There's no homunculus in our brain who guides us - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/81/maps/theres-no-homunculus-in-our-brain-who-guides-us <comment><USER2> I wonder if this works differently for people who are Guugu Yimithirr or Sambals?

Guugu Yimithirr is an aboriginal tribe in Australia, and Sambals are an ethnic group in the Philippines.

The Guugu Yimithirr and Sambali languages use absolute directions rather than relative directions to specify where things are in relation to other things.

For example, imagine standing in the south end of hallway that runs north/south, telling someone where the bathroom is. We'd say something like it being the second door on the left.

A Guugu Yimithirr or Sambal would say it is the second door on the West. Sambali does have words for left, right, front, back but they are mostly just used for describing things on the body, like a left hand.

Another interesting use of absolute rather than relative direction in Guugu Yimithirr is how they visualize time. Researches showed Guugu Yimithirr pictures showing someone throughout that person's life and asked the Guugu Yimithirr to order them chronologically.

When they did this, the arranged the pictures from east to west, with youngest on the east. So if the person doing this was sitting at a table facing North, they arranged the pictures right to left. If they were facing South, they arrange the pictures left to right.

More detail on Sambali in this Reddit comment from a native speaker [1].

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1m6l0b/til_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1m6l0b/til_there_are_languages_without_the_terms_left/)

<comment><USER3> Because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west I guess? Very remarkable!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read years ago about an anklet that contained 16 tiny vibrating motors, and whichever one was north facing at any given moment would pulse rhythmically. Wearing this device for a few days resulted in the conscious signal fading, but a wild increase in the accuracy of the wearer's mental mapping and navigation abilities.

Seems like a fun thing to try out, and probably simple to build.

<comment><USER5> There was an interesting experiment about this, and about the effects when you stopped wearing it (people's internal navigation systems took a serious hit). [1]

[1] - [https://www.wired.com/2007/04/esp/](https://www.wired.com/2007/04/esp/)

<comment><USER6> I knew about the feelSpace belt already but this was a very interesting read and a lot broader than I had expected it to be. Do you want to submit the article here? You would have my upvote right away.

<comment><USER6> I have submitted it myself now. I hope you don't mind.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22393300](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22393300)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised scientists would ever theorize that way finding is allo centric.

I've often "stitched" together two areas that I knew were close simply by walking from one to the other for the first time. After doing that, I tend to stick to the first such route, even if I am consciously aware that there's a more efficient one. Is that not a common experience? Does anyone think about space in a way that they can plot everything absolutely and accurately speculate about routes they've never taken?

<comment><USER8> Your experience sounds to me like modular mapping. I also tend to have abstracted, modular mental maps. They are modular due to gaps in my knowledge or other practical reasons (compression?). I don't think this modularity says anything about ones propensity to plan or navigate in a detached, third-person perspective versus in a first-person perspective. Clearly, with a more abstract mental map, you cannot plan in purely geometric terms. But, that doesn't distinguish whether or not you think about your environment in a holistic, out-of-time, out-of-body perspective.

I am sure this varies by person as well, but I think people in grid-oriented cities or in relatively flat, open terrain are more likely to navigate and plan in a concretely geometric way. You can reason about and infer paths on a 2D plane and benefit from having a good knowledge of relative cartesian positions for different locations. You don't need detailed knowledge of other routing constraints when the paths are more interchangeable.

If limited by transportation modes, you might be biased towards a more hierarchical mental model. I.e. I know some areas abstractly by the highway, exit, and local neighborhood without a clear model for how (if at all) several such areas connect together via local roads. Users of public transit systems are likely to have similarly hierarchical knowledge of trains, buses, and transfer stations. Popular transit system maps are greatly simplified to show this abstract topology without the full spatial complexity of the real physical system.

When faced with challenging topography and circuitous routes, I think a more abstract topological model is more common. I have a rough sense of position along a route in terms of percentage completion or relative ordering of landmarks. This includes some topological knowledge such as trail junctions, water crossings, or ridges and saddles along this same abstract route. I don't retain a detailed memory of every twist or switchback in a convoluted trail. I can plan to walk around a lake or the rim of a valley without detailed memory of the shoreline or cliff edges themselves.

However, I do also have a pretty good sense of my real orientation, i.e. where is north, where is the sun, which way does the surface tilt, and which bearing would take me towards other places I know (if I could fly). I have used that to speculate and plan routes cross country without any visible trail or trail markers. But, I am not foolhardy, so I do consult maps as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related article about London Black Cab drivers brains

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi- memor...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/)

> Maguire discovered that London taxi drivers had more gray matter in their > posterior hippocampi than people who were similar in age, education and > intelligence, but who did not drive taxis. In other words, taxi drivers had > plumper memory centers than their peers. It seemed that the longer someone > had been driving a taxi, the larger his hippocampus, as though the brain > expanded to accommodate the cognitive demands of navigating London's > streets.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article is about how we navigate. I've noticed that some people are quite good at giving concise understandable directions and other are virtually unable to describe in any useful way how to drive a route they drive every day.

I knew an intelligent, successful person that would give directions like "Turn at the stop sign two streets before the yellow house that has the flag pole. Then keep going, but at the train tracks you've gone too far so before that turn at the light. After Elm street, well right there they were going to build a house on that corner, but they didn't because the husband got a different job in Ohio and I didn't know them that well when they moved away. But anyway make a turn, right no left well the road kind of goes right but stay to the left, but not at the red sign in front of the old hardware store, instead I drive to the next street.", etc.

<comment><USER11> This person navigates by visual sequences and landmarks. Others navigate by direction and distance. You may be interested to learn that there is a large gender-correllated divide between the two methods. Learning about these two methods has made me much better about communicating directions, because unfortunately people dont often grok the "other" way.

It is tempting to tell a "just so" story about this, but I do think direction / distance instructions helps two groups rendesvous or coordinate in new areas, whereas landmarks are natural ways to find things in known areas.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/14607168/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/14607168/)

<comment> GuB-42 These two ways of navigating are formalized in pilot training (VFR).

The first one involves landmarks, and the training consists of finding good ones. They need to be highly visible, not ambiguous, and preferably referenced on maps. Following highways is a good strategy.

The second, called dead reckoning, uses the watch and compass. With knowledge of your airspeed, wind speed, and heading, you can estimate your position after a set amount of time.

Usually, a combination of the two is used: dead reckoning between landmarks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't really understand what the argument is about here.

Different people organize their knowledge in different ways.

From cybernetics we have the Law Of Regulatory Models, to wit: every good regulator of a system must be (contain) a model of that system. (Conant and Ashby, 1982) [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/LAW_MODEL.html](http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/LAW_MODEL.html) (In humans this model (in the mind, there are others, e.g. homeostasis) is called the "ego".) A mobile entity situated in a physical environment and capable of navigating around it in repeatable ways is also a system so the regulator (in the brain of the entity) _must_ contain a _model_ of the physical environment.

I would be really surprised if, at any time, using any method, you could find anything that looked like a map inside the brain of a human, even while visualizing a map.

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

<comment><USER13> >I would be really surprised if, at any time, using any method, you could find anything that looked like a map inside the brain of a human, even while visualizing a map.

No but there's probably a specific part of the brain that does deal with visual mapping.

I read this excellent article some years back about the test that aspiring London cabbies, the ones that drive the black cars, take and the preparation required "The Knowledge" to pass this difficult test. Since London's road system is so byzantine and requires lots of insider knowledge, it is unlikely that the cabbies will in the near future ever be supplanted by companies like Uber or Lyft.

Anyway turns out the gray matter in the posterior and anterior hippocampus of some of these guys were tested before and after studying for the test and there was significant growth. Perhaps this would be the place to start to pin down a neural equivalent to a real-world map.

[https://www.wired.com/2011/12/london-taxi-driver- memory/](https://www.wired.com/2011/12/london-taxi-driver-memory/)

<comment><USER12> > there's probably a specific part of the brain that does deal with visual > mapping.

Sure! In fact, you could say that the eyes are the part of the brain that has a close isomorphism to (a tiny subset of the EM manifestation of) the real world. Once you get about 2-3 cm from the retinas, though, I think that information has been encoded in ways that make it unrecognizable from the outside. I'm saying I doubt we'll ever be able to decode a model (let alone a map) of London from studying a cab driver's hippocampus.

<comment><USER14> This is probably not true. There have been experiments where faces have been reconstructed by measuring the neural responses of monkey's when seeing faces: [https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-40131242](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40131242)

<comment><USER12> Wow, that's cool! Cheers!

I have to adjust me "priors", as a Bayesian might say. Still, monkeys aren't humans, and faces aren't London. Recognizing faces and their expressions has been a thing since faces first evolved, eh?

<comment><USER14> Place cells have recently made the rounds in popular science which are basically the cognitive topological maps being discussed. The fidelity of these maps remain to be seen. Some examples: [https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14531](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14531) [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08550-1](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08550-1)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nice description of what a maintainers workflow looks like with git - <AUTHOR> http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/howto/maintain-git.txt

<comment><AUTHOR> here are also a nice explanations of "pull vs fetch,merge"

<http://longair.net/blog/2009/04/16/git-fetch-and-merge/>

[http://blog.mikepearce.net/2010/05/18/the-difference- between...](http://blog.mikepearce.net/2010/05/18/the-difference-between-git- pull-git-fetch-and-git-clone-and-git-rebase/)

~B</comment>


IKEA Effect: How a single egg made Betty Crocker millions - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/sales-gems/ikea-effect-7457e1f9ef53 <comment><USER2> FYI—Snopes claims this is false: [http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp](http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp)

<comment><USER3> And even if it was true, I would not credit the effect on the act of being manually involved but on that egg being from a trusted source. "I know there is an actual in the meal because I saw it with my own eyes". Otherwise, the _entire_ meal would be composed of essentially industrial mystery goo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even if this was true for cake mix, it seems a bit of a leap to apply it to IKEA furniture. The simplest explanation that flat packing allowed them to reduce costs seems sufficient. I don't think anyone considers assembling IKEA furniture close to making your own furniture in the way that baking a cake from mix is close to baking your own cake.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've seen this anecdote about 20 times now

[https://www.google.com/search?q=bernays+egg+cake+mix](https://www.google.com/search?q=bernays+egg+cake+mix)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is an ad for a book...</comment>


Samantha West The Telemarketer Robot Who Swears She's Not a Robot - <AUTHOR> http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/10/meet-the-robot-telemarketer-who-denies-shes-a-robot/ <comment><USER2> Those calls are uncanny. We are _this_ close to getting systems to pass the telemarketer subset of the Turing test.

<comment><USER3> The "68" recording had me wondering if this was a real person, which was terrifying. Some people have been saying this could be a soundboard operated by a person, which does seem plausible. I probably would have said Cirrus, Socrates, particle, decibel, hurricane, dolphin, tulip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love that the program knows not to respond with any audio clips that were already used. Classic robot giveaway.</comment>


Rickrolling is sexist, racist and often transphobic in context - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2015/05/28/rickrolling-is-sexist-racist.html

<comment><USER2> When I hear the word "semiotics", I unclip the safety on my Browning Automatic.</comment>


UK ISP group names Mozilla 'Internet Villain' for supporting 'DNS-over-HTTPS' - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/uk-isp-group-names-mozilla-internet-villain-for-supporting-dns-over-https/ <comment><USER4> > In the UK, ISPs are legally forced to block certain types of websites, such > as those hosting copyright-infringing or trademarked content. Some ISPs also > block other sites at their discretion, such as those that show extremist > content, adult images, and child pornography. These latter blocks are > voluntary and are not the same across the UK, but most ISPs usually tend to > block child abuse content.

It does give the lie to the "for the children" argument when blocking copyright infringement is mandatory and banning child porn is optional.

<comment><USER5> What you quoted simplifies and thus obsfucates the situation in the UK.

Child pornogrpahy is obviously illegal, but nearly all of it is actively filtered via the IWF lists.

Legal forcing comes from court orders, of which there have been many of in regard to piracy and many other issues. Don't need court orders to regularly bring down child porn because there are already plenty of active attempts and stuff in place from IWF, ISPs, Police forces etc.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_K...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kingdom)

<comment><USER6> What the courts said went like this:

_If_ you have a mechanism that you've put together to block some content (in this case the IWF to block child porn porn) then you must also use this mechanism to block stuff the court wants blocked, in this case everything Hollywood has arbitrarily decided it might be a copyright infringement.

But if you don't have a mechanism to block stuff (which A&A does not because why would you want to spend money on that nonsense?) then obviously the court shouldn't order you to go around making Hollywood's life easier and you can ignore it.

<comment><USER7> No, this is nonsense.

The IWF blocks are completely separate (and use a different mechanism) to the court ordered piracy blocks.

The court ordered piracy blocks only apply to the "big 6" ISPs. A&A doesn't have to comply because they're an insignificant ISP with very few customers.

<comment><USER6> A different _legal_ mechanism these days, but the only affordable and effective technical countermeasure is DNS blocking, which is why this whole anti-DPRIVE thing happened.

Cleanfeed as originally designed is irrelevant in 2019. It worked by doing transparent HTTP proxying on port 80 and then comparing URLs to a blacklist of hashes. But in 2019 the site can just upgrade you to HTTPS and then you vanish off the radar in Cleanfeed. What's left is yet more DNS blocking.

You might think wait, surely they could do IP blocking? Well, no. Fast flux combined with the address exhaustion means if you do this you'll either underblock so badly you might as well not bother trying, or you'll overblock and get yourselves a reputation as the ISP whose Internet doesn't work. SNI lets your opponents do this to you as much as they want even though very few of their customers are doing anything you actually want to block.

So the other working (but far too expensive) option is "Deep packet inspection" or "Transparent TLS proxies" where you'll watch the ClientHello and drop clients asking for forbidden names in SNI before the connection is encrypted. The UK government's White Paper in 2018 showed no appetite for this extra cost, but even if they go there that's exactly what eSNI fixes - <USER2> they'd spend all that money and by the time they ship anything probably it doesn't work anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A&A (a UK ISP) today donated £2940 to the Mozilla foundation. It's the amount that ISPA membership would have cost them if they were members which of course they are not:

[https://twitter.com/aaisp/status/1146803916853645314](https://twitter.com/aaisp/status/1146803916853645314)

<comment><USER9> Straight to the point. Excellent work from A&A. I am currently with Zen and as they are a member of ISPA I'm going to terminate my account and move to A&A next month.

<comment><USER6> They're very good, however do watch out if you're a heavy user, there is no "unlimited" for A&A. I think I have 250GB per month, and there's a scheme to carry over a fraction to discourage you burning everything on the last few days (e.g. if you have 100GB of quota left on a 250GB quota, you start the next month with 300GB) but if you're the sort of person who routinely Torrents a whole TV series to "see if I like it" and then throws it away after one episode because you didn't then you are likely to exhaust the smaller quotas before a month end and A&A's prices start to get steep.

I watch a bunch of Netflix, Youtube, play some online games, never came close to my quota, but I know people using 1TB+ per month on other ISPs so YMMV.

<comment><USER9> I pull 750Gb a month max across 5 people so this is fine. Thanks for the heads up however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I applaud the IWF's intentions - I agree with ending child abuse - and am personally quiet happy with _effective_ if draconian measures

the problem there is the effective not the draconian

We know some evil people record these vile acts, but we don't think that banning video cameras will solve the problem - so my gut feeling is that banning abuse images online is less about stopping the crime and more about not being reminded it exists.

So I wonder what the effective solutions to child abuse are?

Something to do with nosey neighbours willing to pry? With school teachers being amazingly sensitive? something to do with spending huge amounts on foster care and social services - something to do with simply getting to know and talk with your neighbours? or something else?

Was childline ever effective?

I don't know - but it's a huge problem with amazing ROI - and well worth spending at least as much as we do on pointless record my browser history projects.

<comment><USER7> > so my gut feeling

This is absolutely the worst thing about HN.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzOv14fA- BI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzOv14fA-BI)

"I don't know anything about zoology, biology, geology, geography, marine biology, crypto zoology, evolutionary theory, evolutionary biology, meteorology, liminology, history, herpatology, paleontology, or archeology, but I think ..."

We know from interviewing the children who were abused that they continue to be traumatised by the knowledge that images of them being raped are still available online.

We also know that fear of people viewing the images causes children to avoid seeking help. Some children feel huge amounts of shame or guilt, and they wrongly[1] think that they will be seen as willing victims.

You're also making the mistake of limiting your thoughts to images created by a local abuser - someone in the same room as the child. You need to remember that some images of CSE are created by the children after they've been groomed.

[1] Although reading any HN thread which mentions images of CSE these children aren't far wrong.

<comment><USER10> >>> available online ... still causes them trauma

Thank you. Consider my opinion changed. There is a clear reason to pursue this course of action, even if it is less effective at the root cause.

Personally I think having my prejudices called out is one of the good things about HN.

I still would love to see research on other approaches to tackling the root problem (i.e. the abuse not the images)

(This would presumably included what properly funded social services look like, how cross-department co-operation can be improved, as well as the more "Big Society" suggestions.)

I mean a frustrating part of this is that in almost always some political issue has had a "yes but in Country X they are trying a new system that has had huge success" and slowly a consensus forms around the right way to tackle the problem - but on CSE I have never come across even the right direction of travel.

Finally I hope the threads you mention in your footnote are at an end - <USER3> is no willing victim, this is crime and vile crime at that.

Edit: general tidying

<comment><USER10> Edit Edit: Rethinking this (frankly being called out is always time for reflection) I suppose my first request for my own education is to get a size of the problem - looking at the Rochdale case in the UK it is seemingly large - and can our knowledge of published images help size the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I personally would have been a lot more comfortable with a different DNS protocol if

1) the companies pushing them didn't limit it to just their product (and instead added it to the C runtime resolver)

2) didn't limit it to their servers (that's honestly pretty concerning)

<comment><USER12> Firefox allows you to use any resolver you wish. It just isn't a feature exposed in the UI, and instead you have to use about:config.

Specifically you'll need to set:

\- network.trr.bootstrapAddress: To a secure DNS provider you trust (to get the HTTPS DNS resolver's IP/bootstrap DNS over HTTPS). e.g. 220.127.116.11

\- network.trr.mode: To 2 (DNS-over-HTTPS is first choice, fallback to OS), 3 (DNS-over-HTTPS only otherwise fail, recommended)

\- network.trr.uri to the URL of your DNS-over-HTTPS provider. e.g. [https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query](https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query)

If you set all three (and mode to 3), it is a completely bespoke, highly secure DNS solution. That's what I use at work for any personal browsing.

<comment><USER13> The problem isn't the lack of a configuration option, it's when the default is to ignore the one configured in the operating system.

Suppose I have all my devices configured to use my local DNS where I've added names for my other local devices or changed the ones for some names because local devices should use the RFC1918 addresses instead of the internet ones that are routed differently. Suddenly Firefox on every device is using Cloudflare even though nobody ever told it to, and now I have to go touch every device and fix it, including when they're BYOD and the owners want them to "just work" and resolve the names correctly without me having to touch them.

Then the same thing all over again when Chrome does it or any other application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So they nominated Firefox for implementing DNS over HTTP but not Chrome? Does anyone know their rationale for that?

<comment><USER9> Signed up to post this. This is because Google are a member of ISPA: [https://www.ispa.org.uk/members/?letter=G%2CH%2CI](https://www.ispa.org.uk/members/?letter=G%2CH%2CI)

The other nominees for Internet Villain were Donald Trump and EU article 13. But they chose Mozilla. Clearly ISPA has an agenda and cannot be trusted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If the UK disapproves I'll be sure to use it! Only gotcha is screw this per- application stuff, will want the whole computer doing it. But that shouldn't be too hard to rig up on Linux.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-huitema-quic- dnsoquic-05](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-huitema-quic-dnsoquic-05) oooo.

[https://github.com/jedisct1/dnscrypt- proxy](https://github.com/jedisct1/dnscrypt-proxy) does a few good protocols.

<comment><USER16> so true. the fact that browsers have dns resolvers is weird.

to me only the kernel could do it, and it would limit outgoing port 53 by default to every other process.

if I want to set configuration on my hosts file I damn sure want everything to follow it, not have to worry about thousands of applications that might or might not use it.

<comment><USER17> On Linux (and probably macos, windows), the kernel doesn't do DNS name resolution. The kernel provides the network stack which does IP, and also TCP and UDP. On Linux you need a tool that can do DNS operations, like NetworkManager, dhcpcd, dhclient, systemd-resolved. You could use selinux to restrict port access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

-John Gilmore

<comment><USER19> Obligatory reminder that this was said about packet routing, not about application-layer protocols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm a bit of an internet novice so excuse me if this is dumb but won't the ISP still know which IP I've connected to? Just because I haven't conveniently looked it up in their giant DNS dictionary doesn't mean they can't just follow the traffic, right?

<comment><USER21> They will indeed know the IPs, and the SNI domain name information from HTTPS connections which don't encrypt that.

<comment><USER22> Note, on Firefox if you enable the DoH and the esni mechanisms in about:config. Then that information is encrypted to cloudflare hosted sites. At that point, they can't even use deep packet inspection to identify which sites were visited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm split here. Obviously this nomination only speaks well of Mozilla, but regarding DoH itself, isn't it a... problematic technology when it comes to user freedom? With DoH, how is Pi-hole going to work? Not sure if I like browsers working around the OS on this one; this should really be a user- configurable OS-level service.

<comment><USER23> Your pi can be set up as a DoH server, of course!

<comment><USER19> From what I read however, it can't be set to work OOTB for everyone on my network; I'd have to go on every machine and every Internet-connected application to try and change it, hoping all the applications would let me (if I read correctly, Chrome won't?).

<comment><USER24> See [https://developers.cloudflare.com/22.214.171.124/dns-over- https/clo...](https://developers.cloudflare.com/188.8.131.52/dns-over- https/cloudflared-proxy/) and [https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns-over- https/](https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns-over-https/) and [https://openwrt.org/docs/guide- user/services/dns/doh_dnsmasq...](https://openwrt.org/docs/guide- user/services/dns/doh_dnsmasq_https-dns-proxy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> DNS is the last cleartext channel for ISP's to monitor browsing. This isn't about "porn" at all. Even with HTTPS ISP's have long been able to snoop DNS to find all the sites you visit.

This data is extremely valuable for marketing since the ISP also knows who you are and where you live. And using DNS bypasses tracker blocking.

This is all about ISP's getting mad that their advertising revanue is being cut off. And possibly a lot of pressure from governments to keep "metadata" like DNS requests in the clear

</comment><comment><USER26> I can see why the gov't would have something to say about DoH, but even though the article specifically asks "why do ISPs hate it?", it doesn't actually answer why ISPs themselves would have a hat in the ring. Surely they cannot be blamed if DoH prevents them from sniffing users' traffic?

<comment><USER27> I don't know if it's the reason, but...

Most UK ISPs run advertising portals on DNS-not-found redirects, DoH would remove those redirects.

<comment><USER28> This is almost certainly the reason. The first thing I do on any internet connection in the UK is change the DNS out for one that isn't broken...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> DoH -> DNS over HTTP.

<comment> cadence- DNS over HTTPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Oh no, suddenly ISPs are relegated back to their role as common carriers of data!

</comment><comment><USER31> Is there any good local DNS proxy server that transforms classic DNS to DNS- over-HTTPS, for applications that don't implement it natively (such as Desktop Chromium) ?

<comment><USER32> dnscrypt-proxy[1], though you'll have to use something like iptables to redirect all DNS traffic to it

[1] - [https://github.com/jedisct1/dnscrypt- proxy](https://github.com/jedisct1/dnscrypt-proxy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> DoH is plugging a security hole. ISPs and other entities were using that security hole to implement features for their users. The correct response is for them to use a different method of implementing their features that does not compromise user security.

Their whole argument against DoH is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER34> I believe ISP level blocking in the UK can already be easily bypassed simply by not using your ISPs DNS servers.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, I'm surprised that anybody thinks that DNS blocking is sufficient for anything save ad blocking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is pretty standard in the UK under the current political climate. The Conservative Government about 2 years ago was hell bent (and probably still is) on getting rid of "strong encryption" and wants backdoors in pretty much everything.

Both major political parties are pretty censorious and many of the smaller parties aren't much better.

<comment><USER37> > _many of the smaller parties aren 't much better_

There is certainly _one_ which is much better; and maybe it's a total coincidence, but they seem to be the punching bag of the major parties. ;- )

<comment><USER38> Which?

<comment><USER39> Liberal Democrat's.

They've been thrown under the bus for entering a coalition government and choosing to support alternative voting over scrapping tuition fees.

Since they were a minority player they didn't have much choice in fighting that ultimatum, but I understand why people feel scorned. Even if the conservatives are doing many, many more heinous things daily.

As a nice conincidence the "NoToAV" campaign (lit. "No alternative vote") was undertaken by the same people who drove the leaveEU campaign, they used remarkably similar tactics too. "AV will cost £250m, that should fund our army!" And such.

[https://images.app.goo.gl/Z4GP93UTWMgaVmLQ6](https://images.app.goo.gl/Z4GP93UTWMgaVmLQ6)

I mention it because it was funded by the same conservative doners. So the Lib Dem's lost both ways.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Consultancy helping migrate a large CMS-Intrastructure to AWS? - <AUTHOR>

We're leaving our managed hosting provider where we pay >5000 USD per month on long term contracts to move our infrastructure to AWS.
Our plan is to move our servers to a VPC. All the static files are already on S3 and the application is modified accordingly.
When you migrate to a VPC its fairly important to choose wisely which subnet plan you are using as it is difficult to change that later. And the subnets determine in which availability zone the servers are in.
The transition will be complicated and as we're running a high-availability site with 5 Mio Uniques we would like to help a consultant with our migration.Amazon "recommends" some "Solution Providers":
https://aws.amazon.com/solution-providers?selection=service_type_id&service_type_id=6&type=si
Have you worked with any of the companies or have tipps for good consultants in this area?
Has anyone made bad experiences using AWS VPCs? <comment><USER2> I think you need to catalog just what you're paying for with your current provider. If you're running on bare metal machines and performance is your requirement, you're going to require more vertical scaling on AWS. If you are paying for boxes that are underutilized, then, you might find running on AWS to be cheaper.

You also have the advantage of AWS scaling and the ability to do things you probably cannot do with your existing host. First and foremost, if you're moving to AWS, make sure you can split your services into multiple availability zones. A lot of people got burned when they put their entire company in separate deployments within the same availability zone.

Is price your only motivation to move? If so, ask your current provider to renegotiate. Have quotes from two competing providers so show them that you have investigated other providers that appear to offer a better deal.

I don't know what your company does, but, unless you have a ton of hardware you're really not utilizing, simply moving to the cloud isn't a silver bullet for cost savings. Things don't run the same way and there is definitely a different paradigm to implementation. You will likely spend a lot of your cost savings, if any, in re-engineering your current processes to better fit the cloud.

Are you hiring people at your company to maintain the AWS installation? Your current programmers/engineers are going to need to deal with things in a different light. If you just hire a consultant to transition, when things break, is your current team going to have enough insight into how things work to be able to diagnose or fix things when things go wrong?

There are things to outsource, but, if your current team doesn't understand AWS, the first time you have a problem, you're going to be back on the phone with the consultant that moved it.</comment>


On Being a (OAuth) Product - <AUTHOR> http://obfuscurity.com/2012/03/On-Being-a-Product

<comment><USER2> The hard part is getting people to signup for your service. Once they do the first step it's easy to get their email. The sign in with FB/Twitter/etc... makes that first step easier.</comment>


At full speed with Python: a book for self-learners - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-python <comment><USER2> I've used Python sparingly in the past for tooling and helper apps and am now picking it up in a more serious way as I'm working on a Flask API app. I've been reading lots of instructional materials and the one thing that I find lacking across the board is coverage of the toolchain and it's edge cases. For starters, Macs only come with Python 2.X, tell me about installing 3.X and some of the walls I might run into in the process. Having used other package managers, pip is easy to pick up but you might get stuck if you forget you need to use pip3 instead. virtualenv is something that could use a more thorough explanation in almost everything I've read, but I'm also now seeing everyone shift to using pipenv and sorting this out yourself is not easy to newcomers (I haven't seen a text yet that discusses it other than packages using it in their install copy and paste and the pipenv site itself). The small things that seem obvious to seasoned devs are really what I'm looking for, especially in an accelerated course.

This applies almost equally to most language reference material I've come across but I'm asking politely, please spend more time on the toolchain.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python'? It strives to be exactly this -- a guide on installation, configuration, and usage of the Python runtime and development toolchain.

[http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/](http://docs.python- guide.org/en/latest/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I feel like I have read sections of this guide but going back and seeing some of the now relevant section titles, there appears to be some good info in here I could use. I hope I didn't skip over some of these when I was looking for relevant material.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> quick suggestions:

* create sub-headings, for ex: 'Basic datatypes' chapter, create numbers/strings/lists as sub-headings...

* loop iteration - as you are anyway showing how to use 'enumerate', I'd suggest to not show 'range(len(mylist))'

* lots of ' Finally', might want to remove some or rework those sentences

\----

Resources similar to this, but full fledged books

* [http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/](http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/)

* [http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/](http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/) \- based on think python

* [https://automatetheboringstuff.com/](https://automatetheboringstuff.com/)

and for exercises (disclaimer: these are from my github repo):

* [https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course/blob/mast...](https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course/blob/master/Python_curated_resources.md#code-practice)

* [https://github.com/learnbyexample/Python_Basics/blob/master/...](https://github.com/learnbyexample/Python_Basics/blob/master/Exercises.md)

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice book.

The simplicity of the build system for epub is impressive: [https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed- python/blob/master...](https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed- python/blob/master/Makefile#L3)

<comment><USER6> The beauty of Pandoc!

I discovered Pandoc in the past few months thanks to a post on HN, and I've been going out of my way to involve it in my projects because it's so fascinating to me.

Pandoc: [https://pandoc.org/](https://pandoc.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> PDF is terrible to read in a Kindle. This book would be much more valuable in a ebook format.

Every time I tried to generate mobi files from Tex they were terrible formatted. O'Reilly does it fine with some open source books, but I've never managed to do it myself. Are the good publishing tools for ebooks just avaiable for specialized publishers?

Which techniques do you have to convert these Tex books to mobi (the Kindle format)?

<comment><AUTHOR> If enough people are interested, i may try to do something with pandoc to generate an ebook!

<comment><USER8> Me too

Epub and mobi formats would be great

<comment><USER9> I would also be interested. LeanPub might also be a good shout.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely, the problem with leanpub is that they ask for 99$ to start a book. I thought about that before, but i don't know if i could sell enough books to recover at least that inital value..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Could someone suggest which title sounds better: "at full speed with python" vs "up to speed with python"?

I would like to convey the idea that this is a fast way for people to learn the basic concepts of python. But I'm not sure that "up to speed with X" exists, as I cant find many ocurrences of it in google (i'm not a english native speaker, this is the technique i use to find how certain expressions are used in english).

<comment><USER10> "Getting up to Speed with Python" is what you are after. "Up to speed" implies that the reader is already "there", hence, the book will be targeting readers that already have considerable knowledge and skill with Python. Clearly, your statement, "I would like to convey... that this is a fast way... to learn the basic concepts...", you are targeting those with minimal skills and experience. Therefore, they will be "getting up to speed" as they go through the book, with the implication that upon completion of the book, they will be "at speed".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's it! Thanks!

(Changed the book title to match..)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well done, very well written!

Be aware that the approach this book takes has its own type of target audience. I guess the audience that will like this book/tutorial are the kind of people that will usually just read the entire reference manual of anything to see what's in their toolbox before actually starting to build something. So by reading it, you help them as a guide to work through it, choosing the parts of the language that are best learned first. After following the exercises, the reader can already build some programs using those concepts, whatever it might be, leaving it to their own imagination.

The other type of audience, which this book might be less suited for, is people who get bored after chapter 1, thinking "I want to build something fun now already!". Those might be better served by a tutorial like "we're building a XYZ game", explaining concepts along the way.

Both are good, both are needed.

I'm one of the first type of people, so I'm really happy to see this kind of book. The second type of tutorials only give me fragments of information if I follow it building that XYZ game, while I have my own idea of what to build, and just want to learn how those lists and dictionaries work when I discover I need them. ;-]

</comment><comment><USER12> Have you thought about releasing this book with something that makes it easier to read online? For example Gitbook: [https://yumedzi.gitbooks.io/python- book/content](https://yumedzi.gitbooks.io/python-book/content). I am sure here are others as well.

</comment><comment><USER13> "become familiar with Python's syntax in two weeks and are able to implement a distributed client-server application with sockets in the third week" are there plans to extend the book to include the design of the distributed Client-Server Application?Would be super intrigued.

<comment><AUTHOR> > are there plans to extend the book to include the design of the distributed > Client-Server Application?

I do not know how I could integrate that in this book specifically, because it is not something that a regular user would need to know to be able to use Python per se, but I would like to publish something eventually. Maybe something like "up to speed with socket programming in python".. :)

Basically, I give my students two files (client.py and server.py) with a basic and very simple use of sockets, and guide them to build a basic shell client app that sends messages to be evaluated by the server and to receive the result back.

Other is a very basic http server with sockets. These are not production-ready things, I'm just interested that they learn the concepts. You can check something about this http server in this blog post of mine: [http://joaoventura.net/blog/2017/python- webserver/](http://joaoventura.net/blog/2017/python-webserver/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Changed the book title to "Getting up to speed with Python" which is a more accurate title for what I wanted to write. Made a new release with a few corrections and the new title at [https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed- python/releases](https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-python/releases)

Cannot change anymore the title or the link on HN though..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've included a pandoc generated epub and it seems ok on my computer, would anyone be able to test it on a epub device to see if it works ok?

[https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed- python/releases/](https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-python/releases/)

<comment><USER14> Looks good on my MBP. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> just fixed the Makefile and created a pull-request, it should build both epub and pdf as long as you have pandoc installed. The pdf file is 18 pages in total, so it is a very short one, or am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just checked your pull-request, but the resulting pdf is on article form instead of book. I'm talking about the latex document class:

        \documentclass[12pt, a4paper, oneside]{book}

It has to be ran with pdflatex..

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm starting to learn Python so I'm super interested in this. However for me the PDF is blurry?

I tried in Chrome/IE/Acrobat and the text is blurry for me, anyone else have this problem??

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just confirmed on a virtualbox installation of windows 7 and it is working fine on Acrobat Reader. It may be a crazy suggestion, but can you reset your computer? I've also made available an epub, so maybe you can use it instead of the pdf..

<comment><USER16> epub works great. No issues. I got alot of PDF's i donno why only this one displays weird. :( if no one else has this issue must just be my work pc being bung.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you provide a screenshot? You can open a github issue if you want...

<comment><USER16> I think it's just my work computer on it's last legs. Worked fine at home and on the surface.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for the reference to your blog. Will check it out. Thanks for making this book available

</comment><comment><USER17> congrats & thanks! would be _great_ to have these as jupyter notebooks as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> is there a slack channel that has been developed in addition to this learning?

</comment><comment><USER19> good book</comment>


Oregon passed sweeping housing crisis laws - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-19/oregon-lessons-california-housing-crisis <comment><USER2> > Lawmakers passed a first-in-the-nation cap on rent increases

Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a- rent...](https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent- affair.html)

[https://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-rent- cont...](https://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-rent-control-bad- idea-making-comeback.html)

> in an effort to spur new homebuilding, became the only state to eliminate > single-family-only zoning in many of its residential neighborhoods

But this is good. Allowing to build new homes will obviously help with the housing crisis. Usually decision makers just won't allow enough new construction, so its effect will usually stay too small.

<comment><USER3> > Unfortunately, rent control will have the opposite effect of what Oregon > thinks, and only make housing scarcity worse.

It depends on the kind of rent control. Housing has important asymmetries it's reasonable to address through legislation. One is asymmetry in scale: you have one unit; landlords have many more. This gives them stronger negotiating power. Another is cost of change. It's much more expensive for me in time and money to move than it is for a landlord turn over a new unit. That means a landlord can extract money well above a true market rate. A third is of interest. Individuals and the community have a interest in healthy social bonds, while absentee lords mainly want to extract cash.

I understand free-market fundamentalists hate all rent control, but Oregon's rent control laws are designed to preserve incentives to construct new housing: [https://www.npr.org/2019/02/27/698509957/oregon-set-to- pass-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/02/27/698509957/oregon-set-to-pass-the- first-statewide-rent-control-bill)

The first 15 years of a new building are free from rent control, and after that they can increase rent at 7% above CPI, meaning in real terms rents can still double circa every 10 years. And if a tenant moves out, landlords can raise rents as much as they like.

For this to affect construction today, a builder would have to be betting on a very tight market continuing unabated during the 2035-2045 period. But that's a ridiculous bet to make, rent control laws or not. Anybody building new housing will want to be sure the economics work if rent increases return to their long-term average, which is well below 7% above CPI: [https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth- since-...](https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-1960/)

<comment><USER4> > _One is asymmetry in scale: you have one unit; landlords have many more. > This gives them stronger negotiating power._

This is one of those theoretical arguments that sounds good but have no empirical foundation at all.

If it was true the gigantic Walmart could completely dick me around when buying socks and toilet paper. In reality prices are very competitive.

It also completely ignores that fact that most landlords are small operations, and often the tenants are richer than their landlords.

<comment><USER5> It's not theoretical at all, and Walmart does dick you around, albeit indirectly. They dick around the supplier and force them to make cuts in quality to meet the price. And if Target/Amazon/Dollar General weren't around, there's no reason they wouldn't increase prices and pad their margins.

In a landlord situation, their cost of goods is so small that they can afford to sit on an empty apartment while prospective renters need to put a roof over their family or business.

<comment><USER6> >In a landlord situation, their cost of goods is so small that they can afford to sit on an empty apartment while prospective renters need to put a roof over their family or business.

I'm not a landlord, but I did consider getting into it once, and studied how the system works. And a number of my friends are landlords (including one who quit his job because the passive income is enough).

No - probably over 95% of landlords do no have a small cost. Almost everyone is paying a mortgage/loan on that property. The exceptions are old people whose house was paid off and they just want free money. Those people almost always charge low rent, BTW - they just want some extra cash. The standard tactic is to buy properties on a loan, and try to get $100-200/month profit per house/unit. So if the apartment costs $1500/month in rent, assume their monthly cost to the bank (principle + interest) is about $700-800. Then add in the insurance and real estate fees. The remaining money goes to long term costs (repairs, vacancy, etc). Then they keep about $100-200.

If the apartment sits empty, they're still on the hook for close to $1000/month in taxes, insurance and loan payments.

Over time, if the property appreciates significantly, the plan is to sell the property, and use the gain in appreciation to buy a larger apartment complex, where they are down to $100-200/month again, but because the place has, say, double the number of apartments, their overall gain is double. Lather, rinse, and repeat. They only stop once they are making enough to live on in the lifestyle they want - which could be anywhere from 30-60 units.

They are almost always in debt, and vacancies are almost always very expensive.

A lot of the anti-landlord comments are similar to anti-employer comments, where it's always a given that employers have large piles of money and they can afford X, whether X is higher wages, better equipment, etc. Once you step into the "other" role, you'll find your assumptions were wrong.

Of course, if the state/city needs to pass laws to help with housing, so be it. Let's not just blindly assume that most landlords can absorb it.

<comment><USER7> There is another point missed — freezing rents seems fair only if all the other costs are also frozen — property taxes would need to be frozen, and utility costs, and repair costs. Otherwise you just have a situation where one party is squeezed from both sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's an anti rent control argument I haven't heard (this applies to stricter rent control regimes like NYC, SF - not sure about this new OR law). Getting a spot in a rent-controlled apartment is a valuable, non-transferable asset. If you buy a house and it gains $100,000 in equity, you can sell it and buy a bigger house, sell it and cash out while getting a smaller house, borrow against it. With a rent-control asset, you can't do any of those things, so you have fewer options, but if you move, you just forfeit the asset. That's a big economic drag.

I wonder how many rent-controlled residents in SF/NYC would accept a $100k buyout that would convert the apt to market rate. Has anyone seen a study of the spreads between market/rent-controlled, by city/zip/census tract? I'd love to see that.

<comment><USER4> Your observation also highlights how rent control is institutionalized privilege.

Those who already have a home are given an ownership right to that status, while those without a home are being permanently excluded.

<comment><USER9> In a fair system we'd all need to take turns in being homeless and share our homes around.

<comment><USER10> Maybe, for some definitions of "fair". There are other definitions where that wouldn't be fair at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lawsuit has been filed challenging New York's rent control laws on constitutional grounds as an illegal taking of private property and as a violation of due process.

Landlords File Federal Lawsuit Challenging New York's Rent Control Laws - [https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2019/07/16/landlords-f...](https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2019/07/16/landlords- file-federal-lawsuit-challenging-new-yorks-rent-control-laws/)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's crazy how many people advocate for rent caps when all it will do is make the housing shortage worse. And making it harder to evict tenants will also make it worse. If you want housing, sign a year lease and _dont be a horrible tenant._ landlords have to deal with some of the worst people out there. People who destroy their property and who disrupt the lives of other tenants. And it's only these horrible tenants that use all these ridiculous tenant protection laws as a way to torment the landlord.

And this article makes it seem like California hasn't done anything which is complete bullshit. They fail to mention the massive ADU initiative that effectively doubled the amount of housing in residential areas. Making things better for the developer and the landlord which will be a thousand times more effective than anything else. Even commercial developments use these ADUs.

</comment><comment><USER13> So, I probably drastically misunderstanding how rent control works, but I don't see how it is going to help. I would argue it will push house prices even higher as you will have less people trying to rent places. Why?

I was reading a bit about renting as a business (plus I have 1 house in Bay Area I rent) and there is so-called rule of 1%, which means for cash flow to be positive you should rent your house for at least 1% of its market price. But it is just not the case in the SF area, you can get 0.3-0.4% at best. House with 1M price can be rented for 4K, which can't even cover mortgage + tax, I'm not talking about repairs. Based on rule it should be 10k to make it interesting for the investors (buy and rent to make some profit). The only reason I didn't sell it is the hope that prices will go up in x years, but right now I technically subsidizing people living there + waiting on possible rent increase in couple years. With rent control in place I would've been pressured to sell or live there myself. And as I moved out for an interesting opportunity, in a different market I would've just stayed in Bay Area. Which will not lead to drop in prices, But to decrease of available housing.

In supply/demand problem, the only way to decrease price is by increasing supply, not caping the price.

And the reason I would've stayed in Bay Area is cause I can't afford to rent a place for a true market price. I'm right now paying 5k for the house which is around 1.5M (should be 15k, right?), which is mind blowing. The only reason it is possible is that the owner bought it long time ago and had the opportunity to pay it off. Buying it right now would require 300k in cash + 5.7k mortgage + 1.5k for taxes. + maintenance

So, to me, market rent control already there. And it is already on the verge of what financially feasible.

<comment><USER14> > Based on rule it should be 10k to make it interesting for the investors (buy > and rent to make some profit). The only reason I didn't sell it is the hope > that prices will go up in x years, but right now I technically subsidizing > people living there + waiting on possible rent increase in couple years.

Maybe the market is telling you that SF house prices are wildly overvalued. Maybe the best move is not to wait for ever higher prices, but sell now.

People seem to be programmed to buy high and sell low, making the old truism to do the opposite very difficult in practice. Your description isn't uncommon, but is very characteristic of the physiology of a top.

<comment><USER13> They are not overpriced. When eng with 10 years of expirience can make 250base + 500k in stock per year (or 4 years can get 1M in pre IPO lyft stock), it is hard not to see why Bay Area houses are so expensive. Area with money coming in will become more expensive to live in.

Housing price in SF are tied to valuation of tech companies. Valuation goes up, house prices go up.

I actually think houses in Bay Area are cheap.

<comment><USER15> Those companies have to pay this much only because otherwise employees wouldn't be able to live there. And even then, the 750k per year is an outlier even in SF. Divide it by 2 to get the more realistic pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Regulations to fix regulations.... Perhaps the root issue is that the government tries "helping" too much.

Neither California nor Oregon have the the spatial constraints somewhere like NYC does.

Both states and their cities have implement policies which only make sense when you've run out of land and the ability to develop relatively unregulated.

Government intervention except for at the last possible moment almost always has negative long term second order effects.

<comment><USER17> I agree with the first sentence. And the last one too.

However, San Francisco in particular has worse spatial constraints than NYC. That city has "run out of land."

<comment><USER18> 75% of SF is single family homes that can be redeveloped, there are 800 acres of private golf courses in SF, how has SF "run out of land"

<comment><USER17> There are not 800 acres of "private" golf courses in SF. Most of those golf courses are on public land in public parks. Do you also propose SF tear down Golden Gate Park and replace that with housing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Economists strongly agree that rent control does not have positive effects on the amount and quality of affordable housing [0].

[0]: [http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/rent- control](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/rent-control)

</comment><comment><USER20> Good. Mandatory single family home zoning should not exist, anywhere. It is exclusionary by nature; economic segregation is often the intent, and in most cases the impact.

It's one thing to accept the free market causing this sort of segregation as the collective result of individual choices, quite another to suggest that the government ought to be using regulatory power to help enforce the creation of invisibly gated communities. It's a great wrong -- in particular, the impact it has re: school districts -- that it is long past time be rectified.

That said, there is much more to be done. While going from SFH's to fourplexes or small apartment buildings is usually fine by itself, greater levels of density usually need changes to infrastructure and transit service and other parts of zoning to accommodate the increased population.

<comment><USER21> Really an appalling point of view. There is absolutely nothing wrong with single family neighborhoods; in fact, they are greatly desirable to most.

<comment><USER22> Sure, nothing wrong at all except for:

-sedentary car-dependent lifestyle

-inefficent use of arable land

-carbon intense lifestyle contributing to the collapse of ecosystems

-materialistic lifestyle enforced

-impossible to serve economically with public transit making car ownership mandatory

-energy inefficient buildings

-encourages racial and economic segregation

-anti-social lifestyle decreases face to face contact and increases barrier to connect with others

If I could vote to make these neighborhoods illegal, I would.

<comment><USER23> > anti-social lifestyle decreases face to face contact and increases barrier > to connect with others

This cannot be overstated enough. My pet theory is that the suburbification of America led to our current division and political strife. You cannot expect great results when those with the most combined political power and wealth in the nation sequester themselves individually away from others and even each other. This ends up with anti-social people driving social policy for the nation. And it shows.

The older I get, watching the first generation fully raised in "suburban culture" seems to be a lesson in watching the threads of a society break down in real time. It's amazing to me that within 2-3 generations we completely blew up the notion of extended families and close-knit community taking care of each other.

That said...

> If I could vote to make these neighborhoods illegal, I would.

I'm not quite willing to go that far. I would simply make zoning them illegal. If an area is desirable enough to toss up a giant single family home next door to a few 3 flats - so be it. But I should be just as allowed to come buy that place, tear it down, and toss a small apartment building in it's place. Additionally I'd be in favor of laws that make it illegal (or exceedingly difficult) to require setbacks/minimum parking/etc. for most areas.

Basically I'd like to see a legal framework that brings us back to "natural" incremental city development vs. this BS planned crap that never works. The only cities in the world people marvel at (at least in western societies) are those that predated zoning law.

Choice and freedom are a beautiful thing. The problem now is there is little choice due to subsidy and zoning laws.

<comment><USER22> > I would simply make zoning them illegal.

Sorry, yes that's exactly what I meant and we're in total agreement. There's no way I'd advocate tearing these neighborhoods down, only make it illegal to continue to protect their zoning, just like this new law in Oregon. I think that's a super solution, and I'd happily vote for it in my own state.

<comment><USER24> It somewhat works in Japan because you can't register a car without having a dedicated parking space.

In the US, an apartment complex in an ordinary suburban neighborhood would swipe all the on-street parking and probably people's lawns as well. Those home owners expect nearly exclusive use of the street parking for their guests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > tenant activists and union leaders

In other words, these are people looking for a free lunch and thinking they have the power to get it by legislating it into existence.

Only, there is no such thing as a free lunch. It will be paid for. And the ones paying for it will be the people providing the housing, so there will likely be less housing.

I wonder why these same people who are so concerned about this don't just go out and build affordable housing instead of forcing their ideas on other people?

</comment><comment><USER14> The Growth Ponzi scheme may be useful in thinking through housing issues:

[https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi- scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme)

Briefly, most cities are unsustainable in their current configurations due to an unaffordable maintenance cost structure. But they can fake it by adding people/businesses and thereby growing the tax base.

This scheme leads to a growth at any cost attitude resulting in market distortions. Throw in some help from a central bank hellbent on levitating the US stock market by shoveling money into the credit system, and you end up in a bad place.

Portland has decided to stop sprawl by investing in density-increasing infrastructure such as rail lines.

Ironically, the result has been to send property prices through the roof, leaving an overhang of unused land in its wake. Owners of these properties look around them to see high density developments everywhere. What's the value of their own land? It will of course be turned into and equally-high value development, so the price is set accordingly.

Nothing is left in the middle.

[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/23/portland- hous...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/23/portland-housing- prices)

What's the solution? The author of Strong Towns puts it this way:

> What if along all these rail corridors and at all of these rail stops, > instead of being able to build an eight-story condo unit, all a developer > was allowed to build was the next increment of intensity? For most of that > area, that would mean single family homes. In that case, what would happen > to land prices? They would drop. They would crater, in fact. This would free > up an incredible amount of land for cheap, affordable development while also > taking a substantial amount of pressure off of the existing single-family > neighborhoods.

> I'm not advocating for single family homes. I'm advocating for incremental > development. Portland (and Austin and San Marcos and...) are trying to skip > increments. They are trying to have a toned body without proper diet and > exercise. ...

[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/30/spiking-a- ris...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/30/spiking-a-rising-tide)

</comment><comment><USER26> Controlling rent is the surest way to discourage new housing capacity addition. If your profits are capped fewer people will be interested in entering the market.

<comment><USER27> You can come back to market price between tenants. Rent control doesn't discourage new construction: [https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/242/docs/Rent_Matters_...](https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/242/docs/Rent_Matters_PERE_Report_Web.pdf)

<comment><USER7> I realize the reasonable 7% cap prevents this in Oregon's case, but in NYC you will find rent controlled apartments kept thru two generations, now used as storage only because the cost is so low. Sometimes a rent controlled apartment can cost less then a storage unit after 30yrs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Zoning could be a huge improvement, but rent control sounds like a repeat of California's mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER29> Everyone is commenting about rent control, but the cap is very high. 7% + inflation.

The real news is banning single-family home zoning.

<comment><USER30> I wonder if that figure will hold though. The progressive strategy may well be to get any sort of limit passed now, and lower it later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "the only state to eliminate single-family-only zoning in many of its residential neighborhoods." \- this is the silver bullet. Minneapolis has done the same, I hope this becomes a nation-wide trend.

<comment><USER32> I hope it stays in Minneapolis and doesn't spread outside of the city for a number of reasons. I enjoy living in a neighborhood of houses and families where we have some space and nature visible vs tar and housing complexes. Its one of the reasons why I don't live in or closer to Minneapolis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> There is no better way to reduce new rental construction then to remove incentives for developers to build with rent control. San Francisco and New York City are prime examples.

</comment><comment><USER34> The thing everyone appears to be missing is that you don't need land lords. They don't produce anything anyone needs.

The point of the whole mechanism is to force out less wealthy people and/or with smaller income and replace them with more wealthy ones and/or ones with more income.

If this is a nice thing to do or desirable aside, there are better formulas to accomplish the same. You could for example tax housing heavily then burn the money on live tv. That way you will at least have the advantage of configuring how wealthy the citizens need to be.

</comment><comment><USER35> A related recent thread is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20322358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20322358).

</comment><comment><USER36> In previous research, I haven't been able to find an economist that supports rent control. Does anyone have examples?

</comment><comment><USER37> Prediction: If Amazon/MS/Apple/Some-company-that-does-not-exist-yet were to go ahead and create 100,000 dev jobs in Portland over the next decade, Oregon will have the exact same housing crisis, regardless of its laws.

</comment><comment><USER38> I live in a 2 bedroom apartment in Oregon. Rent went up by close to 11% when I renewed my lease. Management changed 2 or 3 years ago as well. End result is that the quality of life has been going down. Management complained about the color of my curtains when they inspected last time... (Navy blue, not exactly wild or offensive.) So I've been searching for a place to buy. I've also been looking for alternative rentals.

If want cheaper rent, I'd have to move into a rat nest, if I want a house, I'd pay more renting than I would for a mortgage. A couple blocks down a new apartment building was built and is charging $2000+ for 1 bedroom apartments... Every house that's come up within my range is in bad shape, bad location, or gets sold so fast I don't even have a chance to view it. So, yes, the housing situation is tight.

That all makes me think that the allowing denser zoning is a good thing. I'm not willing to live in that dense of a location, but for those that are, it should help.

The part I'm not sure of is the rent control. Maybe someone here has read up on this enough to know the answers, I'll look for them myself soon.

So, my rent shouldn't go up by more than 7% if I renew my lease, that seems good. But what about fees? One of the annoyances the new management company tacked onto the lease is fees for utilities. I'm fairly neutral on them, but if they can be used to increase rent past the 7% limit, I know they will be.

Also, say I leave my apartment. If my rent was, say, 1000/month, how much will it be for the person moving in after me? Can it go up by more than 7%? If so, doesn't that incentivize landlords to increase rents by much much more than 7% for for new tenants?

Wouldn't that make it a LOT harder for people who need to move?

Also, wouldn't there be another way landlords could bypass this by just making life difficult for tenants so that they move out more often, thus letting the landlord increase rents more frequently?

Personally, from what I've seen under this new management company, they've been trying to push out the old tenants who started renting before they took over. That will make it easier for them to implement policies that are obviously hostile for tenants who don't know that things could be better. (For example, if I remember correctly, they sent a message about no longer offering lock out service. Even though the manager is on site, you have to call a lock smith. The old managers would get back in, you might pay a fee, but you'd get in.) So I could see this particular company trying that method of increasing rents more frequently.

</comment><comment><USER39> Interest rates are too low causing asset prices based on its leverage to rise to be unaffordable levels to the lower classes.

</comment><comment><USER40> [http://archive.is/Vll6d](http://archive.is/Vll6d)

</comment><comment><USER41> Sadly this isn't going to help. Have lived in Portland for the last 25 years, Portland was for a time, was the unpopular rainy big town. Now, Portland is known for all sort of things. I see tour buses downtown and big money has moved in. The rich are buying and building, the middle class is moving out and the poor are getting subsidized houses and rent.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm not planning on living in California ever again, but the title here seems a bit prejudiced? Couldn't we lose "vowed not to become California" and keep most of the meaning?

</comment><comment><USER43> Bunch of morons running this state.

</comment><comment><USER44> Eastern European countries have a racial homogeneity that the United States doesn't have.

<comment><USER45> No they don't. Gypsies are a large ethnic minority in many eastern european countries. Also, although a religious minority instead of racial, there are a large percentage of Muslims in many of those countries too. Don't forget that the last european genocide over ethnic and religious lines happened in eastern europe too.

Also don't forget their is currently an ONGOING war in the Ukraine over divisions between those who are ethnically Russian and those are ethnically Ukranian.

I'm not preaching diversity as a virtue in itself but the idea that places like Eastern Europe are some kind of ethnic utopia where you can leave your doors unlocked and kids play on the streets just because everybody is white is just absurd.

<comment><USER44> Saying that a country like Romania is not ethnically homogeneous is absurd. Gypsies exist but in low numbers and stay in ghettos. Muslims only exist in some countries of the south of the Balkans.

<comment><USER45> Ok fair enough, but then why is Romania such a sh*t-hole? (Sorry Romanians). Surely the racial homogeneity there should mean that things are better over there?

<comment><USER46> I'm form different Eastern European country so I can explain it to you pretty easily.

Communism. It's pretty much same reason in whole Eastern Europe. Some countries managed to recover faster for various reasons whether it was more useful industry which was pretty much centrally planned in whole Soviet block from Moscow, so some countries where more industrially orientated and other remained pretty much agriculture only.

Second important reason is geographical location, especially presence of wealthy neighbors - compare Czechia with Germany and Austria as neighbors to Romania whose economically best performing neighbor is Hungary (which is economically worse off than Czechia itself).

<comment><USER45> Absolutely, you are right about that. My point was more to argue against the idea that in eastern europe, kids can run free on the streets because its a mostly white society. More likely is that the kids run free because the parents are not infected with american-style parenting and media-induced fear of everything. Literally nothing to do with race at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your Mouse is a Database (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2169076

<comment><USER2> Good article. Another interesting and fascinating article from Erik is "A co- Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" ([http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1961297](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1961297)).

<comment><USER3> It strikes me that the monadic model seems to be over-specifying the query in the same way that SQL does. Compare to a datalog query where the compiler can decide in what order to join the tables and how to perform those joins (eg we use a constraint solver to perform all the joins simultaneously). A clever compiler could probably recover the original intention from the monadic query - similar to how an imperative language forces you to totally order all your statements and then the compiler goes to a great deal of effort to figure out whether that ordering was important or arbitrary so it can emit better code.

Mike Pall has a great deal to say about accurately recording and preserving programmer intention to allow better optimisations throughout the stack - [http://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/Ramblings-on- languages-...](http://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/Ramblings-on-languages- and-architectures-was-Re-any-benefit-to-throwing-off-lua51-constraints) . Similarly, I recall hearing Carmack talking about wanting to separate logic from optimisations because they spend so much effort removing old optimisations when the hardware changes, but I can't find the source anymore :(

<comment><USER4> SQL does not specify join order. Determining efficient join order based on constraints and statistical distributions of the data is one of the main tasks which a Cost Based Optimizer performs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shame I never got around to replacing the Queue site / app, it's one of the ACM's token CFM/Oracle sites with no caching.

Wheeee 90s tech!

EDIT: oh, it's loading again. It was looking all slashdotted. ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've read Erik's ACM post when it got published and had a hard time understanding what he is talking about at first.

It took me about until now after seeing functional programming and streams in action to grasp the beauty of the concepts behind it.

I also love the clarity behind the sync/async duality (getters/futures & iterables/streams).</comment>


Show HN: Picbox – Save Your Liked Photos on Instagram to your Dropbox - <AUTHOR> https://picbox.io <comment><USER2> I like the concept but not sure I see the need other then saving the videos.

1\. I believe it breaks the instagram privacy policy. 2\. Instagram saves all the photos and videos we like. 3\. We can screen shot the photos we like. 4\. Waste of my dropbox server space

<comment><USER3> If an Instagram user removes the photo or blocks access to their account, you lose access to that photo you liked. (Perhaps that's a desired behavior, but archiving does appear to be a valid use case)

<comment><USER2> In that context archiving is a valid use. I wonder if it would make me more conscious of the content I like, with me knowing it would be saved?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doing this using a simple IFTTT recipe

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using that too. Thought I could start with this and add some new features eventually. If you find some features missing from your IFTTT recipe, I'd love to hear.</comment></comment>


Sweden may be first country to eliminate cash - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/news/sweden-may-be-first-country-to-eliminate-cash-20120910/

<comment><USER2> So the Swedes will be the first people to endure vast suppression by government and banks to do as they say otherwise they cannot use their money to pay.

Mark my words, doing away with cash money will be the most silly thing that people will fall for when it comes to their independence from the big manipulators.

I personally hope that these systems will suffer a lot of colateral damage due to hackers.

Doing away cash will cause despotism at large.</comment>


Australian Wildfire Smoke Obscures Skies Half a World Away - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-07/australian-wildfire-smoke-obscures-skies-half-a-world-away <comment><USER2> The Nullschool Earth Weather Visualiser is an amazing tool for exploring such phenomena.

Here's a view showing smoke plumes from Australia having passed over Chile and Argentina, PM25 channel:

[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/08/0600Z/particulates/...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/08/0600Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/winkel3=-143.60,-0.38,239/loc=-135.238,-81.696)

The CO channel shows areas of active combustion -- the NSW and Victoria fires are abating somewhat, though Kangaroo Island is completely mental: [https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/08/0500Z/chem/surface/...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/08/0500Z/chem/surface/level/overlay=cosc/orthographic=-218.46,-31.88,3000/loc=145.004,-30.806)

Contrast with January 5, when the NSW/Vic fires were near their peak (at least so far): [https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/05/0600Z/chem/surface/...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/05/0600Z/chem/surface/level/overlay=cosc/orthographic=-218.46,-31.88,3000/loc=145.004,-30.806)

Current smoke cover over Australia -- relatively recovered, though much of the country is at the very least hazy, and Sydney / Melbourne / Canberra fairly heavily polluted:

[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/08/0600Z/particulates/...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/08/0600Z/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-218.46,-31.88,3000/loc=145.004,-30.806)

Coastal temperatures have somewhat moderated:

[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/08/0600Z/wind/surface/...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/08/0600Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-218.46,-31.88,3000/loc=141.288,-28.988)

What's been impressive is to note the tremendous temperature swings, with southern Victoria seeing temps ranging from the mid-40s (Celsius) to the single-digits, over the course of a day or so:

8.4C on January 4: [https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/04/1800Z/wind/surface/...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/04/1800Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-218.46,-31.88,3000/loc=146.643,-37.251)

39C, slightly north, January 3: [https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/03/0600Z/wind/surface/...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/03/0600Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-218.46,-31.88,3000/loc=146.054,-35.134)

(That same spot hit a low of 17.7 a day later: [https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/05/1500Z/wind/surface/...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/01/05/1500Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-218.46,-31.88,3000/loc=146.054,-35.134))</comment>


A Third of America's Economy Is Concentrated in Thirty-one Counties - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-us-gdp-concentration-counties/ <comment><USER2> And 2/3rds of the US population lives in 3.5% of the land area, what do you expect?

The correction here is not to spread things out again but to adapt to the concentration.

<comment><USER3> Yes, a lot of these sorts of measurements tend to just be population heat maps. Going down the list of most populous metro areas in the U.S. [1] or the most populous counties [2], all the top places are represented in the list. Although there are a few outliers at the edges (e.g. Charlotte, NC seems to punch above its weight).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas#United_States) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populous_coun...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populous_counties_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER4> Lowe's, Duke Energy... I'd probably have expected Wake County in that general area but that's something of a bias because of tech--and because it's the capital.

As the article notes, this isn't purely explained by population--but a lot of it is. It's maybe also worth noting that, for a lot of those metros, a decent chunk of the working population lives far enough outside of the metro area to be in another county. (Some businesses are too of course but probably less than the number of people.)

<comment> non-entity Charlotte is also like the 2nd or 3rd largest banking center in the country

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Radiolab has a great episode on Cities from a while back. [https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/radiolab/cities](https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/radiolab/cities)

Among other things, you can predict the average walking speed in a city with some accuracy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Would assume the NX gets credited to the production county not the port county...

<comment><USER7> The core flaw is that GDP is a national calculation and so cannot be used for county analysis. You'd need to compute Gross County Product separately for every county, to avoid cancelling out one county's exports against a different county's imports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> GDP = C + G + I + NX

Since cities are centers of consumption (C) and government spending (G), and those that are ports do exporting (NX=net exports), the concentration seems reasonable.

<comment><USER9> Government spending doesn't add to GDP because government doesn't create the money it spends. All the money government has to spend and create value is a byproduct of what actually goes into GDP.

<comment><USER10> You're not quite correct but not entirely wrong either. You can measure GDP by measuring production, or measuring consumption plus investment and exports. (Everything that is produced must be either consumed, saved, or exported.) Government spending is one type of consumption that's included in the GDP calculation.

Obviously, however, a dollar of government spending will typically replace a dollar that would otherwise be consumed or invested.

<comment><USER11> > Obviously, however, a dollar of government spending will typically replace a > dollar that would otherwise be consumed or invested.

It may be "obvious", but is it true? There's quite a bit of economics suggesting that it isn't, ranging from multiplier effects and orthodox Keynsianism ("reserve army of the unemployed") to more surprising claims from the MMT wing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Guess it's a slow news week. A large chunk of the country's GDP is concentrated where a large chunk of the population lives?? Riveting reporting, Bloomberg.

<comment><USER13> Except if you look at the actual political discussion, that's not the idea you will get.

The vast majority of American political discussion is centered around the idea that "real Americans" are those living in rural areas, when in fact a few years ago the majority of Americans live in urban zones.

But further, there is a pervasive belief that it's those rural areas that are keeping the US economy going, and pretty much all political economic discussion is based on the idea of catering to rural areas economic needs, when in reality, as this article shows, the overwhelming majority of the US's economic output comes from urban areas.

<comment><USER10> "Urban" is a broadly defined term. According to the Census Bureau, Sibley Iowa (pop. 2,800) is an "urban" area. So are the suburbs and exurbs of Des Moines. Most Americans don't live in what you'd usually think of as an "urban area."

I also disagree with your characterization of our political narratives. There is probably a disproportionate focus on rural areas. (Although, that accounts for 20% of the population, which is pretty remarkable when you consider that the small towns in rural areas are classified as "urban.") There is also a big media focus on rust belt cities and the like. (The famous "Cuyahoga County"). That encompasses secondary cities like Cleveland and their suburbs. That _is_ where most Americans live.

<comment><USER4> As I've said before, the census definition of "urban" makes sense in the context of the vast areas of the US that are truly middle of nowhere rural. But most places that are classified as urban have very little in common with a city core where you can walk out of your apartment to the corner store. I live in an urban area between an apple orchard and a Christmas tree farm.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Maps indoor navigation: yeah, it works at CES - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/08/google-maps-indoor-navigation-las-vegas-ces-2012/ <comment><USER2> Will you be able to locate your device inside buildings?

<comment><USER3> Yes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there alternate internets or the possibility of one? - <AUTHOR> I'm aware of the idea of the Chinese, Indian, European, and U.S. internet models and also of the dark web, but are there other internets that regular people can access? Are there still 'internets' like usenet, Gopher, and other non-commodified information sharing portals? <comment><USER2> In the beginning, there were separate internets. By Postel's law, it is hard to stop them converging into one, though [1]

Your last question, though is more about "Are there alternate networked information systems than WWW"? Gopher is still active [2]. Gemini is a proposed modern incarnation of Gopher [3]. There is also Alfi [4]. There seem to be run by hobyists, though.

If there are any other comparable platforms, I'd like to know too.

[1] [https://apenwarr.ca/log/20200708](https://apenwarr.ca/log/20200708)

[2] [https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/gopherspace.html](https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/gopherspace.html)

[3] [https://toffelblog.xyz/blog/gemini- overview/](https://toffelblog.xyz/blog/gemini-overview/)

[4] [https://github.com/jezze/alfi](https://github.com/jezze/alfi)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Thank you. I ran into Gopher a long time ago and thought maybe it was gone or dormant. I appreciate your clarification on my ask.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can I do with $1-2k (Australia) - <AUTHOR>

I'm a young 2nd year CS student at a Melbourne university. I have one or two thousand dollars I would like to play around with. Well not play around with - I don't want to waste this money - I want to invest it. I just want to do it in a way where I learn some new skills or have an interesting experience. Talking to my friends we came up with stocks, gold or some kind of small business. All of which I know sweet all about. So I thought I might ask you guys. <comment><USER2> Honestly? If you haven't got a sound idea on how to invest it, I would say leave it in the bank and accrue interest until you've got a decent idea on what to do with it, otherwise you run a high risk of essentially blowing it.

If you're still adamant about blowing your cash, might as well spend it on something tangible like towards a new macbook pro or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have all the material possessions I can really think of, in fact I enjoy getting rid of things when I can. I want an experience and a reason to learn new skills. I won't just blindly run into any investment, I'd just like some advice on where to start learning for a not-so-large amount of money.

Edit: This is hardly a small amount of money for me. I don't mean to sound nonchalant

<comment><USER2> That's fair enough. Again, honestly? I'd say still stick it in the bank and start a web-based business around an app you write. Its extremely cheap to take this route.

Bootstrapping is an incredible rush and it makes you think about what is absolutely necessary in your business, then cut that in half.

It's one of those "living on the edge" kinda feelings, the payoff is worth it.

If I was in your position, that's what I'd do.... but take my advice as much as you can take the advice of any random stranger on the net telling you how to invest your money... with a grain of salt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man, always like honest advice even if it's from 'random internet strangers'. That sounds, well, amazing. I had a few ideas a short time ago but I guess I'm not really very confident about my skills yet. But it's going on the whiteboard</comment></comment></comment></comment>