What I'm Teaching my Son about Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/05/20/what-im-teaching-my-son-about-money/ <comment><USER2> This line stands out to me:

> Income is not something that employers or the government ration out to you > based on a rigged system. It is a something you generate yourself. It is the > byproduct of your hard work, combined with learning and mastering the system > itself. Even the system itself is subject to your control if you choose.

It's easy to interpret this as a positive statement about the way things simply _are_ , but I don't think the author quite intends it that way. When pressed, he might say it is a positive statement, but the clearly intended ethical significance of the statement—the fact that it has deep consequences for the way his son _should_ act—suggests we can look deeper.

Specifically, it's important to understand the normative dimension of the statement: that when "income is not something that employers or the government ration out to you based on a rigged system", that is a good thing. And most importantly, it's possible for things not to be that way—whether because the laws or government of your country are not set up the right way, or because you yourself have the wrong attitude about your work.

The attitude interpretation is probably what the piece is focusing on (and what most readers will take away), because obviously the author can't teach his son to solve problems outside of his control. But the author is thinking about systems too.

When he says "the system itself is subject to your control if you choose" it's clear that there are plenty of systems where this is not the case, where the system is so huge or arbitary or irrational that "learning and mastering" it is not possible. Examples might include oppressive dictatorships, bloated bureaucracies, or sweatshops (especially to a child).

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The point I'm trying to make is that we have a responsibility not just for our own attitudes and actions, but also to shape our world in such a way that it is _possible_ for the right attitude to pay off.

Edit: the author's point about how the son's savings account enables him to be generous is a great example of this. This is called "moral luck" by philosophers--the idea that certain conditions need to obtain before a person can be virtuous. The idea goes back all the way to Aristotle.

<comment><USER3> In a wider social- and group-context it is sometimes best to maintain the view that you are a victim being manipulated by outside forces.

In a strictly _personal_ context it is often better to maintain the view that you are a fully empowered actor.

<comment><USER4> It's really quite important to maintain both.

Becoming wealthy without manipulating the system (or, put another way, becoming wealthy while creating a similar amount of value) requires both prudence and either a great deal of luck or a lot of hard work and reasonably good luck. Many people work hard; most do not become wealthy. Sometimes that's due to their own choices, but not always. It's something of a disservice to teach a child that he or she is a fully empowered actor; the reality is very different.

In the real world, you are competent, professional, and hardworking but your employer goes under during a bust. During the 2 years you're out of work, you drain your savings and have to start over from scratch. 5 to 10 years of earning, saving, and investing go down the crapper.

In the real world, you work hard, draw good pay, and invest wisely. Unfortunately, due to monetary policy established by unelected officials, you are faced with a choice of losing money to inflation every day or paying wildly inflated prices for any asset available to you. As a result, you never achieve financial independence no matter what you do.

In the real world, you may be faced with a choice between working a job that will never enable you to become financially independent and engaging a crooked physician to help you collect disability benefits from the government for the rest of your life. You find it impossible to accept that you should have to work for what others are given for nothing.

A child who grows up believing he or she is fully empowered is likely to respond poorly when encountering these situations later in life. It would be reasonable to interpret them (incorrectly, of course) as evidence of one's own failure, inadequacy, or even bad character. The reality is that the game is rigged, and badly so. The industrious good behavior the Calvinist work ethic endorses makes success a little more likely, but it's nothing close to a guarantee. Better to learn these lessons young, even if it encourages "cheating" later in life. Sadly, cheaters usually do prosper; the choice to be "honest" or not should be made from moral principles, not a misguided belief that it will lead to success/happiness/financial independence.

<comment><USER5> Read the book "The Millionaire Next Door". It is entire possible, and in fact commonplace, to become wealthy by quite ordinary and predictable means.

It isn't really about working hard, either. That's a myth. It's about working effectively, and making prudent, common sense choices about what to do with your income.

Of course, life can hand you a lot of bad luck that can derail your plans. But this is simply not the usual experience.

<comment><USER6> The "Millionaire's Next Door" in that book were working in an environment different than the current, that's a fact. Now whether the current environment is "less honest and merit-based" (as I happen to believe), or not, it is certainly different.

Bubbles come and go, some are long, some are short, some are consequential, some are not. For example, real estate bubbles: these are most dangerous because it is usually the most substantial asset purchase an individual ever makes, and it is typically 90% leverage. If you fall ass-backwards into the right spot on the development curve, you can literally turn $50k (down payment) into a million++ dollars - if you guess wrong, you're bankrupt and you pray that you have a non-recourse loan.

<comment><USER7> But your description sounds like a home the buyer lives in. That is not an investment, from an investor's point of view.

Instead, for a specific example, consider a 4-plex my wife and I bought for $65K down ($215K total - it is in an economically depressed area). Rents, when fully occupied (not always the case, we see about a 5% vacancy rate) are $700 a month over all expenses, including debt service.

Plus, we put close to 20% down but get 100% of the depreciation. End of the year: $7000 in our pockets, a legal tax loss of $800. And that is assuming no change in value of the asset. If someone offers to buy us out at %200 of the purchase price I would definitely consider it, but until then, I pocket the proceeds.

For me, doing the due diligence up front reduced the luck factor, my preferred way of obtaining my goals, when possible.

<comment><USER8> Your math does not add up. If your rental profits are $700/month (total for all 4 units), then your annual rental profits should be $8,400. For a property purchased for a total of $215,000, the depreciation should only be approximately $7800/year (straight line, 27.5 year recovery period), meaning that you should have annual taxable rental income of roughly $600.

Moreover, the amount of depreciation you can take (in total) does not increase with a change in the value of the asset; it's based on your "cost basis" in the asset. It only goes up if your costs in the asset increase, such as for property taxes paid, improvements, etc.

Finally, and this is a big one--the value of the land is excluded from the depreciation calculation--only the building and improvements to the property can be depreciated. So $215,000 is an upper bound on the recoverable amount-- the properly depreciable amount is less than that, meaning that your annual depreciation should actually be less than $7800/year and that you should actually have more than $600/year in net rental income.

You need to talk to an accountant soon, because if you get audited _you almost certainly will be paying back taxes and penalties._

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I was rounding conservatively, and my tax returns were prepared by a conservative, professional firm that I hold in high regards, so I am not concerned there, but thanks.

To be more accurate, we do get a bit more, but we withhold for repairs, replacement costs, wear and tear, new appliances, etc. So our income is higher, but I have trained myself not to count it, as the odds tell me I am going to have to pay for repairs. The $700 is what we get to hold onto most often, unless we are saving towards big repairs like new roof, outside paint, etc. And (crucially) I left out that we had enough first year expenses to legitimately lower that perceived income, as well as the interest that we get to deduct (interest being far higher at first in a mortgage payment). Next tax year will have different numbers, since we will have had different expenses and different occupancy (unfortunately they do not stay 100% occupied).

I am just trying to get out round numbers that show that it can work.

Most people have this concept that their house is their biggest asset, when a residence is really a liability for the person who lives in it.

I should not have taken the shortcuts in my math, but regardless, we do well. We have used the profits to invest in more education, and have recently purchased another unit in Florida that will start cash flowing in about two more months. Well, actually it cash flows now, but we had to pay for some new appliances, so in my head, we are negative for two more months, then we start paying off ourselves for the down payment. Again, I am more conservative.

So it is a slow path to wealth, but a valid path, nonetheless.

<comment><USER7> And I should have put this in the first comment I made: This is not legal advice, nor is it financial advice. Please seek professional guidance for specific situations. This only serves as an example of one specific deal I am involved in. And even I get the numbers slightly wrong sometimes - H/T to gamblor956 for reminding me to state this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love his blog because he not just tries to educate people about personal finance or money as an end to itself but about money with a purpose.

An attitude like his can almost be considered subversive today. If it wasn't for 'keeping up with the Joneses' the world could be a much better place and more people could live the lives they actually want to live.

<comment><USER10> Money (and it's alternate form, stuff) too often ends up being read like a scorecard, when it's really a means to an end. I love MMM for the exact same reason as you do - he gets that money is what lets you do things that you find enjoyable or rewarding, not something you flout around as a status symbol.

Thank god MMM is a subversive, because his is one of the only revolutions I could see myself subscribing to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's an active subreddit for discussing Financial Independence (FI) that often links to MMM and recommends his blog to people interested in learning about the topic.

If you liked the article, you might find the community there interesting: [http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence](http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence)

<comment><USER12> Suppose that there are, broadly-speaking, two levers on a person's financial independence function: money brought in, and money spent. The FI subreddit and MMM focus, IMO, almost exclusively on reducing money spent.

I subscribed to the FI sub hoping to find a lot of discussion about efforts to bring money in. Instead, I find a lot of people angling for a definition of financial independence that includes wearing the same clothes for seven years, barely ever eating out, and vacations that resemble nothing I'd call travel. Whatever discussion around increasing income does take place is usually centered around picking up another job. For me, as long as the income earned is a linear function of time invested, it's a losing proposition. There's a reason why "work 10 jobs" isn't commonly suggested as a way to get rich.

I know this sounds snobby, there's not any way around that.

My definition of FI is not having to deliberate, rationalize and bargain with myself when it comes to purchasing something I _want_. Yes, reducing wants is a major factor in happiness, but finally there will always be _something_ that I want, despite pursuing a life of frugality and parsimony. The FI/MMM approach leans _way too far_ towards ascetism for my tastes.

Are there any communities, besides HN, which focus discussion more on strategies for increasing income and less on lifestyle amputation?

<comment><USER13> I actually had a conversation like this with a freelancer a few weeks ago. He was cutting back expenses to achieve financial independence (you know, 10-20 years from now).

When I asked him why he didn't just increase his (seemingly low to me) freelancing rates by 10-20%, he said that was impossible. Little did he know I charge nearly triple his rate for sort of similar work, and spend about 50% less time than him working.

You don't build wealth by saving on small purchases, you do it by earning.

<comment><USER14> Charging more can increase sales without changing the quality of your product, assuming the product is already "good" or marketable. An increased price adds a perceived 'quality' or 'prestige' and you'll get bigger spenders, although fewer spenders. This is because of the bad reasoning that "more expensive = better".

My mother did this with her home business by slowly increasing her prices. The product she delivers hasn't changed in the slightest - but she now makes 5x more than she was before!

People fall into the trap of _lowering their cost_ to _increase buyers_ without paying attention to how much they are working. They see an increase of price "would ruin them financially" because they would get less clients.

Of course, finding the balance is important.

There was a story on HN where someone was setting up custom sites for $75. They quickly realized this was more work than they expected and began charging $2,000 a site (after charging more and more per site, from $200->$500->$1000).

People were still purchasing. Same work. $75 --> $2,000.

<comment><USER13> Absolutely. I live by this.

In contracting or consulting, you want to find critically important projects to work on and then almost shock people by what you're charging. Then overdeliver.

<comment><USER14> >Then overdeliver.

I feel this brings up another important thing. Set _realistic expectations_. Always set the bar at what they expect while remaining near the bare minimum of what you can realistically deliver...then do everything you can do deliver past that.

1) If you overpromise and underdeliver you give yourself a bad rep and have an unhappy client.

2) If you promise reasonably and overdeliver your client will be happy. Happy clients often lead to more clients.

Assuming in 1 and 2 you _did the same amount of work_ and the only difference was you didn't promise them the world and a field of kittens to boot. Marketing for 1 might land you the sale; but that's incredibly shortsighted. 2 will almost always do better for your business.

You will likely lose some sales if you market with #2 in mind. However are those the types of sales you want to begin with?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mr. Money Mustache really helped me with life as I ran my startups, because he taught me that I could live a great life with almost no money. Therefore, even if I failed, life could be great. This simple bit of wisdom massively reduced my anxiety, once I internalized it.

</comment><comment><USER16> With my 6 (almost 7) year old I've been giving him 2% daily interest on whatever is in his chequing account. He's aware I'll scale it back when it gets out of hand :) But so far he spends enough on nerf equipment that it hasn't posed a problem yet! Now he wants to keep more of his money in the bank to see it grow, and I didn't have to say that specifically, which was the entire point.

A rule I did have to institute later though is that if he forgets to ask for his interest that evening, he doesn't get paid.

We also have to rely on his last bank receipt to calculate the amount owed because it appears impossible (at least here in Canada) to open an online account for a child his age.

<comment><USER17> You make your kid ask you... every. single. night... to please give him his 2%? You are warping that child's mind with your mind games.

<comment><USER18> Disagree. The point is to get the child to internalize the value of savings and investing. Silent accumulation of wealth (the point of investing as a adult) is useless from an educational point of view (the point the parent is making for their child). It also teaches the value of speaking up for what is due. Hats-off to matb for it, IMO.

We give our kids an allowance of sorts for chores above the basics. We also allow them to blow this money on "stupid crap". We once let them split a pack of candy at an ice rink, but they didn't have the money yet (we were traveling). Once everyone agreed that they'd buy it with their allowance, I bought it with them understanding that they needed to pay me back.

Later that weekend, it came time to pay their allowance. We could have easily paid them $2 each (the net), but it was far more effective to pay them $3 each and then make them physically pay us back the $1 each, even though it resulted in significant frustration and a more than a few tears now that the candy was gone.

That's education, not a mind game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great article, it gives me some new ideas like the excel bankaccount with monthly interest. I value the curiosity that our son has. He likes to ask about how we make money with our own company, what taxes are and why you have to pay them. He's really happy when he can buy us an ice cream from his own money and have a good time together.

<comment><USER20> Agreed! This particular quote: "Income is not something that employers or the government ration out to you based on a rigged system. It is a something you generate yourself. It is the byproduct of your hard work, combined with learning and mastering the system itself. Even the system itself is subject to your control if you choose."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I liked this line:

> To me, raising kids to feel pressure and fear so they can be COMPETITORS is > bullshit. Life is not a competition. It's a gigantic collaboration, and the > world welcomes and rewards people who see it that way.

Life is not a competition; it's a collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like the idea of a spreadsheet. I suppose its ok to give your kids a 10% ARR, too bad we can't get that on anything as close to secure as "Dad's checkbook" :-).

But the key message which I really like is spending is your choice, and if you can't afford something you want to buy it may be because you chose to spend the money to buy it on something else instead. Recognizing that is what you are doing when you "spontaneously" buy that over priced beer at the ball game is a good life skill.

<comment><USER23> The stock market will, on average, do better than 10%/year. There will be some -50% years along the way, though.

To get 10% with zero volatility, you have to invest with Bernard Madoff.

<comment><USER22> Well I've only been really fully diversified since 2001 but over 2001 to 2015 it hasn't done 10% year over year, closer to 7.8% :-) And that included the tight clench in 2007 - 2009 which is why 'security' and 'return' are inversely related.

And I see the S&P has done slightly better (8.3% [1]) over 10 years so I should probably kick myself to having anything in a stock or fund other than SPY :-)

[1] [http://quicktake.morningstar.com/index/IndexCharts.aspx?Symb...](http://quicktake.morningstar.com/index/IndexCharts.aspx?Symbol=SPX)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I agree with the general premise of the article, but there are a few points that struck me as somewhat misleading.

 _> On the other hand, having crossed the threshold of having more than enough money for a good life almost a decade ago, I cannot even imagine my son not earning a plentiful and permanent surplus very early on in his adult life. _

If I remember correctly, the author's net worth was greatly boosted by the stock and real estate market bull market of the 90's. During that era, making an earnest living and investing aggressively in these two markets would handsomely reward you. To automatically believe that the same is true in the current era or any other future era is a dangerous assumption.

In regions with the biggest opportunities from employment, employees are increasingly priced out of the real estate rally and the tax savings home ownership affords you. Similarly, there are no guarantees on how much longer the current 5 year bull market run in the public equities market will last, and how sharp and long lasting an eventual correction will be. While it is possible for informed individuals to navigate times of volatility in the markets, it is a matter easier said than done, particularly for a young professional who has not experienced market turmoil first hand.

 _> And yet consider the stunning case study of the children of the nation's uber-wealthy enclaves like Palo Alto, California. Despite incredible wealth and some of the best educational institutions money can buy, kids there are more stressed, less happy, and more likely to commit suicide than others who live with a fraction of their privilege.

The problem arises when high-achieving parents assume that their kids need to be pushed to achieve more themselves, to beat out the other high achievers and gain access to the most elite schools, in order to compete in this incredibly challenging modern world._

It's worth examining "why" these parents behave this way -- what their underlying motivations are. I'm going to simplify the situation and focus on what I believe is the largest slice of the hypercompetitive student population: the children of successful immigrants (this classification is very representative of the Palo Alto and Cupertino school districts).

The immigrant parents who are sending their children to High School now overwhelmingly came from modest means and worked their way to financial and social well being and stability. As immigrants, their situation was highly volatile, both with respect to employment and residence status. As the author himself notes, parents want their children to have it better than them. The worst part about being an immigrant? The fear of not knowing what will happen to you tomorrow. The fear of losing your job and getting deported was a very real possibility. What they want for their children is first and foremost, stability. More than pure financial EV, they wish to maximize the predictability and stability of their children's employment prospects. Status and financial returns are secondary.

Anecdotally, even self made millionaire behave this way. Read "The Millionaire Next Door," (a book primarily about small business owners with prudent spending habits who saved their way to 7 figures) and you will find that most of these self made entrepreneurs want their children to become doctors and lawyers so that they won't have to endure the volatility that the parents suffered.

How do you maximize professional stability? The narrative of "go to the best school and study a technical, skill based discipline" is actually not misguided. The problem if any is that you quickly hit precipitously decreasing marginal returns on any additional academic competitive effort. But from the parents' perspective, even "poor marginal returns" looks like a no brainer. After all, they would have _loved_ to have that opportunity to increase their employment stability before being subjected to the economic forces themselves. The stress in children is a result of wildly differing perspectives and experiences between the immigrant parents and the child born to safety and prosperity. The parents truly want the best for their children, informed by their own experiences and difficulties. Sadly, even "the correct decision" for any person is hardly ever the correct decision for another.

<comment><USER25> Attaboy - this is what I thought when I read this. Land prices for the boomers made them. For their kids unless they are bequeathed land they will have to pay a vast chunk of their salary to rentiers.

Things have changed from the 1990s. The expansion of the money supply has detached asset prices from wages. Older people rode that wave and loved it. The price? Their kids are going to be farmed forever via the financialisation of housing.

Fantasy land. I work hard and I'm well paid, in a high percentile. My financial security is way below someone who went balls deep into debt in 2000 on housing. They could have done a low stress, low pay job and they'd have more equity than me as I've had to spend a tonne on rent.

ps in fact on his "about" section he has this:

"very boring conservative Vanguard index funds and a __rental house or two__."

The first time I heard about the compound interest for kids was this "bank of dad":

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/05/owen_on_parenti.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/05/owen_on_parenti.html)

Itself it's totally unrealistic now thanks to QE which itself of course is pumping asset prices which is great if you have "a rental house or two".

Retired in his 30s to have a family. Must be nice especially if you have a family slaving away in your rental houses for you so you can capture all their labour.

<comment><USER26> >Retired in his 30s to have a family. Must be nice especially if you have a family slaving away in your rental houses for you so you can capture all their labour.

I will never understand this kind of thinking. A rental agreement is beneficial to both parties - otherwise it would never have existed. You're no more "capture[ing] all their labour" than they are "squatting on your property".

<comment><USER27> Land is special because it can't be made. Imagine that you land on some planet, with no way to go back. You can work remotely using the intergalactic internet. It turns out you're the second guy there, the first guy now legally owns all the land. He agrees to rent you some land for living, at the maximum price you are capable of paying. Isn't he capturing your labor?

It's still 'beneficial' to both parties, because if you don't pay you will get legally killed for trespassing by police robots.

That's the situation on Earth, except 'the guy' is 'older generations' and the homeless are generally allowed to sleep rough on public land in most countries. Also no intergalactic internet.

<comment><USER28> On Earth, you can turn away and choose someone else.

If someone is renting too high of a price, then you go somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really liked the compassion and care that MMM shows for his kid. In too many articles like this, it's clear that the author cares more that the child adopts the parent's ideology than that the child is actually happy. The goals and methods were moderate: earning one's own money (at an appropriate age), learning to control one's own life (I would add "to the extent possible") and not over or undervaluing wealth.

My only reservation was the artificial 10% interest rate. The current interest rate is 0%. Over the last 100 years interest rates averaged 5%. This is a concern to me because people on the Right tend to fetishize compound interest rates, while MMM seems to focus on true fundamentals.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am one of those people who followed the path (and was told to) of "study hard, get a good job, work hard till retirement, spend wisely, ...". A few years back, I realized that one important thing nobody taught me during my childhood is that a very important part of everyone's life is to provide value to others in exchange for money that you live by.

At that time, I decided to teach my children about this. One of the ways I have thought of doing this is to ask my children to start earning a small amount of money early in life by providing value to others in ethical ways. I am glad to read that the author, who can be considered an expert at managing personal money, is being successful at a similar experiment.

<comment><USER31> This connection—between earning money and providing value to others—is something that sounds obvious, but I only really internalized it recently, after reading Kevin Simler's Congolese Trading Window thought experiment[1].

It would be easy to take this line of reasoning into dangerous territory and suppose that earning money is equivalent to being morally virtuous, but this neglects externalities and the sometimes fundamental difficulty of accurately pricing certain kinds of goods (subjective wellbeing, community, a sense of meaning, etc.). Money is, at best, a very rough proxy measure for human value.

[1] [http://www.meltingasphalt.com/wealth-the-toxic- byproduct/](http://www.meltingasphalt.com/wealth-the-toxic-byproduct/)

<comment><USER32> That's a good article. It has a long introduction that resembles libertarian twaddle, but then Section V brings it home to tie the knot in a way most econ 101 libertarians ignore.

<comment><USER29> Actually the article is completely wrong.

If you make money "squarely" as described in I-IV, then you have created some value. Cashing out in section V is simply consuming that value.

All we can say (given the assumptions in I-IV) is that the person was a net positive (or zero) for the Congolese economy.

The technical mistake that the author makes is not realizing that adding value to the Congolese economy means increasing the total amount of _physical_ wealth in the economy. When the person cashes out their yacht, they are simply exchanging cash for the physical wealth they helped create.

I don't think you can logically say that I-IV are "libertarian twaddle" and that V "brings it home", because V is predicated on I-IV being true. If you're interested in the theoretical basis behind "econ 101" I suggest you look into general equilibrium theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While I don't have kids myself these types of experiments aimed at pushing kids in a certain beneficial direction. e.g. My dad had a policy that he'd cover the cost of all bookstore purchases. All other entertainment expenses get funded via allowance.

I wouldn't be surprised if small nudges like that have far reaching effects much later in life.

<comment><USER34> _I wouldn 't be surprised if small nudges like that have far reaching effects much later in life._

I suspect that having a nudger around who cares enough to do that kind of nudging is what really matters.

<comment><USER33> >I suspect that having a nudger around who cares enough to do that kind of nudging is what really matters.

That too. I'm proud to say that my dad was a true class act - he swore both his kids would walk into life with a varsity education and no debt come hell or high water.

That being said I still think its the small practical things that count. All those small things accumulate towards one massive social edge that is hard to quantify. Suppose you need to pick an engineer to build a bridge...the one grew up with legos the other grew up without. Who do you pick? Trivial childhood detail?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great article! It's funny to think how our kids are overwhelmed by useless subjects and have no background on personal finance.

On the long-term, it's fundamental for building wealth and a future for oneself.

</comment><comment><USER36> > more likely to commit suicide than others who live with a fraction of their > privilege.

data that supports this?

</comment><comment><USER37> Mr money mustache needs to spend some of that dosh on a properly scalable server, I think.

</comment><comment><USER38> I love the fact that you guys are using that spreadsheet.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can I please deposit some money in the Bank of MMM?

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm glad to see MMM here on hacker news!

</comment><comment><USER40> If your kid asks for something, don't just tell them it's too expensive. If you don't want them to have it find some good reason, but not always "it's too expensive". The kid will get a distorted idea of the value of things.

A few years ago I finally figured out that the reason my mother always says things are too expensive is that her father committed suicide when she was just seven years old.

<comment><USER41> >The kid will get a distorted idea of the value of things. //

Are you equating price with value here? Just because something is expensive doesn't mean it is valuable.

<comment><USER42> Not to speak for OP, but my mother used to do that too, used 'too expensive' as a reason when she didn't want me to have something. That video game rental was 'too expensive' or those hideous velcro shoes were 'too expensive' and what have you. It was really confusing to hear that McDonalds was 'too expensive' and then have delicious grilled steaks for dinner that night.</comment></comment></comment>


Objective-C Memory Management For Lazy People - <AUTHOR> http://interfacelab.com/objective-c-memory-management-for-lazy-people/ <comment><USER2> I think the article vastly overstates its case. Nobody disputes that it's possible to have more-or-less working memory management in ref-counted Objective-C. But it's clearly harder than in a GC language, else it wouldn't need seven pages worth of "simple rules" to explain.

Moreover, the author glosses over many of subtleties of reference-counting. For example, accessors in Java are dead-simple, practically boilerplate. But in Cocoa, what looks like a perfectly reasonable implementation to a newcomer is in fact buggy:

      - setFoo: (id)aFoo {
        [foo release];
        foo = [aFoo retain];
      }

Look closely, and you'll realize that if foo and aFoo are in fact the same object, it will be freed, and foo will have an invalid pointer assigned to it. Pretty much every Cocoa programmer knows about this, but we shouldn't ahve to.

One of the better Cocoa blogs is written by Mike Ash, and he has quite a few posts that illustrate some of these issues. For example, the first half of [http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2010-12-03-accessors...](http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2010-12-03-accessors-memory-management-and-thread-safety.html) talks about whether or not accessors should autorelease their return values, with pros and cons for each option. Later on, the money quote: "If you're using garbage collection, this whole question becomes vastly simpler."

Our author here says that "Cyclic object graphs in Objective-C are not a problem. At all." But another post by Mike Ash illustrates that it can be harder to deal with: [http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2010-04-30-dealing-w...](http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2010-04-30-dealing-with-retain-cycles.html) . A great example:

      _myInstanceVar = [[SomeClass alloc] initWithBlock: ^{
        [self doSomething];
      }];

Using 'self' within the block captures it in the closure as a reference, and then the closure itself is referred to by the instance variable of 'self'. This cycle is hard for the coder to notice, and will leak.

<comment><USER3> Here's another good example of why memory management isn't as simple as this article makes it out to be

        -(void) addAccount:(UIBarButtonItem*)button {
            ListController *list = [[ListController alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewStylePlain];
            UIPopoverController *pop = [[UIPopoverController alloc] initWithContentViewController:list];
            pop.popoverContentSize = CGSizeMake(320, 200);
            [pop presentPopoverFromBarButtonItem:button permittedArrowDirections:UIPopoverArrowDirectionAny animated:YES];
            [list release];
            [pop release];
        }

Anyone see the problem with this code?

<comment><USER4> UIPopoverController does not retain itself and will cause a crash shortly after that release. Both the iOS SDK and the Cocoa SDK are fairly inconsistent about which presentation classes require retaining and which handle that themselves -- UIAlertView does not require it, for example.

<comment><USER3> Precisely, and that's the thing I've come to learn about objective-c memory management. It's fairly easy to learn as the article points out, but in practice when you have to interface with other developers code, it can be a confusing mess.

<comment><USER5> I know this from practice, having come in halfway through a project on iOS whose code was exquisitely, terrifyingly awful. I was fine on memory management; it was hunting down previous memory management errors that took up most of my time. I ended up giving up and reimplementing certain classes because it was seriously simpler than debugging the existing code.

I think the issue is that trivial examples—for example, the kind you have in a blog post or comment—will invariably look simple and easy. In a non-trivial application, "four basic rules" ends up being four more things that can create bugs.

<comment><USER6> And this brings up a point overlooked in the article: it isn't about the time it takes to do things right, it's also about the time it takes to track down the problem when you inevitably (you ARE human after all) make a mistake. To me, that's the real value of GC, because memory allocation errors are tedious and time consuming to debug.

The author is confusing 'habitual' with 'easy', and the two concepts are very distinct. And even beyond that he undervalues the debug time saved with automated GC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, before knowing about Obj-C memory management in detail I thought it was ok. Now that I know the rules it looks painful.

If someone were to write such an article about C, then it would have just one line: if you malloc, then you must free.

If someone were to write such an article about C++, it would be more involved: delete if you new, delete[] if you new[] and then they'd explain auto_ptr and shared_ptr. More complicated that C, but still reasonably easy and you can get automatic memory management.

On the other hand we have Objective-C, where you apparently need at least 11 paragraphs to explain the basics, only to find out that - yes - you still have to call malloc and free only with other names and slightly different behaviour?

<comment><USER8> For me "if you malloc, then you must free" is _much_ harder, because you have to know whether ownership was passed to you, who else might be using object when you free it, etc.

In Objective-C there's no owner, everyone borrows objects. You increase retain count (if you want to hold object for longer than lifetime of a function), and you decrease retain count when done.

And there are few methods to increase (retain, init, copy, new, property assignent) and few to decrease count (release, autorelease, nil property assignment).

To me it's that simple.

<comment><USER9> Reference count based GC? How would you deal with circular reference?

<comment><USER10> You don't.

You'd avoid creating circular structures as much as possible. You can get pretty far that way.

<comment><USER9> It's very difficult to avoid it when thing goes complicating. A may reference B, B may reference C, ... and somewhere, X may reference back to A. If this strategy makes sense for big project, many hackers work with C++ can use it either, as the performance overhead is very low.

But in the real world, reference-count based GC just has limited usage.

<comment><USER10> > But in the real world, reference-count based GC just has limited usage.

And in theory it doesn't fare much better. Proper garbage collection can have better performance, and does the Right Thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article has some good points for people who are new to Objective-C, but (much like the comments you complained that people were downvoting) the snarkiness and condescension tends to distract from it.

Anyway, thanks for posting it. FWIW, I'm one of the comments you linked to as being unhelpful.

</comment><comment><USER12> The reason most people find Objective-C memory management hard at first is they don't realise the importance of recognising and following the conventions.

Once you know the handful of conventions the article covers, knowing when to retain or release is pretty easy.

</comment><comment><USER13> The original article was strange in that it got a whole lot of things wrong, but was sufficiently technical that you would actually have to have been an iOS and an Android developer in order to discuss it. This is why the comments were so content-free on Hacker News.

(Just one example of the things the article got wrong: The Android emulator actually defers a lot to the host OS and its own implementations to the point where I have never seen an OpenGL ES app that runs the same way on the emulator as it does on real hardware; the Android emulator also runs at full speed: it's just slower because it's doing more.)

</comment><comment><USER14> > @property (retain) NSString *title;

Why is he retaining NSString? Shouldn't that be (copy)?

<comment><USER15> Not necessarily. If you want to avoid situations where title points at a mutable subclass, yes, but if that isn't a concern, there's nothing inherently incorrect with a simple retain.

<comment><USER16> Except that if someone modifies the string they passed you, your 'copy' of the string will also change.

<comment><USER17> That would only occur if it was an NSMutableString, like the GP said.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coders at work is finally available - <AUTHOR> http://codersatwork.com/

<comment><USER3> Founders at Work is one of those books that I keep finding myself re-reading over and over. There is so much good stuff there.

For some reason, the description of this book just doesn't inspire me to read it. It's hard to articulate why that is, since it's in the same style as Founders, and it interviews a similar set of people.

Maybe it's just that I've heard enough from that generation of programmers. Maybe I've just heard enough from _all_ programmers. Maybe, talking about programming is simply not interesting at all. I don't know.

Tell me about how you launched a billion dollar company from your apartment with stolen office chairs and I'm there. Tell me how you _really_ like pointers, and I sort of lose interest.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I feel similar. Programming isn't _that_ hard :/

Building a successful startup, selling stuff, getting investment etc etc - They seem orders of magnitude harder than programming.

<comment><USER5> " Programming isn't that hard"

Whoa! doesn't that depend very much on what exactly you mean by "programming" and which specific program you are trying to create ?

<comment><USER4> Pick a webapp. Lets take twitter or facebook, or even youtube. I'm sure there's some really interesting problems when you drill down, and it'd take a fair while to conquer the problems, but it's just a large mountain - <USER2> takes longer to climb. I'm sure most of us _could_ build a facebook/twitter/youtube clone if we decided to.

The hard bit of course would be getting people to use it.

The world is absolutely littered with fantastic clever well written programs, that no one uses. This is why I think programming is far easier than convincing someone to use it and all that other non-programming stuff, and why I personally am far more interested in the non-technical side of the equation. In comparison, the technical side is trivial.

<comment><USER6> People always assume this with sites like youtube/facebook/twitter/etc but they forget that the most interesting problems tend to come from the requirements of scaling.

From my experience most people seem to have their wall at which point they can't possibly conceive of a better way to scale X until someone comes along and goes "Try this". My experience also says this level is pretty low for most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a crime this isn't on the Kindle. A book about hackers? When I emailed the author, he was not so interested. Books I bought for the Kindle last quarter: 20. Books I bought on paper: 0.

Update: It's also hasn't been submitted for Amazon Search Inside scanning or Google Book Search. If authors retain their digital rights, they can submit to both (plus Kindle) services quite easily from a variety of source formats -- circumventing ancient publisher pipelines. Alas.

<comment><USER8> Never mind Kindle, I just want a paperback.

<comment><USER9> Actually that's the only choice. I'm not sure why Amazon lists it as hardcover. Presumably they'll get that straightened out one of these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Masterminds of Programming[0] is another cool book on the subject.

[0] <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596515171/>

<comment><USER11> Yes, this was a really good book. I suspect that Coders at Work will be a little better though because the interviewer(s) in Masterminds seemed a bit weak in places and not really able to keep up with the interviewees in the discussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No sample/preview chapter?

</comment><comment><USER13> Re Knuth: _"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."_ \- Gall's Law

\- Tesla claimed that he could envisage an entire complex machine (and run it, so he could watch which parts wear out), without experimenting or prototyping or designing anything - as a contrast to Edison.

\- Henri Poincaré claimed that complex new insights came to him fully formed (after immersing himself in their details), from his unconscious.

Re Simon Peyton Jones: Functional programming is the future of imperative programming and always will be.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish it was possible to buy a PDF version.

<comment><USER15> I believe the ebook option at <http://apress.com/book/view/1430219483> is a PDF.

<comment><USER16> I went there literally ready to punch in the CC#.

But $21?! I might as well pay the extra $9 and have a nice physical artifact to show for it.

<comment><USER17> Or you can save a dollar and get the hardback from Amazon. O'Reilly is having the same issue setting prices for their eBooks against Amazon[1].

[1] [http://getsatisfaction.com/oreilly/topics/amazon_hardcopy_is...](http://getsatisfaction.com/oreilly/topics/amazon_hardcopy_is_cheaper_than_ebook)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >> "Crockford is, by nature, a simplifier and a tidier. He invented JSON, the data interchange format widely used in Ajax applications"

Does anyone else find it irritating to read "He _invented_ JSON", which isn't true at all? He _popularized_ and called out JSON which already existed.

<comment><USER18> Crockford actually makes the explicit distinction that he discovered JSON vs inventing it in a presentation he gave called "The JSON Saga".

[http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford...](http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford- json)

It seems like other people often say that he invented it, even though he doesn't say that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome. I'm pre-ordering the second I get home from work... or maybe during lunch.

<comment><USER20> There's no reason to pre-order, since it was released today. I _did_ pre-order last week, and Amazon told me it'd be shipped on the 15th, _sigh_.

<comment><USER21> Except that Amazon still shows it as pre-order (10:09 AM EST).

<comment><USER9> It has now switched from "Pre-order" to "Add to Shopping Cart".

edit: And then they switched it back. Grrrr.

<comment><USER22> It's up for me now.

Looking forward to reading the book, Peter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In searching for the book on Amazon I found this: [http://www.amazon.com/Land- Lisp-Learn-Program-Game/dp/159327...](http://www.amazon.com/Land-Lisp-Learn- Program-Game/dp/1593272006/)

Sweet.

</comment><comment><USER24> Funny, it was also pirated today. (I have an RSS watch for "darksiderg" on Mininova.)

<comment><USER24> To all the downvoters: Guess what, I live in Eastern Europe, so I can't go to the local bookstore to flip through books. English language books (most good stuff written today) doesn't get imported at all. Books that are popular in the US are translated (terrible for technical books) about 5-10 years after their original release date. So guess what, I download the books, look at them, and order the good ones (about 5 every few months) from Amazon and Alibris.

<comment><USER25> I think the downvotes may have something to do with the fact that you gave a bunch of information that make it very easy for others to download the book as well. Effectively you have probably cost the author a bunch of potential sales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Too much old / academia guys for my tastes. Underground / modern programming is a different kind of culture.

<comment><USER27> Ah, young padawan. How cute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Only two in the list are women. However, one could argue that almost all programmers will be women in the far future.

That's because as AI becomes more sophisticated, programming will become more like teaching.

And teaching is something that mostly interests women today.

<comment><USER25> > However, one could argue that almost all programmers will be women in the > far future.

I find that hard to believe.

> And teaching is something that mostly interests women today.

I'm all for more balance but to either relegate women to teaching because 'that mostly interests women' (for which I have no evidence, my classes were pretty much 60/40 men/women, with the men predominant in the maths/physics/chemistry department, but that was a while ago) or to assume that men are not interested in it (they are), whichever way I slice it I can't make much sense of it.

Would you mind explaining ?

<comment><USER28> Men (and women) become professors to do research -- not to teach. In fact, top research universities try to minimize the undergraduate teaching that professors have to do.

<comment><USER25> The mission of a university - and of everybody in it, from the janitor to the director - is to further our collective knowledge.

That means that every professor, whether teaching, researching or both, irrespective of their gender is engaged in this. Some professors put the accent on research, others spend as much of their time teaching as they can, for most of them it is a mix.

I do not see any argument why men or women would be predisposed to go one way or the other.

My suspicion is that you have some bias that you should get rid of to see things more in perspective.

Maybe this is your personal experience (which is always a possibility) but the world is a very large place and very few generalizations hold if you have a large enough sample.

Yours will almost certainly not stand the test of being exposed to the world the way I see it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you while the automated tests are running? - <AUTHOR> I work on a Rails app with a fair amount of test coverage with Cucumber. It takes around 30 to 40 minutes to run the entire test suite. While the tests are running, I usually check my email, HN news, Stackoverflow and Reddit. They don't seem like the best use of my time. Can you share some things you do that's productive? <comment><USER2> My guess is that you're testing AR associations all over the place and that the business logic in your models is tightly coupled to AR associations. This has the effect of slowing down testing tremendously.

I try to write code so that stuff that needs to be tested is not tied to AR. Why should your logic need to wait for AR to fetch records and fire a callback when the part that is likely to break (that isn't covered by AR's test suite) is your logic, not the data fetching or callback infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER3> We dont run the entire test suit. Our last night test suit took 159 minutes to finish.

We automated that in order to run every night. We need a 100% pass rate before we push to production.

If you just do something you run those specific tests. If something else breaks due to that, it will be caught ( hopefully ) by the nightly tests.

Imagine having to run the test suite 2 - 3 times a day. Your day would be wasted !

</comment><comment><USER4> I use my Ansible runs (which are much shorter, but still take a huge chunk of the day in agregate) to update my todos and timesheets, doodle ideas... and also to check email and HN. So it goes.

Of course, my Ansible runs are shorter because I try not to do the full run every time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Shorten the tests is one thing. A lot of database setups and tear downs? Try encapsulating each test in a transaction to keep it in memory.

Another thing is reading the docs of the libraries you use - reading around a subject is an under used and highly valuable activity.

</comment><comment><USER6> Actually relevant xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/303/](http://xkcd.com/303/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I start planning my work for the next few hours, scratching down notes / sketching out an algorithm / design a screen / update my todo list . Although I have never had to wait more than 5 minutes for tests to run.

</comment><comment><USER8> I work. Don't let tests dictate your workflow, start them and move onto something else. The results will wait until you have time to focus on them again.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do BDD tests typically take that long to run?

My unit tests take 1-50ms to run (the majority of them closer to 1ms) and I can run a decent suite of them in a few seconds.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a huge room for improvement in my automation code here and there, but there are also some hard improvement barriers presented from using selenium webdriver. In the future, I am thinking about moving all the selenium webdriver tests to use phantomjs. I am also still using ruby 1.8.7. I hope that upgrading to ruby 2.0 will have noticeable improvement in speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You should set up something like Jenkins (or use a hosted solution like Travis), and keep working. No need to wait around for test results...

</comment><comment><USER11> Office jousting.

Edit damn! Someone already posted the xkcd.

</comment><comment><USER12> Try to schedule your tests to run over lunch, or during meetings, or kick them off at the end of a work day.

</comment><comment><USER13> I run the tests in a VM so that I can keep working on them while the tests are running.</comment>


Lockitron Sells Over 9000 Units in First Week, Opens Up Orders for Batch 2 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lockitron.com/post/32927907961/production-updates

<comment><USER2> Buyer beware. The original Lockitrons were OEMed from a Chinese company (they only really built the software) and damaged quite a few locks to the point keys no longer worked.

Far from an isolated case unfortunately. I replaced at least 4 of them myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very early in our history - before we launched publicly last year - we made a number of custom installations in the Bay Area where we ourselves hacked together solutions using off-the-shelf components. In some cases the quality of the locks we used didn't live up to the standards we expected - in all cases where our early customers notified us, we repaired and replaced the early Lockitrons for free, without question with upgraded models or traditional replacement locks. Sorry that you had a poor experience, we are always here to help if you reach out to us.

We are still happy to replace any failed Lockitron components. We learned that using another supplier's components meant that we were beholden to their quality and ultimately that responsibility falls on our shoulders. During our pre-launch period we learnt that there are no magic shortcuts and no silver bullets to make all styles of locks compatible with Lockitron.

For the new Lockitron's mechanical design we worked with a firm with experience in creating millions of high quality products for Fortune 500 companies. We are leveraging their sourcing capabilities to ensure we deliver a high quality product in the same way that their current products end up in the homes of millions of consumers while living up to the expectations that they perform through years of wear and tear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Call me old fashion, but I'll save $150 and leave a key under the mat.

<comment> mansoor-s Why is this modded down?

<comment><USER4> <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

Probably because it adds nothing to the discussion. Your comment would probably be modded down too as a result.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to think this guy's question wouldn't be actively modded down for not adding to the discussion. Yes, people are supposed to read the rules and such, but I don't find anything wrong about legitimately asking the community for clarifications about standards and expectations, especially when things are border-line. Indeed, the case of the original commenter seems a little border- line to me - while his point is valid, he comes across as needlessly flippant, and is probably being down-modded more for perceived attitude than actual lack of content. That's a subtle point, and it wouldn't happen on every forum.

That said, I recognize that such meta discussions can be a little derailing, and I don't want to derail this discussion any further - so I'll just leave it at "let's not be a place that discourages new people from asking questions".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.lockitron.com/post/32927907961/production- updates)

</comment><comment><USER7> Tumblr is currently undergoing maintenance, so this is an unfortunate time to reach the frontpage of HN.

(The full post has been reprinted here, though: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4620163.>)

</comment><comment><USER8> Site currently unavailable

<comment><USER9> From the Bing cache[1], this is a very short post with some information about the 2nd batch available probably in May:

\--8<\---

Production Updates

Thanks to all of our backers for pushing Lockitron beyond $1 million in reservations! We've been working hard to get back to everyone and we thank you for your patience – we're bringing in some help so we may answer your questions more quickly.

As we noted yesterday, we have gone far past the original 1,000 Lockitrons we intended to make in the first run. We have been very careful to hold off from selling Lockitron in bulk or wholesale quantity to ensure that individual backers have a chance to get in.

We've been in touch with our manufacturing partner, and to ensure that we satisfy all the backers who have supported us already in a timely fashion, we are going to restrict the first batch of Lockitrons to 9,000 units. We're planning to start shipping batch 1 in March. Once batch 1 fills up, we will open up pre-orders for batch 2. (Edit: batch 1 is now full. We have just opened pre-orders for batch 2.)

It will take us a few days to get a more accurate quote for the new production times, however we don't anticipate batch 2 to begin shipping before May.

In the coming weeks we will be posting new pictures and videos of the Lockitron mechanism in action. We've had a lot of questions about compatibility - of course, if you discover that your door is unfortunately incompatible with Lockitron you can cancel your reservation.

\--8<\---

[1] [http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=blog.lockitron.com%2fpost%2...](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=blog.lockitron.com%2fpost%2f32927907961%2fproduction- updates&d=348495168431&w=4e238952,391779c8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://i.imgur.com/gVbiw.jpg></comment>


What Dart wants - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sethladd.com/2012/09/what-dart-wants.html

<comment><USER2> I want to fall in love with a scripting language like I did back when there was Perl. These days there are so many!

I want something with a good IDE debugger. Not because I write a lot of bugs, but because I like to interact with my code as it runs. Javascript is looking better with ES5/strict and V8+node.js, but it still looks difficult to me (I like to understand the syntax in detail).

Probably I'm just being too picky.</comment>


Ask HN: Where does Neural Networks fall short? - <AUTHOR> Hiya!
I have a background in cognitive science which studies the mind. ANN and DNN are probably the hottest topics within ML that are suppose to model the mind.
One mission is to classify images. Since I am not well read on the matter I was simply curious in what aspects does todays models fall short in this topic?
Question: Can a todays state of art neural network models seperate a red apple from a green one from having trained on lets say 1000 images of red and 0-1 green apples?
I know that one of the downsides with current models is that they demand a lot of data which our minds does not. If someone showed me 1000 different images of red apples, it would be enough to that that there exists green one, partly because I have a perception of what green is and can apply it. However, if I didn't know the color green, it would be sufficient to show me a image of green or a green apple to learn that fact. <comment><USER2> Image classification is only a 90 - 95% correct situation. Convolutional, and other forms of neural networks are vulnerable to pixel attacks, this is an area of great research right now Checkout arxiv.net computer science</comment>


Ask HN:Depression in Workplace - <AUTHOR> Have you ever experienced depression because of your work. Did you find difficulty in getting proper treatment? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if that was "proper" depression, but many times I've felt very low at my jobs. Luckily, I was always making enough to save a lot of money, so I was able to quit and recover every ~2 years. During the recovery period, I followed my various interests, such as exploring programming, ML, computer vision, mathematics, making art, music, games, reading a lot of books. I didn't go deep on many of these, but I gained some understanding of the fields and what it is like to do these things, which I feel made me a much more well- rounded person, compared to someone who has just been working software jobs his whole life.

Incidentally, one of the results is that now I see jobs as strictly means to an end - i.e. a way to earn money to be able to do interesting things. I think it makes me more resilient at jobs - whatever the level of suckage I experience in a job, I know that it is only temporary and that this sacrifice is for something. If I was career oriented, the depressing circumstances of many jobs would hit me much much harder (as career-oriented people see career as a huge part of their file, and the realisation that huge part of your life is a failure and makes you miserable surely can lead to massive depression).

<comment><USER3> I agree. I am one of those career people. Unfortunately I dont make enough to quit.

The lies the company tells to dangle the carrot in front of you eventually destroys you when you never get it. At my company, the policies are great but they don't follow them. Plus, the project leadership/vision sucks.

I've never been diagnosed with depression. I tend to be happy, or at least content, when not at work. When I'm at work, I constantly dream of quitting.

<comment><USER2> Keeping costs of living low (see my comment above) is a very reliable, if long-winded, path to freedom. The fact, that, via LCOL, you don't depend on "them" as much, also helps mentally.

<comment><USER3> I try, but I have a family and my wife does not financially contribute.

I have a garden (big enough I can stuff), keep bees (and sell honey), grow shiitake and lions mane, make our alcohol (fruit wines, mostly from stuff I grow), make our own soap, and other hobbies that save or make some money. Of course I do the usual stuff like Netflix instead of cable, use a budget cell carrier, etc.

It helps, but the big influence is one's spouse. My spouse spends most of her money on horse stuff. I'm left to pay the bills and basically support us on a single income. She does not share my dream of retiring early.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depression is a medical issue and will exist in all fields and workplaces.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi All, I am trying to know if depression is a real problem in workplace especially in engineering industry.</comment>


Massive patent troll suit seeks to tax USB hubs at Wal-Mart, Amazon, Best Buy - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/nest-ceo-and-ex-apple-star-are-inventors-in-patent-troll-suit-over-usb/ <comment><USER2> The SIO bus used by Atari 400/800 computers (shipped in 1978 or 1979) looks like it could be prior art. SIO was only 19200 bits/sec, but who cares? :-)</comment>


Show HN: Webcam + Favicon = Face-icon - <AUTHOR> http://paulkaplan.me/Experiments/Favicon/favicon.html

<comment><USER2> Nice idea, but in Chrome when you activate WebRTC, the favicon will blink with a "recording" icon, ruining the effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think so, it works fine for me.

<comment><USER3> Im seeing the same issue on 26.0.1410.3 Mac Chrome

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm on 24.0.1312.57 and it is working fine, but it says I'm up to date, is that a dev build or something?

<comment><USER3> Im not at that computer now, but according to <http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/> it is the OS X dev build.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Million Lines of Obfuscation - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2013/10/healthcare_gov_problems_what_5_million_lines_of_code_really_means.html

<comment><USER2> This is a really lucid response to the 500m loc nonsense

<comment><USER3> I found it to be the opposite - no new information, no explanation. While the author certainly know more about programming than a NYT reporter he is simply guessing about the facts (actual LOC, leaker qualifications, employer and motives) and his explanation that comments and trailing brackets explain, even partially, the huge line count is ridiculous.

Perhaps he (or someone else) should contact the NYT reporter to see if this mystery can be cleared up.</comment></comment>


IncludeJS - Use CommonJS modules inside Ruby/Rails - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/walski/include_js A friend of mine found himself in the situation of having to implement the same business logic in both Javascript and Ruby.
So he wondered how to get rid of that duplication. The solution he came up with is IncludeJS which allows you to implement something in Javascript and use that code _both_ in Javascript and in Ruby.
He gave a talk on this topic during RailsConf2011, which provides some more details: http://en.oreilly.com/rails2011/public/schedule/detail/1941 <comment><AUTHOR> A friend of mine ran into the situation of having to implement the same business logic in both Javascript and Ruby.

He wondered how to get around this and his solution is IncludeJS which allows to write the business logic in Javascript and use this code in BOTH Javascript and Ruby. He gave a talk about this during the Railsconf 2011, here's the URL where you can find the abstract and slides which provide some more details about this:

<http://en.oreilly.com/rails2011/public/schedule/detail/19412></comment>


The wrong kind of sharing: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/jan/26/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-page-hacked

<comment><USER2> If facebook was a public company, zuck would have seen the stocks go through the roof about now.</comment>


Switching from Java to Python – First Impressions - <AUTHOR> http://henrikwarne.com/2014/06/22/switching-from-java-to-python-first-impressions/

<comment><USER2> > So which is better? For me, this is not an important question. I am not a > Java-programmer, or a Python-programmer. I am a programmer, period. There > are differences, but Python and Java have more in common than what sets them > apart. Fundamentally, programming is about breaking a problem down, and then > using elementary operations, conditions and iterations to solve it. The > mechanics may vary, but the core is the same.

Finally someone with a sane attitude toward language flame wars.</comment>


Facebook blocks links to B.S. Detector, fake news warning plugin - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/02/facebook-bsdetector-plugin-blocked/ <comment> joatmon-snoo People keep saying that Facebook should be doing more to block fake news, but here's the part that I don't get: why do you want Facebook to exercise even _more_ discretion over what kind of news people see?

That's to say nothing of the sheer difficulty of classifying something as "fake news". What's the threshold? How do you determine if something is fake news? Should stuff like Clickhole and The Onion - y'know, satire news - <USER2> considered fake news? What about sources like the Huffington Post, which masquerades as a newspaper but is literally a glorified blogger platform?

<comment><USER3> That's why you don't block; you flag. Let people make their own choices, but informed. Allow users to flag a link or post with tags such as Satire, Misleading, Controversial, Editorialized, Biased, Debunked, etc. Everyone else can still view the links and posts, but with some small indication of its trustworthiness. Though I feel like some tags, such as Debunked, should perhaps require a supporting link attached to a flag.

<comment><USER4> Tagging by users can easily be gamed but it would be a useful signal for an algorithm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure why anyone uses Facebook anymore. I think a better plugin would be to remove any posts that contain remote content.

Then you are simply left with updates about your friends.

<comment><USER6> The FBPurity browser plugin might interest you. You can block all sorts of content based on post type and keyword. [http://www.fbpurity.com](http://www.fbpurity.com)

<comment><USER7> I've tried this plugin and it's very useful, however, in my case the chat stops working when enabled.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, interesting. For what it's worth, I haven't had that problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ugh. Facebook should quit pretending to be part of the web. Just recreate the AOL experience and be done with it.

It is beyond embarrassing that they're blocking people from helping each other in order to fail at saving, er, face.

"Share with your friends in any way our PR department approves!" At least China isn't weaselly about its control-freakery. Zuck & pals really should own theirs.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would like to see a raw unfiltered stream on Facebook with some colored labels like satire, entertainment, opinon, etc. Rather than label an entire source, each story should be labeled, perhaps by a community effort.

Deciding what is fake and what is not with an algorithm is a slippery slope.

Mainstream media rushed stories that created their own echo chambers last week with the Ohio State incident.

Newsweek was just on air the other day saying they published a story that they did not read or write. If mainstream journalists are not doing their job, how can we trust an algorithm to get it right?

</comment><comment><USER10> This plugin blocks wikileaks.org as a "rumor" site.

This is what I feared would happen with plugins and concepts like this.

<comment><USER11> The plugin doesn't block anything, it labels things.

Wikileaks is a "rumor" site. It doesn't provide verified information.

<comment><USER12> > Wikileaks is a "rumor" site. It doesn't provide verified information.

This is a blatant lie. But I guess this is the type of propaganda and JTRIG ops that we have to get used to.

[https://wikileaks.org/About.html](https://wikileaks.org/About.html)

> We are fearless in our efforts to get the unvarnished truth out to the > public. When information comes in, our journalists analyse the material, > verify it and write a news piece about it describing its significance to > society. We then publish both the news story and the original material in > order to enable readers to analyse the story in the context of the original > source material themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From Hustler Magazine v. Falwell to this ... sad.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell#/media/File:Falwellhustler.jpg)

<comment> joatmon-snoo In what way is this relevant at all?

<comment><USER14> Fake news is protected under free speech. Not on Facebook since it's private but it's a bad thing if everyone has a walled garden.

People are actively trying to turn the internet into a safe space ignoring free speech and all the hard work that came before to keep it.

There is no 100% filter for fake news especially with all this propaganda from governments not excluding the United States.

<comment><USER15> Not sure how that is relevant...Has anyone proposed removing fake news from the internet entirely?

<comment><USER16> The problem isn't that fake news exists, it's that Facebook's algorithm promotes it over real news.

<comment><USER17> Still not seeing the connection to Hustler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I just saw a link to the site on my feed and it was working fine for me -- anyone else seeing it blocked?

<comment><USER19> Just tried to post the link on my FB feed and it works fine. There is no blocking.

<comment><USER20> TechCrunch is fake news! Or... Facebook changed their tactic after being called out on it (for at least some users).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well, you have it, your ministry of Truth.

Now the question is, the fake news detector:

Will detect the lies about weapons of mass destruction?

Will detect about lies in basic statistics like gross product or unemployment done by Gov agencies?

It is said that the first victim in any war is Truth, as we get nearer a financial collapse because debt unsustainable path the people in power are getting more and more worried and want to exert some kind of censure about news and data they can't control.

It would be great to have fake news and data detector that are not centralized. Oh wait, they already exist: places like shadowstats.com

But I bet that if you access those places you will become labeled a fake news subversive that doubts the sacred news that people in power want you to believe.

</comment><comment><USER22> Some challenges:

\- it's hard to draw a line between true and false in the presence of subjective information.

\- it's hard to do a classification without false positives and false negatives.

\- it's hard to defend yourself from accusations of bias and manipulation in the presence of false positives/false negatives.

\- it's hard to scale a process involving human reviewers.

So, in short, what they did is to let the community regulate their own content. If people visit some stupid article about curing cancer by eating cheetos while twerking then that is what is going to trend. If people want to read about Brawndo, the thirst mutilator and how awesome it is on plants let them read it.

<comment><USER22> Then, just like television is not responsible for TV addicts, Facebook may not be responsible for the susceptibility of people to believe and share fake news.

<comment><USER23> Why should Facebook be responsible? Do we really need to "protect" people by preventing them from reading tabloid magazines?

<comment><USER22> I think the problem to address should be improving education. If you are well educated it would take a much more elaborate effort to trick you. It's still possible, e.g: race baiting and conspiracy theories have become a thing lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Clearly, they are part of the problem. Perhaps even symbolicly the problem(s) itself.

<comment><USER25> exactly. if it comes down to people internalizing information from various sources without any critical thought, its really too late for democracy. trying to vet the sources after the fact is pointless. if any random person can bring down society purely by spewing innuendo, then the whole premise of the fourth estate is flawed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The problem with this, of course, is that even Pulitzer winning organizations are guilty of being fake news. And they're, arguably, far more damaging than National Enquirer type headlines.

[https://www.google.com/amp/www.newyorker.com/news/news- desk/...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the- propaganda-about-russian-propaganda/amp)

<comment><USER27> That got even more ridiculous when Josh Marshall of TPM and Paul Krugman of the New York Times got pissed off at all the people who didn't buy it because of course, everyone knows that Russia was influencing the election: [https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/802192619627540480](https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/802192619627540480) Just like the most obnoxious fake-news-spreading social media users, the fact that it confirmed their belief was more important than its obvious fakeness.

And make no mistake, a dodgy anonymous group spreading dubious but terrifying stats about Russian propaganda whilst redefining that to mean any site posting politicial views they disagree with is a form of fake news, even if they eventually managed to find a reputable news organisation that would launder their claims for them.

<comment><USER28> The problem with the NSA database -- and I assume the Russian equivalent -- is that it can be used to hide interference in other nations (or domestically), using social graph information and psychology profiles.

I don't believe that the issues which won Trump the election are because of Russian influence -- they're generational scale strategic blunders on the part of the US -- but that several of them became "active" at a critical moment in US politics is precisely how covert warfare between large nations is enacted (or, at least, is the obvious extension of Cold War tactics).

It's very likely that Russia executed an operation against the US during the most recent election cycle. The actual effectiveness of that, and the culpability we bear in leaving the nation is such a vulnerable state is a matter of considerable debate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "The list of domains powering the B.S. Detector was somewhat indiscriminately compiled from various sources around the web." You don't say. Could that be why thedailywtf.com is in that list?

</comment><comment><USER30> Isn't Facebook blocking _any_ plugins that interfere with the site contents? Perhaps it just got popular enough for them to notice?

</comment><comment><USER31> How about a plugin that blocks Facebook completely?

<comment><USER15> Insert

127.0.0.1 facebook.com 127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com

into your /etc/hosts file.

<comment><USER16> Even better, use 0.0.0.0 to avoid timing out on localhost.

Or :: for IPv6.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Remember Facebook before news? It was fantastic.

Newsfeed advertisements lead to rich multimedia posts which lead to news and then fake news.

From a product standpoint, I think they should not have allowed news organizations on the platform.

<comment><USER33> Ah, Facebook nowadays is just idiots writing their friends' names underneath meme pics, because they think that's how you share stuff with friends: some content has 100K comments, but most of it is just people's names, such a tragic UX. The great news is that this 9gag-level junk content is what will turn away their eyeballs base.

<comment><USER16> Blame the interface, not the user. This just tells you tagging is more discoverable than sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Everyone gets what they want out of Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER34> Everyone gets what they want from facebook

</comment><comment><USER35> what's going under the hood here to reliably tell if an article is fake or not?

<comment><USER36> Checking against a PR-curated list: [https://github.com/selfagency/bs- detector/blob/master/chrome...](https://github.com/selfagency/bs- detector/blob/master/chrome/data/data.json)

<comment><USER35> that's incredibly simple, I thought some NLP and web crawling was involved.

The bigger challenge are fake news generating disinformation and fake comments on various social media platforms.

This is especially true in reddit where sockpuppetry and vote manipulation as well as band wagoning is rampant. Anonymity in social network seems to serve the voice of those who exploit it's weakness as well as the general naivety and indifference from it's audiences.

For example, in various cryptocoin subreddits I'm seeing a lot of said activities, even where it is blatantly obvious, the moderators seem to turn the other cheeck as it generates long debates.

As I recall, Zuckerberg did the same shit in the early days according the movie The social network where he would jump in discussion and generate long debates. Except, now the very technique is being used for political and manipulations in un-regulated "crypto-anarchist-code-is-law" market exchanges.

It's a matter of time before more tools that help the user cut through the bullshit appears. There will be tit for tats on both sides but in the long run it's to make fake information expensive to be disseminated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Which, incidentally, "detects" any non-left-wing news source as "B.S.".

<comment><USER38> Didn't check myself, can you just provide any example of that? Poster above says it blocks Wikileaks as a rumor site which is, um, not even non-left-wing. Wikileaks is a legitimate source that isn't partisan, but partisan people love or hate it whenever it reveals something good or bad for their side. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's too easy to blame Facebook in this case. Fake news has a market because people seek it out. Some may want to believe the fake news to confirm a world view they hold and others may see it as entertainment.

The real problem here is why do people want to believe things that are obviously not true? Maybe some of it is that the world is increasingly more complicated. You can't explain most issues without researching current events and having a firm grasp of history. Perhaps it is comforting for people who do not have the time or the ability to understand complex problems.

In my opinion, the easiest thing for Facebook to do to fix the problem is to just bring back the chronological news feed. If a friend of mine shares something Facebook assumes I don't agree with then I should be the one to make that decision, not an algorithm. This will break the "bubbles" by forcing people to talk to each other again.

<comment><USER40> Fake news is a problem because the wrong metrics are being targeted. Fake news vendors are seeking clicks because ctr maps directly to their revenue stream. So they make outrage click bait, get the money, and compete to make the most outrageous stuff. There's a mix of human psychology and general platform failure going on here.

<comment><USER39> > Fake news vendors are seeking clicks because ctr maps directly to their > revenue stream.

This is an absolutely important aspect of the fake news problem. It goes back to when news started to be run for profit, which has always been the case to some degree. In recent decades it appears to have accelerated. The internet during this time started to become commercialized as well. The ad supported internet and for profit news combine to create this scenario.

Maybe it is a chicken and egg problem... Does supply drive demand in this case or is it the other way around? I genuinely do not have an answer and suspect it is somewhere in the middle. It is an unfortunate symbiotic relationship we have found ourselves in.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Convert c to lisp? - <AUTHOR>

Hi I'm trying to find a program or library that can convert an arbitrary procedural program written in c, java, perl or any similar language to a functional language like lisp or haskell.
There are a couple of tools to go the other way or embed lisp in a c program (since you can just "unwind" lisp declarations like a macro):
http://www.interhack.net/projects/lpp/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TPPW3i4v9A
And I found ECL which lets you call c from lisp and vice versa, but doesn't seem to do any actual conversion of the code or make any guarantees that it's correct or without side effects.
It should be possible to do this, at least for a very simple program that for example only has access to the input and output streams:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church-Turing_thesis
Am I just being naive?  Is this a nontrivial problem?  If so, this seems like it would be an interesting research topic.
I very much need a c to lisp converter so that I can rapidly prototype my functions and results without having to think in a purely functional manner, because it doesn't tend to match the real world and worse, I can't explain my code to other people.  I would also like to evolve my code with genetic algorithms and it's much easier to do that with lisp than syntax-heavy languages.  If this is a truly intractable problem then I wonder if this has anything to do with the problems facing software engineering today.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> The Church-Turing thesis simply tells us that different models of computation are equivalent — and as applied to programming languages, anything that one Turing-equivalent language can compute, another can. But it emphatically does not mean that idiomatic code in one language can be mechanically translated into idiomatic (or even particularly readable) code in another language by a simple process.

If you did have a C-to-Lisp converter, it would almost certainly produce very imperative-style Lisp code that mimics the form of the C input, not nice functional code like you probably want.

</comment><comment><USER3> If your problem isn't well-suited to a functional approach, why are you using Lisp to solve it?

Anyway, the Church-Turing thesis won't cause you any trouble. C and Lisp are both "Turing-complete" which means that any program you can write in one will be representable in the other. I couldn't find a direct translation, but maybe this Fortran->Lisp converter from 1979 will show you how it's possible? <http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/Fortran-to-Lisp.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. I try to write most of my code in a functional manner in c, so like, DRY, favoring functions instead of having a variable dependent on another variable, stuff like that. I want to make a tool at some point that takes a block of c code and converts it to lisp so that I can try various transformations and permutations like Mathematica does, or evolve the parse tree with genetic programming:

<http://www.geneticprogramming.com/Tutorial/>

Then I want to turn the lisp code back into c code and keep it readable. Off the top of my head, I might be able to represent any globals in c as a list and pass that along to the lisp functions, or better yet, ban globals for now. External library calls would probably also be banned, unless they are from a built-in library with no side effects. It's just much easier for me to proofread code than generate it so I'd really like to have a tool like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a compiler that compiles c/c++ to xml. It's name esacpes me now, but a little bit of google-fu should do,

XML to lisp should be relatively straightforward.</comment>


Suicide of an Uber engineer: Widow blames job stress, racism - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Suicide-of-an-Uber-engineer-widow-blames-job-11095807.php <comment><USER2> Just last night some tech workers were talking about what a friend had said of working at Uber. The culture there allows "toe stepping" so that for example if someone is on vacation it is okay to take over work that had been assigned to them. Also they practice "always on" which means that any time of any day maybe required to meet company goals. These two features alone are damning enough, but when combined with a culture of back stabbing among high level managers the results are atrocious. This cannot end well.

<comment><USER3> > if someone is on vacation it is okay to take over work that had been > assigned to them

I really hope this means it's okay to do that _with_ discussion before the employee goes on vacation. If not, holy crap that really does sound awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So after such a tragedy, what does Uber do? They deny the family's benefits claim, of course:

 _Uber denied the benefits claim through its insurance carrier. In California, workers' compensation usually does not cover psychiatric injuries until after six months of employment. Joseph Thomas had worked slightly less than five months at Uber when he killed himself._

 _But there is an exception to the six-month rule. It doesn't apply "if the psychiatric injury is caused by a sudden and extraordinary employment condition," according to California law._

<comment><USER5> Well naturally. Why would you give free money to people?

<comment><USER4> There are other factors at play. Like, you know, concern for the next of kin and an expected general sense of remorse, for example.

<comment><USER6> Remorse for what?

<comment><USER4> Like, you know -- leaving 2 children without a father, and a widow with a broken heart. That sort of thing.

<comment><USER6> That's implying causation. Two children without a father and a widow with a broken heart happened. Why would anybody want to scramble to assume financial liability for such an incident?

Do I feel remorse for people starving in Venezuela? No, as I have done nothing to directly cause the starvation. Nobody's agony should have a claim on your financial resources or your property.

<comment><USER4> _Why would anybody want to scramble to assume financial liability for such an incident?_

Because it's the right thing to do (in this case).

<comment><USER7> > Because it's the right thing to do (in this case).

In your opinion, uber obviously disagrees. Why is life insurance tied to a company in the first place?

<comment><USER4> _Why is life insurance tied to a company in the first place?_

Again, my focus is on the suffering that has been caused. Not statutory or contractual liability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Uber denied the benefits claim through its insurance carrier.

That seems like an _extremely_ terrible move, even if Uber might be technically correct. Deciding to do that makes them _look_ awful, and I think that's what matters most, given everything else contributing to their public image right now. It could have been a great opportunity to look magnanimous.

</comment><comment><USER8> This story is heartbreaking.

</comment><comment><USER9> This could happen in any profession or culture. Uber are just the ones in the spotlight right now.

The real issue here is unfortunately ONCE AGAIN, a lack of mental health awareness and services.

A psychiatrist has diagnosed someone with "high anxiety"...why aren't they are being subscribed treatment in the form of therapy or medicine? He went to ask for help, and was told something wasn't going well...let's do something to remedy that! If assistance was in fact prescribed and Thomas denied that it would help him, the fault then is placed on social awareness and acceptance regarding men receiving mental health care.

As someone who has gone through my own suicidal thoughts and had therapy and medication literally save my life, this infuriates me to no end.

<comment><USER10> And what happens if you feel you have to leave your job? You lose your insurance, or go on disability and have a target on your back for the next 10 years of your career.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And another condemnation of Uber.

<comment><USER11> When it came out what Uber was doing to track Lyft drivers that was kind of the nail in the coffin for me.

There's just too much. Companies will always make someone angry, but there's just TOO MUCH.

I will never use Uber, and I'll encourage everyone I know to avoid it as well. Do we REALLY want this company getting a monopoly?

<comment><USER12> Could you imagine how unethical they would be if they were the only game in town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How could Uber become such an awful company?

</comment><comment><USER14> It's terrible that this young man committed suicide, but it there any evidence that it was Uber's fault?

Is the racism claim based purely on lack of hiring diversity? If Thomas was given unforgiving or impossible tasks, why would he refuse to quit?</comment>


3800 communities of reddit in one JavaScript visualization - <AUTHOR> http://www.yasiv.com/allreddit

<comment><AUTHOR> Some time ago I showed visualization of reddit in parts, using SVG.

I add WebGL support to my library (<https://github.com/anvaka/VivaGraphJS> ) and wanted to visualize full graph of indexed reddit.

A blog post describing how it works: [http://blog.yasiv.com/2012/07/visualizing-communities-of- red...](http://blog.yasiv.com/2012/07/visualizing-communities-of- redditcom.html)

Would love to hear what you think...</comment>


Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors with Ukrainian Firmware - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware <comment><USER2> > John Deere and other manufacturers have made it impossible to perform > "unauthorized" repair on farm equipment, which farmers see as an attack on > their sovereignty

I think this is the key point. All other harms of DRM are just symptoms, enabled by loss of sovereignty - of having some corporation make itself arbiter of what you're allowed to do with hardware that is supposedly yours.

</comment><comment><USER3> Add (2017) to the title, please.

Previously: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=john+deere](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=john+deere)</comment>


Show HN: Self Host the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dosyago/22120.git <comment><USER2> This is neat. As a data hoarder I thank/hate you for this.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is amazing work. If this is yours, well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. it is mine. how can I get companies to pay me for this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's the purpose for it?</comment>


Show HN: Drop-in replacement for Logstash / FluentD with a management console - <AUTHOR> https://www.trink.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, i'm the creator of Trink.io - the first managed log collection platform.

I've created Trink.io because my team and I spent endless hours on something that was suppose to be simple like shipping logs. I knew that it shouldn't be this way, and when we focused on the process as a whole we realized that current setups can be improved in almost all aspects, like cost, performance, agility, scalability and visibility.

Our goal is to offer a single solution that connects to all popular sources (e.g AWS, K8s) and ships them to a destination of your choice (Datadog, Logz etc) in minutes instead of days.

You can try it for free for up to 10/GB per day. We'd really appreciate your feedback!

<comment><USER2> Hi :-) Does Trink do just the sending of logs to an external aggregation point (ex: syslog-ng), or does it handle aggregation, visualization, etc.?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Matt!

Trink handle the entire shipping scope, from your servers to your preferred log monitoring tool or storage.

One of the things we offer is a visualization of the operational data pipeline, Which also is the key element in our configuration process</comment></comment></comment>