A new census shows how a Brazilian favela works - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/05/30/a-new-census-shows-how-a-brazilian-favela-really-works <comment><USER3> Well, in Rio, I believe life in favela truly is horrible for most of the time. I can think of a few reasons:

\- Lack of decent public education

\- Lack of decent healthcare

\- Lack of basic infrastructure, in a lot of favelas, they don't even legally have electricity

\- Jobs are scarce, favela's citizens usually endure long commutes under the very inefficient public transport system to work low-paying jobs

\- Rio's favelas are usually located in hills, when it rains, landslides are very common, more often than not they are deadly

\- Most favelas are dominated by heavily armed drug dealers (most of their weaponry are semi-auto rifles coming from the USA), law-abiding citizens often see themselves under gunfire between rival gangs or cops

\- Citizens are often extorted by drug dealers, or even corrupt cops. They need to pay a "protection tax" in exchange for basic services

I could go on and on ...

Source: Born and raised in Rio

<comment><USER4> Curious that criminals would import semi auto rifles from the US when Brazil has a very large domestic gun maker (Taurus). The Taurus guns should be massively cheaper. Unless you're referring to the full auto weapons flooded into South America by the CIA in the 80's. Those I could believe are cheaper.

<comment><USER5> Taurus quality control illustrated (turn on the subtitles)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9_YWNo1f-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9_YWNo1f-o)

<comment><USER6> They are the packard bell of firearms.. I don't miss that desktop company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went to Brazil about 15 years ago. My girlfriend signed us up for a favela tour in Rio. We had a private guide. It was going pretty well until the police started a raid. The fireworks went off to let people know the police were coming. I saw one cop who looked terrified and I saw another shooting indiscriminately up a hill with his rifle. At first, I wasn't worried but everyone around us went behind a truck, so we joined them. After that, the guide was ready to continue but my girlfriend said we were done.

Our Brazilian friend back in the states said we should have never gone in the first place. The favelas are run by the gangs. She grew up in one of them so I assume she knows what she's talking about.

Fortunately for me, it was my girlfriend's idea.

<comment><USER8> Favelas are neighborhoods where lots and lots of families live their everyday life.

It has crime just like any other place (e.g. a Phd in UCLA mapped gangs in LA, santa monica and Beverly hills had the most count of gangs and members) but the police treat favelas as their war ground, causing an artificial firepower escalation. And the reason is twofold: by twisting public opinion that favelas only have criminals you can relinquish all forms of state spending (culture, etc) and you can maintain a tight grip on the local political representation during elections, and favelas have lots of votes.

In sum, it has nothing to do with the gangs per-se. It's more artificial public policy.

<comment><USER9> Dunno about US experience, but for someone coming from Europe like me favelas that I've visited in Rio surely left impression of very dangerous places - <USER2> I grew up in Serbia in 90s, been through wars and all that shit and anarchy, and had my share of street education. Now, it's quite possible that they have less crime than some other neighborhoods, but that's just because gangs keep a close grip on their territory. As long as you play by their rules you can live your life sort-of normally. Problem with living in such surrounding arrises when you're forced to go against them, as there's no law to protect you, so you're fully at their mercy. That's a HUGE difference from Santa Monica or Beverly Hills, and much more like living in Somalia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As @throwawayr1188, me too, I'm born and raised in Rio, and I'm very surprised to see such article on Hacker News.

No doubt, a favela can be a very dangerous place from an foreign, but I understand the fact that many people are curious to see how it really looks in its innards, despite this danger. My grandfather lived his entire life in a favela called Acari in the North of Rio, and I used to go there visit him. About 50 milles distant from Copacabana, Acari is a shit place with an IDH lower than some poor countries in Africa. But, as described in The Economist article, Acari too has a very active economy. You can find all sort of businesses in there. Of course, I'm not talking about millions of dollars businesses, but there's an interesting cash flow running inside of the favela. However it's not enough to make people rich. The life condition in favela are really horrible. Besides all that has been said here, I have to add on point that hasn't been mentioned: Favela are extremely noisy places... It's pretty common bars playing music incredible loud. Besides that, some favelas organise parties called 'baile funks'. These parties have their pros and cons:

PROS \- people coming from outside (many spend money buying drinks, food, cigarettes, etc) \- it promotes some fun for young people living in the favela

CONS \- These partie are often organised by drug dealers... it attracts some drug adds to the location, and cocaine, crack, etc run freely \- The music in the 'bailes' uses to be extremely loud. As it doesn't have acoustic protection the entire favela don't sleep during those parties which may go through an entire week-end. It very bad for those who have to wake up to go work.

My advice, do not visit favelas... The vast majority of its population, I'd say more than 99,9% of its habitants are honest people, but this 0,1% and their war with police and other drug dealers represent a real danger for your life.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it really that surprising that large favelas have things like supermarkets? Yes, there are drug lords and extreme gun violence and illegal electrical installations, but these slums have been around for decades and are home to hundreds of thousands of people. Many of these people are not interested in a life of crime, but simply don't have the means to live anywhere else, so what else would they do if not slowly build towards a semblance of civilization in the area where they are forced to live?

<comment><USER12> Yes, it is surprising to see over 3000 illegal businesses in a neighborhood, working under a violent regime.

Is there a point to your comment we're missing? It's a lot more interesting to discuss the findings, than your impression of people's impressions on it.

For example, how much cash flows from these business to traffickers.

<comment><USER13> Plenty of legal businesses too, e.g. Bank of Brazil in Rocinha:

[https://goo.gl/maps/pK3K1Lc24fgh7wzv6](https://goo.gl/maps/pK3K1Lc24fgh7wzv6)

When I lived in an affluent part of Rio, I often got my haircut, bought fruit, veg and groceries in the local slum.

Many locals believed the slums were strictly no-go. While some certainly were, many were fine. Rather than build a mental barrier around these places, I find its better to interact.

Common sense, courtesy, some humility are all that are required - that goes for the high brow malls as well as the favelas.

<comment><USER14> I'd love to do this. I live in SP. How do I know which ones are safe even for someone with a noticeable gringo look and accent? Whose word to trust?

<comment><USER13> I tend to look at the risk as being relative.

For me, downtown Rio around 'Central do Brasil' bus and train station were far higher risk than many slums.

Various areas around Rio (and SP) have 'Cracklands' (Cracolândia) with many crack cocaine users who are frighteningly unstable. Reports describing hold- ups, with victims cooperating and getting shot - usually in a better parts of town put things in perspective for me.

Some slums are trying to open to tourism, as a starting point you could look up well-reviewed bars\restaurants in slums to get an introduction. As the article suggests, there are many legit businesses in slums, so going to the ones with a lot of business activity is usually a good bet. The economy of a slum can only develop if there is a reasonable level of security.

I can only trust my judgement. I have not encountered any problems so far. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://outline.com/2kMJur](https://outline.com/2kMJur)

</comment><comment><USER16> Favelas are a mass transit problem. People live there, in bad conditions, because they are somewhat nearer to their jobs. Otherwise, they would spend half a day in their way to work.. Renting a 'house' in a favela is more expensive then renting a good house in small cities.

<comment><USER17> Rio has one of the best public transportation systems of Brazil. What is a shame really, because yes, it's not that good.

But the urban area goes for dozens of km on every way. Rio is confined between the sea and the hills, there aren't many places to expand into suburbia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This census is fantastic. There is a ton of work to be done throughout the world in these informal communities/economies. Documentation, data collection, analysis...

Also, just an observation, I noticed a lot of these comments here are tangential to the article.

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone who has never been to Brazil has no right to speak about this topic. Edit: I see the down-votes, but will stand my ground on this topic.

<comment><USER20> I've been to Brazil. Stayed in Rio for 5 days. Went to Sugarloaf Mountain and saw Cristo Redentor. Saw a regional "futbol" match, got drunk and danced the night away. Never stepped foot into a favela, closest I got was as I flew into and out of the airport there.

Why do I have a right to speak about Brazilian favelas and a (team of) reporter(s) whose done dozens (or hundreds) of hours of research on the topic does not?

<comment><USER19> You don't have any right since you've never been to Brazil outside of tourist context. All the places you've listed are famous tourist attractions. Do you believe your opinion and views about Favelas actually have merit? If so, on what basis?

<comment><USER21> The point was being made that your "been to Brazil" bar is far too low.

<comment><USER22> You're committing the same fallacy as the other responder. This bar is THE LEAST of the thresholds, not THE LAST of them. You're misconstruing the comments to which you're responding.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Security Is Maturing in the Docker Ecosystem - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xebia.com/security-is-maturing-in-the-docker-ecosystem/ <comment><USER2> Hmm, nothing about identifying and fixing security issues in the code in containers?</comment>


Ask HN:How do you manage to go through loads of infos to build a product? - <AUTHOR>

Everytime I want to learn some topic, I learn many things about it but never seems to be sufficient to build a product. I am of course talking about the programming and technology stuffs. suppose when I want to learn about javascript I get started soon but then I am lost within tons of information about it, the books, documentation, videos and never reach to build some product I am proud of. Any good suggestion would be appreciable. <comment><USER2> Go through less information. A far, far superior developer to me once said 'An efficient way to find the answer your looking for is the most valuable thing a developer can have.'

1\. Decide on what to build 2\. Break the project down into small chunks (i.e. add dropdown) 3\. When you get stuck, stop reading as soon as you find an answer that works and get back to developing

You can always go back and make it better later. Just make sure you're moving forward with your projects.

<comment><USER3> Yes, agreed. OP shouldn't be out trying to learn JavaScript, take classes, etc.. OP should be out trying to learn how to do a specific thing they ran into problems implementing - how to loop through a set of things that each take a callback in NodeJS and run something when done, etc..

The amount of general learning people do nowadays should probably just be classified as procrastination. Easier to read a book or take a class than actually sit down and write something. So there are people who just do that constantly and never actually build anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try reading or listening to "The Checklist Manifesto: How to get things right". I believe Jack Dorsey gives it to each of his employees. As you learn independently you will find long term success in mastering your own process.

I agree with the other comments regarding breaking projects into small chunks. I have found success just finding the most recommended resources and then organizing it in order of beginner to advanced. Build your own curriculum with all of the resources you have gathered.

Structure is important even if it needs to be self imposed.

Don't be too concerned with being super efficient in what you learn because resources will overlap in content, some more than others. The overlapped content is usually fundamental and never a bad thing to go over more than once with a different perspective.

You seem to be very driven and kudos for attacking your personal development full steam.

</comment><comment><USER5> Focus, patience and meta learning.

Focus: don't try and learn about every topic

Patience: it seems you simply do not stick to one subject long enough to build some product you are proud of. Remember that learning takes time and practice.

Meta-learning: get an idea of how you learn the easiest. As you said there is tons of information. You'll have to figure out what helps you most: Real life courses? Practice? Video courses? Short tutorials? Books? Peer programming?

So, once you have your focus, decided to be patient and know how you learn the easiest, go and find out what is available on your topic of interest.

This depends per topic (for iOS, for example, there are loads of pretty useful videos available for registered developers). Often you can find nice lists of 'where to start', for instance on StackOverflow.

</comment><comment><USER6> Start working on a project, and when you have a problem, only then go look for a solution.

</comment><comment><USER7> i was going to say "learn how to learn", but that sounds rather trite. instead, learn what to learn and from where to learn.

if you're "lost within tons of information about it", it sounds like you are trying to gather everything you can. learn how to evaluate sources and pick a small handful to focus on, learn how to figure out what minimal info you need to to learn, and go from there. focus on the minimum viable info needed to accomplish your task, and go from there. minimize your inputs to what you need to have something to show.</comment>


Show HN: A Hands-On Guide on PySpark Coding and Best Practices - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ericxiao251/spark-syntax <comment><USER2> Great start, if you keep at it i'd love to see more of the advanced stuff. I feel like we're all hitting problems like skew and it would be cool to have a reference for dealing with those.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey quadrature, thanks for the feedback! Would you be able to go into more details about what skew you see :)?

In chapter 7 I go into some methods of fixing skewed data when performing joins. This solved a majority of our skew problems, but we still see skew on aggregates I believe. I am working on how to debug/find skews in a spark application in Chapter 6, wanted to initially release this as I've been procrastinating over 2 years to do so lol.

We have done more spark parameter optimizations but that helps after the data skew have been resolved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I didn't find Apache Arrow in this repo. I would like to learn more about your experience with using arrow, performance improvements and any lessons.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't looked into/keep up with Arrow much, but if I see fit, I can add more stuff about it :)!

<comment><USER4> I've given a very introductory talk about what Arrow "gives for free" when using the right kind of UDF. It's more fun in person, but with the references at the end and the presenter notes I think you could get an idea of what you will want to mention quicker than having to look at it from scratch. It's [here]([https://github.com/rberenguel/pyspark-arrow- pandas](https://github.com/rberenguel/pyspark-arrow-pandas)), I hope you find it useful!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh awesome thanks for the resources! I will definitely see how i can incorporate it into my guide :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great and much needed! Looking forward to chapter 6. Wish I had the other chapters when I was getting started with spark.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I agree, that was the whole premise of the repo 2 years ago!

I'm glad you like it :)!</comment></comment>


Google to Encrypt All Keyword Searches - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hubspot.com/google-encrypting-all-searches-nj <comment> chestnut-tree If Google cares about about user privacy, why do they prefix every search result link with their own URL? Clearly the HTTP referrer header isn't enough for them. They want to capture even more tracking data (even from the tiny minority of users with referrer header switched off). Forget trying to copy and paste a URL from their search page.

Given how lax they've been over deleting wi-fi data (promising to delete data and then failing to do so), it's hard to take their offical statements on privacy seriously.

Their reach over online browsing behaviour is simply pehenomenal - <USER2> than any other online company and yet their privacy policy is as vague as it possibly could be.

This, for example, is from their Google Analytics privacy statement

 _" Google Analytics does not report the actual IP address information to Google Analytics customers. Additionally, using a method known as IP masking, website owners that use Google Analytics have the option to tell Google Analytics to only use a portion of the IP address, rather than the entire IP address, for geolocation."_

Notable by omission is what Google do with the anlaytics data themselves, they presumably capture (and save) the full IP address as well as all the tracking data from the site using Google Analytics.

[http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/analytics/privacyoverview...](http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/analytics/privacyoverview.html)

<comment><USER3> While I wish Google would stop doing this, for now there are extensions that will replace the URLs in search results with the actual ones. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/undirect/dohbiijnj...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/undirect/dohbiijnjeiejifbgfdhfknogknkglio)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am not sure if I get the post right, but if you want to know what keywords people use when clicking on your website and/or seeing your website in search results (and on which average position you are with that keyword), and on which page they land the most often (and with which keyword), you can use Google WebMaster tools

For free, for every website.

[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)

<comment><USER5> True, but I don't think there is a way to get this data in session and be able to get detailed funnel progression by keyword. That also limits dynamic content based on keywords.

<comment><USER4> Oh.

OK. So the websites cannot "analyze me" as properly.

I am OK with that.

<comment><USER6> Google still can, though.

<comment><USER4> Not really...

What parent said is that marketers cannot now measure funnel progression (I had to google that) by keyword.

Google cannot do that, since it has no way of reading the server's data. (If the server doesn't have Google Analytics injected, of course.)

<comment><USER7> Google has its own funnel, with Analytics, AdSense and all its myriad other web properties. They can track and analyse users much more than specific companies.

A simpler example would be that I would not know which keywords were driving people to my site (it's "learn to remember everything" or is "snickerdoodles recipe"?) A stupid question? In my case yes, but for a company, it's crucial to know. Not even for pinpointing users, just in broad terms, with relevant date data, landing page and some other goodies (which webmaster tools does not offer, and looks unlikely to offer in the future)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this guy actually _complaining_ that Google is taking measures to increase user privacy? Or am I being too cynical/not cynical enough? 'Cause my knee- jerk response is "Dear Marketers, This is why people hate you."

<comment><USER9> I'm not a marketer but this is a matter of knowing what people want so that they, marketers or their businesses, know what to work on making and selling. It isn't really a privacy issue since Google does track you and know who you are even if you are not signed in.

<comment><USER8> "Google tracks my every move" is more privacy than "Google tracks my every move and lets advertisers know too."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really, this isn't news and should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that's looked at their keyword metrics anytime in the past year.

This graph (all search traffic plotted against keyword-not-provided) speaks for itself: [https://neosmart.net/blog/2013/google-search-encrypted- traff...](https://neosmart.net/blog/2013/google-search-encrypted-traffic-not- provided/)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's not as accurate, but you can still get an idea about keywords traffic from Google using webmaster tools (Search Traffic -> Search Queries)

</comment><comment><USER12> As I posted earlier. Not a solution, but maybe helpful for some: [http://notprovidedkit.com](http://notprovidedkit.com)

</comment><comment><USER13> Of course PPC ad users still get that data - Google transparent when it feels like it.

</comment><comment><USER14> So if the site is secure (HTTPS) it can get the referrer and thus the keyword?

<comment><USER15> No, as Google does not include the keyword in the referrer either. They moved it from the query string to a hash tag, which is not part of the URL sent in the referrer header.

<comment><USER16> Not only that but they actively put in an intermediary redirect between the search results page and the destination, so that website owners will know they came from Google, but not the search term used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Let go a head and say this. Fuck you marketers. Thank you Google.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well this makes Google Analytics awfully pointless for what most people care about most of the time...

<comment><USER19> I believe google analytics does still track keywords because google add some JS to each page to track there.

Kinda sucks if you run a competing tracking service though.

<comment><USER15> Google Analytics doesn't have a special exemption. The keyword from secure Google searches shows up as "(not provided)" in the relevant reports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's great. Somebody wake me when they stop sharing the key with anyone who asks.

</comment><comment><USER21> Finally, my router has a feature that shows what the user googled for, it's creepy.

</comment><comment><USER22> When I grew up, the stores around me commonly had those voluntary questionnaires. Each include a bunch of questions that if I wanted to answer, provide the store with market research. Some times even, those stores include a small reward for answering - A chance to win a prize or simply a buck's worth of store credit.

I don't see those anymore. I haven't been asked by a stranger to answer a few questions in years. Even the computer that the fast food restaurant had looks to be gone.

<comment><USER23> Hmm, it's been a while since I checked but last time I went to Dunkin Donuts they still had that "Get a free donut on your next visit by filling out yada yada yada" on the bottom of the receipt and CVS seems to frequently have contest offers for a small survey. Similarly Tops supermarkets used to have something like CVS's when I used to shop there as recently as a few months ago. Maybe it's only chains now?

<comment><USER22> I haven't seen any lately, but it is good to hear that it lives one somewhere. I remember seeing survey around 2005 in a online store I commonly visited, but they stopped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What about Chango ([http://www.chango.com/](http://www.chango.com/))? Most part of their revenue comes from Search Remarketing...

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm pretty sure I still can see what people searched for when ending up on my site in Google Analytics. Or did I misunderstand something?

<comment><USER26> No you can't! It says "(not provided)" in GA

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Encrypt all keywords and store it for later use...

</comment><comment><USER28> Does google show the keywords in Webmaster Tools?

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe I am cynical, but this seems more like a 'user privacy' PR stunt than Google actually caring about user privacy.

<comment><USER9> Nah, I think this is how Google is trying to make it less visible how they rank and what people search for. If you consider how Bing is gaining ground and that Yahoo may be inclined to build their own search engine and that such competitors can legitimately get Google based data from other sources easily by buying it, you'll want to hold your trade secrets close to the chest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Let's call what it is not about: user privacy. Adwords, that I guess gobbles most clicks on a lot of searches, still transmits the data.

This is the latest from a desperate Google. Why is Google desperate? Virtually all their money is being made via ads, their original business plan. Asteroid mining and other BS "We're curing death" press releases aside, Google is dependent on adwords so they need to keep turning knobs to force sites to advertise. Their PE is 25+ so they need to show huge increase quarter to quarter to keep the scheme going.

This month Google also made the Keyword Tool for advertisers only. And in another major coincidence after Page took over, Google has made major algo changes (Panda, Penguin) giving sites virtually no way to come back in ranking but that greatly improved Google's revenue. Shocking, huh? Of course they can advertise to make up for the lost traffic, like the sites that rank high (brands.)

So do I have a smoking gun memo? Nope, but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Ever wondered why Wikipedia ranks #1 for "computer"? IMO, it has to do with forcing Dell, MS, HP and others to advertise and to increase clicks on ads. I doubt most people want to know what a "computer" is when searching Google on a computer.

That Gmail "promotions tab"? Google attacking another free source of sales and marketing.

P.S. I expect a gazillion down votes from you know who. I don't care.

<comment><USER31> First, I don't think we agree what desperate means. Desperate makes it sound like revenues are shrinking or something.

Second, if your theory were true, why is Wikipedia not #1 for "laptop"? Wouldn't that be a more powerful keyword to force people to advertise for?

<comment><USER32> > why is Wikipedia not #1 for "laptop"?

Browsing Google while logged out, using its 'no country redirect' option, the first non-ad result is Wikipedia.

(Even using those settings, Google will serve local ads – in my case, in Dutch)

[http://i.imgur.com/UevuyEy.png](http://i.imgur.com/UevuyEy.png)

<comment><USER30> I'd guess that due to commonly used resolutions most users cannot see beyond the Wikipedia link so it's all set up perfectly to increase ad clicks: 3-4 relevant links (er, ads) or Wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why isn't google open with the data it collects? Surely that would be an easy step towards "organizing the worlds information and making it universally accessible".

<comment><USER34> I know, it's almost as if they lied about their mission statement and it's really "maximize shareholder profit."

This is really disturbing my worldview.

You don't think other huge corporations might have mission statements that are really marketing tools aimed at disguising their profit motive and disregard for users?

No! it's unthinkable. We must be missing something!

<comment><USER9> Haaaaaaaahahahaha! The Internet sure makes me laugh more than any human being. Screw those guys called friends.</comment></comment></comment>


CloudFlare CDN over https down - <AUTHOR> https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/require.js/2.1.1/require.min.js

<comment><USER2> CloudFlare absolutely is not down. Sounds like a specific issue impacting where you're located. Please provide the output of:

1.) [http://ajax.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/trace](http://ajax.cloudflare.com/cdn- cgi/trace) 2.) [https://ajax.cloudflare.com/cdn- cgi/trace](https://ajax.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/trace) 3.) A traceroute to ajax.cloudflare.com

</comment><comment><USER3> that sucks. I love the idea/theory behind CloudFlare, but it just seems like they aren't where they need to be yet. I have tried to use them on high traffic sites a couple times and didn't have luck.

Hoping they can iron this stuff out, because it's a great idea.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that our infra is centralized in places. We'll get it right soon.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> non-secure seems to be fine:

[http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.js](http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.js)</comment>


More on The Two Flaws Of Libertarian Economics (Zed's Response to Comments) - <AUTHOR> http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-01-09.html

<comment><USER2> So many straw men being attacked so lamely.

He writes:

"First off, the unstated goal of most libertarian doctrine is basically the following:

1\. Corporations are more "efficient" than the government because of the "natural selection" of our capitalist system.

2\. Corporations are therefore better than the government at everything.

3\. Corporations should be the government, or at least in control of it."

That's just plainly not true. The "anarcho-capitalist" bunch may be saying that, but that does not qualify as most Libertaran doctrine, and certainly not the mainstream libertarian doctrine. Point 1, yes, but not 2 or certainly not 3.

Force corrupts everything, especially the production of wealth. That is why force needs to be separated out. Individuals and corporations must not be allowed to initiate force against others, that's why we have the government to enforce that. But since the government can and must use force to do its necessary duties, it is inherently inefficient at everything else. That is why we need a separation. Corporations should not "be the government" or be in control of it.

He then goes on to talk about Libertarians defining "efficiency" as "speed" and knocks down that position. I have literally _never_ heard a Libertarian make that argument and I have been quite involved in the movement for years.</comment>


It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/its-end-of-world-as-we-know-it-and-i.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AFewThoughtsOnCryptographicEngineering+%28A+Few+Thoughts+on+Cryptographic+Engineering%29 <comment><USER2> This article makes me wonder if the government may already possess quantum computers.

If they did, how would we know?

<comment><USER3> If they did have them, they'd most likely have to hide their existence for quite some time.

During WWII, after the Allies had broken the Enigma cipher and were reading all the German communication, they still had to allow enemy actions that would result in loss of human life, just so they wouldn't tip their hand and reveal that they had broken the code.

I'd assume it would be the same today - a plausible non-crypto way of getting data came out ("We beat him with a pipe until he told us the password", ala <http://xkcd.com/538/> ) would be a better explanation than if they broke a code with some quantum ubercomputer.

<comment><USER4> GCHQ had public key cryptography in the early 1970s, a few years before Diffie-Helman and RSA did their work. While I think it'd be difficult to hide properly functional quantum computing (given the amount of interaction between public and private sector) it wouldn't surprise me if fine minds on both sides of the atlantic were doing advanced research in the field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the article: _They can't see the future._

Forgive my ignorance of quantum computing, but the classical computer can see the future in a finite image space by computing every image combination. It just turns out to be _a lot_ of computing to see every variation in any space of reasonable size.

Isn't this something a quantum computer would excel at, by computing the variations concurrently?

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe quantum cryptology will finally release us from the extortion business model based on "trustworthy" SSL certificates.

<comment><USER7> Completely unrelated.</comment></comment>


Apple Excludes ITunes Music From $100 IPhone Credit - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ach7AweWoeyo&refer=home <comment><USER2> If I read this correctly the article states the message on the apple website is incorrect and the credit can be used on iTunes.</comment>


Microsoft wants Azure to be the multiplayer server solution for every platform - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/microsoft-wants-azure-to-be-the-multiplayer-server-solution-for-every-platform/ <comment><USER2> I can't say much about Azure as my services are on AWS right now.

However, annecdotally Microsoft seems to have wisely invested in their Cheyenne WY data center. Rural areas of Rockies getting excellent pings / bandwidth.

I was really surprised to see Wyoming pings under 30ms from a normal cable connection. For reference I've never seen under 75ms to anything previous to that.

Makes a lot of sense for multiplayer quality.</comment>


Interview with Gabriel Weinberg (founder of DuckDuckGo) - <AUTHOR> http://web-target.com/en/case-studies/402-interview-with-gabriel-weinberg-duckduckgo

<comment><USER2> New bangs can be requested here: <https://duckduckgo.com/newbang.html>

For any new ideas for goodies, the best bet is either <http://duck.co> or <https://www.duckduckgo.com/feedback.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> While I really like DuckDuckGo and wish them success and more press I found this 'interview' very superficial and uninteresting. I wish people would stop up-voting stuff like this.</comment>


Be careful with JS numbers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.greweb.fr/2013/01/be-careful-with-js-numbers/ <comment><USER2> Essential rule: ALWAYS treat large ID numbers in JSON as strings. Produce them as strings on the server, so the browser treats them as strings during the JSON decoding process.

(Fortunately, if they're ID's where they need to stay exact, then you probably don't need to do any math on them! Although once a coworker of mine had to write a bitwise XOR function in JavaScript that operated on large ID numbers represented as strings. That was fun...)

<comment><USER3> Been burned by this myself, because while the person that created the ID knew it was a string, the person using it down the line thought it looked like a number and treated it like one.

My advice is to store those ID's with a leading "$" character or something similar. Removes the temptation to treat them like numbers.

<comment><USER4> Or convert them to hex before sending to client. And you can convert them back to decimal on the server side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Eich: No one expects the rounding errors you get - powers of five aren't representable well. They round poorly in base-two. So dollars and cents, sums and differences, will get you strange long zeros with a nine at the end in JavaScript. There was a blog about this that blamed Safari and Mac for doing math wrong and it's IEEE double -- it's in everything, Java and C"

-Peter Seibel Interview with Brendan Eich "who under intense time pressure, created JavaScript", Coders at Work, p.136

<comment><USER6> Some languages have arbitrary precision types or use BCD. Next time you see someone using floating point types for money, please stop them. There's too many financial libraries out there like OFX4J which get this wrong (or at least did the last time I looked).

<comment><USER7> Python has Decimal for that. Unfortunately, the people who wrote the platform I use - which deals with money - decided they're "too slow".

<comment><USER8> > Unfortunately, the people who wrote the platform I use - which deals with > money - decided they're "too slow".

I've had the same problem (that platform wouldn't ha. It's… annoying (also bullshit: in the worst case — CPython <= 3.2 — basic arithmetic operations will take ~20µs on my machine aside from divisions which take a bit more and if _that_ shows up in profiling use cdecimal, CPython 3.3 [integrated cdecimal] or pypy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of these issues are equally applicable to integer overflow (termination of loops and the "real web application disaster"). As a result, this is a deeper issue that extends beyond JavaScript into most languages—in general, programmers have to be aware that numbers in the runtime model of a language may not always work like you would expect theoretical, mathematical numbers to work.

Of course, floating point imprecision results in more surprising behaviors than integer overflow on the whole, but the danger is still there no matter what language you use (not counting the languages with full numeric towers, like Scheme).

</comment><comment><USER10> This is not the only area in JS where it pays to be careful with numbers.

For example, the parseInt function mentioned in the article actually does magic base determination. Your string will be parsed into a base-10 number, unless it begins with '0x' in which case base-16 is used, or if it begins with a leading '0' then it is treated as base-8.

This last case has stung me on several occasions when parsing user input into numbers: User puts a leading-zero, and you magically end up with octal conversions. (I believe this whole octal thing has been deprecated in recent JS implementations).

In any case it's sensible to specify the 'radix' whenever using the parseInt function, as in parseInt(numberString, 10);

<comment><USER11> you can also just use _Number()_ to be safe

<comment><AUTHOR> How is it different?

<comment><USER12> Think of parseInt() as what it says- parsing out the number value. Number() can be considered as a cast.

        parseInt('12', 10);  => 12
        Number('12');        => 12
        parseInt('12x', 10); => 12
        Number('12x');       => NaN

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This bit a lot of twitter integrations hard, when tweet id's exceeded the non- lossy integer range of javascript floats.

All of a sudden, tweet ids got rounded off to point to completely different entries!

<https://dev.twitter.com/docs/twitter-ids-json-and-snowflake>

Other JSON parsers may also be affected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Woo I didn't know this! When I mention twitter ids it was just an example.

So it can happen to anyone and it's a real issue for any JSON API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is one reason I stick to statically typed languages. I do a lot of work with cash values and without an explicit decimal type, the shit hits the fan when you hit a float issue.

I get a lot of flak on here for that opinion which is odd.

<comment><USER15> Dynamically typed vs Weakly typed languages aside, you still only have one choice in the browser. Sure, you can write in something which has all the greatest features you love, but it will still be cross compiled to JavaScript, with all of its pitfalls right?

<comment><USER14> Simple solution: I wouldn't write anything that requires numeric accuracy to run in the browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams I got hit by JavaScript rounding on a project once. Funny thing is, IE8 was okay with it and Chrome was the one that caused issues.

Turns out that 1000000 * 8.2 = 8199999.999999999

Sometimes we learn the hard way. The bug was getting written into an XML document and pushed to an embedded device over HTTP which was expecting an int and caused the device to crash. We fixed both bugs.

<comment><USER16>
        // Scheme
        (print (* 1000000 8.2))
        > 8199999.999999999

        // Python
        >>> 1000000 * 8.2
        8199999.999999999

        //PHP
        > 1000000 * 8.2
        > 8199999.999999999

<comment><USER17> I can't reproduce the PHP example:

      $ uname -p
      x86_64
      $ php -v
      PHP 5.4.6-1ubuntu1 (cli) (built: Aug 22 2012 21:13:52)
      Copyright (c) 1997-2012 The PHP Group
      Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2012 Zend Technologies
      $ php -r 'var_dump(1000000 * 8.2);'
      float(8200000)
      $

<comment><USER16> My fault, I think I copied from the wrong REPL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1\. IDs are strings, not numbers. This is the real problem twitter had. The ID size was only vaguely related to the number of tweets.

2\. An event counter is not going to reach 2^50.

</comment><comment><USER19>
        I have determined by experience that 9007199254740995
        (which is 2^53+3) is the smallest not representable
        integer in Javascript.

Here's something to drop in your browser console as an amusing illustration of this

         9007199254740994 ===
        (9007199254740995 - 1)

and

         9007199254740995 ===
        (9007199254740995 - 1)

<comment><USER20> He'dn't've had to "determine" it, had he known the basics of IEEE-754.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interestingly, GWT gets around this problem entirely by having the 'long' datatype be created as two 32 bit numbers. Slows down calculation a little bit, but you get the correct values always.

[https://developers.google.com/web- toolkit/doc/latest/DevGuid...](https://developers.google.com/web- toolkit/doc/latest/DevGuideCodingBasicsCompatibility)

<comment><USER22> Emscripten does the same thing for uint64_t etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For people using npm, check out the 'int' and 'num' modules.

</comment><comment><USER24> Minor nit: isn't smallest integer not representable in JS -1000000000000000000000000000000000000 or something?

</comment><comment><USER25> Is this in the JS standard, or is this in just some implementations?

<comment><USER11> <http://interglacial.com/javascript_spec/a-8.html>

_The Number type has exactly 18437736874454810627 (that is, 264-253 +3) values, representing the double-precision 64-bit format IEEE 754 values as specified in the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic, except that the 9007199254740990 (that is, 253-2) distinct "Not-a-Number" values of the IEEE Standard are represented in ECMAScript as a single special NaN value._

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > _Javascript doesn't have integer type but lets you think it has_

Actually, JS has integer typed arrays.

        new Uint8Array([1,100,300])
        [1, 100, 44]

        new Uint16Array([-1,2,300])
        [65535, 2, 300]

        new Uint32Array([-1,2,300])
        [4294967295, 2, 300]

Here's the spec:

<https://www.khronos.org/registry/typedarray/specs/latest/#7></comment>


Sneaky Microsoft plug-in puts Firefox users at risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139459/Sneaky_Microsoft_plug_in_puts_Firefox_users_at_risk <comment><USER2> In case anyone else didn't see it, apparently Firefox has a system built in to handle this. It popped up a window saying the addon could cause problems and would be disabled as soon as I restarted. It now won't let me reenable the addon, because it causes problems.</comment>


Technologies we've used to improve the Mixlr Livepage - <AUTHOR> http://dev.mixlr.com/2014/02/03/5-technologies-weve-used-to-improve-the-mixlr-livepage/

<comment><USER2> Mixlr is a great platform. Autechre did a couple of epic day-long live DJ sets on it and it was cool chatting with people around the world about the different tracks that were popping up, for hours on end. Interesting way to experience live music.</comment>


Ask HN: Why my "Show HN" submission is not shown in "ask" tab? - <AUTHOR>

I've submitted this Show HN thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2093542
Apparently it received very few votes, so it didn't rise well enough. But I thought I can atleast see it on "ask" tab. But I paginated for 4-5 pages, and that thread is not shown.
Any idea why this happened? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2093542></comment>


Tim O'Reilly: Different approaches to the semantic web - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/03/different_appro_1.html <comment><USER2> O'Reilly clearly gets to a point that I tried to make in reference to one of the first round of articles about freebase: namely, that by adopting the ideas of web2.0, namely relying on users to generate information because it is natural and convenient for them, we have a chance to take another shot at the semantic web, and perhaps actually make it past arguing in the W3C this time.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any good privacy-respecting iOS email clients out there? - <AUTHOR> What I mostly mean by that are email clients that just use straight IMAP to talk to a server and don't route your emails via a third party server. The built in app does that, but apparently has some security issues that at least several people are taking seriously.
All the other email clients I could find either require you to sign up for their service (not an option, I run my own email server) or seem to route/mine your email in exchange for convenience features.
Don't mind paying for the app, but I don't want a subscription model either. Any apps I should be looking at other than an ssh client on my phone? <comment><USER2> Sorry I can't directly help you. I've looked at email clients a long time ago, but never found anything that seemed trustworthy or didn't send information back to its servers.

Email is very important to me. While there may be security issues with Mail.app, I'd trust that they'd get fixed quickly. I can't say the same about some smaller client that's rich in features but has publicly unknown vulnerabilities for a long time. I don't trust the larger ones like Gmail and Outlook to not track me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you link to the security issues in Mail.app?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the specific one I was thinking of: [https://blog.zecops.com/vulnerabilities/youve-got-0-click- ma...](https://blog.zecops.com/vulnerabilities/youve-got-0-click-mail/)

At least the BSI in Germany seems to think it's serious enough to warn people about it (sorry, no English language link for this): [https://www.heise.de/mac-and-i/meldung/Mail-Bugs-BSI- warnt-v...](https://www.heise.de/mac-and-i/meldung/Mail-Bugs-BSI-warnt-vor- iOS-4708945.html)</comment></comment>


Analysis of DNA uncovers a rough dating scene after the advent of agriculture - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/17-to-1-reproductive-success <comment> swagasaurus-rex I've suspected as much would happen during the agricultural revolution, but I did not expect such a huge disparity.

If the 51% male/female ratio did not change, then 16 out of 17 males must have either been killed, enslaved, or been left frustrated. This would imply a highly patriarchal society where the local king and his cronies are the only ones fed, and to whom you would sell your daughters to. The only other explanation would be mass infanticide of males, but to see this in multiple regions is suspect.

"It wasn't like there was a mass death of males. They were there, so what were they doing?" The article raises a very good question. In all places studied, agriculture must have favored a highly stratified society.

<comment><USER2> Not necessarily. There are a lot of things that the article left out. Number 1 is that the Y chromosome is about 25% of the size of the X chromosomes and is also the fastest evolving portion of the human genome. Since this was a DNA based study, you have to control for this as well. I assume they have, but I don't know for certain. Additionally, aneuploidy (XXY, YYX, etc) may also account for some differences along with chimeric (2+ genomes per person due to fraternal twin merging in womb) anomalies. You also have to control for outliers such as Ghengis Khan and those types of mass rape and pillaging, as he has skewed the statistics a fair bit.

Still, if they controlled for all this, it is an AMAZING finding. That only 6% of males will reproduce is fantastical, especially within an agrarian society. I would love to know of other mammalian species that have such low reproductive rates compared to females.

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

<comment><USER3> > I would love to know of other mammalian species that have such low > reproductive rates compared to females.

Some species of deer probably match it.

<comment><USER2> True! Then it seems that the early agrarian humans had more of a herd mentality or reproductive structure of winner take all. Do other apes or monkeys have similar breeding structures? Fascinating stuff.

<comment><USER3> Gorillas form harem-like groups, but they're not as large, 3 to 6 females per male (often the groups have multiple related males). Chimps have dominant males, but females can and often do have sex with other males in the group. Bonobos are just ridiculously promiscous :)

I just found a book called "Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect" which claims that southern elephant seals have harems of 48 females on average O_O - that's probably the record among mammals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you guys are interested in this stuff, I highly recommend "The Red Queen" by Matt Ridley.

[http://amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human- Nature/dp/006055...](http://amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human- Nature/dp/0060556579/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1426700896)

<comment><USER5> This is a great passage from the Red Queen, that might explain what was happening at the time:

In the ancient empire of the Incas, sex was a heavily regulated industry. The sun-king Atahualpa kept fifteen hundred women in each of many "houses of virgins" throughout his kingdom. They were selected for their beauty and were rarely chosen after the age of eight—to ensure their virginity. But they did not all remain virgins for long: They were the emperor's concubines. Beneath him, each rank of society afforded a harem of a particular legal size. Great lords had harems of more than seven hundred women. "Principal persons" were allowed fifty women; leaders of vassal nations, thirty; heads of provinces of 100,000 people, twenty; leaders of 1,000 people, fifteen; administrators of 500 people, twelve; governors of 100 people, eight; petty chiefs over 50 men, seven; chiefs of 10 men, five; chiefs of 5 men, three. That left precious few for the average male Indian whose enforced near-celibacy must have driven him to desperate acts, a fact attested to by the severity of the penalties that followed any cuckolding of his seniors. If a man violated one of Atahualpa's women, he, his wife, his children, his relatives, his servants, his fellow villagers, and all his lamas would be put to death, the village would be destroyed, and the site strewn with stones. As a result, Atahualpa and his nobles had, shall we say, a majority holding in the paternity of the next generation. They systematically dispossessed less privileged men of their genetic share of posterity. Many of the Inca people were the children of powerful men. In the kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa, all women were at the pleasure of the king. Thousands of them were kept in the royal harem for his use, and the remainder he suffered to "marry" the more favored of his subjects. The result was that Dahomean kings were very fecund, while ordinary Dahomean men were often celibate and barren. In the city of Abomey, according to one nineteenth-century visitor, "it would be difficult to find Dahomeans who were not descended from royalty." The connection between sex and power is a long one.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex Killing the llamas is one step too far.

<comment><USER6> In those times, they really wanted to get the point across.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since a lot of early civilizations seemed to be very slave heavy I wonder if that had anything to do with it. Agriculture requires more labour which leads to more slaving. Male slaves would work the fields with less of a chance for reproduction, and the landowners/slaveowners would have their pick of the female slaves.

<comment><USER8> Very good. That's probably an important factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just started reading Harari's brief history of humankind and this gem perfectly fits in the rather unsettling story of our genetic pool. It is no longer the natural environment setting the conditions for who's fit to survive/chosen for reproduction but the present human culture which in turn is just the result of the previous.

If I had to choose an algorithm as an analogy, I'd say it is a recursion waiting for stack overflow. :)

<comment><USER10> We are a very social species, the culture we create is our natural environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It sounds like a persistent theme through history is that a very few people at the top had a Lot of power, and most men and all women were oppressed.

Feminists, take note: men are not privileged. Just those who were privileged were men. The fight must be against the few at the top.

<comment><USER12> There will be always a few at the top, hierarchies among humans will always exist due to natural differences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "In more recent history, as a global average, about four or five women reproduced for every one man"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the same as saying one man, on average, will father a child with about four or five different women? I suppose given the timescale being discussed, "recent history" may mean the last few centuries, but this average still sounds very high to me.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex Yeah, it isn't clear what timescale they are discussing, but the graphic suggests that a near 1/1 pairing is a very recent phenomenon.

<comment><USER14> You still get at least an element of this with pretty recent til-death-do-us- part versions of serial monogamy: Gauss, for instance, had two wives, marrying a friend of his first wife after she died, and had children with both of them.

(I'd be surprised if serial monogamy alone were enough to get a 4:1 ratio, but you can definitely get > 1:1 ratios out of it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Makes perfect sense to me. If you look at our culture now there is always that one male all the females in a group tend to go for.

Same for males there's always that 1 mega hotie you want to meet.

The only difference is even average females can have any guy they want while the same doesn't apply to guys.

The advent of agriculture gave females the ability to support their children more easily without the help of males and the more desirable males could have more offspring with so much food available.

Basically less females had to settle for second best to have offspring.

<comment><USER16> Right. This is not a new theory. It's well known that evolution _tends to_ favor polygamy where females are more selective and males are more promiscuous.

What's interesting is that this apparently started after agriculture rather than before. I had previously thought that maybe hunter gatherers practiced polygamy but it faded away as we become more agricultural.

Also 17 females to 1 male is pretty absurd. Even if you look at cultures that practiced polygamy in recent history it wasn't to that extent. And even when it was practiced, it wasn't necessarily common except in the very upper class, so the average female to male ratio would have been more reasonable.

We can only speculate to what degree this might have shaped our (recent) evolution. That's a huge selective pressure on males to have traits that would lead to them being the local king or whatever they were. And everyone alive today would be descended from those people.

<comment><USER17> >I had previously thought that maybe hunter gatherers practiced polygamy but it faded away as we become more agricultural.

I would have thought otherwise, there is very little incentive for you to labour for the tribe if you have no skin in the game, so to speak. So they would give you a wife otherwise, why fight for them? Why hunt? Why do anything to benefit anyone other than yourself? Since you have nothing to lose, you can even steal from them since no one you care about suffers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is not my research area. However, I can't help but the results seem to radical to me. The dip in male diversity seems far too synchronized among so many different regions / cultures. Are there examples in recorded history of sudden reductions in male diversity that lasted for multiple generations?

<comment><USER19> [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men- direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan/) :

> ~10% of the men who reside within the borders of the Mongol Empire as it was > at the death of Genghis Khan may carry his Y chromosome, and so ~0.5% of men > in the world, about 16 million individuals alive today, do so. Since 2003 > there have been other cases of "super-Y" lineages. For example the Manchu > lineage and the Uí Néill lineage. The existence of these Y chromosomal > lineages, which have burst upon the genetic landscape like explosive stars > sweeping aside all other variation before them, indicates a periodic it > "winner-take-all" dynamic in human genetics more reminiscent of hyper- > polygynous mammals such as elephant seals. As we do not exhibit the sexual > dimorphism which is the norm in such organisms, it goes to show the > plasticity of outcome due to the flexibility of human cultural forms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Another member of the research team, a biological anthropologist, > hypothesizes that somehow, only a few men accumulated lots of wealth and > power, leaving nothing for others.

This line cracked me up.

Yes, "somehow" indeed. Quite a mystery we have on our hands here!

</comment><comment><USER21> Not particularly surprising. In the ancient world, men were often killed in various ways (conflict, hunting accidents) or enslaved so the gender ratio was quite skewed.

I mean, typical ancient warfare meant you attack a town, kill/enslave all the men and boys, rape all the women, and ensure your culture's dominance over them for the next generation or two...

<comment><USER8> I have a hunch that this ancient way of warfare is still the optimal way to destroy a culture and achieve total victory. Not that it's acceptable in any way, but imagine if the US had done this in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is heart- wrenching to think about, but I think it would have worked.

<comment><USER22> An argument could probably be made that it worked fairly well in subduing East Germany after WWII.

<comment><USER23> I new that those things happened there but not that this was was so widespread! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_G...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany)

"estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers have ranged up to 2 million"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sounds to me like slavery. The women slaves had babies, the male slaves were workers and soldiers.

In a way, it sort of sounds like a eusocial sort of society, like a bee colony (but with the male female roles reversed). One reproducing male, many reproducing females, many non-reproducing males.

</comment><comment><USER25> Fascinating stuff, I'd like to know more.

Does anyone know a better source?

I found the original article but sadly not freely available. This psmag.com article is thin and the graph of the data is so small I can't read much off of it. Google couldn't find any larger versions of the graph.

<comment><USER26> Here: [http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2015/03/13/gr.186684.1...](http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2015/03/13/gr.186684.114/suppl/DC1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> In populations studies at all scales, Adam is more recent than Eve. 10 years ago, I read it was Eve 120,000 years ago and Adam 60,000 years ago for the out of Africa theory.

<comment><USER28> What do Adam and Eve refer to in this context? Also, what do you mean by "more recent"?

<comment><USER29> I assume: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The invention of monogamy is what brought about the 4-5 female to male reproduction ratio.

<comment><USER31> What do you mean by that?

<comment><USER32> There are a number of factors (particularly in premodern societies) that produce the imbalance, but polygyny particularly exacerbates the imbalance (and, from a pre-existing state of polygyny, then, monogamy reduces it) because polygyny means that the most successful males are each able, in their reproductive prime, to secure, with social support, exclusive reproductive access to multiple of the most desirable females, which increases the expected ratio of females successfully reproducing in that generation to the number of males successfully reproducing.

(Because of the biology of reproduction, this would seem likely to be the case even if, in institutional terms, the practice of polygyny was balanced by equal practice of polyandry, but historically that wasn't the case anyway.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> \- Initial kings collect women like Pokemon.

\- No contraception. Much baby.

\- Many claims to throne in 14-18 years.

\- Claimants go to war with one another. Soldiers are invented, voluntary and noble at first. Religious later. Can't do mass conscription from the common man as he's working the essential farms.

\- Losers happen. Slavery is invented.

\- Slaves work the mines and other harsh labor, which allows for post-agrarian activities and advanced economies.

\- King sits back and lets the the whole clusterfuck evolve in his favor.

A auto-catalytic male shortage. Easy peasy.

Inadvertently, I have just Twitterized the Old Testament.

</comment><comment><USER34> My 16 yr old is interested in pursuing this field (not sure what to call it - 'Genetic Anthropology'?). Can anyone recommend online resources to help a newbie get the lay of the land? Or in-person resources (talks, exhibits, clubs etc.) near Palo Alto CA ??

<comment><USER35> I would say if Carlos Bustamante or Stephen Montgomery are ever giving a talk to the public to check them out. They're both based out of Stanford Med, but their research touches on tracing Human demographic history. If she's still interested when applying for colleges, Harvard and The University of Chicago should both be on her list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Eunuch's and harems. The rich and powerful males kept all their local women in a harem and forced all the other competing males to become eunuchs. Not fun, but it fits with the Monty Python version of history.... ;)

</comment><comment><USER37> Its the same even today.

</comment><comment><USER38> "somehow, only a few men accumulated lots of wealth and power, leaving nothing for others"

Yeah, thank god we're past this as a species

<comment><USER39> I thought it had been observed with monkeys or apes that in times of scarcity they will share, but if you dump a whole truck load of bananas they will fight over them. The rise of agriculture would be a similar time of plenty which may be what triggered all the fighting and hoarding.</comment></comment>


Jonathan Blow: "C++ is a weird mess" - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-07-02-jonathan-blow-c-is-a-weird-mess <comment><USER2> A C++ that broke backward compatibility would force many developers to go through the "weird mess" of their code base making corrections. I think that C++ standards committee should not break working code and that people who value a cleaner language should try another language or decide on a subset of C++ that they will use.

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't say a thing about the characteristics of this supposed silver bullet.</comment>


The eyes have it: Seeing ultraviolet, exploring color - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/118557-the-eyes-have-it-seeing-ultraviolet-exploring-color <comment><USER2> The original source about seeing ultraviolet is interesting: [http://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery- crystalen...](http://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery- crystalens/ultra-violet-color-glow/)

Worth noting is that the eye filters shorter wavelengths partly to protect the cone cells. Most animals (like various insects) that see further into the ultraviolet have much shorter lifespans than humans, and so damage doesn't have as much impact.

The rest of the article is just somewhat muddled rehashes of Wikipedia articles (which makes me realize once again that some of these color vision articles need dramatic improvement to avoid confusing people). For instance, this guy's changed ultraviolet sensitivity doesn't give us any insight into how tetrachromats see; he is still a trichromat, just with a slightly different short-cone-cell wavelength response.

To understand color vision, I'd recommend Bruce MacEvoy's site, <http://www.handprint.com/LS/CVS/color.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> So, this is a question I've not been able to find an answer for that's relevant:

Where are the non-visible light sensitive CCD-style cameras?

Why can't I take a 'picture' of the 2.4Ghz bouncing around my condo? Or the 1900Mhz rolling through walls and buildings? Things that are 'rf blocking' should show up brightly, while things that are 'rf transparent' should be ...well, transparent, like glass.

I feel like I'm misunderstanding a fundamental difference between 'light' and 'rf' here, so please point it out if I am.

<comment><USER4> Those frequencies you are asking about correspond to wavelengths of several inches. That would require a very large and thick camera, and probably a different sensor technology to be sensitive to the less energetic photons. Near-infrared and UV are easy, though.

<comment><USER3> TIL that visible light is in the 400-800THz range. Things make way more sense now, I never realized it was that crazy high, relatively. Now I'm on a quest to build a RF pixel camera - thanks for the idea!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting read, but I don't see why I'd care about my "blunderbuss" TN panel - it's good enough for work. Also, I think the color gamut picture is flawed - since I have a TN panel, I can't possibly see the IPS gamut, and yet there is a clear difference - how is that possible?

<comment><USER4> If color correction isn't being done on the image, then the image you see has essentially had its color space compressed. When displayed on a wide-gamut display, the "TN" part of the image will match how the "wide-gamut IPS" part looks on your TN panel. (Ignoring dithering and the color inaccuracy of the TN panel.)

If the image was being properly color-corrected, then all the parts of it would look pretty much the same, since all but one of them has the signal clipped when it gets displayed by your monitor, due to the colors being out of range. (This is, of course, assuming that your TN panel has roughly the gamut and color response curve that are being emulated by the image, and that your TN panel has been calibrated to display colors accurately within the achievable gamut.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "As an example, try visualizing a color made from red and green (not the mixture of the two pigments, which would be brown, but a hypothetical color 'reen' made from elements of each)."

Um, yellow is the combination of red and green. Am I missing something?

EDIT: I just feel the author does a poor job of wording his thought experiment. When I visualize a mixture of red and green I visualize either brown or yellow, and since he said he didn't mean brown that leaves yellow.

<comment><USER7> There are different ways to mix color:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtractive_color>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_color>

Light is additive, so that's yellow. He's talking about pigments and paints, which are subtractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> According to what research I've read, tetrachromacy has been demonstrated in a handful of females with a family history of colourblindness. However, there's nothing precluding an XXY male from being a tetrachromat. Indeed, 1 in 1000 males are XXY and most are asymptomatic, and I have good colour discrimination, so I've always wondered if I might be a tetrachromat. Too bad there's no way to test it on your standard-issue RGB LCD…

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be cool if he could see X-rays in the 10 nm range from what I have read UV and X-rays seem to overlap in that area at 10 nm. But the link to his page shows he can see 340 to 350 nm at best.</comment>


Ceci n'est pas une pipeline problem - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aurynn.com/ceci-nest-pas-une-pipeline-problem <comment><USER2> Glad to see someone raising this particular criticism.

We keep hearing this same refrain, "The only way we can really change things is by getting more girls interested in technology from an early age ..."[1]

Whereas the author of this post concludes with, "It's not the pipeline. It's never the pipeline. It's the culture at the end of the pipeline, the culture that generates articles like this."

I have to agree, and am only bothering to comment and upvote in the hope that others will see this and take a moment to reflect on this problem, and really consider this author's point of view.

[1][https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hacking-infosec-boys-club- phi...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hacking-infosec-boys-club-phil-dobson)</comment>


China's Google Maps (zoom out for best effect) - <AUTHOR> http://shanghai.edushi.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks like SimCity.

I think the look adds something to the map. It's a bit easier to parse and understand than satellite images and adds more information than a standard overhead map.

For those of us who don't read Chinese - what's the story behind this map? [EDIT: Wording]

<comment><USER3> This is the real map of Shanghai in 3D. If you noticed the three buttons at the top right of the frame, the first one is for 3D display. Second one is for 2D display. Last one is for satellite pics.

These are so much info that I can parse from the map.

<comment><USER4> Just to be clear, the 2D map and the satellite pics are from the _actual_ Google Maps for China:

<http://ditu.google.com/>

<comment><USER5> What? Google makes a custom political map for China? A couple of years ago, they used to claim that they don't make custom products for any market and product rollouts are always worldwide.

Compare with: [http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Taiwan&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.724817,66.621094&ie=UTF8&ll=22.71539,121.069336&spn=20.138545,33.310547&z=5)

Note that it's not just a matter of translation. First, they list Taiwan next to Hong Kong and Macau as if it's a peripheral part of China (this is surely China's wish, but the reality is that Taiwan is an independent democracy).

Then, there's a line in the water to the east of Taiwan and extending elsewhere whose sole purpose is to imply regions to be part of China's territory that are not or are controversial. This line isn't used anywhere else in the world, such as say, in the Caribbean, where the boundaries of different islands might not be clear.

I guess Google wants market share in China bad enough that they are willing to proffer multiple versions of truth.

<comment><USER6> This actually might not be a custom product. The website that is hosting this map could be using the Google Maps API with their own map of China.

Would you call the special Google News censorship for China a custom product?

<comment><USER5> I actually had something specifically in mind. Google Taiwan had to fight to get special options onto the search page that could limit searches to Taiwanese websites ( <http://www.google.com.tw/> ). Otherwise, most Mandarin language searches would be overwhelmed by results from China. The strong resistance they encountered at the time was that Google insisted on products being rolled out worldwide in a single version, minus minor variations like translations.

It's also a question of ethics in this case. This is about data that Google is directly providing, not simply a matter of ranking or showing/not showing websites in their results. It's not serving the user a purple background because they like purple. Think about another possible case--would it be right for Google to draw Israel as occupied Palestine in countries where the majority of people might hold that point of view?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome. And there are plenty more cities linked from the frontpage (just hover over blue links in two rows):

<http://edushi.com>

For example:

<http://beijing.edushi.com>

<http://hongkong.edushi.com>

Some even have tiny animations - cars, balloons, zeppelins, helicopters, fireworks, flying houses:

<http://guangzhou.edushi.com>

<http://xiamen.edushi.com>

<http://sz.edushi.com>

<http://dalian.edushi.com>

<http://www.3dyiwu.com>

It seems like balloons and zeppelins are actually carrying banner ads (I don't speak Chinese).

\</comment><comment>

Edit: I found the company that did it - Aladdin Information & Technology - with some English explanations:

 _"Aladdin has a dedicated staff of 400 focused on delivering 2D maps to creation of 3D models."_

<http://www.aladdincn.com/en/Cooperation.html>

<comment><USER8> Yeah there are clickable ads within the map, a lot of the billboards seem to be clickable, which is really quite clever if they're selling that ad space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ah Shanghai, the only city i know of that has an elevated high way with roundabouts (check the lower left edge of the map).

That and the spiral onramp to the high tension bridge over the river.

<comment><USER10> Oh yeah, I remember those.

Traffic bottle neck, prone to accident. A horrible idea probably as a result of laziness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Such a beautiful product. Really shows how a web product can be practical and artistic. Very well done.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have lived in Shanghai, and boy do I want to live in _this_ virtual Shanghai (the real one, only for sentimental reasons.)

For me, the best city in China remains Hangzhou, maybe Xiamen :-) the most chill, laid back places in the east of the country (Kunming, Guilin and Hainan Island are all gorgeous)

</comment><comment><USER13> Fascinating. I have never seen such dense development before. It looks beautiful and perfect, of course, until you start to jam everyone into it. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I like how McDonalds gets its own button

<comment><USER15> That's part of their business model. They also put virtual billboards on prime "real estates".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> China's Google Street View: Beijing: <http://bj.city8.com/> Chengdu: <http://cd.city8.com/> etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> Also for Hong Kong - <http://hongkong.edushi.com/>

<comment><USER4> Makes it clear just how dense Hong Kong is, even compared to other Chinese cities.

Do you happen to live in Hong Kong?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is maybe the second-best GMap I've ever seen, next to wunderground.com. And I follow these things closely since I run a GMap website too.

</comment><comment><USER19> Awesome - I'm going to Shanghai in the fall and this is very fun to pan around. Now if only I could read Chinese.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it supposed to be alerting my user agent string? I smell XSS!

<comment><USER21> Easy there, probably just a developer debug message checked into production by mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> so much work and so beautiful to look at!

</comment><comment><USER23> what no cars!

</comment><comment><USER24> Beautiful!

</comment><comment><USER25> Plane crash! Fire! Riot! Tornado! Earthquake! Flood!

<comment><USER26> Tools -> Disable Natural Disasters

<comment><USER27> The cheat: hit F-U-N-D-S to get 10,000$ for free. But after you did this a few times too often, the game engine would activate all desasters after another. Is this just me, or does this remember me of someone at Wall Street?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "pfft air one reporting heavy traffic pfft"

<comment><USER28> you guys didn't play the original Sim City did you. I used to leave my Mac Plus on all night to grow the population, I could run the game on a single 800k floppy, wow. Amazing how quickly the senior members of YC will vote someone down. Guess it's your way of keeping YC an elite site, and it boosts your morale knowing you're all better than us small-time users. Yawn, how boring is that?

<comment><USER29> You get voted down for not adding value deemed relevant.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How about an economy based on Time? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in no way a economist, not by uber long shot, but, I read about economic theories out of boredom.
I'll just pitch my insane idea for a new economic system. Lets have an open discussion.
The current economic system is run by (mostly) meaningless numbers, that can be easily manipulated by people who understand numbers well.
Eg: you do work thats worth x dollars and get paid, and govt prints some bills, now your x dollars are worth x/(somefactor)
Anyway, I'll come to the point, what if we managed to create an economic system that is based on a bullet proof system ever, "TIME".
Time is the single unforgiving platform, that is common to all. Nobody has one second less or more in a day.
By this system People gets rewarded, how efficiently they use their time. If person A creates x tool within 10 hours that was useful to 1000 people and person B creates y tool within 8 hours that was useful to 1500 people, then person B is richer that Person A.
As weird as it may sound, based on my observations, all the rich/wealthy people care more about time, may be that is what made them rich in the first place.
Why not bake it into the system, so, that everybody is encouraged to do more with less time and resources. (isn't that the definition of entrepreneur)
By rewards, I mean some system to keep track of the progress each person made, not necessarily money.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> Money is already based on time. When you go to the store and buy some fruit, you pay for it, but you could also take the TIME to plant some of your own and grow it. When you buy furniture you are paying for something you could take the time to build, and each part you would need is also based on time (you could chop your own wood, etc.)

This applies to services too, obviously. You could learn to be an accountant, but you can also pay someone to do it for you, you're paying for their time. When you boil it down, just about everything you buy is based on time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great comment. So essentially if we bring the system I posted, the unit of measurement of the system will become the new money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You may want to read this book first and then contemplate a bit further:

[http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Time-Tempo-Culture- Pace/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Time-Tempo-Culture- Pace/dp/0465026427)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think your idea is already a movie:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efNzhEKm3w4>

I don't know which came first, your idea or the movie ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> This movie looks like, its about rich people buying time, The plot seems to be in an imaginary world where people can live longer/younger somehow.

But, My theory is different it depends on everybody having the same time.

I agree my idea and the movie has some intersection, Certainly they must gave gotten the idea before me, since, it takes a lot of time for pre-production and stuff. I just got this idea earlier this year.</comment></comment>