across the "tags" that the AngularJS uses, and have found these to be a lot more relevant to my projects. I agree with @mrcwinn that expecting other developers to understand the usage of some of these is asking too much (`:lipstick:` ??? ).

[https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/validate-c...](https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/validate- commit-msg.js#L21-31)

The format they enforce is here - [https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/validate-c...](https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/validate- commit-msg.js#L58)

If done right then these tags can be invaluable when using tools like `git- bisect` - you can safely ignore the ones marked `docs` or `style` (assuming you are not working with a language like Python).

Not to mention you can build automation around like, for e.g. automatically generating release notes.

</comment><comment><USER13> The lipstick one seems pretty silly - especially if one is familiar with the idiom "lipstick on a pig".

</comment><comment><USER14> They contradict themselves. Should it be present ("Is/are less buggy") or imperative ("Be less buggy")?

<comment><USER15> Imperative present. These are compatible. Writing a commit also implies the use of verbs related to actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The best git commit message style guide in my opinion is Erlang OTP's "Writing good commit messages"[0] wiki page.

[0] [https://github.com/erlang/otp/wiki/Writing-good-commit- messa...](https://github.com/erlang/otp/wiki/Writing-good-commit-messages)

</comment><comment><USER17> I have been using atom sense its initial beta release and it has come quite a long way. Some of these contribution guidelines might seem silly (such as the emoji) but it definitely works for the community.

</comment><comment><USER18> Did they improved startup time of the editor? Last time I tested it (Windows 7 x64bit) it took good 3-5 seconds for it to start.

</comment><comment><USER19> Do Android-centered commits use the Linux emoji, or should we be lobbying for a mobile-device emoji?

</comment><comment><USER4> >Use the present tense ("Add feature" not "Added feature")

Agreed.

>Use the imperative mood ("Move cursor to..." not "Moves cursor to...")

Agreed.

>Limit the first line to 72 characters or less

Agreed.

>Reference issues and pull requests liberally

Agreed.

>Consider starting the commit message with an applicable emoji

Fuck off. This is completely useless and doesn't deserve 14 examples when the above sensible directions are so brief.

<comment><USER20> "Fuck off" \- seriously? Why use such inflammatory language in your post. A simple "Disagree" would have sufficed.

IMHO the tags are a quick way to filter commits by each of those. The images are just for quicker reference.

<comment><USER21> How is "lipstick" and "checkered flag" a more appropriate tag than a more specific, less ambiguous and more concise technical word?

Most projects already use tags like "FIX" "CHANGE" "NEW" etc etc, there really is no reason to use ambiguous emojis.

<comment><USER22> These are small and coloured, so they're easy to see in a list.

<comment><USER21> They are definitely not small and coloured on my terminal screen. Maybe we should update git or github with proper tracking and tagging (wait, git already supports tags! But that's for a different thing anyway) instead of using something that was not intended for this purpose. Especially because, as I said, it's ambiguous and it really doesn't bring any benefit on the table.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So... emoji, but still horrible performance? Moving on...

Really? Downvotes without a response? Seems awfully cowardly. So I'll just assume the performance has improved to the point that opening a large file doesn't cause it to lockup for an hour? Because that seems a lot more important to me than emoji's for commits...

*nope, just tried it again, performance still blows.

<comment><USER24> The downvotes were (I assume) because you are going completely off-topic. This isn't about performance of the Atom application, it's about their commit guidelines for contributing to the project.

Editing your comments to attack people that downvoted you is only going to make the situation worse. Just face the fact that it probably wasn't a good comment and move on.</comment></comment>


Python vs Ruby, slightly more in-depth - <AUTHOR> http://rapd.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/python-vs-ruby-slightly-more-in-depth/

<comment><USER2> He mentions Python's GIL (which makes multi-threading completely useless), but Ruby (even 1.9) has a GIL too [1] that works exactly the same (awful) way. Ruby 2.0 will have it too [2]. A new Python implementation, unladen swallow is developped by Google to adress exactly this issue. Python-stackless avoids this problem, but the paraigm change is huge, 'normal' code has to be largely rewritten for stackless.

Note that, if I correctly understood, python event engine Twisted uses a custom C-implemented event loop to avoid this.

[1] [http://www.igvita.com/2008/11/13/concurrency-is-a-myth-in- ru...](http://www.igvita.com/2008/11/13/concurrency-is-a-myth-in-ruby/)

[2] [http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/msg/e809a7a720...](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/msg/e809a7a7205eaec9)

Wow, seems like MacRuby uses OS threads and completely abolished the GIL [3].

[3] [http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/06/macruby-drops-gil- threadin...](http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/06/macruby-drops-gil-threading)

<comment><USER3> The GIL (in Python, can't speak about Ruby) is a controversial issue because people assume its bad and Python is therefore bad at concurrent programming etc. Without the GIL, the implementation would be drastically more complex and slower because all built in datatypes, dictionary lookups (for method lookups) etc would need to be made atomic, through locking. I think I can live with the GIL in this case - use threads for asynchronous (rather than parallel) code and use processes (and Python 2.6's multiprocessing library makes this easy) for parallel code execution.

Having said that, I welcome Google's unladen swallow and hope they succeed in removing the GIL.

<comment><USER4> That's not strictly true. Take a look at <http://plausible.org/nasal> for an example of an interpreter (mine) in the same broad space as Python and Ruby, yet without a global lock for anything but garbage collection (fixable -- there's no reason in principle preventing a concurrent GC from being dropped in). In tests of CPU-bound code without excessive allocation, it scales to 4-way SMP without trouble.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I meant in Pythons case. Obviously theres plenty of virtual machines/interpreters/compilers which do not have a GIL and work perfectly fine.

Here are some of the reasons Python uses a GIL: <http://www.grouplens.org/node/244#comment-2493>

Pasted for convenience:

""" Python has a GIL as opposed to fine-grained locking for several reasons:

\--- It is faster in the single-threaded case.

\--- It is faster in the multi-threaded case for i/o bound programs.

\--- It is faster in the multi-threaded case for cpu bound programs that do their compute-intensive work in C libraries.

\--- It makes C extensions easier to write: there will be no switch of Python threads except where you allow it to happen (i.e. between the Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS and Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS macros).

\--- It makes wrapping C libraries easier. You don't have to worry about thread-safety. If the library is not thread-safe, you simply keep the GIL locked while you call it. """

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I quite hoped to be reading an in-depth comparison, but this article merely scratches the surface. What I would like to see from an in-depth article is actual code implementing stuff, showing the features a language has (and comparing them with each other).

I don't think this is a good article nor a useful one.

<comment><USER6> +1, the article is a 10-minute _gloss_ at best and has virtually no content or analysis.

I mean come on, just look at the 'conclusion': _These languages are interchangeable, especially for building web application. Neither are more awesome. They get the job done and they make programmers happy._

<comment><USER7> Having used both professionally, I think that's a pretty good conclusion, actually.

<comment><USER8> I'd agree with the conclusion, but I'd also agree with nudded - the article is nearly free of useful content. Listing popular libraries of each language does not a comparison make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Reflection a.k.a Meta Programming a.k.a Monkey Patching"

Really? These are all the same thing? I think not.

"Python comes with webbrowser, urllib2, smtp, http, SocketServer, HttpServer, and more, while Ruby only has net/HTTP"

Untrue. Seems the author knows Python, and spent a little time with Ruby.

More useful points to make would have been how objects are implemented, how inheritance and mixins are handled, and the key paradigms in the language (e.g., in Python, foo.bar() means invoking the method bar; in Ruby, it means sending foo a bar message.)

<comment><USER10> That is correct, they are not the same thing. That statement is coming from my use case, where I, have so far, only use them for manipulating objects during run time.

Be it calling function, setting attributes, or adding extra functionality by including modules.

<comment><USER9> "That is correct, they are not the same thing. That statement is coming from my use case, where I, have so far, only use them for manipulating objects during run time."

So here's my main complaint: If you know that these things are not really the same, why do you present them as if they were? You would have had a much more favorable reaction had you been more upfront on your biases, limited Ruby experience, and narrow focus for comparison.

<comment><USER10> Because in my eyes, they all serve this purpose: "That means you have access to the inner working of an object."

Whichever technique I choose to use does not matter.

I am using my blog the way blog is intended to be used, as opinion piece, I had no attempt in hiding my biases, but there's no need to purposely be biased as well because I like both and make a living out of both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> RE daemonizing, Ruby 1.9 does have a nice Process.daemon function (this is what the author is hoping for?). I'm also a big fan of the 1.9-introduced spawn() function. Not only does this make it easy to create background processes, but via its :in, :out, and :err options (also now found in system() and exec()) it's pretty easy to pipe one spawned process's output to another.

OTOH, I'm a big fan of the What's New in Python X.X articles. Nice features like spawn() seem to sneak into the Ruby codebase unheralded and practically unnoticed.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Testing Ruby wins a lot of TDD practitioners. There are plethora of Ruby modules created for making testing experience truly wonderful. See: RSpec, Shoulda, Factory Girl, Selenium."

Yes, testing in Ruby is absolutely wonderful. It makes writing tests an enjoyable experience compared to pretty much any other language I've used. Nowadays I strive for 100% C0 testing coverage and near-100% C1 testing coverage whenever I write software. This can be done very easily in Ruby but is hard to very hard in most other languages.

<comment><USER13> It's very easy in Perl.

But anyway, "100% code coverage" is very misleading. Sure, every branch might have been executed once, but you don't ensure that every combination of branches executed once. If you have state that can be shared between code paths, then you are not doing an adequate job testing.

(This is why people like functional programming. One input always produces the same output, cutting the number of cases you have to test dramatically.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > eval()/exec() are simply evil in both languages. They make debugging more > difficult.

I stopped reading at this point. More complicated debugging is a reasonable tradeoff for intuitive APIs. To call them evil indicates the OP is quite inexperienced.

<comment><USER10> That statement comes from personal experience where some functions did not exists in the eye of text editor because they were defined inside a string.

Not that big of a deal, but enough to annoy me.

<comment><USER15> Not that big a deal != evil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Decorator is Python's implementation to visitor pattern...

huh?

<comment><USER10> Visitor patterns add new functionality to existing object structure [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitor_pattern>].

Python decorator does not do that?

<comment><USER17> The decorator syntax

      @decorator2
      @decorator1
      def foo(*args):
          pass

is just a shorthand for

      def foo(*args):
          pass
      foo = decorator2(decorator1(foo))

I completely fail to see the visitor pattern here, even with stretching until breaking.

<comment><USER10> Python decorator can do more than just that.

@decorator1 can be a completely different class which manipulate foo.__class__

<comment><USER17> Certainly, it is an arbitrary python function, so the resulting foo might be a dictionary or whatever. But this doesn't push it closer to the visitor pattern.

Certainly, you can use decorators as a tool to implement the visitor pattern by implementing some hairy, magical reflecting class-decorator which adds a method visit to an object, which then calls visit_{CLASSNAME} on the parameter, but this is just a way of implementing this and not the visitor pattern in itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm currently working on a python web project; the lack of a mature, battle- hardened payment library kills me.

Ruby's ActiveMerchant is a well-crafted bit of code. The handful of python contenders I've discovered are (1) immature and often poorly coded, and (2) unable to touch ActiveMerchant in terms of number of supported gateways _and_ features supported per gateway.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think it's pretty clear that one person isn't going to be able to write the article we're all actually looking for. We need to get two experts together, one in each language, and in the spirit of respect and discovery, have both people put their language's best foot forward, to try to "get" the other language but to not descend into endless wankery about the details.

But, honestly, I know how it would turn out: The technical considerations are not all that different. Most people who bitch about one of the two and praise the other seem to not understand the one they are bitching about, and the pattern is strong enough at this point that it should be considered the norm. I'm tired of Ruby advocates who seem unaware that yes, Python _can_ pass functions as first class arguments and yes, that pretty much is a block, and tired of Python advocates who get shredded in the comments for obviously having only gone through a Rails tutorial.

In the end the big difference is community. I think there is a big difference there. I'll skip igniting a flamewar by trying to characterize the communities, since it is impossible to do that neutrally, but there's definitely a difference I can see.

</comment><comment><USER20>
      Python                 Ruby
      map                    collect,map
      lambda                 block
      filter                 select
      ?                      reject
      reduce (functools)     inject (native)

Guido van Rossum on inclusion of 'reduce' in Python 3.0, in 2005:

"This is actually the one I've always hated most, because, apart from a few examples involving + or *, almost every time I see a reduce() call with a non- trivial function argument, I need to grab pen and paper to diagram what's actually being fed into that function before I understand what the reduce() is supposed to do. So in my mind, the applicability of reduce() is pretty much limited to associative operators, and in all other cases it's better to write out the accumulation loop explicitly" (<http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=98196>)

Ruby lets you do it however you want to. I don't see myself learning Python any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER21> The comparison is slightly tendentious in that the info on ruby isn't always up to date (eg "Modules" and "HTTP and other Internet stuff").

</comment><comment><USER22> He neglected to mention Python's lack of anonymous functions. (and no, lambda doesn't count given its restrictions).

<comment><USER10> Functionality that I do not mention means that I don't have to use them often, both for work or personal projects.

I don't miss anonymous functions that much, yet, because I have inner function and list comprehension in Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2>
      Both still needs javascript to make awesome looking web applications.

Not so much "looking", as js would not help with that, but working, yeah.

</comment><comment><USER23> There's this site where you can compare implementations of several patterns in different languages... If only I could remember where... anyone?

<comment><USER24> Are you talking about Pleac <http://pleac.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER23> That's it! Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


No more results: Obama Administration Kills Results.gov Website - <AUTHOR> http://www.results.gov

<comment><USER2> there's a lot of stuff going on in the background right now. i'd give it a few days before confirming they killed it. could be an oversight/mistake, or in the middle of being revamped.</comment>


How we increased traffic by 215% - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hubstaff.com/outsourced-writing-teams-and-content-marketing/

<comment><USER2> i clicked on the word "hubstaff" 2-3 times and everytime it sends me to the blog not the homepage. guess i'll never find out what hubstaff does.

<comment><AUTHOR> @lazylizard - we do time tracking and staffing. Here's a link to time tracking and the homepage - [https://hubstaff.com](https://hubstaff.com)</comment></comment>


Dispatches investigation reveals how Facebook moderates content - <AUTHOR> http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/dispatches-investigation-reveals-how-facebook-moderates-content <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Badly</comment>


Jeff Bezos Is Now the World's Second Richest Person - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-29/bezos-rises-to-become-world-s-second-richest-with-amazon-surge <comment><USER2> Everytime I see these types of articles I wonder if we're still in feudalism. Should we really be celebrating that a single individual is worth more than hundreds of millions of people[1]? I dunno, it seems _dystopian_ , like we're enslaved to the system.

[1] [https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/...](https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/just-8-men- own-same-wealth-half-world)

<comment><USER3> I think that's a little hyperbolic. In feudalism the balance of power is enforced by violence, whereas Jeff Bezos got rich because you gave him money in exchange for products. Like,

"Hey, here's this cool electronic device called the Amazon Echo for $50."

is a markedly different from

"Farm here or I'll decapitate you."

The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terrifying.

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example, which I will quote here:

> Nozick's famous Wilt Chamberlain argument is an attempt to show that > patterned principles of just distribution are incompatible with liberty. He > asks us to assume that the original distribution in society, D1, is ordered > by our choice of patterned principle, for instance Rawls's Difference > Principle. Wilt Chamberlain is an extremely popular basketball player in > this society, and Nozick further assumes 1 million people are willing to > freely give Chamberlain 25 cents each to watch him play basketball over the > course of a season (we assume no other transactions occur). Chamberlain now > has $250,000, a much larger sum than any of the other people in the society. > This new distribution in society, call it D2, obviously is no longer ordered > by our favored pattern that ordered D1. However Nozick argues that D2 is > just. For if each agent freely exchanges some of his D1 share with the > basketball player and D1 was a just distribution (we know D1 was just, > because it was ordered according to your favorite patterned principle of > distribution), how can D2 fail to be a just distribution? Thus Nozick argues > that what the Wilt Chamberlain example shows is that no patterned principle > of just distribution will be compatible with liberty. In order to preserve > the pattern, which arranged D1, the state will have to continually interfere > with people's ability to freely exchange their D1 shares, for any exchange > of D1 shares explicitly involves violating the pattern that originally > ordered it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia)

<comment><USER5> This argument is trivially inconsistent. The state must protect liberty by interfering with one's liberty?

State interfence is a direct transgression against an individual's liberty. Thus far the majority has decided that such interfence is a greater evil than the "inequality" that it _could_ reconcile.

<comment><USER6> Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes!

[https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waltwhitma132584...](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waltwhitma132584.html)

<comment><USER7> (You dropped a clause.)

<comment><USER6> I contradict myself _and_ mis-quote Whitman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just don't get this complaining about wealth concentration - for every person capable of complaining on an online forum that some people have 100 to 1000x the wealth they do, there are also likely to be more people that exist who have 1000x less than you. How exactly am I any more entitled to the wealth of those richer than me, than are those poorer than me entitled to my (relative) wealth?

It seems to me that the problem with the totem pole is that each level is logarithmic, but always talked about in absolute terms. If my boss makes 10x and her boss makes 10x of what she makes, aspiring to 100x my wealth looks like a completely impossible goal in my lifetime - but it's really just two promotions.

An argument could be made that some people try to sabotage those attempting to climb the totem pole, but once someone has reached the top and did not illegally interact with anyone they passed on the climb, why all the hate?

<comment><USER9> The problem isn't that Bezos has 1,000x my net worth. He has 1,000,000x my (approximate) net worth. One millionth of my net worth is seven cents, so Bezos:me is me:$0.07.

The graph isn't logarithmic. It's shaped like this:

                    |
                    |
                    |
        ____________|

<comment><USER10> Norway has a $900 billion sovereign wealth fund. Is that a problem too? If you never heard about Bezos's wealth, would you suffer any troubles because of it? I think it's fine.

<comment><USER11> Norway's sovereign wealth fund is managed on behalf of all the people of Norway and there are political systems in place that grants those people some influence over how that money is used, and who benefits from it.

Bezos' wealth (and all the massive political power it represents) is almost totally unaccountable. This is the real problem of wealth inequality. It's not that some people have more material goods than others. It's that levels of wealth like that undermine the political systems that we have constructed to seek fair, just, and peaceful resolution of disputes. It is a road to tyranny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kudos to him, hopefully he will go all in on some crazy idea eventually. I still have this feeling amazon (as in online store) isn't all that big outside of US/english-speaking world.

I do have a question though. When you have that much net worth and you get plastered all over the press about how much you have... What do you do then? What's your life then like? Seems like a nightmare, especially if you have kids and family. Do you become a prisoner of your own wealth then, guarded by people - never be able to just roam about, take a random tourist tour with your spouse, a road trip or whatever? Money is nice to have, but there are things you definitely lose, it seems. Is it worth it to be at that level?

<comment><USER13> until the competition is completely annihilated, jeff is not content.

<comment><USER14> You say that like it's a bad thing.[0] If you had a business (assuming you don't for the sake of argument), no competition would be amazing! People could ONLY come to you for your product or service.

[0] The truth is in the middle.

<comment><USER15> Monopolies are only good fore the monopoly and bad for everyone else in society.

Monopolies mean no choice, no competition, low innovation and high prices

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks to you. And me. Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet have our paychecks covered. Warren's companies take most of what we spend offline, Jeff's companies take most of what we spend online.

</comment><comment><USER17> I know that I'll get skewered for this, but here goes: recently I've convinced myself we are on the verge of a very serious Amazon stock correction. Just today I saw three separate articles (without seeking them out) giving umpteen reasons Amazon is going to a trillion, or that Amazon is only getting started. Then I turned on CNBC during lunch and what are they talking about? Amazon.

There's simply too much positive sentiment around this company and it makes me very nervous. It reminds me of 2007 when everyone was making a killing on real estate and the idea was laughable that the market would reverse. The stock is way overbought and the only questions I have are "by how much?" And "when is the reversal coming?"

There are other reasons I'm skeptical about Amazon remaining at its current valuation. One major one is that the meteoric rise in the stock price has coincided nicely with the economic recovery. Amazon's ecommerce business is one that's built for good times. It remains to be seen how they fare in downtimes. What I mean by that is that much of what I see people buy on Amazon (myself included) are largely frivolous gadgets that one simply wouldn't buy in a time of economic fear. Right now people largely feel wealthy and feel comfortable shelling out for prime memberships and willing to pay a premium for convenience. In a down economy that's the first thing to go.

Of course a down economy will weigh heavily on most companies, but I believe especially so on Amazon because it is a stock that is already overbought and relies on people buying shit they don't need for the sake of convenience.

Apart from that I believe they will face increasing competition from Alibaba, Walmart, and others.

Finally, there are the numbers. Despite the $400+ billion valuation, Amazon did less that a billion in profit from their ecommerce business last quarter! The stock shot up because that was higher than analysts predicted!

I have serious doubts about the long term profitability of Amazon's ecommerce business. Physical delivery of goods, particularly last mile delivery is just too expensive. Sure, drones might come but I wouldn't base an investment on that hope.

My prediction is that an economic downturn is going to send this stock into a tailspin.

<comment><USER18> Amazon already went through 2 downturns. Dot com bubble and the last recession. During the recession they faired extremely well.

they've been facing tough competition from Walmart since the late 90s. Alibaba is still miles away from competing in the same areas as Amazon although that will change with time. For now, if you're a consumer, aliexpress is only good for buying cheap low quality items.

If there's something they've figured out, it's logistics and how to deliver a product as fast and cheap as possible. Everything about their system is optimized for this. Now with their venture into contract companies to deliver goods they can bypass more expensive UPS delivery.

Now do I think they're stock is overvalued? Yes, but I don't see a doomsday scenario happening.

<comment><USER17> The difference to me is the valuation- during previous downturns they weren't trading at a $400 billion market cap.

I think a lot of people assume that because they're amazon that they'll crack the last mile delivery problem, a problem that FedEx and ups, two exceedingly smart and successful and well run companies have not, not to mention the usps. FedEx and UPS want no part of last mile delivery because there's no money in it. The money is in flying it across the country with 300,000 other parcels. I'm very skeptical that Amazon can warehouse and deliver goods to your door with a significant margin, and a significant profit margin is what will eventually be required to justify a $400 billion valuation.

To date, this has not been the case, and the fact is that while they've made shopping an amazingly easy process, they haven't made a lot of money doing so, certainly not compared to the few other companies trading at similar valuations.

I'm not predicting a doomsday scenario in that amazon is going to go belly up. I just think the stock is headed for a dive.

<comment><USER19> Not having net profits does not mean that parts of your business are not profitable.

You may want to take a closer look at Amazon's financials and see what kind of free cash flow they're generating before they reinvest that cash in expansion and new businesses. Net operating cash flow for 2016 was $16B and the trend is strongly upwards.

[https://secure.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/AMZN/financia...](https://secure.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/AMZN/financials/cash- flow)

<comment><USER17> Right, but free cash flow is one of the most common areas of a balance sheet to use deceptive accounting to show huge numbers. Amazon is notorious for this, actually, particularly with their widespread use of capital leases. A big reason that that number has jumped so much is because of their increased investment in AWS hardware which they lease instead of purchasing.

<comment><USER19> Why is leasing equipment considered deceptive rather than a cost-cutting measure?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would it be possible for a guy like Jeff to sell all his stock and convert his wealth to, let's say, gold? The motivation for my question is my doubt that the different sources of wealth are comparable. So this ranking is hypothetical. Wouldn't the stock price drop if someone was to sell so many shares?

<comment><USER21> I believe you are correct. In theory he would be able to turn all his assets into money, but probably he would loose huges amount of it in the process due to the effect you mentioned.

I guess these rankings are just rankings. It's an abstract way to value what someone have (or could potentially have) with no relationship to absolute truth.

<comment><USER22> I am sorry for sidetracking on this, but I need to understand why I am reading so much 'loose' here on HN.

Is this error being used with intent? I have no interest in shaming grammar errors, it's just that I am seeing this too often here, in the same place where I read great arguments.

English is not my native language, so maybe this is a colloquial use of the word?

<comment><USER23> Me too!!

Nah its an error.. I don't know why it's made so often..

Maybe it was happening all the time and we only started noticing it?

It irritates me far less than your/you're tho ;)

<comment><USER24> Your write, its an error made all to often. Many people are loser with spelling and grammer online than is you and me.

<comment><USER23> Argh, the pain! Have an upvote for making me cringe with just two sentences ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> it is amazing how Bill Gates remain richest person in the world despite donating billions to Melinda & Gates foundation.

<comment><USER26> You know what would have been even more amazing? If Microsoft had not landed in its monopolistic position it had. Then all that money that landed at bill gates which is even more, could have been spent earlier on philanthropic means.

<comment><USER27> Why do you think that money would have necessarily gone to philanthropy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> World's two richest men from Seattle tech companies. I hope some of this money translates to venture capital. Number of successful startups in Seattle pale in comparison to SV

<comment><USER29> They're also neighbors who live in the same neighborhood:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medina,_Washington](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medina,_Washington)

You can kinda see both of their mansions (covered by privacy hedges) when driving across the SR-520.

<comment><USER28> That's just nuts. Should have bought a property in Medina back in the day. Would have seen great appreciation by today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It is interesting to know that Bill Gates is still the world's richest. Thinking about how little I have directly spent with Microsoft is interesting.

I bought Windows 3.11 from a computer fair. I got Windows 95 from school (proper CD, not a pirate). I bought a computer that came with Windows 98 (and a lame Cyrix processor), got an XP licence from a case someone was throwing out, skipped Vista, bought Windows 7 Pro system builder from eBay (proper version, no pirate copy, I don't like pirating software). I then got a free upgrade to Windows 10.

Hardware, I think I bought an xbox 360 controller for the PC. I got given an old generation 1 xbox (since retired) and a load of games. Bought Office 2003 from eBay (proper version, OEM with hardware to satisfy licence) when Office 2007 was all the rage (so it was cheap). I think my brother once bought a Sidewinder joystick (had the footprint of a large dinosaur, such a big piece of hardware).

Then I used the Express editions of SQL Server (MSDE before that), Express editions of Visual Studio and now the Community as I am a Lone Ranger developer at home.

Oh and I bought a laptop that had Windows 10 on it so I guess they had a cut of its value.

So basically Microsoft have had very little direct money from me, despite basically being responsible for my employment for the last 15 years (I write apps under Windows).

I have spent more money with Parallels Inc as they force me to "upgrade" every year (every other year if I can help it) despite Apple introducing a new virtualisation layer a couple of releases ago.

So thanks Bill.

</comment><comment><USER31> He would be wise to cash out now while the getting is good. Amazon has an enormous problem with counterfeit goods in many categories. Unfortunately, when the implosion happens it will likely be incredibly fast and catastrophic. How might this happen? People get sketched out by their own, or other's experiences with fraud on Amazon, and simply decide to buy from other sources. I suspect this is a tipping point situation where it's not a slow decline, but instead a very fast one. For instance, my wife and I used to do most of our non-grocery shopping on Amazon. But recent horrific experiences (in spite of Jeff and his team stepping in to rectify things) and questions about what we'd actually get if we order something from Amazon means that now we don't buy nearly as much--mostly just Kindle books now. I just think that at some point most of their customers will stop shopping with them all at once because of fraud concerns, they'll stop subscribing to Prime, and next thing we know the company will be broken up and sold piecemeal.

I'm afraid Amazon thinks they have a lot more time than they actually do to think about what, if anything, they want to do about the problem.

</comment><comment><USER32> With a little math, we are not-too-many years from the world's first US$ trillionaire.

Using Mr. Bezos as the example:

US$ 72,000,000,000

Annualized gain of, say, 10% on AMZN stock

Over a period of 27.6 years

1.1^27.6 * US$72,000,000,000 = ~US$ 1,000,000,000,000

Just in time for his 80th birthday.

<comment><USER33> Assuming 27 years of 10% compounding is quite the leap.

<comment><USER32> Since 1990 (27 years ago) McDonald's has returned 10.87%, including the Internet Bubble and Subprime Mortgage crashes.

March 30, 1990: $7.38

March 29, 2017: $128.84

I am not saying it'll be Bezos, but someone will get there within the next 2-3 decades.

[edit] And while I'm at it, AMZN has returned 36%, annualized, over the last 10 years, encompassing the Subprime Mortgage crash.

<comment><USER34> Inflation alone means eventually someone will. (Just like Rockefeller's adjusted fortune is 300-400billlion)

<comment><USER35> Rockefeller's adjusted fortune is not $300-$400 billion. It's a lot closer to $30 to $40 billion in fact.

That huge fake number - which has been thrown around the Web for more than a decade - is derived from the GDP share.

It goes like this. Rockefeller in 1915 (pick the year), was worth the equivalent of 1/37th of the US GDP. Therefore, adjusted to today, Rockefeller would be worth $bazillion (1/37th of $19 trillion; which used to be more like $12b-$14b when the fake premise originally started floating about).

If you dig into the calculation that was / is used on that $300-$400 billion, that's where it's coming from in every instance.

In fact, Gates is objectively far richer than Rockefeller ever was, just not in relation to the US economy size at present. Rockefeller was worth between $1 and $2 billion at his peak, in his time. The inflation adjustment on $1 from 1910 to now, is _not_ 300x or 400x. It's closer to 20x to 30x. If it were 300x, Ford's famous $5 per day pay rate (from 1914), would be ... $1500 per day. Laughable obviously; the 300x+ doesn't pass any challenge thrown at it.

<comment><USER36> Yes, not in terms of buying power, but success in terms of proportion of GDP seems a reasonable measure. It must be harder to make the same amount of money in a smaller market. It also shows how well you did relative to others, and may be a better measure of how much actual power you have over others.

Just use the proportion 1/37 instead of converting to dollars, or I agree it's misleading.

Also: perhaps, $1500 per day today _is_ reflective of our buying power in a way, if we consider new inventions like TV, smartphones, internet, air-travel, when the closest equivalents back then were much more expensive.

<comment><USER33> > Also: perhaps, $1500 per day today is reflective of our buying power in a > way

(A little sarcastic, sorry:) Yes, if we ignore all of the things we buy that have gotten more expensive, it's like prices have deflated.</s>

Overall inflation measures a collection of consumer prices, the average of which has trended up since that time. It is a general reflection of buying power, dollar for dollar.

<comment><USER36> Of course you're right that the accepted measures of inflation would have already considered and addressed the issue. And I would guess that fundamentals like food and land/housing have indeed gotten more expensive.

I'm a little intrigued though: shouldn't technological progress and "accelerating returns" have made things cheaper? I do see for land, that location is a monopoly ("they aren't making any more" \- at least, in that spot, in that community, with that access). I wonder how much similar market effects have "artificially" kept other prices high? An oligopoly or silent collusion/combination between sellers (e.g. as happened for flat TVs).

Also, I wonder if a different lifestyle is possible, leaning more heavily on those aspects that _have_ gotten cheaper (one e.g. living remotely and working remotely or independently).

Anyway, I'm glad you agreed with my other points, I'm assuming.

<comment><USER33> > And I would guess that fundamentals like food and land/housing have indeed > gotten more expensive. > > I'm a little intrigued though: shouldn't > technological progress and "accelerating returns" have made things cheaper? > I do see for land, that location is a monopoly ("they aren't making any > more" \- at least, in that spot, in that community, with that access).

Healthcare and education costs have increased hugely, housing costs moderately (moreso in the big cities). Overall inflation is somewhat offset by food and electronics getting much cheaper.

> I wonder how much similar market effects have "artificially" kept other > prices high? An oligopoly or silent collusion/combination between sellers > (e.g. as happened for flat TVs).

The healthcare marketplace is pretty terrible. Perverse incentives, no pricing transparency, etc is at least part of rapidly increasing costs. Oddly education has gotten much more expensive as well, including K-12, and there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason there.

> Also, I wonder if a different lifestyle is possible, leaning more heavily on > those aspects that have gotten cheaper (one e.g. living remotely and working > remotely or independently).

Yeah. If you can swing a remote tech job living in a low or moderate cost of living area, you can save enough to retire (in that LCOL location) in a couple years. It can really be single digit years if you can keep your saving rate above 90%.

<comment><USER36> Interesting, it's a bit different here in Australia, we have free healthcare, free education and incredibly high house prices (eg ordinary house in suburbs > $1 million; 2br unit almost $0.5 million). Of course, those first two aren't actually "free" and eg drug prices can be very high.

Patented drugs are at least something new - you're getting better tech, enhancing or even saving your life, to an extent previously impossible. The "standard" cost of drugs increases with our expectations, but also their true value. Inflation measures mightn't account for this. eg basics like aspirin and ibuprofen are dirt cheap these days.

House and education prices are above their actual utility; a bubble, an insidious monopoly, or something else.

Isn;t educatiin high because it's a false ticket to a "good job"? i.e. people get it for that reason (not for the education itself, or for a market demand for that specific skillset/knowledge), but the jobs aren't there, so they double down. Demand for education exceeds supply so the price goes up. Yes, more places are made available to meet demand, but they lack the prestige (and network effects) of the top institutions... On it goes. Mightn't apply to K12 though (that's highschool I guess?).

LCOL is it. BTW I used to want to retire, now I want to be able to work on projects. That's a subset, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Worth noting that Gates leads by a _$10 billion_ margin.

<comment><USER35> And that's after Bloomberg weirdly adjusted his net worth down by about $12-$15 billion recently, right before he was about to cross $100 billion again for the first time since the dotcom bubble.

They left a note on his profile in the billionaires list that says:

"The net worth history for Bill Gates was changed to reflect a revised approach to the valuation that was applied on Jan. 27, 2017."

Which is probably another way of saying, that he put in a favor with Michael Bloomberg to not show him crossing $100 billion, as he doesn't want the headlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> For all the hype Silicon Valley gets, the companies of the world's 2 richest people are in the Seattle area.

<comment><USER39> Seattle has one of the lowest amounts of sun per year of all metros in the USA. It selects for those who are serious about work, more than weather.

<comment><USER40> The weather isn't that bad here. It's overcast a lot and there are a lot of "rainy" days but it's usually a light mist or sprinkle. It rarely drops below freezing in the winter and the summers, while short, have long days and are quite dry. Maybe the bay area has better weather but I'd take Seattle weather over most of the US (Chicago, Austin, NY, DC, etc)

<comment><USER41> Perhaps this is because I am from California, but having lived in Seattle for the last 3 years, the hardest part isn't the rain or cold but the lack of sun.

My previous manager at Amazon told me he recommended everyone who came from California to take a vacation back during the winter lest they get too depressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Buffett should just buy a bunch of $AMZN so he keeps on par with Bezos. Buffett is not greedy, but he is ultra competitive. I look forward to going to my first annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting this May.

</comment><comment><USER43> I am failing to see how someone who founded a company that hasn't made > $1B in profit over each of the last twenty years can have a fortune of $75B

<comment><USER35> It's pretty simple. The market has been valuing Amazon - from day one since its IPO - with an eye on the _future_ value of its cash flow / net income. Certainly many investors and competitors have regarded that constant pushing off of the profitability expectations (for two decades), as unfair.

Since Amazon began showing off AWS financial figures, the stock has more than doubled. The market has priced in AWS as being worth perhaps $150 billion or more. AWS is making a lot of money, and it's going to make a lot more over the next five years.

Investors likely expect that given the immense scale of the business and the fact that it's still growing at 20%+ (remarkably), the future prospect of Amazon generating, say, $16+ billion in net income, is reasonable to expect. One can then debate whether it's rational to be granting that valuation to Amazon today, if it'll take another ten years to produce the $16 billion annually (pulling future returns forward, the cause of Microsoft's 15 years of stagnation in regards to its stock).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> How is Bezos making money? Amazon doesn't seem to generate enough dividends to reach this amount of wealth, or does it?

<comment><USER45> It's only by choice that Amazon doesn't generate dividends.

<comment><USER46> That's speculation. Maybe the low prices are the real reason why Amazon is doing so well.

<comment><USER47> The reason Amazon doesn't issue dividends is not because their prices/margins are too low. It's because they are constantly reinvesting in the business.

<comment><USER48> AWS is their real cash cow, but it gets stupid amounts of R&D funds put back into it. Azure is right behind them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Some fun facts: Jeff Bezos owns 80.9 million shares of AMZN (or did in September), which is about 17% of the company. Over 60% of the company is held by institutional shareholders, led by Vanguard. His annual salary is $100K. He appeared in Star Trek Beyond as a Star Fleet official. In his spare time, he runs a spaceship company.[1]

I've always admired Amazon and have been a customer of theirs since the late 90s when it was mainly a bookseller. For a while I owned a few hundred shares, but sold them for a slight profit. Had I held onto them... sigh...

Jeff Bezos is one of America's great entrepreneurs, along with Gates, Musk, Ellison, and a handful of others. This is America at its best. We could do worse than to produce such amazing and successful technology innovators.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos)

<comment><USER50> > His annual salary is $100K

I would have guessed 160.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> So is Bezos our modern day Carnegie or Rockefeller?

<comment><USER52> As a reference example, Rockefeller was worth over $300 billion in 2007 dollars:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Rockefeller&oq=Rockefeller&a...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Rockefeller&oq=Rockefeller&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=Rockefeller+wealth&*)

<comment><USER53> The $300 billion was estimated by assuming that his assets expand with US economic output. That makes no sense because the US population grew substantially (and the US economy has diversified into many new fields).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Unless Putin is on this list I doubt its veracity.

<comment><USER55> maybe they dont count corruption?

<comment><USER56> maybe they should.

<comment><USER57> When you're embezzling money the last thing you want is to reveal enough information about your stash to show up on these lists.

Saddam Hussein obviously had tons of liquid assets but the totality of them was never truly known. It was all squirreled away, and likely stolen by the caretakers when his regime imploded and the threat of retribution was removed.

How much did Pablo Esbobar have at his peak? We can only guess, but given the staggering cash-flow rate of an estimated $500 million _per week_ , perhaps as much as $30 billion. This is 1980s dollars, too. Adjusted for inflation that's absolutely nuts.

<comment><USER55> in the /r/conspiracy realm - it is widely believed that the reason for Gaddafi's execution was to go after the billions he had - and to take him down. The idea is that the Benghazi fiasco was let loose by the state dept so that HRC could loot Libya... its not provable - but the fact is that Gaddafi was one of the worlds richest ppl - and the rumor is that HRC and cabal stole all his loot.

He was worth a reportable 70 billion.... and unknown amount off-books...

He was murdered for his money. And anyone who says that is not true is fucking clueless about what the fuck is actually happening in this world at that level.

[http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/573aeac75632a39...](http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/573aeac75632a39742ed39a0/)

<comment><USER58> OK, I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this is just crazy.

So, in your scenario, HRC wants Gaddafi's money. So she orchestrates an attack on a US embassy nearly a year after he died, as a false flag operation. And then we sent people in get the money. Of course, officially we didn't send anyone in Libya in response to the attacks except some more marines to guard the embassy, so this group that went in to get the money did so secretly. But then why did they need to orchestrate the attack on the embassy? Why not just send spies in under cover? Also, where is the money in scenario? Is there some big fucking safe filled with gold bars in his palace that none of the militants have touched in that last year?

Oh, also you don't think Gaddafi's execution had anything to do with a prolonged civil war and numerous human rights violations? Or did Clinton also invent the Arab Spring and force Gaddafi to be a brutal dictator for decades?

<comment><USER55> OK, first, I am not trolling - and I didn't state that this was my belief per- se...

I do find all the Benghazi BS to be super weird - but thats just me without all the facts...

However, it is a documentable fact that Gaddafi may have been the richest documentable person (clearly we are ignoring the Rothschilds etc...) in the world...

He had vast assets and liquid cash all over the place. This is known - so do not accuse me of trolling on facts...

Further, it is known that HRC is a corrupt person (proven via her emails and many many other resources -- if you are unaware of this, then you're simply unaware and I am not trolling)

I said that it is RUMORED to have been financial motivation to go after Gaddafi... did you ever see the list of countries that Clark said the .gov was going to go after? Libya was on that list...

now, I shall admit my ignorance - as I am not entirely familiar with the libyan civil war, but I know my CIA history a fair bit... arab spring was an op. to foment a varied amount of things... civil wars here, uprisings there, extremests wherever... and change all over.

I never said Gaddafi was some benevolent anything -- I said he was sought for his money and executed CIA fashion.

so.. let me ask you: What happened to all the 70+++ billion dollars Gaddafi had? He was killed - what happened to his wealth?

I know that you have no fucking clue. So... what is your speculation?

Where did his funds go?

[http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/573aeac75632a39...](http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/573aeac75632a39742ed39a0/)

<comment><USER58> I'd imagine a lot of his liquid assets were seized by militants. From some googling, it seems some portion of his wealth was in a bunch of real estate he owned. I imagine those have also been seized, those that weren't destroyed. But the most part his wealth was invested in several western countries. Per [http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/21/world/la-fg- kadafi-m...](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/21/world/la-fg-kadafi- money-20111022) that money has been seized by the governments in question. But before you go "see, HRC took the money!" those assets were seized over a year before the war in Libya, so it's unrelated. That which hasn't been seized has probably been taken by his various money managers.

<comment><USER57> People that are very good at hiding money for the ludicrously and criminally rich are also, not surprisingly, very good at making money disappear.

If your biggest client just got killed in a coup do you really think you'd go through a lot of trouble to track down his various relatives as they're being systematically captured and/or executed by the uprising? No, you'd quietly wrap up all those trusts and funnel the money to safer places, like the bank accounts of yourself and people you trust.

<comment><USER55> You're just a hypocritical person...

You denigrate my comments yet you just state a reinforcement of my speculation ___" criminally rich are also, not surprisingly, very good at making money disappear._ __

this was the premise of my post!

Money went someplace, and we dont know where it went - did HRC profit off it or not....

<comment><USER57> You can't just speculate. Maybe it was the Pope! Trump! Elvis! Fucking aliens!

Come back with a shred of proof, okay?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Any reason why the Rothchilds never show up in these lists? My best guess there is some sort of "who's the richest game" for some new money players (who's fortune can be tracked), where old money prefers obscurity.

<comment><USER60> [http://www.snopes.com/rothschild-family- wealth/](http://www.snopes.com/rothschild-family-wealth/)

Basically, after three generations a single persons wealth is distributed out enough to get dropped from these sorts of lists. Jeff might be the 2nd richest in the world - it's highly unlikely his grandchildren will be ranked as such.

<comment><USER61> Good point. One family that is directly measurable however: offspring of Sam Walton. Bill G is a distant second by that yard stick: [https://www.forbes.com/profile/walton-1/](https://www.forbes.com/profile/walton-1/)

<comment><USER62> And that's why the individual Walton's are usually on the list. They usually occupy around 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th places.

<comment><USER57> When those fortunes split 3-5 ways again they'll be diluted down to 80th or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Woot! Go go Seattle billionaire club!

</comment><comment><USER64> funny thing is.. announcement to be made later

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Amazon's founder has added $10.2 billion this year to his wealth...

It's not even April yet...

<comment><USER65> End of financial year tomorrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> eh is it? I thought it's end of Q2 tomorrow only. The $10 billion is probably the addition of Q1 and Q2 so far this fiscal year.

<comment><USER65> Sorry I'm mistaken. The end of the fiscal year is the 5th of April in the UK.

In the US, I think this is different. So this is a more dramatic result considering.

<comment><USER66> The US fiscal year ends on September 30, but companies can set their own fiscal year. (Many C corps do end it at specific quarters)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> aka legalized [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme)</comment>