Tech giants Elon Musk, Sam Altman push universal basic income concept - <AUTHOR> http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20170520/NEWS/170529965 <comment><USER2> UBI is not the solution.

The fact that someone else might be in need does not give him any right to my money, or time. Forced social welfare programs ignore this. UBI does not reduce the negative imapct of these programs, but actually enforces and concretizes them and the mentality of "social debt" and "inherent social debt" (both do not exist) by declaring every citizen equally guilty.

UBI sounds nice on paper because everyone wants a cut on their taxes (and that's not bad) but it quietly pushes the agenda that you are entitled to something from everyone else just because you are alive. This will only lead to worse problems in the long run, because then very few individuals would understand that people can actually live without UBI.

The increase in taxes for the majority of the earning population would cancel out the benefits for them anyway, and might even be a negative for them.

UBI gives people something for nothing, which means that people would opt to not get a job but just stay on UBI for as long as they can. And if the government does enforce a criteria, well then, it just increases the surveillance surveillance and mandates it. And to say nothing of the illegal immigration that will increase if UBI is introduced, because UBI unconditionally sacrifices the money and time of people who produce for those who can't, and/or won't.

I just see this as a move for guys like Elon to snuggle up deeper with the government. This kind of short-range thinking is what has led to the massive debt right now and will only increase it. Who knows where this self-sacrifice will stop? People in america cry at the 1%, but being born in America already puts the majority of its citizens in the 1% of the world's population. What will happen when those people say it's unfair for so few to have so much? The people clamoring for UBI do not have a reason for it, and their reason for it is that there needs to be none. The other countries can and will do the same, and that's when people will understand their importance of not basing decisions on feelings.

<comment><USER3> Your "right" not to be murdered is only a construct. We've decided it's a good one, and our society is better when people don't have to worry (much) about being murdered.

We might also decide that our society is better when people have a "right" to food, shelter, and health care. Those rights would be contrivances like the ones you already take for granted. But that's not an argument for or against them.

<comment><USER4> So by your account, a >>"right" to food, shelter and health care<< would mean people would still have to worry (but not much). That's kindalike what the parent was saying, there is no _universal_ right (to Basic Income).

So there have to be arguments and he's giving one, that this proposal is hardly going to be afforded by those in the position to do so. Which part of the actual argument do you disagree with? It seem you are saying the workers would have to want to afford it (because its a positive right), but you don't actually show it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How's this sound for a UBI scheme: Companies - including banks - with more than $2 million in annual profits will be taxed 90%. Individuals with more than $5 million in assets, cash, stock, bonds, and other investments, will be taxed at 85%. This would adequately pay for such a system that Messirs Altman, Musk, and Zuckerburg desire.

Facebook 2016 net income was $1.56 billion. Their tax bill would have been $1.404 billion.

Until corporations and the super wealthy are willing to give up their own fortunes to fund a universal basic income they should have zero say in such a policy decision. It MZ wants everyone to have a UBI then why doesn't he personally put up the money to do so?

<comment><USER6> If you're rich and pushing UBI, that probably means that you'd be willing to pay significantly higher taxes, or why would you do it?

That doesn't mean you have to be a sucker and do it unilaterally when nobody has to do it. It's a collective action problem.

<comment><USER5> You would do it because you assume and have a reasonable ability to believe in the assumption, that the money for such a program won't come from your pocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The problem is that giving all Americans a $10,000 annual income would cost upward of $3 trillion a year — more than three-fourths of the federal budget.._

It also does not make the poor stop being poor.

My alimony is a little over $10,000 annually. I recently wrote about how this stuff is a total fantasy. This is some ridiculous fantasy that you can easily solve this problem by throwing money at it instead of doing any hard work like resolving the affordable housing crisis in this country.

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-world- ha...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-world-has-lost-its- ever-loving-mind.html)

Edit: They are talking about giving people $10k a year because they expect robots to take our jobs and there to be widespread unemployment. So forget the feel good anecdotes about how this will supplement your income and imagine living on ONLY $10k per year. That's enough to assuage their guilt. It does not buy you a middle class lifestyle. But if it becomes your right as a citizen, you can expect even more people to desperately want to immigrate to the US.

</comment><comment><USER8> In truth, we already have UBI. It is social security. Think about it: a country full of fixed income retirees. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Currently that's not working out though. The retirement age is going up, not down. It's too expensive to give money directly and let people figure it out. The UBI end game is something like the terrafoam housing from Manna.

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm)

Put all the UBIs in a nice neat little box where we can forget about them, like we do with prisoners. Maybe even add sedatives and birth control to the water, because we certainly don't want resistance or more of them. We'll probably even call them that. UBIs. Universal basic inmates.

</comment><comment><USER9> I "live" (not starve but that's all) in a Vanagon in SV on ~$300/month on GA, SNAP and Medical (Medicaid).

I can barely afford two required medications that I copay out of pocket (Walgreens), and the price of the expensive one just jumped from $22.50 to $38. Can't afford auto repairs, can't anything entertaining that involves money, replacing anything should something break or saving for emergencies much less retirement. I would like to convert my vehicle to EV (a-la Electric Samba) and add solar, but that's currently well beyond my reach. (My and others MPCs are higher because of inelastic demands to survive, not "avocado toast.")

Thankfully, propane is cheap ($9 every 3-4 years).

UBI will likely never happen because it reduces economic violence on those unable to earn more than minimum wage. Poor conditions, union-busting, minimal benefits and maximum productivity benefit the ruling class to extract more profit from people, keep people busy and keep them "in line."

<comment><USER10> What do you do all day if you aren't working?</comment></comment>


India Develops $35 Tablet Prototype - <AUTHOR> http://www.hardocp.com/news/2010/07/23/india_unveils_prototype_35_tablet_computer/

<comment><USER2> Similar articles for reference:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1540120> <\- This one has lots of comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1540494>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541197>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541514> <\- This one has a few comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1542275>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1542557>

</comment><comment><USER3> Picture here: <http://techfreqnews.com/?p=298>

Reminds me of my Palm Pilot.</comment>


Ask HN: Stripe Atlas in Germany? - <AUTHOR> I have launched a business a couple of months ago and I'm now getting my first paying customers.
Currently I'm running a sole proprietorship for this, but I want to find a legal construct that takes the liability off of me.
My customers are from around the world, but mostly from the US (80%). They pay in USD.
I'm living in Germany and I plan to stay here.
Any tips on creating a Delaware C-Corp through Stripe Atlas in Germany? Do I need to create a german branch of the company (Zweigniederlassung)? <comment><USER2> Rather than creating a foreign corporation, why not create a German one?

A GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) is limited liability but requires a starting capital of €25.000. However a UG (Unternehmergesellschaft) also has limited liability and a €1 starting capital. With a UG 25% of the profits need to be retained until you acquire €25.000 and can convert to a GmbH.

You would have to consult someone else regarding the Zweigniederlassung but I would imagine so as you'll need to be able to pay into the German tax system to pay your payroll/health insurance contributions/pension.</comment>


This politician wants to take India back to 1940s by abolishing English and Computers  - <AUTHOR> http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/002200904111531.htm

<comment><USER2> First, election manifestos in India are largely documents full of whatever the authors _think_ (rarely accurately) will get them a few more votes in an election, or signal various postures to various electoral allies, not something they have the remotest intent of implementing to the letter. If one hundredth of the promises made in the last election's manifestos were implemented, India would be a very different place.

Publishing manifestos is an almost empty electoral ritual, beyond the above mentioned mild "signaling" effects. No one holds any party accountable for what their manifestos promise and by the time the next election comes around, everyone has forgotten what the manifesto said (and there will be a new manifesto!). As an example, any party that plans to curry favor with the Muslim populace would include a "resist American imperialism" theme in its manifesto (though my friends who are part of the ground campaign report that many muslims think that Barack _Hussein_ Obama is muslim, so they are feeling friendly to the USA and so the "anti American stance to please muslims" plank is backfiring occasionally!)

Second, the Samajwadi Party is largely confined to the "cow belt" of India, which has the least educated populace in India. There is a national election coming up in the next few days and this is just posturing on Mr.Yadav's part to score points with his uneducated/ English unfriendly constituents (or so he thinks. Most people, even the desperately poor, would,given the chance, send their children to English Medium. computer friendly schools).

A large chunk of the bureaucracy functions in English (though ever larger chunks have moved to the local language over the years) and this causes English illiterate people some difficulty when they have to interact with the bureaucracy. This is the sentiment Mr Yadav is (faintly) trying to add to his vote bank, without pissing off the english using bureaucrats. And of course, there is always a bunch of hard core language chauvinists who hate every language but their own (This in a country with 20+ official languages and 2000+ dialects) The elections are likely to be very close this year and every bit helps. The smarter folks just ignore this kind of posturing and look at what the candidate/party _did_ in the past(vs what they said).

Think of an American politician in a heavily republican evangelical constituency talk about how he'd enforce Christian Prayer in schools and work diligently overturn Roe vs Wade. The American pol would have powerful interest groups watching and publicizing every deviation from their agendsa. In India nothing like that exists.To a much greater degree than in the USA, in India no one really cares about party manifestos anyway except in a very abstract sense. Elections are decided on local/current issues and alliances.

Believe you me, any action to make this a ground reality would cause a massive backlash, if not outright rebellion. Indian governments are largely coalitions of disparate parties and there is no way Mr. Yadav will get the votes in parliament to implement this. (he is a very canny politician, he wouldn't even try!)

To repeat, It's just posturing. Mr Yadav was recently hauled over the coals by the Election Commission for making vaguely threatening noises about a very honest and incorruptible District Magistrate in charge of overseeing the elections in his constituency and probably just wants a last minute burst of publicity to shift the focus elsewhere.

To conclude, Computers aren't going anywhere. Neither is English education. This is all posturing!

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope nothing like this ever becomes a reality. What I was worried was that if such people, popularize these ideas into the poor majority in India, then winning by numbers is not difficult for them. When we look at the reservation of seats issue (<http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/12spec1.htm>), such people when in power were actually able to create policies that would harm over-all development. I wish the well-educated minority here doesn't sit back at home and we all say it our aloud that we can't tolerate such people, by going to vote! Thanks, it was a pretty nice and optimistic read :)

<comment><USER2> "When we look at the reservation of seats issue "

reservation (kinda sorta affirmative action based solely on caste for any non Indian readers )uses an "economic progress" bait to line people up behind it. Whether the purported benefits actually manifest, one can debate about.

Removing English Education and computers has economics working against it. Your kids won't be taught English or computers because we... errr ... want them to remain peasants forever?

Besides , this move if ever attempted (it won't be . _No one_ will be able to get it through parliament) pisses off the teachers, the urban population, students, the business folks, the bureaucrats, illiterate/poor people who want their kids to get the best education ... just about anyone who is not some kind of local language fanatic. There aren't enough of the latter around (except in small pockets) to change the last few decades of history and economics in India (though the few who do exist are very voluble).

At best they are able to shift the _primary_ language of education in middle/high school to the local language _alongside_ English (and there is a good case to be made for that). There's simply no way this can be done at the undergrad level and above. The logistical comlexity of textbooks preparation for a few hundred branches of science, engineering etc (for e.g) would kill any initiative like this.

but it won't get this far. As I said above no one will get it through parliament.

As I said, just posturing :-)

[ Ok I am sick of discussing politics _here_. Iam not sure this is an appropriate forum for this. I am signing off from this thread. ]

<comment><USER3> Too bad you signed off man. I've had a look at your comments and I must say I've learned more about modern India from reading through them, than most books on the subject.

<comment><USER2> Thanks Jonas, if you need to more information anything in particular, just send me email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The worst part, he has got his own sons educated in English medium schools. Do politicians try to introduce such retarding ideas in your nation too ?

<comment><USER4> Ah, Indian Luddites. We fought this battle during our industrial revolution as well:

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

Here's a great parody of these ideas from Bastiat. It is a petition from candle-makers to the government, complaining about the competition from the sun.

<http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi All, Please don't get me wrong, but I don't get what hackers interest HN user can get from this article. I am from Russia and there's enough crazy politicians in my country as well, but I don't feel like it's the right place to post their ideas here. Flagged this article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well some issues related to politics, etc also affect hackers, and future hackers. For example, the education system in some places lacks vision, making hackers feel restricted, like I do, overburdened with unrelated subjects of high credits under a CS degree. Otherwise I could've learnt things I wanted to, started projects that I wished to do, and C# app dev for a project we are doing wouldn't have taken 3 months, if we didn't have tests every other week and loads of assignments to do. I could have had time to experiment, learn and create so many things then. I think such decisions and efforts to do such illogical things as abolishing use of computer and english would create more and more problems for those who wish to learn and make lives more comfortable by use technology. I thought such things do matter a little bit and even this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am sure the manifesto was made on a word processing software.

<comment><USER7> and they would have a copy of it in English too!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> IIT Foundation did respond to Arjun Singh's decision on quota - <http://www.iitfoundation.org/?p=83> could we also have such activities for these kind of situations.

<comment><USER2> "could we also have such activities for these kind of situations."

the reccomended "activity" for "these kind of situations" involves going to your polling station and voting ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> it is sad that the same land which gave us one of the ancient world's greatest universities -- Nalanda <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda_University> produces these dingbats.

That said, plinkplonk's analysis of the situation is very accurate.

</comment><comment><USER9> No wonder we're experiencing a brain drain, and the articles about US Immigrations usually feature a smart Indian trying to live his dream.</comment>


Ask HN: What's going on on the non-English parts of the internet? - <AUTHOR> I'm mainly addressing this question to the non-native english-speaking users of HN.
Stumbling upon PPT earlier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTT_Bulletin_Board_System) -- the largest telnet-based BBS in Taiwan (~500k messages per day),
I wanted to ask: What's going on on the non-english parts of the internet that english-speaking people are all missing out on?
How are the forums, blogs and communities in your language? How is the culture different/simmilar compared to the international (read 'english-speaking') communities? Is the traffic contained to the top international sites, like Facebook? Or is it spread across multiple local sites? Do you think it is to your advantage to be able to experience the internet in two languages? Do you think it is detrimental to americans, for instance, to only experience the internet in english? <comment><USER2> In Spain there are alternative sites to some of the bigger more social ones. A big one ~10 years back was Tuenti, which copied and then died because of Facebook. But there are sites that are still alive and thrilling:

Newspapers: all over the place, but specially big are [https://www.marca.com/](https://www.marca.com/) and [https://as.com/](https://as.com/)

There are of course a bunch of local startups, like Glovo, Lola Market, etc.

[https://www.meneame.net/](https://www.meneame.net/) \- A Reddit alternative

[https://www.forocoches.com/](https://www.forocoches.com/) \- Somewhere between Reddit and 4chan

For almost everything else we use the US companies: Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc.

For Engineering, there's a bunch of Slack groups in different cities where you can talk (like a distributed Hacker News).</comment>


City of Spies - <AUTHOR> https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/05/21/chinese-espionage/ <comment><USER2> As an aside, Lisbon was considered the "City of Spies" during World War 2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal_during_World_War_II#E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal_during_World_War_II#Espionage)</comment>


Supporting open source with 3% of our revenue - <AUTHOR> https://blog.geteventbot.com/2019/01/06/how-we-support-open-source-software.html <comment><USER3> You can donate to several projects via Software for the Public Interest, including PostgreSQL, Debian, ArchLinux, OpenEmbedded, LibreOffice, Jenkins, FFmpeg and OpenWrt.

[https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/](https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/)

 _> SPI acts as a fiscal sponsor to many free and open source projects ... we encourage programmers to use the GNU General Public License or other licenses that allow free redistribution and use of software and hardware developers to distribute documentation that will allow device drivers to be written for their product ... all donations made to SPI and its supported projects are tax deductible for donors in the United States._

<comment><USER4> I'll make a plug for [https://sfconservancy.org](https://sfconservancy.org) who sponsor many open source projects including Clojars (which I'm a maintainer of), and Clojurists Together. They do great work and deserve your support.

<comment><USER5> Going to plus 1 on this one. The Software Freedom Conservancy is doing great work. They are the fiscal sponsor for the project I run infra for (LibreHealth).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Taking that 3% and allocating towards your own developers contributing to OSS gives everyone more bang for the buck right?

It's a wonderful gesture, I don't want to take away from that. Just wondering how straight up donating compares to contributing.

<comment><USER7> > Taking that 3% and allocating towards your own developers contributing to > OSS gives everyone more bang for the buck right?

I see what you mean. However, as a two person company we think the impact from supporting those projects is a better use of funds. It's all a bit of an experiment, but we wanted to put a stake in the ground somewhere because of how important open source has been to our existence as a company.

Joe (Eventbot co-founder)

<comment><USER8> Hey Joe, I'm one of the founders of Open Collective (opencollective.com) Happy to help if you have any questions on how to implement or if we can help out somehow.

<comment><USER7> Hi Pia, we love Open Collective and are using it to donate to one of our sponsored projects. The platform is a great way to relieve a good deal of pain that OSS devs would have to endure in running a funded project.

One of the hardest things we've found is helping small projects (1 or 2 people) that don't have/need the structure of Open Collective but still could use the funds. PayPal is surprising bad since you can't even accept a recurring payment without going through hoops to set up a page/button.

<comment><USER8> For those projects in countries with stripe, they can use open collective with their own stripe account. Fees are half since we don't do fiscal sponsorship (they would self host) and the benefits is that we have the whole subscription / tiers / badges system set up. If you think some of this projects might be able to use it, feel free to send them my way. I'm happy to help them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've always wished I could use the Professional Development budget employers give me to donate to open source projects. Not that I feel entitled to it, but I think some employers could get enough employee engagement and outside attention to justify it.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is similar to WordPress's Five for the Future[1], which is one of my favorite open-source-support initiatives.

It intuitively makes a lot of sense if you are building on top of a platform to dedicate some resources towards the continued well-being of the platform. With SAAS, the resources are the money you pay each month, but with open source you can donate either money or time!

[1] [https://ma.tt/2014/09/five-for-the-future/](https://ma.tt/2014/09/five- for-the-future/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I support FOSS - please add some adult supervision here.. some developer teams have gotten angry and upset when someone gets paid (yes you read that), and on the other side, non-profit tax status is sometimes abused in the US by professionals who make management/fundraising a lifetime occupation with little emphasis on programs served. (sources on conviction of fraud are not always available on the net due to restrictive settlements)

<comment><USER12> > ...non-profit tax status is widely abused in the US by professionals who > make management a lifetime occupation.

In what way? Any sources?

<comment><USER13> A related example is Zuckeberg charity - they simply moved some of their wealth to a charity but retain full control on how it's spent, it's just tax free now. [http://fortune.com/2015/12/02/zuckerberg- charity/](http://fortune.com/2015/12/02/zuckerberg-charity/)

<comment><USER14> It's not a charity, his donations to it aren't tax deductible or tax free. If the business makes tax deductible donations those will pass back to him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Neat. I wrote about a similar idea a while back, which might add some other arguments if people want to pitch it to their own company: [https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2018/mar/9/one-percent- for...](https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2018/mar/9/one-percent-for-open- source/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This idea has made me think of donating a certain percentage of my income each year to open source projects. Does anyone have a system for donating their personal funds to open source projects?

<comment><USER17> I am an open source developer who accepts donations. Whatever you do, I would recommend making a recurring donation. I like to say that one-time donations buy beer, while recurring donations buy sustainable open source development.

I would also suggest contributing to individuals directly. Seek out maintainers of the projects you want to support and see if they have a patreon or liberapay page.

<comment><USER7> I very much agree - we put most of our donations on a recurring basis. Oddly, a few projects specifically asked for a one-off donation because they felt like a recurring donation would make them feel like they "owed us" something. Of course, we don't have any conditions for our donation, but it was an interesting sentiment I hadn't expected to find.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Depending what their margins are, this is great. But wouldn't it generally be a more sustainable to give x% from your profits to Y.

<comment><USER19> My guess is that they want to preemptively dispel cynical low-brow dismissals such as: "that's effectively $0 because startups burning VC cash won't show a profit for years, if ever".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> FFII.org will need your donations this year to file another legal commplaint against Unitary Software Patents:

[http://www.nounitarysoftwarepatents.uk/](http://www.nounitarysoftwarepatents.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER21> It's the small projects that need the help (or... the big projects that are absolutely overwhelmed with requests).

We definitely need a way to make inroads on this, good work.

</comment><comment><USER22> Thank you for doing this. This is a great idea. If every company that used open source committed to supporting the projects they depend on with this kind of approach, it would solve a lot of the current sustainability problems. I look forward to several initiatives over the next few years to encourage this kind of behavior from all companies.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is very similar to what Citus Data and the like have been doing in recent months. Great job guys!

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what percentage the FAANG like companies donate. On the one hand, it's probably quite low, on the other hand, they do run a lot of projects themselves & donate labours to others. Still that's hardly sustainable for the rest of OSS

</comment><comment><USER25> good job! wish you to grow your business and scale your company to support more oss projects!

</comment><comment><USER26> Donating to GulpJS? 2014 is calling, they want their streaming build tool back.

<comment><USER27> Gulp is still a great tool for straightforward workflows. It's still being developed and maintained. It has more than 30,000 GitHub stars. There's no need to change you have a working process.

There are valid reasons to look at other build tools, but "because your current tool is 4 years old" isn't one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nice but no. We need to push Free Software and to push it at political level, with the target of _forbid_ closed source products.

We do not need subsistence economy, we already won technically, open code is everywhere now. The big loss is the miss of political support. The big loss is the mass ignorance of how private companies trap open code in closed "boxes" from Android to WSL/DeX/Crostini to our PND/NAS/router/*.

That's the real point to get and IMO apart FSF we need to take action at school/universities level, workplaces etc. Putting money like that is a way to loose money without return.

<comment><USER29> I'm struggling to see how your comment relates to the article, which is showing financial support to open source projects. Funding is a serious issue with OSS.

Suggesting all code should be OSS is orthogonal.

<comment><USER28> IMO no, it isn't. FOSS project need participation, so not money but resources. FOSS idea is that software is knowledge, something that must be public and grow through interaction (sharing). So if I have a need or a desire and I start implementing it others may or may not join because they share the same or similar need or desire. That's the FOSS way.

I start a new project, for instance to autoclassify documents. Ok users of my code will contributed in code, hosting, documentation simply because they share my similar need/desire. If there is interest there is no need for money, software is not a product nor a thing we can live on. It's shared knowledge. There are no "producer" nor "consumers", only participants.

If we have a single-man-show that say "hey, found me so I can keep the project up" it means that:

\- we completely lost FOSS model, transformed to a sort of neopatronage, the erotic dream of proprietary vendors that dream a world of products to be sold and bought;

\- the project is already dead not because of lack of founds but because of lack of participants, knowledge, interest.

<comment><USER30> I support the FOSS idea that software is knowledge and should be public, but I think that a substantial amount of FOSS development has _always_ been done professionally, on a paid basis. Ad-hoc bazaar-style contributions where someone happened to notice a way to improve something is probably the exception rather than the rule.

One reason for that is that many codebases are large and complex, and so even expert programmers won't automatically understand how to improve them substantially without a considerable amount of study. It's likely that many people will need to be paid for that investment, not because they ideologically believe that software should be property, but because it takes up a huge amount of their time and effort that they won't be able to apply elsewhere.

And indeed, when people have empirically looked into some of the larger FOSS projects they've found that a majority of the contributions were made by people who were being paid to make them—again, not because of any ideological aspect, but because being paid for it allowed them to invest a huge amount of time and focus and helped them to be more sophisticated and productive contributors.

(Edit: Just to be clear, I don't think that trying to convince people to use, develop, or procure FOSS instead of proprietary software is _bad_ , or that, if successful, it won't also lead to more resources being applied to FOSS development. However, a lot of those resources will probably be mediated by money.)

<comment><USER28> Of course there are FOSS paid developers, for instance Intel pay few devs to work on Linux in order to have the _hw_ they sell work properly. That's good. That's not someone that live on FOSS, that's a company that participate to a FOSS project because it need or desire it.

On contrary there are other companies that pretend to sell "open" product that are open like a bunker (to name a few try looking for business software from ERP to CRM to DMS etc) and those are not contributed to FOSS. Even if they both pay someone to develop FOSS code and publish it.

I hope to have being able to clarify that point in my limited English...

On complex codebase: FreeBSD codebase is not exactly simple and little, but it live on it own foot since decades, for instance? Emacs, Debian, ... the same. I do not intent that a project must run on casual contribution but simply that contributors must be subjects that need/desire such code so they contribute to it for their own sake like the Intel example above.

<comment><USER29> And there are other projects (such as Django Rest Framework or even Django itself) where many people and companies derive significant value but either don't have the time, knowledge, or resources to contribute directly. These projects advance by having people dedicated to maintainence. Often the only way to provide dedicated resources is through donations.

If these donations dried up then the projects would suffer. That's not an outcome anybody really wants.

You seem to acknowledge that companies paying staff to contribute to OSS is ok. Why then is it not ok for companies to provide funding for a specialist to do the same thing?

<comment><USER28> Because it's not "founding" but alms. With some intermediary subjects that gain and reign as they want. Not much different than Ottoman's empire "islamic alms" that was in fact a form of imposition on citizen for the sake of few in the upper pyramid.

If project like Django need maintenance the answer is: universities. Universities train students and can easily maintain projects providing not only people but also resources.

FOSS is knowledge, so a thing that need to be entirely public and entirely relay on public. It is ok if a company need a certain software and so develop it, it is not ok to be "founded" like Patreon, LibrePay, PayPal donation etc. We need freedom and participation not charity.

<comment><USER29> But charity does not preclude freedom. Unless you're suggesting that if charity was absent we'd be seeing more participation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A great voluntary step in the right direction. But we know companies like EventBot are rare outliers. Congress could pass a law mandating all large companies that utilize FOSS to pay a tax deductible % of their net revenues to projects of their choice, for which they have no active maintainers. Even something as small as 0.1% would have a huge impact. I've been thinking about this for a while, would love to talk with others to organize such an initiative. FOSS is just like public infrastructure. Maintenance costs need to be shared. Innovation will accelerate immensely when this happens. Go ahead and downvote now.

<comment><USER32> If you force _anyone_ to pay for it, it's no longer FOSS.

This isn't just a technicality, either, it will literally become something different with a whole different set of incentives involved for everyone in the ecosystem.

I am making no comment on whether this would be a positive or negative thing. Rather saying that you have to be careful about messing with established, organic systems with top down planning and tweaks through regulations, no matter how smart or well-intentioned you think you're being.

One observation is that when there's money involved, some things which otherwise are extremely simple become extremely complicated. Like, for example: ownership, collaboration, contributions, credit, etc - <USER2> implications of these all change drastically when there is money on the table and it changes the entire dynamic of _everything_ in the system top to bottom. What comes out of those changes may not be what you want or expect.

<comment><USER30> I'm pretty sure that one of Richard Stallman's ideas for free software funding in the 1980s was government grants, paid for with taxes—except I don't think he suggested that the taxes would be collected only from users of particular software, but rather from everybody.

(This does happen on a small scale because some government grants _do_ go to academic researchers who are developing FOSS, and because U.S. government agencies can't hold copyright in their original work, so there are some codebases that have been released. But it's not like a large-scale software development government agency or grantmaking entity.)

<comment><USER33> That's a different thing entirely though. If you force companies to donate to a project, they'll want to have some ownership of it. If you do it indirectly through taxes, you're forcing _everyone_ to fund it so it becomes a democratic process.

I personally don't agree with either approach, but I think Stallman's idea would have a much better result than forcing companies to donate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: App for Swift Developers - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/ascend-swiftly/id1517245098?mt=12 <comment><AUTHOR> App visualizes your Swift source code. Turns your source code and build artifacts into relationship graphs.</comment>


The woman behind Apple's whimsical icons  - <AUTHOR> http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/24/the-woman-behind-apples-whimsical-icons/?hpt=hp_c3 <comment><USER2> Creator of "Dogcow"!

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

<comment><USER3> You can _buy_ a signed Dogcow now!

<http://www.kareprints.com/?p=69>

If only I had kept my copy of Tech Note 31 to frame alongside...

<comment><USER4> If only they had that in T-shirt form..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The complete "world class cities" story has been written about by Susan Kare on Folklore.org: [http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=World_Class_Cities.tx...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=World_Class_Cities.txt)

<comment><USER6> There's more to the story than that: for instance, New York is a knockoff of Times, and Geneva is a knockoff of Helvetica, hence the names. Monaco was named in reference to its status as a monospaced font.

Later on, when Apple actually licensed Times and Helvetica, the knockoffs coexisted with their original inspirations, even though there's no good reason you'd want to use New York or Geneva anymore. I still have Geneva on my Mac, though old stalwarts like Chicago and New York are gone.</comment></comment>


The persistent memory "I know what I'm doing" flag - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/678011/ <comment><USER2> A commenter on the lwn page pointed to [http://danluu.com/file- consistency/](http://danluu.com/file-consistency/) which seems like a nice overview of file consistency issues in various os's. It includes links to papers on the subject as well.

I found it pretty interesting, so i figured i'd note it for others.

<comment><USER3> Also see previous discussion : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10725859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10725859)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This use-case seems so specialized that it would be better to avoid the flag and assume that they will build their own unikernels. Imagine the performance you could get if, for exmaple, you knew your application is append-only, and that it would always be running on "persistent memory". There is so much cruft and so many trade-offs you could ignore!

That would be a fun project.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was just reading a paper summary this morning that's relevant to the point about an application working on one filesystem but not another: [http://blog.acolyer.org/2016/02/11/fs-not- equal/](http://blog.acolyer.org/2016/02/11/fs-not-equal/)</comment>


Top-Selling Car in Norway Now Electric Car Two Months in a Row - <AUTHOR> http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/30/top-selling-cars-norway-now-electric-cars-two-months-row-7-reasons/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29

<comment><USER2> As a Norwegian this keep coming up in lunch conversations. I just bought an old used car from somebody buying a Tesla.

What we come back to is the very high sale taxes on new cars in Norway (our "rule of thumb" is that cars are close to twice as expensive in Norway as in some other countries), but that most(/all?) of those taxes are waived for electric. So the alternative to getting, e.g., a Tesla is paying almost twice as much for a "similar" BMW. Same story for lower-end cars.

Also, on the commuter high-ways leading in to Oslo, there's one lane that's reserved for bus+taxi+electric (similar to the 2+ or 3+ person-per-car lanes in California). There's a joke that there's a standing queue of Teslas in that lane now (though I don't drive there so I haven't seen how much of an exaggeration that is).

Also, electric don't pay on the toll roads, which saves you 3-4$ each time if you're living outside towns and commuting in.

<comment><USER3> What about driving in the snow?

As a Canadian I can't see a Tesla being of any use in the winter, do people talk about that?

<comment> pi-rat Here is a review of the Tesla during winter conditions in Norway: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ5PqPeOPT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ5PqPeOPT0) (Spoiler: Pretty damn good even in harsh conditions)

<comment><USER4> Interesting, he had good points about such a heavy vehicle in snow and the large amount of torque that can make for dangerous winter driving especially in a rear-wheel drive vehicle.

I had to look up what the 'cold weather spec' package is and seems to be just creature comforts not different engineering/design to increase efficiency in cold weather.

My concern is at -20C in January with a metre of snow, heater on full blast, spinning the wheels as I plow through snow and slush with aggressive studded winter tires how much will that 400km range drop? Even just warming up the interior (a common thing) in the morning and scraping off the ice off the windows before going to work in the morning. My current vehicle's mileage drops in half in the winter due to all those conditions.

<comment> pi-rat Package also seems to include battery heating, probably wise as li-ion sucks in extreme cold: "The Cold Weather Package adds an upgraded heater for the battery coolant to boost range and performance in the coldest of weather, along with an "improved defrost" grille, heaters in the cowl and the windshield washer nozzles, and inside, heated seats for the second row as well."

You can do morning heating using grid power, trigger it remotely via your phone (they have an app for iphone/droid). I think you also can schedule heating ahead of time.

<comment><USER4> It would be nice if there was a torque reduction feature.

A trick for manual transmission vehicles in winter when on ice is to shift into third gear to reduce the torque so the wheel don't spin, the Tesla is the insane opposite of that.

[ Come on Elon summon your inner Canadian instincts! ]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And the Best part its not Tesla. In September, it was the Tesla Model S and in October, it was the Nissan Leaf.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a Norwegian I would like to see sale numbers in Oslo compared to the rest of the country.

My educated guess is that the vast majority of EVs are bought and driven in the larger Oslo area, and if I'm right, I think we actually should be discussing Oslo and not Norway as a country.

Edit: Reorganized two words.

</comment><comment><USER6> Norway is one of the richest countries in the world. Here in LA a bunch of my neighbors have bought the Tesla S. The tax incentive on a luxury car is nice, but it is still a luxury car. I do like how hydrocarbons are the main driver of green tech in Norway.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't wait for widespread adoption of electric cars and reduced pollution.

<comment><USER8> Are you sure it will reduce the pollution (genuine question)? The cars will stop polluting directly but the electricity producers will start producing much more electricity (which is much more pollution) to feed the cars. So, which of these two pollutions is better - nuclear waste/pollution or co2?

<comment><USER9> The people that are complaining about _pollution_ rather than _global warming_ might be thinking about the particles that aren't pleasant and/or healthy to breath in. Global warming is a problem for everyone (though the effects of it may vary depending on where you are on the planet), while pollution is for some a more local problem. If, for example, all cars in a city were converted to electric cars there might be more net pollution (maybe - could be all hydroelectric for example), but the pollution itself would be concentrated around the power plants, _not_ in the city itself. So then you won't have to deal with pollution if you live close to one of the main arteries of that city.

<comment><USER10> There would still be less net pollution in your example though as the total pollution from using petrol to power the cars would still exceed the amount of pollution from an oil burning power station producing electricity to power the cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am proud of you Norway! Can't wait for Canada to do the same.

<comment><USER12> You can't wait for Canada to put a 100+% tax on gas-powered vehicles? I have bad news for you...

<comment><USER11> To be honest, that would make my day, I wish gas was triple the actual price.

<comment><USER13> Do you live in the city with public transportation? Then I would definitely agree.

Otherwise, Canada can be really big and rural. Not having access to car (or in this case, potentially not being able to afford it) can be really damaging to your career, lifestyle, social life.

I grew up in the interior of BC 9 hours East of Vancouver. All of our driving policy (new driver rules and licensing) was dreamed up by street racing ridden Vancouver politics. The result was really damaging in small communities, as 18 year olds could only drive with 1 passenger. In effect, this eliminated young peoples ability to designate a DD. People didn't stop partying...they just drove.

Point being, policies designed for city residents don't always fit out in the rural areas.

<comment><USER14> Another way to see this is that everybody is subsidizing rural lifestyles by bearing the cost of their externalities.

<comment><USER15> You know that "rural" is where all of your food, energy and building materials come from right?

<comment><USER14> Close the externalities and the prices of food, energy, and building materials will adjust accordingly. I have absolutely nothing against rural people or lifestyles but if you choose to commute two hours a day so you can live in the country, you should pay the true price of your lifestyle to society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, a country with Tesla Model S as top selling car... powerful :)</comment>


Here Are (Approximately) 3000 Free Data Sources You Can Use Right Now (Forbes) - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/metabrown/2017/06/30/here-are-approximately-3000-free-sources-for-data-you-can-use-right-now/#48da1c4c3c75 <comment><USER2> tl;dr [https://pastebin.com/XSwPHVCC](https://pastebin.com/XSwPHVCC)</comment>


Easy laser-cut electronics cases for maker boards (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://climbers.net/sbc/easy-laser-cut-electronics-cases/ <comment><USER2> Another good option for enclosing a small-board system would be an aluminium enclosure of the type used for guitar effects pedals. (Of course, a digital guitar pedal _is_ an SBC in an aluminium box...) They're seriously robust (you can, of course, happily stand on one), they can quite easily be drilled to hold I/O and power ports and control interfaces wherever you want to put them, they can be painted or printed on in a variety of ways, they're available in a wide range of shapes and sizes and you can get them very cheap. See for example [https://www.mammothelectronics.com/collections/enclosures](https://www.mammothelectronics.com/collections/enclosures) (just as an illustration: I don't know enough about this particular supplier to endorse them).

<comment><USER3> Great enclosures. The all-metal design is an important property for guitar pedals, it acts as a noise shield. For the same reason, they're probably not the greatest choice for radio circuits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would they be good faraday cages for mobile phones?

<comment><USER4> Sure. If you want Faraday cage for your phone, buy some conductive fabric and sew up a pouch.

<comment><USER5> I put a cell phone in an all metal lunchbox, and closed the lid, and it still rang when I called it.

Faraday cages seem to be a bit more complicated than they appear.

<comment><USER6> Did you have good conductive contact between the lid and the body? This is important and needs to be over a larger area, not just points (otherwise you might have an antenna).

You can get special conductive tape (very beautiful btw, made from eg copper and conductive glue) and cover all the slits. This works better if you have conductive contact to the box, but still helps if not (in this case get the cheaper tape with non-conductive glue).

But as people involved in this space say, EMI is voodoo and I suspect praying to the EMI god, putting little metal amulets on all the cables and making strange markings with this conductive tape are all necessary to limit emissions below the limits. Homebrew electronics are the worst, and passing EMI tests with them can be a special kind of hell. </rant>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sweet! These are quite simple & easy to use cases.

For slightly more complex cases, I submit:

[http://www.makercase.com/](http://www.makercase.com/) (gives me certificate errors on HTTPS, but still quite useful)

[https://www.makeabox.io/](https://www.makeabox.io/)

<comment><USER8> the second link doesn't work, fixed: [https://makeabox.io/](https://makeabox.io/)

<comment><USER7> Thank you, sir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you don't have local vendors, you can use the cheap laser cutting offered by the dirtyPCB guys:

[http://dev.dirtypcbs.com/store/lasercut](http://dev.dirtypcbs.com/store/lasercut)

(Hey it looks like the custom cable builder[0] is back online, woo hoo!)

[0]: [http://dev.dirtypcbs.com/store/cables](http://dev.dirtypcbs.com/store/cables)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a big fan of the similar, but more philosophical, Sick of Beige cases that the Dangerous Prototypes folks came up with:

[http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Sick_of_Beige_compatible...](http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Sick_of_Beige_compatible_cases)

They follow a standard size series, with standard mounting hole offsets, corner radii, etc. The idea being that if you're designing a PCB, you may as well go with one of these sizes because the laser cut cases are commercially available, or someone following the design can make their own easily too.

They work great with minimal modification for the Pi, Adafruit protoboards, etc.

<comment><USER11> I love dangerous prototypes sick of beige. I think they discontinued it, but they used to have an amazing SMD protoboard. I haven't seen anything quite like it since. Especially for the price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I found this fastener free laser cut case maker last week: [http://imagio.dk/boxmaker/](http://imagio.dk/boxmaker/)

</comment><comment><USER13> That's pretty cool - it's easy to note notice how cheap a lot of this kind of stuff has become.

Earlier in the year I wanted to have a case made for one of of my electronics projects, and managed to find a free design from thingiverse.com, then pay a local person a small amount of money to get it 3D-printed.

Over time I've gotten more tempted to have a 3D-printer of my own, but I don't think I could quite justify the expense.

<comment><USER14> 3d printing is incredibly powerful for hobbyist electronics- you can make professional quality stuff[1], only limited by your creativity and design sense. Home FDM printers are so good that you can 3d print working threads even on cheap machines! If you spring for a more expensive lithography or sintering machine, the parts are effectively indistinguishable from commercial parts (aside from obvious technical differences like the lack of witness marks).

The prices are just ridiculously low now as well. $160 + tax and shipping gets you a printer[2]. Obviously you pay for that in terms of continual fiddling and reduced quality (and the $220 MP select mini is probably a better choice), but even that's better than how it used to be. $600 will get you nearly hassle-free prints and $750 will get you one of the best printers on the market[3] (well, almost on the market). Arguably the new Prusa is _the_ best option out there- right now it has features that no other printers do, certainly not with the same build size. Really impressive bit of kit[4].

IMO 3d printing is legitimately at the point where if you're making things at home, a 3d printer should be on your list of tools to buy even before a mill. Obviously it depends on what you want to make but it now takes way longer to learn and use modeling software than to set up and tweak your printer.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3O0jKvxUIM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3O0jKvxUIM)

[2]: [https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=21666](https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=21666)

[3]: [https://shop.prusa3d.com/en/3d-printers/180-original- prusa-i...](https://shop.prusa3d.com/en/3d-printers/180-original- prusa-i3-mk3-kit.html)

[4]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwNIzQLtHnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwNIzQLtHnU)

<comment><USER15> Agreed with all of this.

I bought my first 3d printer about a year ago and it quickly turned into one of the best things I've ever bought.

If you're at all interested in making things at home, there's almost no reason not to own a 3D printer.

I recently replaced the no-brand i3 clone that I initially bought with an Anycubic i3 Mega, and am very happy with the new machine. It's nice and rigid, easy to use, prints stick to the bed well while printing and pop off easily after printing. And all for less than £300.

As you said, the hardest part about it all is learning the CAD software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't have much experience with acrylic cases that snap together, but all ones I tried so far were really easy to break, so that now I stay away from them unless I don't find alternatives.

<comment><USER17> LOL, and the weird Insert-Tab-A-into-Slot-B look. Like brushed aluminum faceplates or art-deco bakelite, down the road they're going to scream the era they were created in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Call me conservative, but what happened to the dust collecting right below this crystal-clear case?

</comment><comment><USER19> I think this method give a much better quality feel than 3D printed cases and seems to be a fair amount cheaper. I'd love to be able to do stuff like this. Thought before of gutting old printers and going to DIY CNC route. To much cool stuff to do!

<comment><USER14> The two-panel cases look very nice, but I hate the jigsaw-puzzle look of lasercut cases and mechanisms. It can be fairly strong but in practice people rarely put in the thought necessary for that. Carelessly designed lasercut cases can be very weak indeed.

On the other hand 3d printed cases can be beautiful and much more sophisticated[1] than lasercut. You aren't limited by the need for huge gussets and dozens of pain in the ass square nuts. Plus you can have curved surfaces.

[1]: [https://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/tuco_flyer.j...](https://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/tuco_flyer.jpg)

<comment><USER19> Ah, intersting.

I too am not such a fan of the jigsaw look, it was the rigidity and strength that I liked. If you say they aren't as strong in practice, perhaps 3D printing would be better. I've only ever seen really good prints come from expensive machines with a fair amount of post-processing going on. TBH currently I just get cases from Hammond most of the time. It's the creation of front panels as well that I'd like to achieve more cleanly. As it's just my hobby, I can just about put up with the misaligned square holes!

<comment><USER20> 3D printed cases can look good with a bit of practice and the cost of a decent 3D printer is much lower than a laser cutter that can cut acrylic. Probably the most popular one with budger makers right now is the CR-10, which is big enough for pretty much any enclosure you could want and only costs $400. I make snap fit enclosures all the time with minimal (usually no) post processing.

There isn't a lot of difference between high and low end FDM printers in terms of print quality, the difference is more with UI polish and idiot-proofness. With a bit of practice however you can get very high quality prints out of any recent printer as long as it isn't a total mess in terms of design.

<comment><USER19> I think before getting any kit (if I do) it would be very sensible to master the software first. Have to look at some NYCNC tutorials and such to ensure I don't end up with an expensive bit of desk art.

<comment><USER20> I love that channel! And I understand completely, it's easy for tools like that to sit collecting dust unless you have the right combination of skills and interests. I usually tell people that a 3D printer is not at all worth it unless you're planning on designing and fabricating your _own_ custom parts and you have a need to do so.

I also have a basic CNC machine which I like, but of the big three maker machines (3D printer, laser cutter, CNC) I'd say the 3D printer is probably the one you want first because it's the most versatile. I mostly use the CNC for fabricating one-off PCBs and while I get a lot of use out of it for that most of the other things I could do with it I just do with a 3D printer. The CNC is a lot messier and more complicated, especially if you wanna cut wood or metal and if you want to do true 3D carves you need to do some proper CAM, which is a whole different skill set from CAD.

Laser cutters have a lot of downsides, especially if you are looking into one at home. Smaller diode laser cutters/engravers are more accessible to someone at home, but they can have a hard time cutting acrylic, particularly clear acrylic. You can get fairly affordable CO2 lasers now in the $5-600 with good laser performance but apparently the electronics suck so you need to change em and focusing the beam is a pain (it's invisible). My main problem with lasers though is that they are potentially _very_ dangerous. One mistake can leave you blind or on fire, which means you have to take a lot of care using them, adding hassle. Plus you need to manage fume extraction carefully, as laser cutting produces pretty harmful vapors that need to be filtered and vented.

What I'm getting at is: 3D printer - minimal hassle, maximum versatility, good for home. CNC machine - medium hassle, medium-low versatility, kinda borderline depending on your use. Laser - high hassle, medium versatility, I'd rather go to a dedicated shop than deal with one at home.

Side note, designing a DIY CNC mill is kinda hard because their mechanical requirements are actually quite extreme even at the low end. You'll end up spending a lot of time and money on it, especially when you can get a cheap- but-pretty-good mill from Aliexpress.

<comment><USER19> NY CNC is great, the guy is so enthusiastic to share his knowledge it's great. Plus some of the machining projects he does are quite something. Also refreshing to get exposure to the business side of running a shop, pricing decisions etc.

You are likely correct that it's better to get a kit even if on the cheaper end than go DIY. There is something about reusing parts that would otherwise go to landfill I really wanted to achieve. Perhaps I can find other uses for them, even if just mastering their operation with an arduino.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Our First Dive Into the New Open Payments System - <AUTHOR> http://www.propublica.org/article/our-first-dive-into-the-new-open-payments-system

<comment><AUTHOR> "There is one drug simply listed as 'KNEES' and another as 'Foot and Ankle.'"

"The database includes three varieties of Clinpro 5000 toothpaste: bubble gum, spearmint and vanilla mint. One drug, CimziaCD, includes the notation "do not use" after its name."

</comment><comment><USER2> What is "royalty or license?"</comment>


Sending SMS In Erlang Using Tropo - <AUTHOR> http://blog.myopenvoice.org/?p=150

<comment><USER2> Nice to see Dan York here - I remember him from Linuxcare days...

This article would be a lot more interesting if it were actually Erlang interacting with an SMS sending device and handling clients via the web or something like that. The code is really just an HTTP request with some json, which in the grand scheme of things is not terribly interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, David, great to see you here as well! (And yes, I remember those Linuxcare days well...)

So "interesting" is obviously a matter of perspective, but in this case the simplicity is really the point - this is all you need to do in Erlang to send and receive SMS messages. <http://tropo.com> acts as the sending device and the client device to interact with the SMS networks. You simply communicate with Tropo using JSON over HTTP.

Personally, I find apps like this interesting... but others obviously may not.

Zhao Lu has written a couple of other posts recently creating similar apps in Go and Scala.

P.S. In full disclosure, Tropo is a cloud communications service of my employer, Voxeo, but even if it weren't, I still would've submitted the link because I think the article is cool :-)

<comment><USER2> The comparison really comes down to "what do you need to do to send json over http in various languages". The fact that the service at the other end happens to send sms's, as opposed to causing monkeys to fly out someone's nose is sort of incidental. That said, Tropo does look pretty cool, and a whole lot more useful than monkey-nose web services.

I was kind of hoping it was something to do with this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMI_%28protocol%29>

I had some contact with a system handling that stuff last year, and it was just screaming to be written in Erlang.</comment></comment></comment>


Metamaterial based flat lens promises possible revolution in optics - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36438686 <comment><USER2> My understanding of these flat metamaterial lenses is that they're fine-tuned for a single wavelength of light; you can't put one in a camera and expect it to work like a glass lens did. I'm sure there are applications where control of monochromatic light is important, but I couldn't tell you what they are.

It's an awfully important detail to completely omit from an article.

<comment><USER3> For smartphones, where thinness is very important but area is less so, it would not be unprecedented to make an array of 4 monochromatic cameras and rectify and combine the images computationally.

      R G
      G B

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, that is not how light and perception works.

There are thousands/millions¹ of separate visible light frequencies. Our eyes and brains takes that all in and does an enormously lossy mapping of that to 3 perceived colors.

If you only record 3 of those thousands/millions of frequencies, you will lose 99.9% of the light, and mostly make black photos.

¹ depending on how wide the frequency interval considered monochromatic is.

<comment><USER5> This is incorrect.

Cone cells have fairly peaked frequency responses, and due to random projections caused by the cascading, this is sufficient to fully reconstruct the signal, i.e. the converse of the statement is true, you can retain 99.9% of the perceptual information using 3 sensors, all you need is to perceive in time and some randomness in the sensor placement.

<comment><USER6> They're not really that peaked, the M and L cones largely overlap, even, and are spread over at least a third of the entire visible spectrum. Pictures at: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Full article: [http://science.sciencemag.org.sci- hub.cc/content/352/6290/11...](http://science.sciencemag.org.sci- hub.cc/content/352/6290/1190)

These lenses are designed for a specific wavelength, and if I am reading the paper properly, only work with circularly polarised light. Essentially, for a given design wavelength and focal length there is a desired phase shift at each point on the lens. This phase shift is caused by the titanium dioxide "nanofins" which rotate the circularly polarised light to produce the desired phase shift. The phase shift is determined by the angle at which each fin is rotated. This produces a pattern of fins rotated relative to one another, which can be seen in the images of the BBC article.

While the lenses are designed for a target wavelength, they're not entirely useless at other wavelengths, they just have terrible chromatic aberration. In all other respects they seem to be excellent (especially for their size), but this makes them useless for most commercial applications.

To manufacture the lenses, they start with a substrate of silicon dioxide; not actually glass as said in the article, but quartz, like sand. This is coated by a resist, which is patterned by electron-beam lithography. The resist is "positive", meaning that the exposed part is removed when developed. A thin layer of titanium dioxide is deposited using atomic layer deposition. This is a type of thin film deposition technique that allows the deposition of a single atomic layer at a time. This is accomplished by introducing two different precursors one at a time alternately in sequence, the number of cycles determines the number of layers. With this they can essentially deposit just enough TiO2 to fill the holes left in the resist, though it also deposited on top of the unexposed resist.

The TiO2 remaining on top of the undeveloped resist is etched off and the undeveloped resist is removed, leaving just the nanofins. The nanofins have a high "aspect ratio", meaning height-to-width, which makes them challenging to produce using most semiconductor fabrication techniques. They are however quite large compared to modern semiconductors, on the order of hundreds of nanometers, which makes most things easier. Semiconductor fabrication uses photolithography, this used electron-beam lithography. While electron-beam lithography can in principle produce smaller feature sizes than photolithography (due to the smaller wavelength of electrons), that was not needed for this application; rather electron-beam lithography does not require the creation of a photomask and is consequently much more useful for small scale prototyping.

Commercially producing these lenses at scale could potentially be done with photolithography, though there would be a large upfront cost due to the need to fabricate photomasks. Monocrystalline silicon substrates are standard and silicon-dioxide-on-silicon is extremely common; I suspect the lenses could be fabricated on such a SiO2-Si substrate and the silicon on the back face removed, leaving optically transparent lenses.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Shapes on the surface of this lens are smaller than the wavelength of light involved: a thousandth of a millimetre."

A micron is 1000 nm and visible light is about 900 nm and down. Close but no cigar.

</comment><comment><USER9> You have to love pop sci headlines with phrases like "...promises possible..."

I promise you, BBC's Roland Pease, that it's possible the sun won't rise tomorrow and Linus Torvalds with announce that he will be Microsoft's next CEO.

</comment><comment><USER10> How is this different than what can be achieved using holographic optical elements, which can routinely make optical lenses and materials using the principle of holography and can be diffraction limited, producing feature sizes that are 1/n the wavelength of light (depending on the mastering process)?

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks exciting on paper, but I wonder how much work is needed to bring this to mass production.

<comment><USER12> It looks like they had that in mind while they were designing it:

"But our lenses, being planar, can be fabricated in the same foundries that make computer chips. So all of a sudden the factories that make integrated circuits can make our lenses."

If this is true, I imagine old foundries could produce these since they probably don't need anything near the precision or consistency that current- gen chips require.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure if this is where and when metamaterials break into the mass market, but it's bound to happen sometime in the next 5-10 years, why not now?

</comment><comment><USER14> Can it see proteins, cell walls or viruses?

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this much different from Diffractive Optical Elements in use today?

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if it can be used to improve VR optics and make HMDs cheaper.

<comment><USER17> Better for transparent AR lenses than the current holographic and waveguide approaches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Gah. Maybe we should add a "[flash]" warning for links that seems to want Adobe Flash installed for important parts of the content. :(</comment>


GCC 4.9.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-04/msg00195.html

<comment><USER2> One particularly impressive improvement: "Memory usage building Firefox with debug enabled was reduced from 15GB to 3.5GB; link time from 1700 seconds to 350 seconds" \- [http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.9/changes.html](http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.9/changes.html)

<comment><USER3> "When LTO is used". For more info about LinkTimeOptimization and Firefox see the recent blog post from one of its main implementors: [http://hubicka.blogspot.com/2014/04/linktime-optimization- in...](http://hubicka.blogspot.com/2014/04/linktime-optimization-in- gcc-2-firefox.html)

<comment><USER4> > Memory usage building Firefox with debug enabled was reduced from 15GB to > 3.5GB; link time from 1700 seconds to 350 seconds

Why does using LTO reduce link time? It would expect the result to be smaller, but transient memory usage to be significantly higher.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't reduce link time, the comparison is between LTO link times for old & new gcc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is excellent:

      GCC 4.9 provides a complete implementation of the Go 1.2.1 release.

<comment><USER7> This is a really interesting aspect. gccgo was intended to be the very high performance compiler for Go (with the intermediate compilation that could benefit from the many years of optimization in GCC), versus gc which was relatively new and unoptimized. It is great to see them catch up.

Though it would be interesting to see hard benchmarks. As is I have found performance regressions when compiling with prior versions of gccgo, as compared to gc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion of the GCC 4.9 changelog: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578896](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578896)

</comment><comment><USER9> From the changelog

|Memory usage building Firefox with debug enabled was reduced from 15GB to 3.5GB; link time from 1700 seconds to 350 seconds.

That's pretty impressive.

<comment><USER10> wow, that is. Any idea if there are any downsides or bugs resulting from this optimization? Or is this just pure win?

<comment><USER11> It's on LTO (link time optimization), which was previously not much optimized for compilation speed. Most projects probably don't need LTO so this won't matter for them, but for projects like Firefox that do, faster LTO compilation is a great thing.

<comment><USER12> not being an expert of such things, could you explain to me why do you think most projects don't need LTO ? (I'm interpreting that as "won't gain much", rather than "will find optimizations unnecessary")

<comment><USER11> In my experience things like PGO and LTO matter most in very large projects. Of course it depends on the codebase, but in general that's what I've seen.

In very large projects, fully optimizing all the code is often unneeded, and bad because fully optimized code is larger (inlining, unrolled loops, etc.). PGO lets you find what actually needs to be optimized, and you can keep the rest compact to improve load times. Vice versa, PGO can tell you what code is run immediately on load so you can order it so that happens faster, etc.

Similarly, LTO is most useful in large projects where it is not obvious to the compiler how to optimize across compilation unit boundaries - as in a small enough project, either there are few such boundaries or it is easy to manually optimize for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Still no D compiler huh? I've been out of the scene for a while, but I think they were they promising D support would be included a releases or two after Go support was added. What happened?

<comment><USER14> It seems to be in active development [http://gdcproject.org/downloads/](http://gdcproject.org/downloads/) "Merging GDC into upstream GDB" is on the list of project ideas [http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/ProjectIdeas](http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/ProjectIdeas)

<comment><USER15> How is growing D? I played with it 6 years ago, then I totally forgot it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> OT but tangential, what do you guys use to build/make via GCC?

Makefile seems like you have to code every new addition in your build manually and take care of the dependency tree.

Eclipse CDT seems difficult to set up.

Ant doesn't seem like good C/C++ Make options and require lots of XML and extra plugins to get it work.

Scons seems like a good option. Haven't tried Maven. What do you guys use to do C/C++ builds for production or for fun?

<comment><USER17> CMake is worth a try. Notably, it's the first build system that IntelliJ's new C/C++ IDE will support once it's released.

Although it's discouraged, CMake does have a way around the "code every new addition in your build manually" problem: [http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v2.8.8/cmake.html#command:au...](http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v2.8.8/cmake.html#command:aux_source_directory)

<comment><USER18> I despise CMake's syntax. But it is by far the best build system to use if you like IDEs and don't want to manage separate project files.

<comment><USER17> Yeah I remember reading a review of CMake that asked why, with so many good scripting languages out there these days, they would hand roll their own subpar implementation. But I mostly think it's a wash between CMake and vanilla make, with its significant tabs nonsense.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Ruby the New VB? - <AUTHOR> http://tssblog.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/30/is-ruby-the-new-vb/

<comment><USER2> The difference is that ruby doesn't suck.

<comment><USER3> Visual Basic 6 was innovative for its time - garbage collection, limited dynamic typing, foreach-style iteration. It compiled to bytecode and ran reasonably efficiently.

VBA works very well for its intended purpose, which is creating simple macros for Word and Excel. The idea of systematically ensuring that there was a 1:1 match between what you could do by hand and what you could automate with VBA rather than only exposing a limited subset of the program to an extension language is a pretty good one, and a substantial part of the reason there's no way in hell a hardcore Excel user would switch over to any of the web-based spreadsheet gadgets out there.

But, yes, programming in pre-.NET Visual Basic (which is really just C# with Basic-style syntax) is pretty infuriating, because the hard stuff is not hard, it's impossible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the measure of "VBness" of a language may not be so much the intrinsic qualities of a language as the calibre of the programmers it attracts. I think VB was (is? ) considered an atrocious language because the average user of VB was, rightly or wrongly, seen to be a "mord" who knew next to nothing of programming and wanted to drag and drop and click his way to project success.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think CakePHP is the new VB since you can easily install VB6 on any Windows computer and make apps for (at the time) 95% of computers (and for Parallels now as well), just like PHP apps run on almost any existing web host. Also like VB6, CakePHP apps are based on a very simple language (BASIC versus PHP) while Ruby is different in some ways than languages most programmers are familiar with. Finally, CakePHP and VB6 both evolved from very popular languages used by hundreds of thousands of people for many years (BASIC, QBASIC, regular PHP), while almost nobody used Ruby before Ruby on Rails came along.

Finally, on all three points, I'm comparing and contrasting Ruby on Rails. Ruby itself is nowhere near Visual Basic--QBasic might be a better comparison.

</comment><comment><USER6> No. In Ruby, array indices start at 0.

<comment><USER7> There's nothing wrong with starting indices at 1 (or n).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> in short no, the thing that made vb popular was it RAD stuff. Ruby on its own does not have windowing etc. Then again maybe it is when you look at the uptake of it. I still think people miss the point of vb and get far to elitist about whatever their fav language. why would I write a 5000 line C program when I could do it in a 1000 a lot quicker? If the end result is the same nothing is lost by doing it in vb. I live by use the best tool for the job.

<comment><USER9> Whilst no IDE style tooling, rails is kind of a "RAD" (non visual) tool for classic style web apps. What with all the scaffolding and only writing the minimal code to deal with actions etc.

So perhaps rails is the new VB would be more fair.

<comment><USER10> I've been writing Rails apps for a while. While I still use scaffolding, I almost always start changing them after I generate it it. A lot of the better Rails dev on #rubyonrails write their stuff from scratch. People who want to take scaffolding to something more capable usually use a plugin such as ActiveScaffold.

If you want to point to anything "RAD" in Rails, it is the ActiveRecord ORM, and more recently, the RESTful controllers.

Hanging out on #rubyonrails, there are a lot of Rails newcomers who come into the channel with little or no programming background, or those that do, come in without having first learned Ruby. They expect to be able to have Rails do the work for them, but Rails doesn't replace the need for a programmer to be able to think. Even a highly expressive language will have difficulty helping someone who has nothing to express.

<comment><USER9> sounds a bit similar to VB - although of course it was (deliberately) a far less capable language, it still had the same issue of people expecting just to sprinkle a "little code" behind the scenes and have it work.

My (distant) memory of most RAD tools of the 90s was similar to scaffolding - in some cases it could get you started but for any reasonable app, you tended to build stuff up by hand or dynamically etc.

I still think it bears a lot of similarity. Now with Sun and MS "blessing" ruby as a glue language, it seems even more likely to follow a similar path, for better and worse.

<comment><USER10> Maybe so.

I'm fully anticipating the day when an entire generation of non-US kids who grew up with the OLPC XO, and expect Python and Squeak to be in "grown up" computers.

Ruby is like a Japanese stone garden or a bonsai tree. Maybe it'll stay weird and Japanese enough to keep the tourists from stumbling in drunk, late at night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In more ways then one I think this is true. VB was never powerful enough to implement itself though, not sure about ruby (time will tell).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> to me Ruby is what Sun always wanted - a simple language (ideally running on the Java VM) that would lure away all those disgruntled VB programmers away from MS... too bad they focused their initial attention on Groovy. Times have changed</comment>


Show HN: Reacttant – A Reddit Web-Client Built in ReactJS - <AUTHOR> http://www.reacttant.com <comment><USER2> Looks very nice, although the name is a bit confusing. I get why you called it that, but I doubt your targeted users really care about the fact that is was built using react.

My first thought when I opened the page was that your title ({{ reacttant }}) wasn't rendering properly. Actually opening links isn't very intuitive.

Good work though.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of the University of Waterloo? - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting to look into universities in Ontario, and was wondering what everyone thought of UW's Computer Science program? <comment><USER2> Waterloo has a very strong CS program, albeit it can be a lot of work, and the campus life isn't great. If you want an intense undergrad CS experience, I think U of T and Waterloo are the best two choices.

That said, I think you should also consider the quality of campus life: I went to Queen's, and I learned much more outside the classroom than I did in classes -- I don't regret going to a less intense program for my undergrad.

</comment><comment><USER3> I went to Waterloo - not for CS but for Systems Design Engineering. I very much enjoyed my time there in Engineering and now have a great job doing primarily web development in Django for a company involved in Green Buildings.

I agree with other posters that you learn a lot, potentially more, outside of classes than in them, but disagree that Waterloo has a poor quality of campus life. There are a ton of things going on if you look for them at Waterloo, and it's not a commuter school so there are a lot of people on campus.

The one thing I cannot stress enough is the value of the co-op program at Waterloo. I didn't realize until my fifth co-op job that this was going to be the only time in my life where I could switch jobs every four months without looking like a quack who couldn't hold a job. I got to see a bunch of different industries (Telecommunications, Power Generation, Green Building and term in Ghana, West Africa with Engineers Without Borders Canada) without making long term commitments to any of them. Not many other schools provide that kind of experience.

Good luck with your choices! Not an easy one to make.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is one of the best. I know people that went there and they are all amazingly smart. A lot of tech companies (RIM, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, etc.) will compete to hide for co-op as well as upon graduation. It is a good school to go to.

</comment><comment><USER5> You ask me what I think of the University of Waterloo? WATFOR?

</comment><comment><USER6> I've never worked with a Canadian programmer here in Austin who graduated from anywhere but Waterloo.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of best programmers I know is a Waterloo grad. He says looking back they prepared him very well.</comment>