Intel announces Cascade Lake Xeons: 48 cores and 12-channel memory per socket - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/intel-announces-cascade-lake-xeons-48-cores-and-12-channel-memory-per-socket/
======
SantiagoElf
Desperate move by Intel. They are stuck with Cascade Lake until 2021, when
their 'new' architecture will be available. In order this Xeon to be under
300W TDP, they disabled the Hyper Threading and when they benchmark vs AMD
Epyc they disabled AMD's SMT. Just wow.

~~~
einr
Not only that, but they also apparently recompiled Linpack with the Intel
compiler -- which is notorious for favoring Intel chips -- before running the
benchmarks. Some really shady stuff going on here.

~~~
geezerjay
On the other hand, these shady practices are a testament to AMD's technical
superiority, as the incumbent is showing himself to be very desperate to react
although it has absolutely no answer to AMD's new line of products.

~~~
Koshkin
AMD does not have techinal superiority, as Intel cores have better single-
thread performance. Look at the recent low-end i3-8100 - it is an amazing
chip.

~~~
api
Single-threaded performance is a toss up and depends on work load. Overall AMD
beats them on price/performance and multithreaded performance, which matter
more for everything but some games and a few not easily parallelize-able
tasks.

~~~
celeritascelery
> Single-threaded performance is a toss up and depends on work load.

I would actually say the exact opposite is true. Single threaded performance
is much more reliable and every single application can use it. Multithreaded
performance is much more workload dependent, and there are many applications
that can’t fully utilize it.

------
xoa
Anandtech's article has more technical details and discussion:

[https://www.anandtech.com/show/13535/intel-goes-
for-48cores-...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13535/intel-goes-for-48cores-
cascade-ap)

The most pertinent technical questions and concern seems to be around the
interconnects, since inter-die bandwidth and latency are big factors in
performance. I think the major surprise/disappointment there is that within
the MCM they apparently are _not_ using their Embedded Multi-die Interconnect
Bridge (EMIB) which was supposed to be their next-gen interposer replacement.
They have been pretty flowery about it, right up to on the official page [1]
having fun with a Star Wars riff and calling EMIB "an Elegant Interconnect for
a More Civilized Age". Looks like it's all UPI here though. According to
Cutress it also isn't clear exactly how many UPI link are used between the two
sockets.

It's not like MCM usage is some necessarily exotic thing, IBM has been doing
it in various forms including for POWER forever. Even beyond TDP however
Intel's approach here definitely seems kind of "odd" to put it neutrally. I
think if this is going to be a major part of their strategy going forward
they'll need a different approach, but for that very reason I wonder if this
is more of a one-off placeholder?

\----

1:
[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/emib.html](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/emib.html)

~~~
rbanffy
Well... Pentium Pro was an MCM and that was a looong time ago.

I also remember Unisys Micro-A boards (the Unisys equivalent to IBM's PC/370).
IIRC, they had 6 or 7 chips within a single package.

------
bigiain
" … currently believed to be a 5903 pin connector."

This thing has way more connector pins than the 6502 (the processor that ran
inside the AppleII) had _transistors!_

~~~
xxs
most of the pins are vcc and gnd, but still impressive indeed. 6502 had
3500transistors, 40pins... and multiple address modes (with zero page+y being
my fav)

------
drewg123
I find the timing of this announcement a bit amusing. Given AMD's planned 'new
horizon' announcements today, I'm assuming Intel rushed out this press release
over the weekend in order to preempt AMD.

~~~
ksec
It allows all those going to be EPYC2 buyers know or at least have an upcoming
Intel chip in their mind, hopefully delaying the purchase decision until later
and gives Intel sales team time to do their job. Which so far their sales team
has been doing spectacularly well and literally every one who has been
complaining about Intel continues to buy Intel. Sad but true.

We should know more about Zen 2 in a few hours time.

~~~
jaxtellerSoA
>and literally every one who has been complaining about Intel continues to buy
Intel

While I am sure this isn't LITERALLY true, there is some truth to it. I work
at a smallish company, who bought 3 new Intel servers about 5 months before
Epyc servers started to be available from OEM's. We plan on adding another
server to our stack next year, I would LOVE to go with Epyc, but I am locked
into Intel at this point (until we decided to replace the entire stack).
VMWare doesn't allow you to mix CPU architecture and maintain HA. So, we stuck
buying a crappy Intel Xeon instead.

~~~
ksec
Judging from the Server shipment and market share this is exactly what is
happening. But to be fair, many fought for EPYC, but those who made the
decisions, CEO / CFO / CIO / Purchasing Director etc are all well connected
with Intel.

------
GiorgioG
Just wait until Apple drops Intel. It's going to be a bloodbath.

~~~
chrisseaton
Is Apple really a major customer of Intel? I’m not so sure.

~~~
GiorgioG
I wouldn't say it's a particularly small number:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-
ma...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-
computers-since-first-quarter-2006/)

Add that to AMD's recent surge, Intel's in a world of hurt.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> Add that to AMD's recent surge, Intel's in a world of hurt.

Meh. Looking at the sales numbers of past quarters, AMD still hasn't
significantly hurt Intel. They have made a lot of inroads among hobbyists and
in small-store prebuilts, but the major brands still appear to be dominated by
Intel.

It's a real shame that nobody seems to have made an actually good Raven Ridge
laptop. The CPU is imho objectively better for laptop use than any Intel
competitor, but all laptops built with it appear to have a major deficit of
some kind or another.

Another mystery is lack of Epyc uptake. There are a lot of workloads where
Epycs should be dominating Intel server chips when compared at the same price
or power level, especially after all the recent chip vulnerabilities which are
much less serious for AMD than they are for Intel, but Epyc sales are
definitely lagging. Is AMD unable to make them, or are companies just wary of
buying AMD?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
There's a lot of interest in Epyc for certain use cases. It's just the server
world moves slowly because when you're spending millions on massive amounts of
hardware, and it needs to run 24/7 for years without defects, you want to make
sure it works.

~~~
jaxtellerSoA
> It's just the server world moves slowly

THIS! I am not sure why people are expecting Epyc to take off like a rocket,
it won't. Companies maintaining 24/7 hardware don't jump on new tech. I think
Epyc will eventually take a good chunk of the market, but it will take a few
years.

Also, if you are expanding an existing VMWare stack you can't mix CPU
architecture and have HA. So unless you are building a new stack, then Epyc
might not even be an option, even if the Admin might prefer Epyc.

------
HNNewer
I hope they have solved the problems with latest security flaws before
releasing these CPUs

~~~
Heag3aec
It takes a long time to design and fab new layouts. So at best you would get
firmware mitigations baked in. Or, as mentioned in other comments, the HT
sidechannels might be fixed simply because HT is turned off.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Intel finally goes MCM! I wonder if their implementation works as well as
AMD's though. Can it scale to smaller chips (which have good yields)?

~~~
mtgx
So much glue. Glue everywhere!

[https://www.eteknix.com/intel-attacks-glued-together-amd-
epy...](https://www.eteknix.com/intel-attacks-glued-together-amd-epyc-dies/)

Intel also did another nasty one, after being caught lying about it with
another benchmark they did in the same way: they disabled EPYC's SMT, likely
because this chip doesn't have SMT, so they don't want AMD's chip to benefit
from it either, even though in real world scenarios it will.

------
InclinedPlane
How many side channels though?

------
sireat
Right out of Pentium D (remember that?) playbook:

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

It bought Intel some time until Core 2.

------
Crontab
Finally, a CPU that can keep up with Google Chrome!

~~~
rbanffy
And Slack!

~~~
mooman219
What's the difference? /s

~~~
lostmsu
IMHO, /s is superficial.

------
hajile
The die shot looks to have 15 core modules at 2 cores each. I assume the
28-core variant lasers out 2 for yields and clockspeeds. I guess this one
would then be cutting out 6 cores per chip. Big chips really aren't the way
forward.

~~~
tolien
Per the caption it’s an Ivy Bridge, i.e. not the Xeon the article talks about.

There’s an annotated die photo of the CLAP (seriously, did nobody in Intel
marketing predict “Intel gives you the CLAP”, “Intel CPUs have the CLAP” and
khibosh this name?!) predecessor die at [1].

1:
[https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/skylak...](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/skylake_\(server\)#Extreme_Core_Count_.28XCC.29)

~~~
wmf
Intel uses three-letter codenames, so it's probably something like CLX-AP, not
CLAP.

~~~
tolien
From TFA:

> Intel is labeling them "Cascade Lake Advanced Performance,"

The Anandtech article suggests they’re de-emphasising the “Lake” so it’s more
of a C-AP.

------
dis-sys
Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 is currently sold for $10k USD each, it comes with 28
cores. For 48 cores and 12 memory channels, you can almost be assured to see a
price tag of close to $20k USD. So basically when they fail to come up with
some better architectures to face the competition from AMD, they choose to
glue up their out of date designs (out of date when compared with Zen2 based
new Epyc line) and sell you as a bundle without significant price cut!

To be honest, I am not surprised - we are talking about a company that worked
so hard for 10 years to fool its customers on why they don't need more than 4
cores on desktops. The whole joke is so INTEL!

~~~
yread
That's the list price, not many customers pay that

~~~
aseipp
It's wild that so many people here think that e.g. major cloud vendors use the
same purchasing logic for multi-hundred-million dollar deals on tens/hundreds
of thousands of units, that a 17 year old uses when deciding how to spend $700
on a new computer. "They're scared", "Zen is a superior product", "EPYC/Rome
will blow them away", etc. It doesn't actually matter.

Not only do many customers not pay the list price you see, they get custom
SKUs specifically designed for them -- which is a growing portion of their
Xeon business and one AMD has no clear, large-scale answer to AFAICS. And they
basically can't get enough of them. Xeons practically print money and Intel
recently announced something like 16% revenue increases and even higher
demands for Xeon than they've ever had. They just invested an extra billion in
new fab production just because they're at capacity right now...

Intel is going to remain very strong in this market for a good, long time as
far as I can tell, and things like list SKU prices are an incredibly,
ridiculously small reason to believe otherwise.

That said I'm very happy with the price/power ratio of my TR 1950X.

~~~
tutanchamun
> which is a growing portion of their Xeon business and one AMD has no clear,
> large-scale answer to AFAICS

Probably depends on the size of the company. AMD has their semi custom
department which was responsible for the PS4 and Xbox One, as well as PS4 Pro,
Xbox One X (the GPUs are based on Polaris but have features from Vega, which
no normal Polaris GPU has) and Subor Z (Zen APU with GDDR5 as main memory like
the consoles, but can run Windows).

AMD is probably the better vendor if you want custom SKUs (as the underdog
they also have more incentive for custom SKUs).


Ask HN: best music to code to? - AdamJBall
Wondering what music people listen to in order to maintain focus whilst coding.
Personally a fan of the TRON: Legacy soundtrack, Justice etc.
Look forward to listening to your suggestions!
======
taprun
There's a big thread on Reddit that suggests programming to video game music,
as it's designed to be in the background. Link:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1u4xh1/lpt_look...](http://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1u4xh1/lpt_looking_for_good_music_to_work_to_try_video/)

~~~
hashtree
The same reason I litsen to Soma FM. Some good channels:

[http://somafm.com/spacestation/](http://somafm.com/spacestation/)

[http://somafm.com/deepspaceone/](http://somafm.com/deepspaceone/)

[http://somafm.com/dronezone/](http://somafm.com/dronezone/)

[http://somafm.com/beatblender/](http://somafm.com/beatblender/)

[http://somafm.com/events/](http://somafm.com/events/) (Def Con Radio)

------
user_235711
I would recommend Boards of Canada[1] and Thievery Corporation[2] most of all.
But really anything in the vein of what has been dubbed "chill" music works
great for me due to the awesome atmospheres and driving beats. Here[3] is a
list I made of some of the best albums IMO in that genre.

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Boards-Of-
Canada/e/B000APHPF8/](http://www.amazon.com/Boards-Of-Canada/e/B000APHPF8/)

[2][http://www.amazon.com/Thievery-
Corporation/e/B000APFP6E/](http://www.amazon.com/Thievery-
Corporation/e/B000APFP6E/)

[3][http://www.amazon.com/Top-10-Chill-Out-
Albums/lm/R32Q5RHQR51...](http://www.amazon.com/Top-10-Chill-Out-
Albums/lm/R32Q5RHQR51XFO/)

~~~
ragatskynet
I also listen to these when I am coding. Repetitive techno-like music can be
also good, it depends on the mood.

------
ceeK
I don't particularly understand how people can code whilst listening to music.
The two simply do not go hand in hand for me. I find it clouds my thought
process why I'm trying to figure something out or reason about a bit of code.
Even when I'm doing 'drone' programming I often think about where this bit of
code fits in with the rest etc.

Sometimes I can listen to music without lyrics, but it has to be fairly calm
and uneventful. Coffitivity is actually a pretty good thing for me.

~~~
andrew_gardener
It works differently for different people. For me it helps drown out
background noise in the office and helps relax me so I can get in the zone.
Its important to note that I play my music very low with headphone and with
rather no lyrics or lyrics in a different language so that it doesn't distract
me.

With all that said though, there is nothing worse than being subjected to a
coworker's music choice. Having experienced this at different jobs, I can
totally understand why other people avoid music at work like the plague.

------
andrew_gardener
I usually listen to whatever is on the top of the list for anime radio
stations
([http://www.shoutcast.com/radio/Anime](http://www.shoutcast.com/radio/Anime))
while at work (since its easier to just stream some music).

At home I have a large collection of random music (some music from video
games, anime, metal/electronic bands, parody/comedy songs, meme themed songs,
etc)

------
heldrida
I'm usually coding while listening to Drum and Bass. But for example, today
I've been listening to Stax (Soul/Funk). Other days I'm listening to Punk,
Ska, Reggae, Hip-Hop [...] At least twice a week I listen to roots Blue music!

It's up to you, I don't think there's such thing as "music" made for
programming, if so, I would say late night and silence...really...!

------
stevekemp
I tend to listen to 80s goth/metal/industrial music, on the basis that that's
what I used to listen to, go clubbing with, and enjoy the most.

There are times when I'll listen to random things, such as Jeff Wayne's war of
the worlds, opera, or piano works, but generally I'm an 80s metal-head at
heart!

------
AnimalMuppet
Depends on what style of music you favor. What music is best depends on who
you are.

It also depends on what you're coding. "Put your head down and crank" music is
different from "I need to be able to think deeply for a couple of hours"
music.

------
Karunamon
I found a "Music for Programming" podcast a long while ago that's fairly
effective. It's pretty mellow compared to the Legacy OST.

[http://musicforprogramming.net](http://musicforprogramming.net)

------
J_Darnley
Whatever you like. My one suggestion is you listen to things that don't have
lyrics or possibly even humming or other vocal elements. I find myself
distracted by those.

I could list some of my favourites if anyone likes.

------
johnsoga
I can listen to almost anything. I usually end up having repeat on and can end
up listening to the same songs 20-30 times before I even notice... and then
the process repeats :)

------
vishalzone2002
I have always wondered about this. An interesting thing to think about is if
there is a correlation between programming language and type of music a
programmer likes.

------
ablutop
ambient and downbeat [http://divbyzero.de](http://divbyzero.de) (also through
[http://divbyzeroambient.rad.io/](http://divbyzeroambient.rad.io/) )

------
wturner
I like massive attack instrumentals and hang drum solos.

------
thebrainkid
when I'm coding, I like listening to classical, although I've also been liking
swinghouse recently.


Ask HN: Do you use market research for your business? - tixocloud

I'm interested in knowing if you use market research to help your business grow? If so, has it been helpful? Did you feel it was a waste of money and why?
If it's possible, I'd also be interested in how much you spent and what kind of research it is? (i.e. custom survey, focus groups, reports, etc.) Thanks in advance!<p>Disclaimer: Reposting this question as I didn't get any responses in the first one. Sorry for the spam.
======
chrisgoodrich
Market research is imperative to success, but it may not always look like
you'd expect. Note that I come from a B2B software product management
background. Market research is a major part of my job, but I don't think I
have ever called it market research.

Big companies often place a lot of value in more formalized research studies
to drive corporate strategy. This is very top-down.

I prefer, and often drive, more lean research initiatives. Working in
startups, there isn't budget or time for formalized research studies. Instead
I have often used more scrappy methods of customer development to test ideas
with prototypes.

A one hour conversation with 10 people in your target market will likely give
you enough information to form a hypothesis about what problems people are
willing to pay to have solved.

~~~
tixocloud
Thanks for the great insight and a really good point on the wording "market
research". Would there be another specific term that you use to describe your
task?

For your leaner research initiatives, do you ever leverage high-level customer
or country profiles?

~~~
chrisgoodrich
Steve Blank calls it Customer Development in his book The Four Steps to the
Epiphany. I highly recommend reading his book.

------
iovrthoughtthis
Have you looked at The Four Steps to Epiphany? Depending on your companies
situation / stage it might have some interesting insight on using market
research.

~~~
tixocloud
Thanks for pointing it out. I'll have a look at it again in detail - I skimmed
through the section towards the other phases.


Facebook Blocks Chinese Billionaire Who Tells Tales of Corruption - Jerry2
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/business/facebook-china-guo-wengui.html
======
bm1362
I was at SoundCloud briefly and an interview with this guy was posted on Ming
Jing radio. We were DDOS’ed and eventually had to take his profile offline as
well due to the volume of requests. At the same time, I remember Googling his
name and found his FB and Twitter accounts were disabled too.

I brought up the optics of blocking him in a MingJing slack channel but at the
time there wasn’t another way to mitigate the traffic. I imagine this is due
to the same pressure. Maybe not, though.

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/world/asia/guo-
wengui-...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/world/asia/guo-wengui-
chinese-billionaire-twitter.html)

[https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/04/21/wanted-billionaire-
guo...](https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/04/21/wanted-billionaire-guo-wengui-
beijing-pressured-us-broadcaster-voa-cut-interview/)

~~~
rqs
I searched "Ming Ling radio" and didn't get as many results as I did with
"Ming Jing Radio", so I guess that's a typo.

~~~
bm1362
You’re right- I couldn’t quite remember the name. I updated my comment.

------
pdimitar
> _Facebook said the content on both pages had included someone else’s
> personal identifiable information, which violates its terms of service._

Oh yeah, and in the meantime, if you forget to flick a switch -- which
unsurprisingly is ON by default and is hard to find -- everybody and their dog
can tag you in photos, even if it's not you. Which would either be slander or
personal identification without your consent; pick one. They have no problem
with that though.

~~~
mcv
Yeah, definitely sounds hypocritical from Facebook. I can imagine they were
under pressure from China to block him and needed a good excuse.

~~~
imaginenore
Isnt't Facebook already blocked in China?

~~~
dawhizkid
They are of course salivating at the possibility of (re)entering China.
Anything to get on the good side of the Chinese gov't is very important if
that's what they want.

------
rdtsc
I was kind of joking, but kind of not, when I said a few weeks back that
eventually Google, Facebook and Twitter would start selling Silencing as a
Service (SaaS). Whoever pays more gets to control the manufacture of consent
-- all of the sudden those who like different brands, political candidates,
who don't believe the correct things will simply get their accounts
deactivated.

~~~
tsunamifury
Why would they sell it? That undermines the fundamentals of the product.

~~~
smsm42
For Facebook, the users are not consumers, but the raw material. The
advertisers are the consumers. Of course, Facebook won't want to lose the
eyeballs, but the way most people use FB would almost not changed, maybe very
slightly - so within a small margin, nobody would leave.

------
tehwebguy
I never forgot about when Yahoo! helped China throw dissidents in prison.

Won't forget this either.

------
chj
If Guo's breaking law, then let him be sued, and actually he's doing these
things to try to get sued. Guo is backed up with a legal team, and is hoping
to expose more in court.

It's disappointing to see FB taking side with the most powerful government
(ironically, which is already blocking its service) during this historical
event.

------
codegladiator
Also: [http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/facebook-fascism-
ma...](http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/facebook-fascism-man-posts-
kamal-ka-phool-hamari-bhool-gets-blocked-for-30-days/story-
mxVtCEYoabUX3lW1ihxc3N.html)

TLDR: social networking site blocked his account for 30 days after he posted
‘Kamal ka phool hamari bhool’ (Our mistake, the lotus) with a photo on his
page. (lotus is the political symbol of the current government in power, BJP)

~~~
eklavya
Doesn't match my experience. I have been seeing a flood of anti BJP posts on
social media and nobody's getting banned. It's like the opposition is just
waking up to the social media outreach reality :P (a welcome change perhaps).

~~~
thewhitetulip
Do you post publicly or privately? This is happening increasingly for public
posts

------
thewhitetulip
Facebook is becoming a censoring platform each day

Just a few weeks ago they blocked a mutual friend if mine who posted anti govt
stuff

And they blocked a guy who shared a photo of a bill on which "Kamal ka ful
hanari bhul" was printed (Lotus flower, our mistake as in electing BJP was our
mistake)

The guy who shared the oic was banned for 30 days

~~~
Y_Y
A mutual friend?

Of you and who else?

~~~
thewhitetulip
What soet of question is this?

------
asdfologist
Does FB have any incentive to bend to the will of the Chinese government?
They're already banned in China.

~~~
ithinkinstereo
As with India, FB sees China as huge potential market and has been shamelessly
courting the PRC government for years now. Zuck even asked President Xi to
name his child on a state visit to the USA a couple of years ago (naming
children is a big deal in Chinese culture and Xi - who was visibly surprised
by the request - politely declined).

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I posted before, but Zuck isn't Chinese and he isn't exactly a social
butterfly in the USA either. This was probably just some awkward smalltalk,
where Zuck was looking for suggestions for the kid's Chinese name (they
definitely didn't ask him to pick out the kid's actual English name). Not
weird if you don't understand hypersensitive Chinese culture.

~~~
jimmies
I have replied in another thread, but I will repeat it here. Both his wife and
grandparents know Chinese, and I would be very surprised if they would not be
interested in giving the child a Chinese name. Asking Xi -- a person who is
not a great thinker but just a big ass politician whom he just met -- to name
it publicly, simply put, you can't kiss more ass than that.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Poppycock. My Chinese wife and my non-English speaking mother-in-law still
haven't selected a Chinese name for my 9 month old son yet (wife vetoed my
suggestion of 小囧, grandma isn't making any suggestions either even though she
can't pronounce his English name), and at this point I'm even willing to ask
Uncle Xi for suggestions.

~~~
ithinkinstereo
Giving a child a name is a big deal in Chinese culture, so I think your
situation is unusual and shouldn't be used as a benchmark here. You also
edited out "My Chinese wife and my non-English speaking mother-in-law have
taught me very little about Chinese culture" which might explain your view on
this matter.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Again, neither Zuck nor I are Chinese, I don't think you can use Chinese
culture at all as a benchmark here. I'm sure Zuck knows less about Chinese
culture than I do, especially since his wife is American born, and he never
lived and worked in china for an extended period of time.

~~~
ithinkinstereo
I've already stated it previously, as have other users, that giving a child is
a big deal in Chinese culture. I'll add to that by noting that this typically
involves the entire family - especially the child's grandparents. I would be
extremely surprised if this was not the case with Priscilla and her parents.
That coupled with the fact that Zuck is actively learning the language and
culture makes it unlikely that his request was just social awkwardness nor
that he is largely ignorant about Chinese culture as you seem to suggest. Plus
if I recall, his wife was by his side when he asked Xi.

In regards to your point about Priscilla, many, if not the majority of ABCs
(esp first gen) are raised by their parents "Chinese" culturally-speaking. Her
not having lived or worked in China does not mean she is unfamiliar to Chinese
culture. To suggest that is frankly absurd and runs counter to the Asian-
American experience.

Because of all these reasons, many people view Zuck's request as a shameless
act of ass-kissing and not just being "socially awkward".

Lastly, the reaction in China was not only due to "hyper-sensitivity" but also
to a mix of 1) media exaggeration and 2) how important naming a child is in
Chinese culture.

With all due respect to you and your family, your personal anecdote about your
son not having a Chinese name is not the norm - even for mixed Western/Chinese
couples.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Stop enforcing your values on other people! You still don't get it. Zuckerberg
isn't chinese, his wife is Chinese Vietnamese American, his in law as are
Chinese Vietnamese, they don't even speak Mandarin, yet you judge them as if
they were narrow-minded hypersensitive northern mainlanders (because
southerners are much more flexible). It distorts and perverts the Asian
American experience, even among Chinese not everyone will share your values.

With all due respect, I know many mixed Chinese kids who didn't have formal
Chinese names awhile after they were born, it isn't freaking easy, it isn't
always a priority. What was chosen afterwards was informal. It just happens,
not everyone shares your values, even among Chinese, and why the heck should
they? They have their name, the one they will use for the rest of their lives,
that is the important part, the rest is just technicalities.

------
tudorconstantin
This is not a very smart positioning for fb. They decided to play an active
role in this dispute and take the side of the oppressing state.

We don't know the whole story, the chinese billionaire could also have a
hidden agenda and try to get rid of political adversaries by inventing
corruption stories and spreading fake news. So taking his side wouldn't have
been wise either.

Facebook should've thought "not my circus, not my monkey" and ignore all of
this, letting them solve their issues using the legal system.

Why would anyone use facebook now to communicate anything more than some cheap
stories and cute cat photos?

~~~
usaphp
> Why would anyone use facebook now to communicate anything more than some
> cheap stories and cute cat photos?

Did anyone ever use Facebook for more serious stuff anyway?

~~~
opportune
You know how when you go to a website, even one you'd never share, you'll get
a prompt to like/share the page or its contents on Facebook? Every time that
Facebook widget gets loaded, Facebook receives information about your
browser/operating system/etc. that it uses to create a fingerprint that it
checks against your previous history. You'll also get a cookie (which you
essentially have to opt-out of) to better help Facebook track your browsing
without needing the fingerprint.

So many websites put up that little like button that Facebook's reach extends
well beyond what users upload directly to their website. Facebook's strength
is that is can combine your demographic data with your network AND your
internet habits. Facebook, in countries where it's not blocked, will even
build profiles on people that have not signed up for facebook directly, for
example if your friend uploads a photo of the two of you with your name. And
Facebook advertises to these people as well.

So I think whatever isn't "more serious" that you do on Facebook is probably
more serious than you think. You either need to be hyper vigilant about
JS/cookies or you need to not use the internet at all to be able to divorce
your profile and all of its information from the rest of the information
Facebook has from you browsing the web.

------
HashThis
We need facebook to respond to this. Does he include someone's email or phone
number? Or is simply referring to people's names a problem. If it is only
referring to people's names to get banned, then that is horrible of facebook
to do.

~~~
CodeWriter23
I can’t confirm for you how I know this but I know merely mentioning someone’s
name and associating their name with something that can be construed as
harassment, combined with use of the Report button is enough to trigger
Facebook Jail for the poster/commenter.

------
l5870uoo9y
Facebook's efforts will be in vain, because letting Facebook penetrate China —
the way it has Europe — is a fundamental (geopolitical) security risk no
matter how many concessions Facebook gives.

------
hud8
How do you armchair Chinese experts know this guy isn't the Chinese version of
Donald Trump who is being silenced before he does more damage. To me it just
feels like the technocrat class of China that is a big part of the govt does
what the technocrat class in the US is incapable off. Everyone is a hypocrite
here. Not just FB.

~~~
specialp
Well the American version of Donald Trump is not silenced as silencing people
is not the American way. In short it doesn't matter who he is or what he does,
we don't like big internet companies silencing people to appease censoring
governments.

~~~
coldtea
> _as silencing people is not the American way._

Except when it matters -- e.g. if they're whistleblowers, activists, people
like Manning, Gary Webb, or heck, MLK, and so on -- all the way to McCarthy-
ism and Hoover.

------
bilbo0s
I guess I'd like to know how accusations of criminal conduct are normally
handled by facebook?

Suppose a user starts posting, all over facebook, posts that accuse a certain
male of sex crimes, or... say... pedophilia. Further, this person names this
male explicitly. Suppose further, the male has not been charged with any such
crime. (Indeed, for all the users in his social circle know, he may not even
be a suspect. He could even be completely innocent.)

What is the normal course of action that facebook would take in such cases?

Are the posts taken down? Is the poster warned? Does nothing at all usually
happen? (That is, can a user normally make accusations of sex crimes or
pedophilia without restraint?) What, exactly, happens in most cases of posts
containing accusations of some form of CLEARLY criminal activity?

It seems to me that whatever happens in the proverbial "girl claims a guy is a
rapist to their social circle" case, should probably happen here. I think
their policy should be consistent, to the extent that is possible.

~~~
rtpg
Though you're not explicit, I bet everyone reads this as "Facebook doesn't
handle false rape claims equally", though you've provided no evidence of this.
Instead just relying on "internet tropes" and people will end up filling in
the blanks.

Not to mention that the article itself says that someone's PII was posted
(presumably without consent). I don't know what it was, but it could easily
have been some person's phone numbers with a call to action to harass them.

That sort of stuff _does_ get taken down by Facebook. Sometimes things get out
of hand, but it's usually one "report content" click away from getting
removed.

Maybe you honestly don't know FB's policies here, but posting this sort of
comment basically reads as an accusation.


Obama defends Bradley Manning's detention in informal discussion - danenania
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/04/22/video-of-obama-on-bradley-manning-he-broke-the-law/

======
danenania
Transcript provided by the author:

People can have philosophical views about…

[Questioner: unintelligible]

No, no, but look, I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source. That’s not
how…the world works. If you’re in the military, and…I have to abide by certain
classified information. If I was to release stuff, information that I’m not
authorized to release, I’m breaking the law…We’re a nation of laws. We don’t
individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate…

He broke the law.

[Questioner: 'You can make it harder to break the law.']

Well, what he did was he dumped…

[Questioner: something about President Nixon's prosecution of Pentagon Papers
leaker Daniel Ellsberg]

It wasn’t the same thing. What Ellsberg released wasn’t classified in the same
way. So. Anyway. Alright.

~~~
danenania
Personally, I think "he broke the law" is a terrible argument and he should
know better. I don't have to tell you where we'd be without countless people
standing up for what's right and yeah, breaking the damn law throughout
history.

~~~
jamesbritt
_Personally, I think "he broke the law" is a terrible argument and he should
know better._

More so because Manning has not yet even been tried, let alone convicted.

Manning is an extreme example of the shitty treatment afforded the accused,
unless you're a banker who's fucked people over for millions of dollars.


Show HN: Imprint – Rethinking Medium - rolandtshen
Hello! This is Roland from Imprint (https://imprint.to).
We've been frustrated with Medium because of their paywall, content ownership issues, intrusive interface, and low post engagement. So we built Imprint to do things different. We want to take the control and ownership you get with Wordpress/Ghost, and provide distribution/discovery.
To us, a blog is...
1. Openly sharing your thoughts (freedom of expression)
2. Accessible, unobtrusive content (no paywalls)
3. Ownership/control of your work (our policies, custom domains, customization)
4. Building an audience that engages with articles (followers, newsletters, distribution)
5. Simple to run, so you focus on what matters — CONTENT
Our manifesto (business model, philosophy, guidelines): https://read.imprint.to/post/the-imprint-rundown
Happy to answer any questions and concerns. Thanks!
P.S: yes, our title was inspired by the Ghost launch years ago
======
throwaway888abc
Clickable [https://imprint.to](https://imprint.to)

------
pinkpigpie
This seems amazing!


H1b vs L1 visa - pattamonnu
http://frontsimple.com/posts/H1b-vs-L1-infographic/
======
elastic_church
I think I recently pointed out that focusing on H1B was a red herring.

Any way, I love publicly posted salary information for every H1B applicant by
company and date! [http://www.h1bdata.info](http://www.h1bdata.info) Way
better than Glassdoor or Payscale or any of those "give us your Facebook
account and a ton of information before we show you outdated base-salary-only
information but since you clicked we're sure the ad worked" websites

Don't know about the history of that transparency and don't care, can probably
convince Congress to extend it to other work visa types "as a compromise to
study the effect on citizens" lol!

------
wyldfire
The infographic doesn't make it clear what substantive differences exist
between H1B and L1 visas. AFAICT from the text below it's more like
transferring within the globocorp.

From [1]: "The new U.S. office must have a corporate relationship with your
foreign entity abroad where you have been employed as a manager, executive, or
worker with specialized knowledge. This means that the new U.S. office must be
a parent, affiliate, subsidiary or branch of the foreign entity, and that both
the U.S. office and the foreign entity must continue to share common ownership
and control."

[1] [https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/l-1-intracompany-
transf...](https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/l-1-intracompany-
transferee/understanding-l-1-requirements)

------
sfilargi
One more difference is that L1 visa holders cannot change companies.

~~~
pattamonnu
That's an advantage for employers. Imagine you are bringing a employee who you
know will not leave. That leads to lots of possibilities

~~~
sfilargi
I didn't imply the opposite. Just stating a fact that was omitted.

------
kozikow
Not fully accurate - spouses of H1B, H4 can work now:
[http://www.immihelp.com/h4-visa-ead/](http://www.immihelp.com/h4-visa-ead/).

~~~
pattamonnu
H4 dependents can only work after the primaries's green card process reached
certain stage which may take few years. But with L1, spouse can start work
from day 1

~~~
topkeker
Incorrect, the dependent has a 3 month waiting period.

~~~
pattamonnu
you mean they become eligible only after 3 months?

~~~
topkeker
Yes, as the other comment says. They become eligible to apply for EAD only
after 3 months. You then need to wait for the EAD, which processing time
varies depending on location.

Once EAD is issued, they can work.

------
credit_guy
Why is the vertical scale not starting at zero? This is generally considered
to be an antipattern in plotting, as it creates the wrong perception of
ratios.

------
geodel
For general population and media consumption concentrating on 1 keyword is way
better than 2 or more keywords. So if H1B is picked by politicians than it is
better strategy to hammer on it instead of discussing nuances of various visa
types.

IMO H1B or not lots of typical IT jobs are disappearing anyway .

~~~
pattamonnu
But, the whole employment visas have to be reformed as a whole. For example,
tightening H1b means, companies can start using L1 or Eb1c more. These work
rounds are already being taken advantage of.

------
inerte
Your graph makes look like "L1 + spouse worker" is a little bit more than
100k.

The source document says ~78k L1 were issued in 2015, and ~86k L2, which
included spouses and chidren.

How do you know how many L1 spouses are working?

~~~
pattamonnu
It makes an assumption that 25% approximately end up working. Forgot to
specify that. Will fix it. thanks


F-Secure will provide Dropbox-like storage [summary in comments] - sampo
http://www.digitoday.fi/data/2013/09/12/f-secure-haastaa-googlen-ja-dropboxin--jakaa-ilmaiseksi-salattua-tallennustilaa/201312767/66

======
sampo
Summary (as the link is in Finnish):

\- F-Secure, a Finnish company, will provide cloud storage like Dropbox and
Google Drive

\- located in Finland, 256bit AES encrypted

\- first 5 Gb are for free

\- virus scanning for stored files

\- will open at the end of October

------
hannibal5
The content is encrypted with 256-bit AES algorithm and the content is divided
into three different parts stored in different locations. One stores the
files, second stores the metadata and the third stores the user information.

The data centers are located in two Finnish cities F-Secure does not reveal.


Students being forced to buy online textbooks to do homework - bjd2385
I was forced to buy an online textbook for my CS course this past semester to do homework. Now I've been notified that my `subscription' to this information is ending at the start of January (specifically by ZyBooks).
I really liked working on the projects and reading through the descriptions, I thought it was worth the $70 or so that I paid for it. However, it was hardly ``fresh,'' I could look up the same information by Googling or surfing SO.
I've been forced to buy these now extinct access codes to websites that have ``online textbooks'' before for courses (I still have the $60-100 cards, about 4 or 5 of them now). I honestly don't feel they're worth, most of the time, what I've paid for them. And at the end of the day, I end up empty handed, robbed of that information (unlike an actual textbook, albeit still way overpriced, but at least it's _mine_ and no one can take it away from me).
Has anyone else gone through the same thing? Thoughts? Opinions?
======
brudgers
College textbooks have been a way to extract money from students for many
years. In the old days of physical books, the new copy would be as
ridiculously priced as they are today (in constant dollars). The used copies
would be beat up and about 80% of the ridiculous price. At the end of the
term, the buyback would be for 10 to 20% of the original price at best.
Sometimes it would be a couple of dollars because a new edition had come out.

One of the current trends is toward open source textbooks under permissive
licenses. It will happen slowly as older faculty are replaced by younger, so
it probably won't be done by the time you finish your degree.

Anyway, given the cost of higher education this might not be the place to
worry about maximizing return on investment.

------
coreyp_1
1\. You need to talk to the department heads at your university and let them
know. Schedule a meeting, and when you bring up your (very valid) points,
point to the rows of books on their shelf, and show them your now-extinct
cards. It will be effective.

2\. Give them the benefit of the doubt. They were probably trying to save you
money. Others in your class probably preferred this lower-cost approach.

3\. Don't just complain here about it. Your University department will never
know that there is a problem unless you communicate with them about this. As
long as you do it in the right way, they will appreciate the feedback.

Good luck!


Ask HN: How to help with time management and project management challenges - source99
I have an employee that regularly doesn’t finish tasks on time and doesn’t concentrate on items that are high priority.
How can I help him?
In his defense I’m sure some of it is my type A personality but I have been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt for what I think is long enough already.
Thanks
======
kazishariar
See my response to:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17596293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17596293)

------
mabynogy
Let him in peace. Give him low priority tasks. You'll feel better.


Dreaming Outside Our Heads - tintinnabula
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/04/20/consciousness-dreaming-outside-our-heads/
======
sebringj
Manzotti conflates the scientifically observable with the subjective. Because
it sounds intellectual, it gets voted on Hacker News? Manzotti will shit
himself when he puts on VR goggles or takes LSD. What will he do then?

------
xaedes
> The only thing that has the properties of the experience is the object
> itself.

I would say, the only thing that has the properties of the experience is the
_experience_ itself.

------
openfuture
Tim Parks book 'teach us to sit still' is what got me to start a regular
meditation practise but only because I enjoyed how hard headed he was and
unwilling to accept the obvious positive effect it had on him. This post feels
a little bit similar where the other guy is just schooling him and his
objections are feeble.

Which got me to think, is this the modern equivalence of this [1]?

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8)

------
mvdwoord
"But this sun that feels “now” to you is the sun that shone eight minutes ago.
The moon is closer, but it’s still more than a second away from the effect it
produces in your body. If this were a starry night, the stars composing the
Ursa Major would be scattered between 80 and 128 years away."

Right.. Because the photons hit you 8 minutes ago and you feel them now? or
They traveled for 8 minutes and are actually hitting you now?

Stopped reading there.

~~~
givan
I think that what he wants to say that is difficult to locate the "now", if
you read a little more he explains it more clearly.

"the quickest neural processes still require tens of milliseconds to complete
as electronic and chemical signals travel back and forth across the meters of
neural circuitry packed in our brains. So even for the neuroscientists the
physical stuff that they view as constituting our conscious experience is
spread over space and time, albeit tiny spaces. In fact, if we wanted to be
really rigorous and consider only what is present at one instant in time, the
world as we know it would disappear. Sounds, light, voices, gestures, actions,
words, all require a flexible notion of nowness that encompasses more than a
single instant."


Pet Cloning as a Service - gremlinsinc
https://viagenpets.com/faq/
======
gremlinsinc
Saw this on ProductHunt...and thought it was a joke/hoax, can't believe this
totally exists.


A Tale of CenturyLink Backdoors, PCI Compliance, and Pain - dlgeek
http://thenubbyadmin.com/2014/04/28/a-tale-of-centurylink-backdoors-pci-compliance-and-pain-lots-of-pain/

======
lunixbochs
From initial inspection of the GPL firmware download, it looks like port 4567
is controlled by the /bin/tr69c daemon. I also found references from tr69c to
a "data_center" program. Neither the data_center or tr69c binaries were in my
reference firmware source.

Research suggests tr69c is hosting the TR-069 protocol:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069)

Also: OpenSSL 0.9.7f 22 March 2005

------
nullc
This is even better than my supermicro 1u systems which turned out to be
running a non-disableable-in-bios unpasworded remote management interface
which provided console access exposed to the network that I only found by
scanning the subnet. "Intel inside" indeed.

~~~
anemic
In Fujitsu servers there is a remote console but that requires a licence to
function. Of course a hacker can acquire (even pay?) for that license and get
console access. This leads to leaving the management network unplugged and
losing remote reboots and other management features.

------
Mister_Snuggles
Another way to achieve PCI compliance is to simply outsource all activities
having to do with credit cards to a PCI compliant vendor and let them deal
with that pain. I've seen sites that let you pay this way and it works pretty
well - as well as a payment workflow that involves sending your customer to a
3rd party site and hoping they make it back can work anyway.

The whole thing with the modem is scary though.

------
jacquesm
Interesting. Centurlink could have easily blocked acccess from outside their
own internal network to that IP and port but instead chose to allow the whole
internet to have the possibility to play 20 questions with the web admin
interface.

Maybe someone even got lucky. What about all the other customers of that ISP
with that particular modem, are those still open?

------
deckar01
I'm not convinced it would have to be secret updates. As the service that
scanned your ports learned new exploits, it reported them. Scanners sometimes
use heuristics to guess.

~~~
lunixbochs
As far as I know, it's common practice for DSL and Cable providers to provide
over-the-air firmware and configuration updates to your modem. Whether or not
they own it.

~~~
noir_lord
One of the reasons I always use a third-party modem not supplied by them (I
like Drayteks for the money they are powerful).

You have to trust that thing with the keys to the kingdom.


Bankers Go Home, Tellers Stay: Virus Exposes Office Inequalities - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-13/virus-is-exposing-worker-inequalities-as-corporate-offices-empty
======
asdfasgasdgasdg
The doctors and surgeons don't get to go home, but the hospital administration
clerks might be able to. The doctors are higher status and make more. I wonder
why that might be?

This is just cherry picking imo. Jobs that require f2f and physical
interaction as a core responsibility don't get remoted? You don't say.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Hospital admins might be paid more than you think.

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
average admin staff is paid much less than the average doctor.

average admin staff is perhaps even paid less than the average RN in some
places.

------
asn0
_Bankers Go Home, Tellers Stay: Virus Reveals That Some Jobs Are Different_

~~~
alharith
This would be the reasonable title. However, in the current zeitgeist
everything needs to be framed as some sort of injustice.

~~~
DeepThoughts
When the bodies start stacking up, we’ll all have a chance to decide which
decisions were injustices and which were pragmatic.

------
arbuge
Bankers make more money, tellers make less. The inequalities were really
always there...

Life and the human experience have never come with any guarantees of being
fair or equal.

All that said, I fully expect bank branches to be closed just like other
retail establishments will be.

------
ajross
While this is true, and unfair, IMHO it's not really an appropriate thing to
try to fix in isolation. Some jobs are more remotable than others. We want to
isolate people physically, so remotable jobs get remoted. The fact that those
jobs are distributed inequitably is bad, but not something we can fix right
now. And once this is over, it's probably not going to seem like something
worth fixing at all, I suspect.

And FWIW: a much bigger injustice is how many of these jobs in the service
sectors are ephemeral in these situations. Wait staff and shopkeepers don't
merely have to go in physically to work, they're at a _much_ higher risk of
losing their jobs entirely (or having their hours cut as, say, restaurants
scale back).

That latter problem is something we can address with appropriate policy.

~~~
celim307
I'd agree except I have friends in sales and almost unilaterally they were
told to keep coming into the office, despite their entire job being done from
phones and computers. Theres a pretty toxic culture in sales where everything
is war, and you have to show how committed you are everyday.

~~~
jbc1
I'm in sales and every role I've held (a grand total of 2 tbf) has been a "be
in the office if you need to be" type deal. Same as other people I know in it
or other other positions I've considered.

If spending the weekend at a convention in another state is what's needed to
make the sale I do that. If drinking with a visiting client until 2am is
what's needed to make the sale I do that. If coming in to the office when
there's no need and I might get sick and die and more importantly not be able
to make sales, I don't do that.

"Sales" is a very broad role to the point where I think someone saying they do
it is closer to someone saying they "make things" or "perform services" rather
than "software developer" or "lawyer". It's more of a department than
anything. Experiences working in it thus vary greatly.

------
gentleman11
At my internship, everyone used to joke about how interns are t real people.
However, I was treated 10x better than any labour or retail job I have ever
worked. It is amazing how well people treat you once you have a piece of paper
that says “engineering” on it, I can’t even describe it

~~~
xiphias2
This was true for my office as well, but at the same time when I was in
elementary and high school in advanced math classes with mostly other guys, I
was always mocked for it by students of parallel classes. Life's not fair for
sure.

------
executesorder66
As someone who has worked for a bank for years, what is a "banker"? Is it the
legal team? the risk team? middle management? software developers? QA team?
risk team? The execs? the cleaning staff?

And why are tellers not bankers? They perform one of the main public facing
banking tasks/services.

Also how are tellers supposed to work from home? This is a rather unfair
situation, but it's just the nature of the job, not some attack on the lower
class.

I just find this whole article weird.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> And why are tellers not bankers? They perform one of the main public facing
> banking tasks/services.

This question/claim only makes any sense if you're willing to consider that
the cleaning staff might deserve to be called "bankers" too.

Tellers don't provide any banking services. They can't agree to hold your
money or loan you money. They don't provide any advice. They're an
implementation detail of the banking agreement you set up with an actual
banker, a piece of plumbing that happens to be how you move money into or out
of your account. Hence the popularity of automatic teller machines.

~~~
executesorder66
I don't know what the definition of a banker is in the first place other than
an employee of the bank.

That is where my confusion lies. What is the definition of a banker? And what
is their job title?

~~~
thaumasiotes
There are a large number of job titles. But I would say someone qualifies as a
"banker" if they are responsible for a flow of money, or if their work
consists of helping other people implement flows of money.

I would be comfortable calling e.g. a corporate treasurer a "banker" in this
sense, though I wouldn't expect corporate treasurers to be included in the
category "bankers" in the context of this piece.

For this piece, something like the intersection of (1) the definition I
provide with (2) the class of people employed by "banks".

A teller occupies a position of responsibility in that they can cause a lot of
mischief by misbehaving. But I don't think the responsibility to refrain from
stealing from the company is the relevant kind of responsibility. A teller at
work isn't supposed to be making any decisions of any kind.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
A teller is responsible for flows of money from the bank to its customers and
vice versa, no?

~~~
thaumasiotes
No. The teller isn't responsible for those flows by transporting the money any
more than the security guard is responsible for them by letting the customer
go through the door.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
You're right, the security guard is also a banker by your definition.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I suggest you show my definition to a few people, ask them whether it includes
security guards, and see what they say.

On the negligible chance that you made this comment in earnest, the results
may surprise you.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
It was in earnest. What seems to be going on here is that we have a very
different understanding of what "responsible for a flow of money" means.

In my mental model, someone who handles, protects, counts, transfers, etc.
money to and from customers is fairly literally "responsible for a flow of
money".

I suspect you believe your definition requires a higher threshold and/or type
of responsibility that these roles do not entail, but I don't see where that
is in your definition.

I think maybe you what you mean is that our hypothetical banker is
independently making some decisions around how / where / etc this money flows
with some degree of autonomy ?

My point here was primarily just to say that it is maybe a bit thornier of a
thing to define than you realize given that your definition in my honest
opinion and in what I consider a reasonable reading did not clearly leave out
one of the primary categories of employee that you intended it to exclude.

Sidenote - stating that "you will find most people will agree with me" is an,
um, interesting method of argument.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Sidenote - stating that "you will find most people will agree with me" is
> an, um, interesting method of argument.

Not at all. That is the standard for determining what something means.

What you're saying here is that I expressed an idea, you agree with me as to
both what I meant by it and what other people would understand by it, but, for
unstated reasons, you think my expression was metaphysically incorrect. Why?

The project of communication is for the listener to understand the same thing
the speaker intended. If that happens, the communication was correct. As
applied here, if I think "responsible for a flow of money", elucidated by a
negative example, means something, and everyone else agrees with me that it
means that thing... then that is in fact what it means. Words hold their
meaning by common agreement, and solely by common agreement.

------
LordOfWolves
How is this inequality more so than it is simple role differentiation?

Can tellers not be trained for better-paying roles? Better yet, education is
available to those who wish to utilize it (though the education system clearly
has its own inefficiencies).

~~~
maxerickson
How is "simple role differentiation" not a description of inequality?

When you ask that question, you are doing this thing where you don't try to
address the concern people actually have, which is about what an equitable
employer-employee relationship looks like, not "role differentiation".

------
zootme
Currently experiencing a similar situation. I work in quality
assurance(medical devices) and we're the only ones on site right now besides
manufacturing. About half of our department has been set up to work from home
and management is working on getting the equipment necessary to set up
everyone. Not to mention they'll now be paying "designated essential workers"
double time and we will not be included because our job doesn't necessarily
require us to be on site, just that we're lacking the hardware as of now.

------
HenryKissinger
What about traders operating Bloomberg terminals? Do they need to come in, or
can they VPN into their terminals remotely?

~~~
huac
bloomberg anywhere exists (cloud version) -- but there are regulations that
require trader behavior to be monitored. no personal devices on the floor, for
example, last thing you want is someone to send encrypted messages over signal
that the SEC/your bank can't read. these seem to be mostly waived:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/finra-
con...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/finra-concedes-
virus-may-impact-wall-street-oversight-of-traders)

------
jdkee
This is the distinction between staff and line. Line produces, staff is
overhead. Easy to cut staff but not line, as cutting line reduces production.

Problem is in some industries, staff have more political power than line, as
we see in higher-ed and medicine. This upsets the balance and results in
less/poorer quality production from line.

------
Animats
The hazard is jobs that are 1) not remoteable, 2) done by old people, and 3)
done at high people density.

What I'm hearing from a friend who runs a branch of a major bank is that
almost no one comes into the branch, because that's only needed for loans. The
ATMs outside are busy.

~~~
Animats
Looking at the above critera, what comes to mind is politics.

------
hwc
Nine out of ten things I need a teller for a bigger ATM could handle. Like an
ATM that will dispense any denomination of coins or bills or cashier's checks.
I've seen ATMs that take checks, too.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> I've seen ATMs that take checks, too.

I didn't know there were ATMs that didn't take checks.

In my experience with depositing checks into ATMs, they originally just asked
you how much the check was for. This would obviously require human oversight
at some point, but you as a customer never needed to interact with a human.

Eventually they started OCRing the checks and proposing to you what they
thought the amount of the check was, subject to your correction. Human
oversight is still needed, but dramatically reduced.

------
duxup
This doesn't seem to be about inequality as much as just practicality.

Back office folks have always been not as necessary day to day in person as
much as front line anyone / anything.


Thoughworks Technology Radar July 2014 - skrebbel
http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/

======
skrebbel
I love Thoughtworks' Technology Radar. HN is very hype-driven, you see a lot
of the hottest stuff, and therefore it's my favourite source of information on
technologies.

Thoughtworks, a software agency, is necessarily a little more conservative
than the startup crowd. Clients expect them to _deliver_ , and if only one
project fails miserably because of a risky technology choice, then that will
really hurt their image, and thus their sales pipeline.

As a result, their Technology Radar isn't so much an overview of what is hot
or not, but more of which of last year's hot stuff really _made it_. If it's
well positioned on Thoughtworks' Tech Radar, then you can be pretty sure that
it's here to stay.


Apply HN:Programmable matter - YuriyZ
Goal: creation of programmable matter, consisting of many microscopic particles (c-atoms). Which can be manipulated to create a user programmed 3d form.
Achievements. Verified experimentally:
- ways to connect c-atoms with each other;
- the movement of c-atom relative to other c-atoms.
The experiments were conducted with models of c-atoms in the macro scale. The size of c-atoms models was 3 * 4 cm.
Tasks:
- development of software capable of managing an array of c-atoms;
- repeating experiments in micro-scale with size of c-atoms - less than one millimeter.
======
pjlegato
What are the possible commercial applications of this technology?

How will your company make money from this?

~~~
YuriyZ
\- Programmable matter will replace 3d prototyping, which is now carried out
by 3d printers. \- Will be used in telecommunications. The effect of presence
- Pario. \- The technology will be used in medicine. The surgeon will be able
to operate on the patient by manipulating programmable matter, which will be
an enlarged, precise, copy of the operated area. \- Toys (gadgets)
transformers. The company will make money by selling and renting devices from
the programmable matter.


Ditching processed foods won’t be easy – The barriers to cooking from scratch - tshannon
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/24/725470305/opinion-why-ditching-processed-foods-wont-be-easy-the-barriers-to-cooking-from-s
======
vorpalhex
> First, it takes money. Healthier diets... generally cost more... They note
> that the unprocessed diet they fed participants cost 40% more than the
> ultra-processed diet.

And yet, a paragraph later:

> Lots of families in our study cooked almost every night, in part because it
> was the cheapest option

So wait, hold on, is cooking more expensive or not? What are they eating
that's supposedly healthier but significantly more expensive?

> the labor of shopping (often at multiple stores)

What major grocery chain doesn't carry everything needed to make dinner?

> This means making healthy food more affordable, but it also means addressing
> the other challenges families face: for example, by guaranteeing workers a
> living wage and fair working conditions and by investing in families through
> universal free school lunch and subsidized child care, so that parents don't
> feel like they're doing it all on their own.

Wait, hold on, what? I thought we were talking about food cooking barriers? I
can understand the connection to free school lunch (make sure kids get one
solid meal in them a day, if you can call government supplied cafeteria
materials food), but, what?

~~~
wongarsu
I guess part of the problem is comparing "unhealthy" processed foods with
cooking "healthy" food?

I can cook food for a whole day for about €1. It will mostly be potatoes and
lack any nutrients, but it will be a lot cheaper than any processed food I
could buy. Or I can cook something with fresh ingredients and lots of fiber
and nutrients, but those ingredients are expensive to buy in part because
handling time sensitive squishy stuff makes every step of the supply chain
more expensive.

~~~
lysium
I agree. I want to add the rumor that you can live on potatoes alone. At least
one guy reported he did it for six weeks and the medical checks did not find
any malnutrition. Don’t know how scientific that anecdote is, though.

~~~
Merrill
Potatoes and milk was the diet that enabled the Irish population explosion
prior to the famine.

[https://www.dochara.com/the-irish/food-history/food-in-
irela...](https://www.dochara.com/the-irish/food-history/food-in-
ireland-1600-1835/)

"The burgeoning population lived on a diet comprised mainly of potatoes and
milk, which if eaten in sufficient quantity is a surprisingly nutritious, if
monotonous, diet. It is also relatively tasty and easy to prepare."

------
javagram
This article is written as if you have to be able to make fancy “foodie” or
restaurant style meals to avoid ultra processed foods.

Wouldn’t cracking a can of beans and a bag of rice qualify as well? Our
ancestors had far less resources than us and still managed to make food
without spaghetti-o cans or ramen packets.

Referencing people living in hotel rooms or who don’t own a knife seems like a
distraction. Obviously being homeless is bad, but there are plenty of people
who can afford a $10 knife and have a stove in their residence who still eat
ultra processed diets and become obese.

~~~
tchaffee
> can of beans

That's processed food. Perhaps healthier than other processed food, but not
the same as cooking beans from scratch.

[https://www.superfoodly.com/are-canned-beans-
healthy/](https://www.superfoodly.com/are-canned-beans-healthy/)

And cooking beans from scratch involves about 5 minutes of labor, including
soaking them overnight, throwing them in a pot, and setting an alarm for when
they are done cooking.

~~~
snazz
Rinsing a can of beans decreases the sodium content significantly. Also, it
can be a bit of a lifestyle adjustment to think ahead on meals, which is why
canned and processed foods are popular in the first place.

~~~
mrob
In the UK it's easy to find unsalted canned beans. E.g., from the biggest
supermarket chain:

[https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-
GB/search?query=beans%20i...](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-
GB/search?query=beans%20in%20water)

------
iamnothere
I would like to see more efforts like this:

* [https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/)

* [https://efficiencyiseverything.com/The-Cookbook-v-1.4.pdf](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/The-Cookbook-v-1.4.pdf)

* [https://efficiencyiseverything.com/Weekly_Groceries.pdf](https://efficiencyiseverything.com/Weekly_Groceries.pdf)

Honestly, it is not that expensive to cook at home. The "foodie" industry
fills the Internet with recipes that are complicated and expensive, and this
can definitely be a barrier for people who don't know how to cook. But once
you learn to avoid recipes with 10+ ingredients, it's actually less of a time
commitment than running out for fast food, as long as you have ingredients on
hand.

Once you know what you like and you always have your staples available, it
becomes almost automatic. It does take time to learn this and develop your own
system, however.

~~~
overkill28
Seriously, it bugs me when people try to cook and start with a giant, very
precise recipe that has you using multiple pans and a laundry list of fresh
herbs and spices. That might be fun for a special occasion but it's not a good
way to introduce beginners to cooking. Salt, pepper, olive oil. Then go get
any vegetables, grains and proteins that you like. Work your way up from
there.

~~~
AstralStorm
Or don't and cook Korean. ;)

(Their dishes are components tossed together mostly.)

------
duxup
Cooking is a skill and like any skill it takes time to both do it, and get
better, and worse is when you fail it really sucks as you've spent a lot of
time and you're not happy with what you're eating.... that time, effort, and
such is a huge barrier.

A lot of people without a lot of money often don't have a huge amount of time
to invest in other things either. Long before I had a better job I worked
multiple jobs, went to school, I ate in my car on the way to doing things
maybe 60 or 70% of the time. All in an effort to do things that would help me
move on. The idea of staying home and coking regularly (and spending extra
money gathering up the food etc) was out of the question. Being poor is
exhausting.

Having said that I'm not sure what this article means by "cooking from
scratch". Would throwing some chicken, veggies, potatoes on the grill count?

There are a lot of varying levels of effort that to me would still count as
"cooking" and not just warming some reprocessed stuff.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> "Lots of families in our study cooked almost every night, in part because it
> was the cheapest option. But when their cupboards ran bare, they ate ramen
> and hot dogs, not a pan of roast chicken and vegetables, as food gurus
> recommend. Mothers said that if they had more money, they'd buy fresh fruit
> for their kids, but this was just an occasional splurge, not an everyday
> reality. Even the more financially stable middle-class mothers in our study
> talked about making trade-offs between the foods they wanted to buy for
> their families and the foods they felt they could afford."

Chicken, veggies and potatoes, as well as the grill, all cost money. The grill
especially. That's a large initial investment - yes, you can buy a cheap
grill, but then you have to buy the propane, and the food that comes off it
going to be much harder to get palatable.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
My grill is made of some bricks and a grate, both are picked up at the nearest
junkyard.

Getting free firewood requires some elbow grease though...

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
You've now limited the people who can follow your advice to people with a
backyard large enough to put a brick and grate grill in.

~~~
saalweachter
And with neighbors who won't report them to the HOA.

------
StavrosK
Seeing these articles always illustrates how some things are out of the
ordinary in the US, but which other countries take for granted. In Greece, for
example, cooking a meal every day is the norm, as in many other countries I've
been to.

I wonder how the US society has "forgotten" this practice.

~~~
Loughla
Time. Two working parents or one working single parent. Ideally just 40 hours
a week, but could be more than that, depending on career field.

School for kids. After school if grades are struggling. Or after school if
you're in an 'at-risk' category (see single parent or low income)

Formalized, scheduled, regimented sports/activities after school.

Formalized 'family bonding' events at schools or community centers that are,
for all intents and purposes, required by societal pressures.

All of these things take time. Pre-made meals are an easy, convenient way to
save time.

~~~
StavrosK
We do all of that as well, except the "family bonding" events, so I don't
think that's it...

~~~
Loughla
Sample Size: 1

Not meant to be snarky, but honestly, the one thing I've learned in life is
that just because I can do it, doesn't mean everyone else's life is the same.

~~~
StavrosK
One is not equal to zero, though. One data point is way, way more indicative
of something than zero data points.

~~~
Loughla
Okay?

Again, this is not intended to be snarky - if we're flexing anecdotal data, I
personally know 40 families for who (whom?) my statements are true.

~~~
StavrosK
I don't understand what you mean. I'm saying your statements are true for
Greeks as well, so it doesn't explain why Greeks cook and Americans don't.

~~~
Loughla
Oh baby did I read that wrong. I read that to mean my family instead of all of
Greece.

I do wonder what the difference is.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh, I see. I think maybe the boomers switched because of the convenience and
didn't mind the cost, and then society forgot how to cook? Whereas here eating
out a lot is very expensive, so we just didn't do it.

------
orev
A regular oven is one of the best tools you have to make food from scratch,
yet people seem to want to find every way to avoid using them. They try to use
toaster ovens, microwave ovens, convection ovens, air fryers, instant pots,
etc... when most of the time a regular oven can do the job. You can make a
whole meal with a few baking sheets and 45 minutes. You just put the stuff in
and check on it once in a while. Take out the veg after 25 min. It doesn’t get
much easier than that.

~~~
mrob
I disagree. A regular oven is slow and inefficient because of the high thermal
mass (taking a long time to heat to working temperature), and it's hard to
control.

IMO, the most valuable cooking tool is the microwave oven. You can cook grains
(pasta, rice, oatmeal etc.) and frozen vegetables, and you can reheat canned
beans. It's fast and flexible, and much cheaper and smaller than a regular
oven.

Second most valuable cooking tool is an electric pressure cooker. This lets
you cook dry beans (cheaper than canned), and some have a saute mode for when
you're making something fancy. It's better than the microwave for cooking
large quantities of food, because you don't need to stir it for even heat
distribution. And you can even cook bread in a pressure cooker if you don't
mind a soft crust.

~~~
orev
A microwave is indeed a very powerful kitchen tool, however almost nobody
knows how to use it. People blast food at high power because they can’t wait 2
more minutes for a lower power cycle. To most people, a microwave’s primary
function is to “cook” frozen/processed foods like TV dinners and burritos,
which is exactly the type of food the OP article is talking about avoiding.
You also absolutely cannot cook meat in a microwave oven and expect it to come
out palatable (and if you just expect people to not eat meat you’re out of
touch with reality).

So when talking about getting away from processed foods, it’s very helpful to
also get away from the microwave, because people have such a strong
association of the two things.

An oven can do it all. Once you accept the concept and master it, you then
stop looking for shortcuts in other gadgets.

------
msluyter
For our family, time is the problem. I do almost all of the cooking, and --
much like when estimating software development -- often tend to underestimate
how long even a fairly simple recipe will take. As I become a more experienced
cook I become more efficient, but some nights we still end up eating quite
late. Add to that non-trivial time for dishes/cleanup, and indeed, this rings
true:

 _The middle-class families in our study had more resources and more options
but felt completely overwhelmed by hectic schedules and competing demands that
left little time to cook._

One strategy is batch cooking in advance on weekends and freezing meals, but
for various reasons, we've been fairly poor at that.

Incidentally, if you want to get better at cooking, I highly recommend Cook's
Illustrated / America's Test Kitchen, in particular, their special edition
magazines. They provide recipes but also techniques and the science behind the
recipes.

This one in particular is a gold mine and is almost falling apart from heavy
use:

[https://shop.americastestkitchen.com/special-issues/cook-
s-i...](https://shop.americastestkitchen.com/special-issues/cook-s-
illustrated-skillet-dinners-special-collector-s-edition.html)

------
chuckgreenman
I recently changed how I eat, mostly chicken thighs, stir fry beef, rice and
canned / frozen vegetables depending on the deals for the week. Oatmeal for
breakfast.

Meals are clocking in between $0.90 and $2.50 per serving, It's pretty cheap
to eat unprocessed foods, it's just gets kind of repetitive. I feel much
better than I did when I was eating processed stuff and my food budget is much
smaller.

~~~
tchaffee
> it's just gets kind of repetitive.

Look into herbs and other seasonings, and different cooking methods. Chinese
cooking for example makes excellent use of them to make very different dishes
from the same raw ingredients. A little bit of soy, Chinese cooking wine, and
spring onions added to scrambled eggs is very different from steamed eggs for
example.

------
lqet
> First, it takes money. Healthier diets — diets rich in fresh produce and
> lean proteins — generally cost more.

2.5 kilos of potatoes usually cost between 1-2 EUR here. As a single person,
you can live days on this. Compare this to a _single_ frozen pizza, which
usually costs the same (1-2 EUR). 2kg of carrots cost 1.99 EUR in my local
supermarket, you can get it way cheaper at Aldi. A package of soup vegetables
(consisting of 1-2 carrots, an onion, a quarter celery, leek and fresh
parsley) is usually below 1 EUR and is (together with a can of tomatoes for
0.39 EUR) enough to form the basis of (for example) a lentil stew (a 500g bad
of dried lentils is 2 EUR, you usually only need 100g for a 2 person meal), or
a bolognese (add 250g of minced meat), or a potato stew (add the potatoes
mentioned above), or... you don't even need the package of vegetable soups, as
buying these vegetables in larger amounts for an entire week is even cheaper.

Another example: a can of tomatoes (39 cents), some oil and a single onion
(1kg of onions is usually around 80 cents) are enough to make a fresh tomato
sauce. A 500g bag of pasta (say: Penne) costs 39 cent if you buy the cheap
brand. This is enough for 2 people, at under 50 cent per person.

Another example: spaghetti aglio e olio. You literally need nothing more than
some oil, pepper, spaghetti (39 cent), some garlic (3 bulbs are usually under
1 EUR, so a single clove is maybe 4-5 cent and fresh parsley. You have a very
tasty, fresh meal which can be cooked in 10 minutes, again for under 50 cents
per person.

Another example: fresh bread. You need roughly 250g of flour (500g are around
79 cent), water, salt (which is so cheap I won't even mention it) and dried
yeast (under 30 cents). Fresh bread for 2 people, again for under 50 cents per
person. Add a fresh cucumber, 1-2 fresh tomatoes, salt, pepper, and you have a
tasty evening meal for under 1 EUR per person.

I could go on and on. I can get quite agitated if people claim that "cooking
fresh" is much more expensive than processed food. I cooked fresh and daily
for years as a student, very often for 2 people, on a very limited budget, and
2 EUR per day was usually more than enough.

All you need is practice.

~~~
minikites
>2.5 kilos of potatoes usually cost between 1-2 EUR here. As a single person,
you can live days on this.

So poor people should live like it's 19th century Ireland? I'm sure that will
catch on.

~~~
lqet
Eating potatoes as the main side dish is living like it's 19th century
Ireland? Then what would be a 21st century side dish? Besides, I am quite sure
that eating only potatoes for an entire week is healthier than eating
processed food for 7 days.

~~~
sseagull
The sentence that was quoted implied that you would eat only potatoes, not
just as a side dish.

~~~
lqet
True, but even then my statement would be correct, as I have written above: I
am sure that eating potatoes for an entire week is healthier than eating
processed food for an entire week.

------
bluedino
>> they ate an average of 508 calories more per day and gained an average of 2
pounds over the two-week period, providing evidence that there may be
something about processed food that drives people to overeat and gain weight.

Has the author tried eating a caloric excess of lean meats and non-fried, non-
starch vegetables?

It's damn near impossible. Throw some cheese, bread, fried potatoes, mayo, and
sugary drinks in there and you'll do it without blinking an eye. But not with
chicken, green beans, and other 'healthy foods'

~~~
minikites
>lean meats and non-fried, non-starch vegetables

That's more difficult than you think:

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

>In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that
23.5 million Americans live in a food desert, meaning that they live more than
one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas, and more than 10 miles
from a supermarket in rural areas.[7] Food deserts lack whole food providers
who supply fresh protein sources (such as poultry, fish and meats) along with
whole food such as fresh fruits and vegetables, and instead provide processed
and sugar- and fat-laden foods in convenience stores.

------
sureaboutthis
A year ago, my son told me he was spending more money than we thought he
should on groceries. So my wife and I decided to keep track of how much we
spend on eating. This includes the very rare times we eat at restaurants,
which might include a burger joint if we're stuck on the road somewhere, and
high end restaurants for birthdays and anniversary.

I do all the cooking. I rarely use anything from a box or a can. That is, I
make my own pasta and tomato sauce and pizza dough and sourdough bread, for
example. I also use higher end recipes, not sloppy joe dinners, including
steaks and chicken and I more often buy spices like parsley and oregano fresh
and chop them myself and not dried in a jar.

The numbers came in, interestingly enough, at $187 each week on average every
time. This is for my wife and myself alone plus (cause my wife said so) about
$15 a week for our two dogs cause, you know, they're family, too.

For reasons I am not positive about, our weekly expenditure for the last three
months has risen to $209 a week. It had appeared to me that items cost more
than in the past but I was unsure till I ran the numbers just a couple of days
ago. Have grocery prices gone up?

In any case, cooking well designed meals takes an effort. Once you find
recipes you like and get used to making them, it's easier, but it will still
take one to two hours for every meal without rushing. I work out of my house
and two major grocery stores down the street so that makes things easier.

EDIT: I should add that I am in the Midwest USA.

------
i_don_t_know
Five years ago on NPR:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/08/01/337141837/ch...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/08/01/337141837/cheap-
eats-cookbook-shows-how-to-eat-well-on-a-food-stamp-budget)

(Cheap Eats: Cookbook Shows How To Eat Well On A Food Stamp Budget)

~~~
duxup
I don't know if you're pointing out a contradiction or not but I'll say I
don't think those two articles are necessarily a contradiction.

I hate the "Ditching processed foods won't be easy" article as it doesn't
define anything.

Lots of thing are possible, there is information out there, but still might
not be "easy".

~~~
i_don_t_know
It started out as a contradiction because I thought the argument was that it's
expensive. But I guess I should have read the article first. As usual it's
more complicated.

Other factors are that it takes effort (it's work to some people after an
already potentially long work day) and time (to shop, to cook and for everyone
to be at home at the same time). And I suspect those are bigger barriers than
just the financials.

------
AstralStorm
Bah. Hard thing to avoid is processed meat, as cooking meat right takes a tiny
bit of skill and gear.

Anything else, unimportant, super easy to make and generally available, except
in literal food deserts.

"Pot roast?! Who do you think we are, MILLIONAIRES?"

The worst part is probably peeling. That takes serious effort. Then washing
dishes. Then obviously shopping which has to be batched or mail in for
efficiency.

If you're rich enough, there are a whole range of ways to save time, from
dishwashers, bigger selection of dishes, timers on hardware, through buying
peeled or lightly prepared food such as frozen (not exactly ready to eat,
that's expensive and uncontrollable) through mail shopping or hiring someone
to shop for you. Finally, outsourcing cooking completely to someone competent,
the most expensive way.

------
Merrill
There is hardly anything easier than microwaving a potato and microwaving
frozen vegetables, which are just as nutritious as fresh and a lot cheaper on
sale.

Add a piece of protein fried in a pan and you are done.

Rice cookers have also become inexpensive and foolproof to use.

------
mark_l_watson
Two years ago I went on the ‘eat no processed foods’ Fuhrman diet and it had
an amazingly positive effect on my health. I realize that I am just one data
point but this is my personal experience.

Because we moved for a job I eventually started eating processed food and got
off of the diet. Within a few months, I physically felt less good, like I was
before before the Fuhrman diet. Again, I am just one data point, but for me
the positive effects of the diet were not permanent.

Now my wife and I are talking about both going on the Fuhrman diet. She did
not join me before, but likes the idea of all fresh cooking, no processed
foods.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
No one is arguing against having a higher quality, non-processed diet. The
article is pointing out all the impediments to try to achieve that, especially
focusing on the lower and lower-middle class. It takes time, coordination,
money, and energy to cook right, and that's really hard for a lot of people.

~~~
saalweachter
And hell, some people will suck at it. There have always been bad cooks.

~~~
treerock
I've always though it would make sense to outsource home style cooking to
specialists who can cook in bulk much cheaper (and often higher quality) than
individuals can cook at home.

I'm surprised that Polish 'Milk Bar'[1] type places, aren't more common.

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

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
The problem now is that they will have to use salt and sugar to make up on
taste.

~~~
treerock
Why? Is bulk/restaurant produced food inherently more bland than home cooked?

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
No, but it's made more tasty with those items. The milk bars seem to have been
named that way for a reason - did they make extensive use of cream?

~~~
treerock
Apparently yeah.

> Although the typical bar mleczny had a menu based on dairy items, these
> establishments generally also served other, non-dairy traditional Polish
> dishes as well.

But when I visited, it was more like a canteen that served quality, home-style
meals.

------
saturdaysaint
Healthy meal kits have been great "training wheels" for my wife and I to make
less processed meals. Specifically, Hello Fresh meals typically have a major
veggie/whole food emphasis. The biggest revelation is that roasting veggies
with a little bit of olive oil and a little salt is an almost can't miss crowd
pleaser that elevates every meal. Cherry tomatoes, green beans, sweet
potatoes, asparagus, whatever. We try to get a roastable item or two every
time we stop at a store.

------
sct202
It's kind of interesting that they named their book after pressure cookers,
which address a lot of the problems of not having working appliances, living
in motels, and are relatively affordable compared to a gas utility hookup.
Instant Pots and knock-offs are <$50 now and are easy enough to use with just
a standard outlet.

------
pmlnr
\- dice onions

\- dice chicken

\- mix the onions with salt, pepper, paprika powder

\- put the mix in a pan

\- fry it on a small amount of oil until the onion gets transparent

\- add the chicken

\- add a tiny amount of water

\- let it boil for ~30 mins

Sure, lots of barriers.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
You've made one "meal", which is chicken and onions, and takes about an hour
to prepare it (cutting, sauteing, boiling).

~~~
AstralStorm
Once you have a timer, it takes 10 minutes. It is scalable too. No need to
watch it cook.

And you can prepare it ahead of time then reheat...

------
taneq
To cook from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I got all the way to evolution but screwed up somewhere in the precambrian.
Now I have a race of hyper-intelligent lizardmen living in my basement.
Needless to say, the soufflé is ruined.

~~~
taneq
But I bet the Komodo-steaks are to die for!

------
dvfjsdhgfv
> the unprocessed diet they fed participants cost 40% more than the ultra-
> processed diet. And lots of American families don't have more money to spend
> on food.

This fragment made me so sad. if the above is true, it basically means many
people in the USA don't have enough money to eat real food and have to live on
processed junk instead.

~~~
snazz
Type “food desert” into your favorite search engine.


Rust, Julia, and Go: Disruptive New Programming Languages - acangiano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qCH7Y2rc_w
======
remify
From the description :

> designed to keep the best of the legacy languages but are re-engineered from
> the ground up to meet the challenges of the modern wired world.

So they're not really disruptive...


Ask HN: is devving on OSX legit *nix experience? - delinquentme

So I'm going back and forth about the OS for my new dev machine. Will I be getting good experience with *nix using the "just works" OSX.<p>That being said I'm guessing the inital answer is "No its not"
======
tom9729
I developed on Linux for 5-6 years before switching over to OS X on my main
machine.

Installing xcode (3 is free, 4 costs a small fee) gives you GCC4 on the
command line, plus some other tools/libs. Note: I've never actually used the
xcode IDE, I use Emacs.

You can also install a rootless X11 server and run X applications in it. Wine
on mac actually uses this, and I've been using it to play Homeworld 2.

Most of the cross-platforms IDEs that you would probably be using (if you're
that kind of guy) in Linux are available on mac. Take a look at QtCreator,
Eclipse, Netbeans.

Mac comes with Java and Python installed. If you do C/C++ development the only
real differences are that some libraries are installed as "frameworks" instead
of in the usual /usr/lib (eg. you link with -framework OpenGL). Also the
dynamic libraries are dylib's instead of so's (and consequently,
DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH).

Mac calls multiple desktops "spaces", and they work pretty much the same as in
Linux/Gnome.

Grep/awk/sed/etc all work pretty much the same as in Linux, although I think
they are the BSD versions instead (whatever the reason, they are a little bit
more picky about command line options).

Mac's Terminal.app compares favorably with Gnome's terminal (including tabs,
transparency) and has some nice looking built-in themes.

Anything else, just ask. :) If you've used Ubuntu recently, switching to Mac
may give you deja-vu.

~~~
tom9729
Ahhh sorry to reply to myself, but the biggest thing that hurt me switching to
mac was that I became very used to selecting text and middle-clicking to paste
in Linux. On mac, middle clicking does something silly like pop up the
dashboard. Frustrating indeed.

~~~
shinratdr
> On mac, middle clicking does something silly like pop up the dashboard.
> Frustrating indeed.

No it doesn't. It does nothing in 99% of situations unless you have customized
it, although middle clicking a link does open a new tab.

------
BrianHorblit
I have a couple of friends who switched to the Mac to get away from WindBlows
and Cygwin when developing, while retaining a good every-day platform with
cool commercial software available. They have never looked back to WindBlows,
or felt like they should be using Linux.

I tried to dump Windows by moving to Linux for my every day OS, but found
doing some simple non-dev stuff (synching my PDA properly) too painful.Windows
was bad enough that I took the leap and bought a Mac, and have loved it for
development as well. I have done mostly command line dev, and IDE-oriented
dev, and both are great on the Mac. The advantage over Linux is not cost, of
course, but the everyday "It just works" experience and the availability of
commercial software like Photoshop. And it is plenty Unixy, if you don't mind
the fact that things like user accounts aren't managed just like Linux or base
BSD.

I think it is the best of both worlds and would highly recommend it.

Brian

------
kstenerud
If you want the unix experience, stay in the shell. Use vim or emacs and
become a passionate follower of either of those religions (but not both;
nobody likes a cleverdick).

Actually, it's hard to do powerful things in OSX without using shell commands,
just like it's hard to do in any graphical environment. But once you drop to
shell, it's all unix.

That being said, use the right tool for the job. If you're writing mac or iOS
software, use Xcode.

~~~
delinquentme
I appreciate your response.

So no iOS.. Rails =]

And ill probs use textmate?

Now what about some of the equivalent operations to GREP and AWK? Or are those
*nix based..thus you'd use them as I would regularly?

..and lasty a tool that I use constantly:

Is there any function for multiple desktop support?

------
tobylane
It's nix plus a bit more. I'm not aware of anything the GUI does in Linux that
it doesn't do in Mac. Some workflows will be different, such as xcodebuild,
but everything else like svn, git, cp, mv, make, sudo, nano etc is the same.
You can do without Xcode, cdto and a Cocoa-only text editor, but don't put
yourself through it.

------
api
If you use the command line tools like make, gcc, scripts, autoconf, etc.,
then it's almost exactly like developing on Linux/Unix.

If you use Xcode, then not so much... though it's still more like Linux/Unix
than Windows.

~~~
delinquentme
so my fellow developers work on OSX ( I'd ask them but they've only ever used
OSX ) They run textmate / console for the majority of their work, I'm thinking
thats where I'll be...

So then its a "Yes" sans all the usual matching of drivers / software to mesh
with the hardware


Let “QUIPU” organise your research so you spend more time to explore content - biyanisuraj
http://quipu.tilda.ws/
======
biyanisuraj
The very best startup ideas tend to be something the founders themselves want,
that they can build, and that few others realise are worth doing

Register your interest for early Beta access at -
[http://quipu.tilda.ws/](http://quipu.tilda.ws/)

I want to make QUIPU so that knowledge seekers, like myself, can have all the
explored content organised, connected & displayed in real time.

No more time spent on indexing, trying to remember where that statistic came
from, or keeping 50+ tabs open to avoid dropping a line of inquiry.

Clear representations of research information can be created from the
“digitally exhaustive information” we create when combined with powerful
artificial intelligence to do the organising.

Please us know what you think about it.


Microsoft Office 15 to Support Facebook Chat, productivity drops? - brackin
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/next_version_of_microsoft_office_to_ship_with_face.php

======
brackin
I guess you could say in a way Google Docs has always integrated with Facebook
as it's in a browser heh


Ask HN: Anybody still into ES5 + traditional Javascript dev workflow? Why? - lewisjoe
Client Javascript development has drastically changed in the last 5-7 years. ES6+ Standards, module bundlers, Managing dependencies with NPM, Typescript & such modern elements in the toolchain is becoming the de-facto.
Are there any companies, projects/products, indie devs out there still sticking to plain old JS development without the modern tools?
Are there any reasons to not switch to the modern workflow?
======
avoidwork
i've avoided it entirely with my latest work project; no transpile, or
unneeded tools... just awk & eslint.

there are no* "de-facto standards", just people doing what they think is
popular 'cause they read about it on the net.

------
gfrryjfcryjry
Me, because of KISS.


A Continuous Delivery Setup - gsluthra
http://arojgeorge.ghost.io/a-continuous-delivery-example/

======
gsluthra
The setup done here is very impressive. Automation with Docker, RPM, Chef,
TestKitchen, Tests for Chef Scripts, Go, and the works.

------
jdrago999
Thanks for posting this.