Ask HN: I'm an experienced developer but I don't understand the internet - <AUTHOR>

I'm a seasoned developer (mainly VFX & desktop apps), but I'd like to learn how to make web apps and would like to learn by making a simple flickr clone.  What advice/resources/technologies would you guys recommend for starting out?
Dunning-Kruger effect aside (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect), I'm hoping it will be easy to ramp up since I'm not new to development. (Altho I hate database work so i'm sure this will get interesting really fast)
Here's what I gleaned from fellow programmers: Python, Google Apps, NoSQL: plus.  MS ACS/Azure: expensive.
Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> _Here's what I gleaned from fellow programmers: Python, Google Apps, NoSQL_

This is a really subjective area of web development. There really is not and probably will not ever be an agreement on the best technology stack for the web.

For me personally, I do not use server side web frameworks. I write web apps and I use pure HTML / CSS / and JavaScript for the frontend and a REST lib to expose REST services for the back end. I use Java quite a bit to build my REST services because it is entrenched in the enterprise and that is an overwhelming percentage of my clientele.

I also do REST services in Python, Ruby, C# and am teaching myself node.js for that purpose as well. It depends on the client's tech stack as to what I use. I find that the way I develop is an advantage to what I do because I use common front-end technologies no matter what stack my client is using.

I don't have to keep up with the latest Struts, ASP.NET, Rails, Django or any other api intensive web framework. My UI is detached from the technical implementation of the back end and for me that is an advantage. There are a growing number of developers that build web apps this way, and yet there are others that believe that it is the spawn of Satan.

Anyway, I would say to just start, don't worry to much about what stack as it is more important to understand how the web is bolted together then as you gain knowledge you can make adjustments as necessary to perfect your web-fu. You cant go wrong with Python, Google Apps is great to know the only one I would caution on is the NoSQL.

Not that it does not have advantages and vice-verse disadvantage, but as a newcomer you want to make your transition as easy as possible and I think a relational database would help achieve that goal. There is more documentation and users of the stack you select that know how to work with relational databases, if you get stuck as you will from time to time, you will find it much easier to find info on how to work your way out of a DB issue rather than a NoSQL issue. Even if it is just do your first project with a Relational DB and then make the transition it will help to isolate your learning's to web specific nuances first.

Finally, learn JavaScript it is the only universal web language and it's use is growing. No matter which stack you chose, you will eventually have to write JavaScript.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome; that's what i was looking for. And, I was also hoping to get advice on algorithmic or architecture knowledge on distributed web apps as opposed to specific details on languages.

Ex: How facebook scales to 500+ million users or how flickr can serve so many photos that fast. Obviously for my flickr app clone, I don't need that level of performance but I'd at least like some pointers on how to go about it the right way.

<comment><USER2> Well Facebook uses PHP and HipHop which is an implementation that converts the PHP to C and compiles it as machine code as opposed to interpreted code. It is how they scale on PHP as for flicker they use PHP as well you may want to look at this document, it outlines the flicker architecture and what they did.

[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&s...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CBcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.niallkennedy.com%2Fblog%2Fuploads%2Fflickr_php.pdf&rct=j&q=flickr%20built%20with%20PHP&ei=a8S_TNGiFYL98AbQx7SjBg&usg=AFQjCNFgbX9j2I4bxDbsUQlUdPjN- CsHGg)

PHP is with out a doubt the most popular web 1.0 server side language, and if you are looking to do this as a job, then it is well worth it. Personally, I would rather jab my eyes out than work with another line of PHP. It was originally designed by a group of people that had neither extensive language experience nor web experience. It is kludged together and you feel it ever step of the way. Over time, people that do know what they are doing have fixed some of it, but there is still some crap legacy in it. I swore off PHP and will not take a contract that mandates it.

Now for the good part, it is fast to develop in, it has a lot of support, there is enough stuff built in it that you can find almost anything you need. Wordpress and Drupal are two of the most popular CMS systems and are written with PHP. You can build a site in 4hrs with either one and a template from one of the template sites. It's like crack of the web development world, cheap, dirty, powerful and it gives you want you want, but no ones admits to using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Take a look at Software Engineering for Internet Applications: <http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/>

From the preface: "We assume that [prospective students] know how to write a computer program and debug it. We do not assume knowledge of any particular programming languages, standards, or protocols. The most concise statement of the course goal is that `The student finishes knowing how to build amazon.com by him or herself.'"

</comment><comment><USER4> Probably best way to do it is pick a programming language or framework and start building your app.

Rails has this: <http://railstutorial.org/book> (If you need a kick to choose.)

If you don't already know HTML and CSS you should probably learn that first, <http://www.w3schools.com/> is a good starting point. (Not really a lot to learn but very valuable.)

And javascript will be useful but you could probably do without it for making a simple app.</comment>


AWS accelerates instance reboots in anticipation of research findings - <AUTHOR> I had some instances that I hadn't manually restarted, scheduled for reboot on Friday and Saturday. Just received this email:
We previously advised you of important security and operational updates which will require a reboot of one or more of your Amazon EC2 instances in the US-EAST-1 region. Unfortunately, we must accelerate the planned reboot times for these instances given anticipated publication of new research findings.
The new maintenance window has been scheduled between January 4, 2018 at 8:00 AM UTC (12:00AM PST) and January 4, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC (6:00AM PST) during which the EC2 service will automatically perform the required reboot. During the maintenance window, the affected instance will be unavailable for a short period of time as it reboots. We will be performing this maintenance in a single Availability Zone of each Region at a time. For more information on EC2 maintenance, please see our documentation here: https://aws.amazon.com/maintenance-help/ .
To avoid your scheduled reboot, you are able to reboot this instance any time prior to the maintenance window. More details on rebooting your instances yourself can be found here:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-instance-reboot.html
To see which of your instances are impacted, please visit the 'Events' page on the EC2 console to view your instances that are scheduled for maintenance:
https://us-east-1.console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home?region=us-east-1#Events
Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services <comment><USER2> Security bulletin now available: [https://aws.amazon.com/security/security- bulletins/AWS-2018-...](https://aws.amazon.com/security/security- bulletins/AWS-2018-013/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't this be disabled somehow for internal servers only ? Say disabling it on db servers but keep it on api/web servers.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're doing this so you (or other shared tenants) can't read your VMs or the host's memory (and vice versa).

<comment><USER3> What about on dedicated servers ? Is there a config that can be done ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think this is a dupe. This notice of reboots is not publicized at all in the other post.

</comment><comment><USER5> any ideas what those findings are?

<comment><USER6> [https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading- privi...](https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged- memory-with-side.html)

We have discovered that CPU data cache timing can be abused to efficiently leak information out of mis-speculated execution, leading to (at worst) arbitrary virtual memory read vulnerabilities across local security boundaries in various contexts.

Variants of this issue are known to affect many modern processors, including certain processors by Intel, AMD and ARM. For a few Intel and AMD CPU models, we have exploits that work against real software. We reported this issue to Intel, AMD and ARM on 2017-06-01 [1].

So far, there are three known variants of the issue:

        Variant 1: bounds check bypass (CVE-2017-5753)
        Variant 2: branch target injection (CVE-2017-5715)
        Variant 3: rogue data cache load (CVE-2017-5754)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> aka "LOL zero day exploit needs to be patched ASAP thx"

<comment><USER8> It's not a zero-day exploit.

<comment><USER9> There's no way of knowing if this was exploited in the wild before it was discovered and mitigated. If it was, then it was a zero-day exploit.

<comment><USER8> By this logic, all exploits for publicly released software, patched or unpatched, could be zero-day exploits. That would make the term rather meaningless, IMHO.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Comparing MRI Rails App Server Performance on Heroku - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jrochkind/fake_work_app/blob/master/README.md

<comment><USER2> Because of the nature of Heroku (and thus EC2) there will always be unknown and random latency associated with shared nodes and hidden network utilization.

What's important is that you did all the tests on heroku and gave enough of a window to subject all tests to the random latency.

This allows users to say "if I'm going to be deploying on Heroku, these measurements are valid." If they deploy anywhere else, those variances will be different and change the equation (though it's unlikely they'd completely flip the results).

Thanks a ton for the great analysis!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! And thanks for puma.

I think I actually probably DIDN'T give quite enough time to give enough window to even out the env -- I generally only ran each scenario test for around 30-60 seconds (you can see how long each test ran for in the results, it's there in the captured output).

Still, by running so many tests and getting _largely_ consistent results, I think it prob averages out into giving us a basic picture, and would be surprised if results weren't basically consistent even if you ran longer.

But if someone wanted to re-run it giving dozens of minutes or more to each scenario, hey, you've got my code, heh. It would probably take a day or more to run everything, but such a person wouldn't have to spend the time I took setting it all up if they used my code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any thoughts on doing the same thing with Sinatra and/or Padrino? Also do you think rails 4 will make any improvements?

~20 reqs per second with barely any concurrency seems so low. Is heroku, ruby or rails the culprit for such low throughput?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Any thoughts on doing the same thing with Sinatra and/or Padrino? Also do > you think rails 4 will make any improvements?

I am not familiar enough with either of those frameworks to know if they can do multi-threaded concurrent request dispatch -- if they can, then it'll apply to them too, I think. But I'm not interested in doing the experiment myself.

I don't think rails4 fundamentally changes the picture, as far as _comparing_ different app servers.

> ~20 reqs per second with barely any concurrency seems so low. Is heroku, > ruby or rails the culprit for such low throughput?

It may be mostly that I was choosing to model relatively slow apps. With an app that takes 100ms of _cpu time_ to return a response, and 4 cores -- the -theoretical- maximum is only 40 reqs/second, it's not possible for it to get any higher than that.

For my own work, my apps don't get a whole lot faster than what I modelled, but others might.

But I wasn't really setting things up to look at the actual requests/second numbers -- in what I set up, the relationship between the scenarios is more significant. If you wanted meaningful absolute numbers (or to compare ruby/rails to something else) you'd probably want to test a real app doing real things, not my simulation app.

I also think, generally, "requests per second" is not the right number to be looking at -- what you (and the users or clients) really care about is how long the clients spend waiting for a response (at median, and how much variation), right?

<comment><USER3> Yeah latency is more important but wouldn't you cache most results in a real app.

I think 37 signal's showed us that a rail's app is capable of delivering low latency responses. In some presentation David mentioned most responses are sent out in 20-50ms but he didn't mention the hardware involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I've been wanting to see is how puma threads compete directly against unicorn workers ... so as an exmaple ... how puma with 4 threads does vs Unicorn with 4 processes? I can't find that particular comparison anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice write up. I am recommending [https://github.com/wg/wrk](https://github.com/wg/wrk) instead of ab if you ever have to run those kind of benchmarks again.</comment>


Human Nature Makes People Assholes; Not the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.violentacres.com/archives/142/human-nature-makes-people-assholes-not-the-internet <comment><USER2> when people wantonly sprinkle the F word around (as she does all over her blog), I lose respect for them.</comment>


The TCK Trap - <AUTHOR> http://skife.org/java/jcp/2010/12/07/the-tck-trap.html

<comment><USER2> GPLv2 likely does include patent protection implicitly. Here's an article written by a law firm discussion the issue (PDF): [http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/IP/potential_de...](http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/IP/potential_defenses.pdf)</comment>


Show HN: Reactpack – one command to build your React front end - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/olahol/reactpack <comment><USER2> I wish we had something like this officially backed by the react team. In 30 minutes when a new standard approach comes out, this tool will become obsolete.

<comment><USER3> They are specifically working on it according to this React.js Conf talk [0].

There's also rwb from Pete Hunt [1].

EDIT: Removed comment about 'standard'. Ain't so bad anymore apparently.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJf2jYzs8A#t=00h14m25s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJf2jYzs8A#t=00h14m25s)

[1] [https://github.com/petehunt/rwb/](https://github.com/petehunt/rwb/)

<comment><USER4> > the most obnoxious style-guide of all

What do you mean? I've heard people say that a couple times but they never really elaborated. Do people love their semicolons that much? Are people offended that it's called "standard"? Or something else?

> They are specifically working on it according to this React.js Conf talk

This is very exciting. I prefer React over Vue, but one of the things I love about Vue is vue-cli[0]. Something similar, if not better, for React, would be greatly appreciated.

[0] [https://vuejs.org/2015/12/28/vue-cli/](https://vuejs.org/2015/12/28/vue- cli/)

<comment><USER3> Tbf I just looked over 'standard' and it's improved a ton since it initially came out. Bar one minor rule, the only rule I still object to is the semicolon one, which I'm obvs not going to get into a discussion about, because I value my sanity. I'll edit my above comment if I still can :)

<comment><USER5> There also exists semistandard, just for you :)

<comment><USER6> Which this tool doesn't integrate with...? Ultimately, that's always the problem with these "get-started-quickly" tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a small utility for people who are tired of remembering what babel presets or Webpack loaders they need to build a relatively up to date React project.

<comment><USER7> The diagram here shows a real talent for explaining complex processes in a way that even a two year old could understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :) I made it in gnome-paint, the shrubbery symbolizes okayish development practices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice work! I've been looking for something like this.

I hope to see more tools in this vein emerge from the JavaScript ecosystem - tools that aren't afraid to make some well-reasoned assumptions for the sake of a more minimal interface. (It seems like every tool nowadays wants you to put another dotfile or garbage.json at the root of your project.)

</comment><comment><USER9> We use "bates" [https://github.com/luiscarli/bates](https://github.com/luiscarli/bates) by our own engineer

</comment><comment><USER10> I would love this only for the react stuff. More useful defaults, less opinions. For example: please let me chose my own CSS workflow and please don't force me to write javascript without semicolons like an animal :P.

Update: I just realised that you can bypass the linter and the postcss. I am sorry OP, looks like I'm a lazy jackass.

</comment><comment><USER11> Finally, an opinionated build tool.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've similar plugin for gulp [https://github.com/ro31337/gulp-react- easy](https://github.com/ro31337/gulp-react-easy)

</comment><comment><USER13> react router missing

<comment><USER14> likewise redux, redux thunks and wireup for router would probably be beneficial as a starting point. Of course at that point, pretty much wandering into starter project territory.

<comment><USER15> Plus while redux is an excellent redux it's not everybody's cup of tea. (I currently like both redux and mobx depending)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That is an amazing logo.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm a bit confused - this didn't actually install a shell script that can be run ?

<comment><USER18> It did, `reactpack` - look at the "scripts" section of package.json to see it used

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> was that...like...a hundred megs for a web page?

<comment><USER20> 177 modules for a Hello World page? Is this satire?

<comment><USER21> Sigh, that's an absurd way to measure. A "Hello world" is just that: a demo. No-one is:

1) actually making Hello, World pages that will go anywhere near a user

2) Using React in Hello, World pages (which they don't make)

3) Using Reactpack to build the React-based Hello World pages they aren't making

<comment><USER20> It's not absurd because:

1) Whatever you're making, you're starting out with 177 modules minimum if you use React + Reactpack.

2) See 1.

<comment><USER21> But if you're using React you are creating a not-insignificant webapp and the initial install time of 177 modules is totally irrelevant beyond that first install. It doesn't have any reflection on the size of the client JS file (webpack loaders, for example, only live on the dev machine).

Moreover, you can presumably globally install this, so it can cover every React-based project you need to build.

What is an acceptable number of modules?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When I try to install it npm just hangs

command:

        npm i --save-dev reactpack

node version:

        v0.12.6

npm version

        2.11.2

uname -a

        Linux gentoo-1 4.4.0-22-generic #40-Ubuntu SMP Thu May 12 22:03:46 UTC 2016 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

<comment><USER21> Those versions of npm and node are quite old - I imagine the minimum requirements might be higher, though the project should have those outlined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23>
        S  E  M  I  C  O  L  O  N  S
        E
        M
        I
        C
        O
        L
        O
        N
        S

</comment><comment><USER24> These things are always funny to me. By the third or so release, it'll be just as easy to write your own script than to learn how to use this.</comment>


Steve's Outfit - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevesoutfit.com/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I must be a cheapskate (well, I am) but would never pay $130 for a pair of jeans, shirt or shoes in 2011 dollars. I probably wouldn't even pay $130 for all 3 combined.

Do average people really spend $130 on a pair of sneakers?

<comment><USER3> What, exactly, do you think is average about Steve Jobs?

<comment><USER2> Good point. My thinking was that these were brands I know are marketed towards 'average' people (Levis and New Balance).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice touch on the footer: "Click here to sue, please." <http://cl.ly/0L0p1l0J3j370m0o0N1w>

</comment><comment><USER5> Grrrrrrrrr,

demonstrating one of my major pet peeves; If you're going to tuck in your top, wear a belt.

I assume this one would be suitable stupidly expensive for Mr Jobs [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sugar-Cane-black-leather- CANE1141/dp...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sugar-Cane-black-leather- CANE1141/dp/B004CI5B0K/ref=sr_1_6?s=clothing&ie=UTF8&qid=1312237087&sr=1-6)

(seriously what wanker pays £150 for a black leather belt? I've got one (I think I paid a fiver for) that after years of wear looks just like the one I linked. If anyone wants it it's your for £70)

</comment><comment><USER6> Steve has needed to upgrade his jeans for a long time. If he's fond of Levi's, he doesn't even have to switch brands, just transition to darker denim (not pre-washed) and straight leg.

</comment><comment><USER7> See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science>

</comment><comment><USER8> Doubt the cashmere & silk shirt is what he wears. It would go against his vegan beliefs. But overall it's kinda creepy...

</comment><comment><USER9> That's a funny site. I see the links go straight to Amazon. I was wondering if they were actually selling these items themselves, that would be slightly disturbing.

<comment><USER10> They're making money off the links, using referrals

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> is he freeballing it? what about the underwear???

<comment><USER12> I would think this: <http://www.ugo.com/tech/iphone-boxers-20>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Missing glasses.

</comment><comment><USER14> Absolutely brilliant and a great example of the simple side-project opportunities that exist at every turn.

</comment><comment><USER15> why did this need jquery?

<comment><USER16> Short answer: it doesn't.

Long answer: In <http://www.stevesoutfit.com/js/tutorial.js> jQuery is used to implement some sort of AJAX contact form, but I don't see the code in tutorial.js used anywhere.</comment></comment>


CUDA 10 in Clojure - <AUTHOR> https://dragan.rocks/articles/18/CUDA-10-in-Clojure <comment><USER2> Reminder that you can support Dragan's work on Patreon, if it's acceptable to post here:

[https://www.patreon.com/draganrocks](https://www.patreon.com/draganrocks)

</comment><comment><USER3> The experimental CUDA bindings for LWJGL3 might also be an interesting target for Clojure interop: [https://github.com/LWJGL/lwjgl3/blob/master/modules/samples/...](https://github.com/LWJGL/lwjgl3/blob/master/modules/samples/src/test/java/org/lwjgl/demo/cuda/HelloCUDA.java)

LWJGL3 is full of hidden treasures.

</comment><comment><USER4> Neanderthal and ClojureCUDA seem like such awesome projects, makes me wish I had more time to get into linear algebra. Is anyone doing anything fun with it they could share?

<comment><USER5> non-ANN ML is essentially a subset of linear algebra applied to statistics.

also, if you do anything involving physics simulations, (actual physics, mechanical engineering, other engineering, etc) you will likely use it.

also finance. also also also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonder if there'd be any lisp or clojure dsl that compiles down to fairly minimal c/cpp, so that you wouldn't have to have the cuda program be a string

<comment><AUTHOR> Cuda program doesn't have to be a string. I keep them in regular .cu files, and just load them with slurp into clojure repl.

<comment><USER7> yes but wouldn't it be nice to be able to emit CUDA/OpenCL code from an AST so that you could use your Clojure functions on the GPU without duplication ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It wouldn't since most of Clojure functions would be poor match for the GPU hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really wish clojure would adopt a heredoc syntax to make embed language snippets and docstrings nicer.

<comment><USER9> Some codebases have adopted markdown for their docstrings, and other nice formats are only a macro away.

<comment><USER8> Using markdown doesn't fix the problem of having to escape double quotes, unless you are using a literate programming technique where the clojure code is quoted inside of the markdown instead of vice versa. Using macros only works if the formats consist entirely of balanced s-expressions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Been searching for a while trying to see if there are only CUDA libraries for Clojure and as far I can tell that is sadly the truth, no signs of any ROCm libraries available [https://rocm.github.io/](https://rocm.github.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Neanderthal has an OpenCL backend, and ClojureCL can be used for programming your own stuff, and they both work fine with ROCm's OpenCL support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dragan does it again

<comment><USER12> He does rock!</comment></comment>


Learning Linux Through Immersion and Reflection - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@steven_ovadia/learning-linux-through-immersion-and-reflection-fb7fd008467e#.956s94u8m <comment><USER2> The author is Steven Ovadia, who runs the Linux Setup blog: [http://www.mylinuxrig.com/tagged/the_linux_setup](http://www.mylinuxrig.com/tagged/the_linux_setup). It's like usesthis.com with a focus on Linux.</comment>


Online LaTex editor - <AUTHOR> https://www.sharelatex.com <comment><USER2> I looked into using LaTeX in an online service once but my understanding was that LaTeX is difficult to serve as a service because there are several commands which allow arbitrary code execution. Is this whitelisting some of the syntax? How are they doing that?

(btw, if it turns out they aren't please don't comment here about it but instead report it to them at [https://www.sharelatex.com/security](https://www.sharelatex.com/security) )

<comment><USER3> It's always possible to sandbox the processes. In that sense, it's not very different from the various [http://try.$PROGRAMMINGLANGUAGE.org](http://try.$PROGRAMMINGLANGUAGE.org). For most of the sandboxing techniques, the performance can be however problematic.

What's peculiar about latex is that its compilation model is ridiculously inefficient. There's no separate compilation, so you have to re-run the whole compilation at the tiniest change. Also, there's a lot of I/O involved, and a several passes are needed. For example, to display the table of contents, it is necessary to append to a temporary file a list of commands (emitted by \section{} etc) which will be interpreted, in a following pass (it is necessary to manually re-run the compiler) by \tableofcontents.

<comment><USER4> Has anyone ever tried to refactor and sort Latex out? As such a widely used and important app, it really surprises me that there would be so many problems left in the code base. It is open source after all.

<comment><USER5> > [...] since Knuth highly values the reproducibility of the output of all > versions of TeX, any changed version must not be called TEX, TeX, or > anything confusingly similar.

I have heard that to be the reason that some don't want to "fix" TeX/LaTeX.

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#License](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#License)

LaTeX also has a similar clause (or whatever you call it): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX_Project_Public_License#Un...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX_Project_Public_License#Unique_features_of_the_license)

<comment><USER6> To be clear, it is allowed to be called a TeX if it passes a testsuite:

> To enforce this rule, any implementation of the system must pass a test > suite called the TRIP test[39] before being allowed to be called TeX

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a new product from the people who made ScribTeX ([http://www.scribtex.com/](http://www.scribtex.com/)).

ScribTeX helped me a lot a few years back when I had a conference paper due in a couple of days and only an old PowerPC machine at my disposal at home that had trouble running MacTeX (for reasons I had no time to fix). I ended up writing most of it in the browser. Then the killer feature of ScribTeX for me was that it didn't require registration; you could use it from anywhere right away if you had your TeX files with you on a flash drive. It wasn't that registering or logging in was hard, mind you, but not having to do it completely bypassed the mental barrier of entering your password in a potentially unsafe environment like a malware-infested university computer lab. Later you would be at a safer computer (e.g., your own), log in to ScribTeX and upload your document to it as an off-site backup.

</comment><comment><USER8> People in this thread might also be interested in the following. GmailTeX allows you to see LaTeX in your Gmail and GChat. Works in real-time, but browser plug-in required.

[http://alexeev.org/gmailtex.html](http://alexeev.org/gmailtex.html)

Socrates is a website for writing instant Markdown and LaTeXing in the browser. It's hyperlink-shareable, no plugin required.

[http://socrates.io/](http://socrates.io/)

<comment><USER9> I want to love socrates.io but the fact that it doesn't support Markdown tables is an issue:

Socrates.IO Table: [http://socrates.io/#YtM088D](http://socrates.io/#YtM088D)

Working Example: [http://bit.ly/JbtMarkdownTable](http://bit.ly/JbtMarkdownTable)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My experience is that LaTex is too hard/strange for most people (even electrical engineers, so its not about IQ...), and there isn't a better alternative to MS Word for writing big product manuals.

(Also, while having some experience with the system, I do notice that I have a hard time achieving flow while writing LaTex. There are hundreds of WTFs).

<comment><USER11> I've started doing my academic writing in MultiMarkdown (MMD) using Scrivener. It generates LaTex (or PDFs via LaTex) and for me is even easier than Lyx. When needed, you just embed raw LaTex in the doc as <!--xxx-> comments or just do the final polishing in your usual LaTex editor.

<comment><USER10> I almost forced the team to choose Markdown, and then had to change my advice and say "Let's go with LaTex" because there are so many features MS Word users want to use... I don't remember exactly the one that prompted the switch - maybe footnotes, tables or referencing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is another site called [http://www.writelatex.com](http://www.writelatex.com)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm surely getting old, but I believe online editing of text documents is insane. I would forget about writing anything slightly more important than a pie recipe with this.

<comment><USER14> Why insane? I mean, you're welcome to your opinion, but you haven't presented any arguments for your position.

I find it incredibly useful. The alternative is normally using Microsoft Word, and emailing each other versions of the document, that need to be merged by hand.

<comment><USER13> I'm worried about privacy. Even scientific papers need to have reasonable privacy before publication, that you do not have by using somebody else's hosting.

More useful would be using latex and some form of source-control like git or svn hosted by you or your organization.

<comment><USER14> The odds that you or your organization will do a better job of Dev Ops than Google are effectively zero. You'll leave some port open that you shouldn't, have an easily guessed password on a router, forget to update a kernel, you won't set up two-factor authentication...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I swear by StackEdit one, which is an online editor for markdown supporting LaTex math expressions: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stackedit/iiooodel...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stackedit/iiooodelglhkcpgbajoejffhijaclcdg)

</comment><comment><USER16> Used sharelatex for my third year project report at university. ~60 pages rendered quickly and flawlessly. Such a great experience using it compared to various desktop software and command line

</comment><comment><USER17> Going the other way, if you want to enter the LaTeX variant called MathJax locally (PC and Mac), which is used on math.stackexchange.com (among other other places), try [http://www.inkcode.net/qute](http://www.inkcode.net/qute). I find this very handy for short to moderate length math.

In my weirdness, I like to use qute in split-screen mode, and work out the math as I enter it, never writing anything down. I then make corrections, modify things, move lines around, all in qute. I have developed some techniques for having correct MathJax syntax at almost all times, which I find necessary since qute does not show the result of an incorrect expression.

I find qute very useful for formatting math. Since it is all offline, no connection is needed. After the formatting is correct, I can then push it to the clipboard and paste it into whatever I want (usually math.stackexchange.com).

I recommend qute highly. Again, it is for Windows and Mac OS, not Linux (unfortunately).

<comment><USER18> @mjcohen weird, I use qute on Linux (Gentoo), there's even an ebuild for it. However it's not hard to built it yourself on linux, actually dead easy. I also use pandoc writing Markdown and compiling to latex → pdf

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's something vaguely "scammy" to be about the university logos being featured so prominently on the front page. My first thought was that it was being developed by a consortium of schools, but apparently it is considered good enough if one or more students at the institution use the product...

<comment><USER20> co-founder here. We do require that the university is paying for a licence before we show their logo. Also most of the time we get asked to add their logos there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I used Scribtex (a previous product developed by at least some of the people behind sharelatex) for 2 years during university with a lot of success. Compared to setting up a latex environment on every PC I used it was a dream. I found the developer quick to respond to bug reports and issues. Recommended!

</comment><comment><USER22> It is a good editor.you can create you own resume through the sharelatex....

</comment><comment><USER23> We use LaTeX a lot for all kinds of documentation. I've used sharelatex.com on and off for a while now.

I think they'll be onto a winner when they've got their up coming Git access feature sorted out.

</comment><comment><USER18> How you can speedup LaTeX compilation speeds by a factor of 2x or 3x.

%&Thesis -jobname="Thesis"

% ^^This needs to be the 1st line of your Thesis.tex^^

%% Enable Binary Preamble Cache

%% Doc: [http://www.ctan.org/pkg/mylatexformat](http://www.ctan.org/pkg/mylatexformat)

%% Usage: pdflatex -ini -synctex=1 -shell-escape -jobname="Thesis" "&pdflatex" mylatexformat.ltx Thesis.tex

\csname endofdump\endcsname

What follows here is the part that changes, ie. your chapters. All preceding "endofdump" will be compiled into a cache file.

</comment><comment><USER24> The templates section is nevertheless useful [https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/](https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Since we're on the subject, here's my online LaTex editor:

[http://arachnoid.com/latex/](http://arachnoid.com/latex/)

<comment><USER26> You should promote more this solution of yours. Big thumb up!

<comment><USER25> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


The $50,000 San Francisco Home - <AUTHOR> http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/9/22/the-50000-san-francisco-studio-apartment <comment><USER2> I think the real tl:dr of this article is: making affordable living spaces is easy if the laws and NIMBYs allow it. But they don't. So it's not.

<comment><USER3> The more I learn about this situation the more surprised I am.

George Carlin had a great bit about NIMBY-types, but in that bit the NIMBY- types, who don't want a prison built near them, have a "logical" viewpoint that he deconstructs: criminals don't hang around outside of a prison. Inmates who escape want to get as far away from the prison as possible, that's the point of escaping, after all.

From what I can tell, the NIMBY-types in SF only have...aesthetic concerns? is that really what is keeping housing from being built? concerns over an eyesore? I don't see the "logical" viewpoint that can be deconstructed here, no wonder it's such a headache.

<comment><USER4> It all comes back to money. People who've seen 20x returns on their property value want to keep the money, people who've spent $5m on a small house want to justify that investment, and landlords want to keep renting their shoebox studio for $3k/mo. Arguments about neighborhood character are just trying to obscure the obvious greed.

<comment><USER5> Just a random opinion from someone who doesn't live in SF: I like to visit SF because of the architecture. It really is what makes it unique in the United States. It would be a shame to lose that.

<comment><USER4> Nobody is asking to bulldoze the Painted Ladies or Lombard.

The problem is more about the Sunset, the Richmond, Forest Hills, Excelsior -- just these huge sweeping neighborhoods which are incredibly underzoned and underdeveloped. Or the people who fight development in SOMA because it blocks part of their view.

<comment><USER6> Sunset is the strangest place I've ever seen from the air. A totally regular grid of housing with no almost no open spaces at all. Maybe you can't see it from the air but are there even community spaces where people gather? I can't even see any shopping or restaurant areas. It's all just regular roads.

I can't imagine how you could make it any more developed. There isn't an inch of breathing space is there? If you built up how would anyone get around? In higher rise places even like London there are parks and a variety of spaces and variation in the layout to get around the extra vertical density.

<comment><USER7> I live in the Sunset. We have plenty of small parks and the Sunset runs the entire length of the enormous Golden Gate park, which stretches across half the city.

There are plenty of restaurants and shops, most of which is not yet gentrified, and they just fit into the regular grid as mixed-use urban buildings (restaurant on the street level, apartments on the floor(s) above. There are no strip malls, big box stores, etc.

Like much of the city, developing it further would likely mean building "up", yes. There are also an enormous number of single family homes in the Sunset, some of which could be converted into multi family apartment buildings to increase density.

All that said, I'm not clear on how you'd actually accomplish the above. My family and I live here BECAUSE we wanted a single family home, a backyard, etc. SF obviously needs a vast increase in residential availability, but I'm certainly not the guy to ask about how to make it happen.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure it must be nice on the ground in reality as so many people want to live there, but it looks positively dystopian on a satellite image. Hundreds and hundreds of identical crammed blocks on a rigid grid with no green spaces in them. It looks like in some places you'd have to walk six blocks to reach any kind of open space.

Other big cities like London are crowded as well but at least no two streets are the same and there's always some breathing space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like this, although one thing that I've recently learned is that Silicon Valley has a number of large trailer parks, and you can often purchase a home in one of them for about $70-90K. Many of the trailers are actually quite retro cool. I believe Tony Hsieh still lives in a trailer, in Vegas.

[http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/191-E-El-Camino-Real- SPC-2...](http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/191-E-El-Camino-Real- SPC-284-Mountain-View-CA-94040/2097442737_zpid/)

[http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2150-Almaden-Rd- SPC-125-Sa...](http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2150-Almaden-Rd-SPC-125-San- Jose-CA-95125/2097418932_zpid/)

<comment><USER9> I feel obliged to point something important out about trailer park homes (and other temporary dwellings)...

They're a financial trap. So MOST people buy a home with finance, it might be a bank, credit union, or whatever but ultimately these loans are backed by larger organisations in the background that set the rules.

One thing you may not be aware of is that once a trailer park home is 15+ years old a LOT of companies won't loan against it. Even for a new dwelling of that type it can be hard to get finance, but as they grow older loan providers vanish.

There's a whole host of reasons for this (e.g. the type of people that live there are "high risk," the home can literally be stolen, there's less standardisation for home inspection, the land is low value since it is often in the middle of a trailer park (i.e. has no general purpose value)).

I call this a "trap" because you'll buy the trailer park home, then at some stage in the future you'll want to resell it; when that occurs you may suddenly find that while there are a lot of interested buyers none of them can get finance(!) to buy your home.

This has nothing to do with a buyer's credit score by the way. It is the property itself that won't be loaned against (since when you mortgage the property itself is normally collateral in case you don't pay, in this case they cannot determine that the property is worth as much as the loan you're asking for).

I know someone who's been trying to sell their trailer park home for a year. Lot's of interested buyers, all with good jobs and solid credit scores, but none of them can get finance because the property is too old, and none have the cash. They're tried dozens of financial institutions.

<comment><USER10> Could they offer seller financing?

<comment><USER11> I knew a seller - a veterinarian in Missoula, MT - who purchased a trailer, then sold it on owner financing, and repeated the process many times as his buyers defaulted.

Even at the lowest income bracket, there are buyers who can put together 10% down on a $12,000 house - even some who can put together 20%. If you owner finance such a sale, and charge interest rates that make the monthly mortgage competitive with rent elsewhere, you can do very well for yourself.

<comment><USER12> Dodd-Frank significantly curtails this sort of predatory behavior.

[https://www.ortconline.com/Web2/Downloads/English/CFPB%20and...](https://www.ortconline.com/Web2/Downloads/English/CFPB%20and%20Seller%20Financing.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of course, then it would just get "flipped" back on the market for $500k because that's what people are willing to pay.

<comment><USER14> Not necessarily. If zoning laws become such that it is possible for anyone to just build 50,000$ per unit homes, no questions asked, then the market would solve the problem.

Or if you don't believe in the laws of supply and demand, then you could just team up with a bunch of other people and pool your funds, and build your own 50,000$ unit. Who cares about the market price, if you can personally fund the building of your apartment yourself!

<comment><USER13> I agree...if you can build enough of these. I can't remember off hand, but I think that you need to build something like 40,000 more units to even start making a dent. Call me skeptical that you can build 40k of these.

<comment><USER8> You could build 40k of them, it's been done and it's called Silicon Valley. Take a look at the place with Google Earth, it's a perfect example of 50's - 60's dense Western-style suburban development. Even if you could do that, however, I think the cost of land there would be prohibitive, which I don't think was factored into the original post.

<comment><USER15> Yes, cost of land was factored in to the original post. That's what the whole section about density was about. Keeping land costs at 10k per unit defines how many units you need to put on a given plot of land, based on price paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find it so strange that experts center their goals around how to fit as many people as possible into these cities, rather than figuring out how to scale what makes places like the Bay Area desirable out to other regions...

<comment><USER17> The Bay Area is so desirable because it where all the tech companies are located and the tech companies are there because it were all the tech workers are. It's an unbreakable cycle.

<comment><USER18> I keep waiting for one of the major tech companies to get fed up with what it has to pay staff in SV, and start moving jobs somewhere cheaper. And pretty much anywhere is cheaper.

Even the Wall Street banks eventually moved their back-room staff to places cheaper than Manhattan. Apparently New Jersey was a popular destination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I currently live in a new 330 sqft microhouse in Berkeley. Its not a solution at all. You can't have a family and you don't gain enough value to buy an actual livable size home.

The only use it has is to rent to others on your backlot to help pay for your $1.2m two bedroom home's constant renovation needs.

Its like living in too small of a pot, you either end up with a tiny plant (your life) or a dead one.

<comment><USER20> FYI: In Soviet Russia in the early 80's, there were 161,5sqft of house space per each resident. The most common accomodation was single-room apartment 351sqft sized.

<comment><USER19> You just cited a nation who has been in a population decline.

<comment><USER20> USSR's population had grown up since WWII to the end. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union#Population_2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article has a picture of a "typical" san francisco street that doesn't represent most of the city. Maybe weighted by population the photo from chinatown is typical, but weighted by land use this photo is more typical:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.4896485,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-122.4896485,3a,75y,358.24h,84.24t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sZGoGAvwrztEtEGSlevEvgw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DZGoGAvwrztEtEGSlevEvgw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D136.28094%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656)

<comment><USER22> This 3rd world cabling...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Even if they do make houses for $50K, there is a huge demand so prices will still rise well above those prices. Both government and local home owners don't want more housing. Nobody who already owns a home wants more built because it would mean their home goes down in value. Also, it means it would be more crowded and more traffic. It's a crappy situation all around.

That aside, I wish we could get some better 100% telecommuting / remote jobs.

<comment><USER24> > here is a huge demand so prices will still rise well above those prices.

That is not supply and demand works, price _will_ fall.

It might pick up again due to increased economical activity driven by population growth, but that is a second order concern. At some point housing itself will not be a limiting factor to the growth of the economy, however SF is far being Manhattan, London, Paris.. It might take 10 years to get there.

Once SF increases its population by 7-8x a simple investment in underground metro would undo the effect of congestion.

That is where technology is right now, Greater Tokyo supports 40 million people ! and the city is an economical powerhouse. It allows cool stuff like trains that travel at the speed of a bullet.

<comment><USER23> I should have clarified. Yes, increasing supply satisfies some demand and brings down prices. My point was that demand is so much higher than supply that the market value is still much higher than the intrinsic value. Saying you can build a home for $50K doesn't mean it will cost that.

Regulatory concerns are a large part why homes so much more expensive.

I built a 2 story, 4 room structure inside of a friend's warehouse for $3,800 total. I got a book on framing and just bought a bunch of lumber and drywall from Home Depot and built it myself with the help of a friend.

It wasn't legal of course. If I actually followed the law I couldn't have afforded a place to live and would have been homeless.

I agree that technology follows an exponential curve and will bring construction costs down, but gov't and society in general doesn't move at that speed and so I don't anticipate homes being much cheaper.

That and inflation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Besides NIMBYism, a drop in home equity will be extremely bad for the economy due to how much of debt is linked to mortgage debt, so I do not expect to see a drop in price anytime soon.

<comment><USER25> rent-extractors going bankrupt is a net-positive for the economy. There will be losers, sure, but we're better off overall if the Bay Area has three times as many people at the current levels of productivity/salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> $10,000 profit and $40,000 expenses is not a 20% profit margin, it's a 25% profit margin.

Is it just me or has there been a recent uptick in miscalculations like this on the part of professional journalists?

<comment><USER27> You sure about that? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_margin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_margin)

<comment><USER26> Apparently I've been mistaking profit percentage for profit margin all along.

Thanks for setting me straight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wait, they're proposing four story, wooden multiple-occupancy buildings? Would those meet fire safety standards anywhere in the developed world? I doubt their example photo (sheltered accommodation for the elderly in the UK) is wood, since we don't generally build that way, and from what I can tell it cost substantially more than their budget despite being built somewhere with low land costs.

I also notice that their photos of how six-story buildings would look are actually mostly four stories or less - and even at that height, they're starting to look pretty crowded in and dark. That's the trouble with dense high-rise buildings - you rapidly run out of light and privacy. This has two nasty effects on their proposals: it limits the density at which you can manage to cram them in and puts a lower cap on the minimum size.

<comment><USER29> In the US, home construction is almost entirely wood. Masonry is usually reserved for commercial buildings. Really large apartment buildings are often made with concrete and steel. Using wood isn't unusual at all for a project like this. There was even some large apartment buildings going up in SF last year between the Potrero and SOMA neighborhoods that were entirely of wood.

<comment><USER30> It really depends upon where you are in the US. Here in South Florida, most homes are built out of concrete block, due to expense (it's cheap) and building codes (for hurricanes). Yes, there are a few wood homes but you have to go out of your way to find them.

Brick houses are very rare, as it costs a ton to ship the bricks in (we lack the resources to make bricks, but not concrete blocks).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> 1) construction costs don't scale down linearly with square footage. Every home needs a kitchen, a heater, a bathroom, a foundation. This makes micro homes much more expensive on per foot basis 2) using construction costs from rural areas with low cost labor. Majority of home construction is labor with materials and overhead the rest. Contractors in SF are highly sought after due to hyper demand and charge double the figures here 3) seismic reinforcement in SF significantly increase construction costs 4) the cheapest anyone ever built anything in dense urban areas is $250/sq ft. My architect here says $350/ft is a challenge in SF for 2000 sq ft build. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER32> By "home", the author apparently means "120 square foot studio apartment". And by San Francisco, the author apparently means "somewhere near San Francisco, except the zoning laws don't allow this anywhere near SF right now".

<comment><AUTHOR> There are plenty of people who would happily live in those, if the choice were available to them:

[http://www.sightline.org/2016/09/06/how-seattle-killed- micro...](http://www.sightline.org/2016/09/06/how-seattle-killed-micro- housing/)

<comment><USER32> I don't buy the math in that article one bit for why they can't build more houses. I also don't buy the premise that building as many SRO-style apartments as possible is a good thing.

<comment><USER14> Well fortunately, you don't have to live in them! If you don't like micro- apartments, why not just let other people live in them, and allow developers to build them>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm a little surprised that the Googles and Apples of the valley aren't trying to build company housing on their campuses.

It's not without its own problems, as the history of "company towns" shows, but something has got to give.

<comment><USER34> Google has been struggling with Mountain View city council to get housing built in North Bayshore for about a decade.

It got approved this spring:

[http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2016/03/03/council-oks-plans- fo...](http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2016/03/03/council-oks-plans-for-dense- housing-in-north-bayshore)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I did the math and it checks out. $500,000 for 1200sq is essentially DC prices for a condo in 12-16 story buildings.

Our land values aren't that high though, so there's definitely some money being put into the luxury of the building and grounds.

</comment><comment><USER36> Thing about dense housing is that one or two streets lead in/out of a community of 1000 cars. When everyone wants to leave at 8:30 AM and get back at 6 PM, this often ends in traffic tragedy

<comment><USER37> Strange that places like Manhattan and Paris have a solution to this issue

<comment><USER4> This is the baffling thing to me -- the way people philosophize about rent in SF you'd think it was the only city to ever grow bigger.

<comment><USER38> I am curious about this, though, and I have posed this question to HN. Is there a lot of precedent for a city that has been at a medium level of density for 75+ years suddenly going to a much higher density model?

One example I frequently hear about is Vancouver which is similar to SF in square mileage, which did add a lot of density without tearing a lot of old stuff down. However, people often don't realize that SF is already more densely populated than Vancouver managed to achieve _after_ it's very high profile density initiatives. Not to say we shouldn't try that here, but keep in mind we'd be starting this high-rise density initiative from a higher density point than Vancouver reached after the high rise initiative. Again, we may be in uncharted political waters here. Clearly, SF isn't the first city to grow bigger, but it may be the first city facing pressure to tear down the oldest housing stock west of the Mississippi. Even in the relatively low density and unfashionable SFH neighborhoods like the excelsior or outer mission, many of the houses are nearing their 100th birthday. Out here, that's old.

The reason I ask this question is that I'm not really sure this is a "SF" specific phenomenon. It may be an artifact of borders. Many cities do have a relatively old "core", but their borders extend far beyond this core. In other words, growth in concord or walnut creek or antioch would count as growth in "SF". So if they protect their older neighborhoods, they can still build elsewhere and show new construction growth.

I'd be interested in seeing what kind of precedent there is for something like this. It's reasonable to ask why SF isn't building more, but it may be in a much more unusual situation than people realize. No, of course it isn't the only city ever to grow bigger, but it may be the first city under pressure to grow bigger by tearing down neighborhoods that have been in a relatively stable, medium density state for close to the last 100 years.

<comment><USER4> That's the problem -- SF isn't going to a much higher density model. The population growth is actually pretty tame, especially compared to cities in Texas and Arizona. Granted, they have more land, but it's not like this kind of growth is unprecedented. San Francisco doesn't want to be low-growth, it wants to be no-growth.

I appreciate the desire to protect the housing stock, but there's a reasonable balance. For example many of the neighborhoods between Midtown and Downtown in NYC are protected -- but neighborhoods like Hell's Kitchen, FiDi, Long Island City, and Downtown Brooklyn/Dumbo offset the housing impacts. SF can't even agree to build a couple of high-density buildings in SOMA which was (still is?) a wasteland.

<comment><USER38> What about growth outside SF in nearby areas, though? For instance, Austin Texas, a city growing rapidly, has a current population density of 3,360 per square mile

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin,_Texas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin,_Texas)

But here's the thing - Austin has a land area of 271.8 sq miles! SF has about 48. Yes, like SF to the Bay Area, Austin _city_ is smaller than Austin _metro_ , but even the city area is so much bigger that there's probably far more space to build without tearing down something old, enough that I'm not sure the comparison is a fair one.

My guess is that you could draw a square around 48 square miles of Austin that locals would consider completely off limits to demolishing for high rises. Thing is, Austin continues to grow because growth at the peripheries counts as growth "in Austin".

As for SF... well, there certainly is growth going on in SF.

[http://www.sfexaminer.com/san-franciscos-most-massive- housin...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/san-franciscos-most-massive-housing- construction-era-since-urban-renewal/)

My thesis is that if you compare this to the smaller, old and medium to high density areas within the cities where growth is more substantial, you'll see a very similar pattern - in fact, SF may be be showing a _greater_ willingness to grow - but that the supposed resistance is really just an artifact of borders.

That's a thesis, not a conclusion - it's something I find intriguing, possible true, enough that I'd be interested in seeing more data on it before concluding that SF is somehow uniquely against growth compared to comparable sub-regions in greater metro areas.

<comment><USER39> I'm not familiar with Austin, but if it's anything like most other cities, the growth is not happening at the peripheries of the city limits. It's happening in the inner urban core or well outside city limits at the edges of the _metro_ , where there's nobody to object.

In SF proper most development is happening in the South of Market Neighborhood, an old industrial/warehouse district walking distance from downtown. The other areas seeing substantial growth are in far eastern Contra Costa County (Antioch, Brentwood, etc) which is a 90 minute commute from downtown SF. In the Bay Area nearly all the land between downtown SF and the exurbs is either protected park/watershed land or is filled with existing low- density suburban communities who object vociferously to any new development. In San Francisco much of the city was downzoned in the 70s and 80s so that even the existing structures would be too dense, tall, or otherwise non- compliant for today's codes.

That 3500 homes per year is setting a record since the mid-60s just shows how little development there has been. San Francisco has about 350000 existing homes, so that's a growth rate of 1% a year. That's only slightly above the rate of population growth nationwide, and doesn't account for the neighboring communities that have zero growth (Palo Alto, all of Marin County) or migration that would like to join the enormous economic boom going on here.

<comment><USER35> Austin's downtown isn't that big. If you drive 15 minutes away from the city center, you're basically in ranch-lands.

There's no one to object to building houses there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what people would be willing to pay for 200 sq ft apartments in, say, San Mateo if the units could be rented at market. Could you get $1000 per unit per month?

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if one could create some sort of a floating platform and build housing on it.

<comment><USER41> just use a cruise ship to bring cheap labor 5 miles off shore ala [http://www.sea-code.com/](http://www.sea-code.com/)

<comment><USER40> Most cruise ship cabins aren't exactly comfortable. Plus cruise ships are really shitty in storms. I'm thinking of a much wider structure.

<comment><USER42> You haven't heard of seasteading?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> TL;DR: It's the size of a postage stamp.</comment>


Haskell Game Enpuzzled Released for Android and iOS - <AUTHOR> https://keera.co.uk/2020/06/18/enpuzzled-released-for-android-and-ios/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see something new on the blog this month. Wish you best of luck with your games.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Incredibly addictive!

</comment><comment><USER4> Niiiiice!</comment>


Bitcoin Created by U.S. Government, Says Natalya Kaspersky - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinist.com/kaspersky-labs-co-founder-says-bitcoin-created-american-intelligence-agencies/
https://sputniknews.com/business/201801191060881605-kasperskaya-bitcoin-us-intelligence/
Dunno if this is true. But couldn't believe this hidden Satoshi fellow. <comment><USER2> I mean, it's kinda true, people who worked on bitcoin probably were part of the higher echelons of tech research at the three letter hot spots... A nicer question is, what to do with all these SHA512 chips around the world now? :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Burn em :D

That aside. Did these people who brought up Bitcoin thought that the story of Satoshi Nakomoto is even remotely believable? No one seems to be interested in finding out who really is behind all these. We rather have vague stories. It isn't easy to hide like this unless they come from those who are pulling the strings. The hype and bubble certainly reminds us of other such scams (non- internet variety) which popups up at regular intervals.</comment></comment>


AMP is now available for email – What does it mean? - <AUTHOR> https://adkgroup.com/blog/amp-email-what-it-means-and-how-approach-it-0/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a look at how AMP builds Google's strategic moat AND a framework for marketers to approach the question of whether to implement AMP or not. Feedback and questions are more than welcome!</comment>


Mark Pilgrim found and annoyed - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/#!/textfiles/status/121436177298493440

<comment><USER2> Well, what did he think was going to happen? "I'm just going to 410 Gone some of the most useful pages on the Internet and all my social media accounts without saying anything about why. Ho hum. Surely there will be no consequences to this whatsoever."

Let him be annoyed. In the meantime, I'm going to be annoyed that he's pulled his content. Surely this violates some implicit social norms and the trust of the Internet community. "Here is some useful content which will educate and inform the world! Come, refer to it and rely on it. HAHAHAHA 410'd!"

I'm sure both of our Being Annoyed's will be very productive. [/snark]

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Pardon my pontification/speculation, but I wonder if _why and Mark's disappearance is a symptom of a larger disease — programming just isn't as rewarding once a hacker goes public.

<comment><USER3> As much as I love _why, and Mark, it looks to be more of an exception than the rule. _Many_ hackers are comfortable with being 'public', each with their own quirks. Off the top of my head, DHH, Ryan Dahl, Zed Shaw, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just as a reminder, this is the guy that refuses to update Dive into Python because he feels that things older than five years or so should never be touched again, even if they've got glaring errors that should be fixed.</comment>


Artist Nan Goldin takes on the billionaire family behind OxyContin - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jan/22/nan-goldin-interview-us-opioid-epidemic-heroin-addict-oxycontin-sackler-family <comment><USER2> I don't think it is appropriate to blame doctors in the US for this. She was initially prescribed the drug in Berlin. The article mentions that she was in a high-risk group that should not be prescribed the drug, but it is likely that the European doctor was legitimately unaware of that.

"When, back in New York, doctors refused to supply her any more, she turned to the black market, and to cheaper hard street drugs whenever she ran out of money."

I think this person should take responsibility for her own mistakes, rather than trying to blame them on other people.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you quite understand how drug addiction works. It's not a simple matter of "take responsibility". Particularly since she didn't set out to be a drug addict - she was prescribed a painkiller, and took it by prescription. That has happened to rather a lot of people.

<comment><USER4> I hate this response. It's such a classic copout and one that attempts to completely nullify any argument for personal responsibility. We just don't "understand" how drug addiction works. Right.

How have some people come to believe that simply being prescribed these medications and taking them as prescribed STRIPS the patient of mental faculty to notice a problem, and renders them utterly dependent and hopeless? That's just not the case, at all. There's plenty of information available to patients about the risk of dependency and many choose to avoid it because, well, it feels good.

I know some addicts. Those that are clean today are clean because (in addition to many other proactive steps) they recognized that it WAS within their power to stop. They admit and recognized that they ABUSED the medication willingly, and despite sobriety being very difficult, is still a choice they can make.

<comment><USER5> It's not just a response or opinion. It's how addiction works. Read about it.

How do you feel about climate change?

<comment><USER6> Please don't post such obvious bait on HN.

<comment><USER5> It was facetious to make a point. If the you are happy to ignore evidence/science because you "hate that response" your argument isn't wort much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Many of us knew about the Home Loan Fraud the Prescription Drug Fraud for years before it "exploded" and yet there didn't seem to be anything to do about it.

The media and government proved their incompetence and corruption with the ruined lives of millions.

I'm hopeful that the internet is changing this and the time between new massive scams and their exposure shrinks so that fewer people are hurt. That's the best we can hope for right now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Stop this insane vilification of opioids.

This is turning into another moral panic; yet another iteration of the never ending war on drugs. We keep doing this: from prohibition of alcohol to banning pot and psychedelics. It doesn't work.

Opioids are incredibly useful. Vilifying people for providing a pain-relieving medication because they are sometimes misused is disgraceful.

<comment><USER9> What an incredibly naive statement.

<comment><USER8> How so?

I've used Oxycontin before. I used it for one week, as prescribed, and it helped me recover from a painful medical issue. I'm grateful it was available to me.

For the photographer profiled in this piece to take zero responsibility for her predicament, particularly since she's struggled with opiod and other types of addiction currently and in the past, is absurd.

She's in effect saying, "I abused this drug, so other people should be barred from using it." I reject that full stop. Some people abuse alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, etc., but that doesn't mean that it should be banned.

<comment><USER10> The profiled photographer does not call for a ban on OxyContin, she argues that they require much more regulation than they currently have. I don't see how the fact that you are apparently one of the many people who don't get easily addicted, and she is one of the many who _do_ , gives you the authority to say that she took "zero responsibility. Not sure what relevance alcohol and tobacco have in this. In America, both substances are heavily relugated, and these regulations were ostensibly in response to fears about their threat to health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nan Goldin to the rescue! Brilliant! The Sacklers fancy themselves as philanthropists for the arts. For an artist to bite the hand that feeds them is usually suicide, but not for Nan. Nan's name is made. And heroin was a constant backdrop. The Sacklers made her whether they wanted her or not.

</comment><comment><USER12> A profile of the Sackler family:

[https://forward.com/fast-forward/385375/the-jewish-family- ma...](https://forward.com/fast-forward/385375/the-jewish-family-making- billions-from-the-opioid-crisis/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why don't doctors simply stop prescribing these drugs?

<comment><USER14> Because at the end of the day, they still work and truly do help a vast number of people.

<comment><USER15> "Really work" in this case meaning probable addiction and potential death in exchange for a month or two of pain relief. If it "really worked" as advertised (maximum of one dose needed per 12 hours) we wouldn't have this problem at all. OxyContin's much-marketed delayed release mechanism is BS and it's costing thousands of lives and livelihoods.

<comment><USER16> I had surgery in 2011 and was prescribed OxyContin for post-operative pain.

I was very satisfied with the therapy as I had very little post-operative discomfort.

I took the medicine for several days, the prescription ran out, and I felt no incentive to request a refill nor did I turn to street drugs.

I am truly sorry for people that struggle with addiction. I have family members who struggle with that and I know the devastation that it causes.

However, I do not want the government to eliminate an effective class of medications, either through banning them or through scaring doctors into not using them.

<comment><USER17> The problem, of course, is the misuse. Either by doctors who misprescribe (chronic pain relief is a common use case for opioids, and probably an exceptionally bad one), patients who misuse or abuse, and marketing companies like Purdue who push for profit.

The question, to me, is this: where do we balance benefits/freedoms from overall harm?

This is also the crux of many issues like alcohol abuse, gun rights, etc. Is it more harmful for the government to intervene than to not attempt to legislate away the source of the problem, at the cost of losing something valued by people in the society?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While the pharmaceutical companies deserve penalties, it's ridiculous that someone with a pre-existing Valium addiction and a history of "hard drug" addiction is blaming the pharmaceutical companies.

Nan, admit it, you like getting high.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite software that you adopted in 2019? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Visual Studio Code. It feels like every other week there is another release with one or two very useful features.

</comment><comment><USER3> Godot engine. I've finally found something that enables me doing some silly small games I've always wanted to do in short amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER4> ScanKey.

I wrote in its App Store review that it shouldn't be free.

It's a soft keyboard with integrated barcode scanner AND OCR scanner for iOS.

It saves me a ton of time.

<comment><USER5> Oh I've been asking for this for years. I couldn't believe it didn't exist. Finally does, thanks for this!

Original use case I had was having a long password on one device on screen but needing to enter it on a different one.

</comment></comment><comment> jerome-jh Maybe that was 2018, but last tool I adopted is 8 years old cindex/csearch code (well text) indexer: [https://github.com/google/codesearch](https://github.com/google/codesearch)

</comment><comment><USER6> Two  menu bar apps:

\- __Shush __: Quickly mute and unmute your microphone using a hotkey (e.g. fn).

\- __Clocker __: Easy way to keep track of your friends and colleagues in different time zones.

</comment><comment><USER7> Mermaidjs and plantuml.

Being able to make technical diagrams and version them is great.

</comment><comment><USER8> flex and bison. GNU Forth. PostScript + GhostScript.

</comment><comment><USER9> TablePlus</comment>


How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/how-a-new-jobless-era-will-transform-america/7919

<comment><USER2> Published in March 2010. A lot has happened since then. (This is Hacker NEWS, after all.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I still fee its a worthwhile read even if its a bit old and lengthy</comment></comment>