Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan: US would actually be saving money - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-medicare-for-all-plan-cost-save-money-2018-7 <comment><USER2> > "If every major country on earth can guarantee health care to all, and > achieve better health outcomes, while spending substantially less per capita > than we do, it is absurd for anyone to suggest that the United States cannot > do the same," Sanders said in a statement. "This grossly misleading and > biased report is the Koch brothers response to the growing support in our > country for a 'Medicare for all' program."

This stuff is so misleading. Most countries with universal healthcare don't have "Medicare for all." Germany, for example, has a system of public health insurance entities with mandatory enrollment of employed workers. It is paid for by a very high (15.5%, split between employer and employee), and rather regressive (only on the first 52,000 euro per year of income) payroll tax. By comparison, the U.S. Medicare tax is just 2.9%, on all income with no cap. No deductibles or co-pays in Sanders' plan? How about France, where most medical care has 30% co-insurance (government only covers 70% of cost)?

His heart is in the right place, but Sanders lives on a planet where if only the U.S. would cut its defense spending down to NATO levels (cutting about $250 billion a year), we could afford to spend trillions more per year on free healthcare, free education, etc. Except Europe isn't a liberal paradise--they have to make ends meet like anyone else. So you get free education in Germany, with aggressive tracking to keep most people out of the educational system after age 16. You get 40% income tax rates on people making median incomes or below, 20-25% VAT that primarily affects the middle and lower classes, but low corporate taxes (because you have to keep businesses around to bankroll the welfare state). There is no major European country that meets the Sanders ideal of offering free healthcare and education, but which encourages _everyone_ to take advantage of those things, and also pays for it by taxing primarily the rich and corporations.

<comment><USER3> Truth in advertising is not a common quality of communist sympathizers. Utopian visions are dirtied by reality and mathematics. So when Bernie, in his 70s, found out on live radio that they have months long waiting lines in Canadian hospitals, he could hardly believe it. And then he moved on, the revelation made no impact on him. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oQP7XvxQpRU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oQP7XvxQpRU)

<comment><USER4> You know what months-long lines for non-critical procedures for people without supplemental health insurance is better than? Having the number one driver of bankruptcy in the US be medical bills. [https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/101148136](https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/101148136)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bernie lost for a reason. This "plan" is actually painful to read, let alone the conclusion. The man doesn't understand economics and never will. It all made sense when I clicked the Author's page though:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/author/bob- bryan](https://www.businessinsider.com/author/bob-bryan)

Bias much? Journalism is dead. What a joke of an article.

</comment><comment><USER6> I will be frank.

I don't really care about the economic arguments. Not only can we afford to take good care of our own, there's a strong moral argument for doing so.

Not doing it is a priority problem.

<comment><USER2> The countries that have universal healthcare don't think that way. They understand that it's about economics: they offer the benefit, but they pay for it by levying heavy taxes on the middle class people who can't up and leave the country, and they ration it. (Even then, it's not sustainable, but that has more to do with their demographic problems.)

<comment><USER7> As a Canadian who's had two immediate relatives undergo surgery to remove breast cancer, survive, and had paid nothing, while I pay a very reasonable $35/month to be covered by this care AND the provincially run health insurance system reports a surplus, I must disagree.

<comment><USER2> The $35/month is meaningless, because the insurance premium doesn't cover the whole cost of care: [https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/average-canadian-family- paying...](https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/average-canadian-family-paying-more- than-12k-to-fund-public-health-care-study-1.4034416).

> The average single adult makes $44,348 and pays $19,759 in taxes, with > $4,640 going to health care insurance.

That's about 45% tax for someone making an average salary. In Maryland, that tax would be under 25%.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that public healthcare isn't a good idea. (I think it is.) My point is that Canada didn't get public healthcare by declaring "we don't care about economics" (like OP). They figured out how to pay for it in realistic ways. That means they decided to tax the average guy on the street 45%. And cut taxes dramatically on corporations--to less than half the U.S. rate--in order to keep that dude employed and paying into the system: [https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does- the...](https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the-u-s-have- the-highest-corporate-tax-rate-in-the-world) (Figure 2). Canada isn't fantasy Bernie Sanders world where we declare "screw economics," give everyone free healthcare, and raises taxes on rich people and corporations.

<comment><USER7> The Fraser Institute that the article cites is a notoriously conservative leaning Thinktank.

You can refer to this tax calculator for a more accurate estimate of a single persons tax obligations at $44,348.

[https://simpletax.ca/calculator](https://simpletax.ca/calculator)

As you will see, it's no where near the 45%.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why The PS4 should already be out. - <AUTHOR> http://rumor2release.com/blog?blogId=5187d998fa4a4a3a75143fcc#0

<comment><USER2> First: Oculus Rift is not a living room game console competitor.

Second: Ouya has not even reached the open market. It might do well, but it has several major hurdles to get past before it could be thought of as any sort of threat to the XBOX or Playstation platforms. Ditto Steam Box. (Although I'd put my money on Valve over Ouya.)

Third: No talk in this article about how Sony and Microsoft might need to fight off other very large players that want to take over your TV set? My new Samsung TV has games like Angry Birds built right into it. They suck, but it's definitely a sign that they might move further in that direction. And I assume Apple will eventually open up the Apple TV platform for third party developers to release games. Those seem like _much_ bigger threats to Sony and MS.

Especially Apple. AAA game studios already release games for the Mac -- porting to a new Apple TV flavor of iOS (or whatever) might not be that big of a step. And, unlike Ouya (for example), Apple has a proven ability to attract _massive_ numbers of independent developers to build for their platforms.

Anyway, I don't necessarily disagree with his point that Sony and Microsoft might need to move a bit more nimbly on these new systems, but I don't think the author of the article has really drilled down to the true reasons. He's kind of fixated on a couple of very green products that have attracted some niche attention from developers and gamers but definitely do not have any kind of demonstrated mainstream appeal.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author seems to make some strange conclusions. For example, he says Microsoft should have released the 360 because the number of games being released for the Xbox had peaked. But, did the no. of games for Xbox decline because it was "old" or because MS had announced the 360 lead developers to focus their efforts on the coming console? He then says the market excitement had waned out, but what about the PS2? When the PS3 was released the PS2 was still in full force. The year the PS3 was released the PS2 got FFXII, Guitar Hero II, Kingdom Hearts II, and God of War II. In fact one could argue that the PS3 was released long before the market excitement for the PS2 had died down.

It doesn't look like PS4 should already be out, Sony has just been following a 6 year cycle (PS1 in 1994, PS2 in 2000, and PS3 in 2006), and if it takes 6 years to develop the technology, theres no point in rushing it.

<comment><USER4> I agree, but the 6 year cycle would have hit perfectly last holiday season and, with the WiiU lacking, would have satiated a large section of console gamers that are waiting for more powerful hardware.

And the extra year isn't getting them much on the hardware front. If anything, the extra time is being spent on the service and social platform which, although necessary and important, may mean the difference between a big head start and an even race.

<comment><USER5> I don't see either the PS4 or the Durango doing much better than the Wii U. I think how much better they do growth-wise will be based entirely on how much money they are willing to burn for proper software exclusives and a reasonably priced console. It is the games that will sell the consoles, and I do not see third-parties flocking to more expensive development costs with incredibly low potential consumers. What incentive do third-parties have to develop for new hardware when the old hardware has a much higher install base?

I for one expect all next generation consoles to have growth rates similar to that of the Gamecube. I do not think it matters much when the consoles launch, either.</comment></comment></comment>


Do You Know Why Employees Leave Your Company? - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2019/07/do-you-really-know-why-employees-leave-your-company <comment><USER2> The manner in which employees leave is rarely going to have any meaningful signal in white collar organizations. The vast majority of employees will give reasonable notice (1-2 weeks) and they will not be forthcoming about all the real reasons for departing. Their colleagues are also unlikely to grant any insight.

The truth is employees leave for reasons of salary, growth, and because they lose trust in their managers to be effective. These things are rarely something management is interested in hearing about much less doing anything about. And being candid about the reasons only has the possibility of harming the person leaving: they gain nothing because the employer certainly isn't going to care and they risk offending someone and burning a bridge.

<comment><USER3> > they will not be forthcoming about all the real reasons for departing

I can relate to that. I once quit a startup and then went through an exit interview with the CEO, a person I respected. The CEO felt bad that someone was leaving at an early stage and said that it meant "we must be doing something wrong."

One of the big reasons I left was that I didn't like my boss's personality and communication style. But, I didn't tell the CEO that. I just said I had an excellent opportunity to work at another company with some old friends and I really had to take it (which was also true).

Even though I didn't like my immediate boss's personality, I didn't wish them ill. I just wanted to move on.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Joining a startup as an employee: How to decide? - <AUTHOR>

I have been considering joining one of the interesting local startups as an employee. I have no experience working in startups, so how would I evaluate whether a startup is worth joining or not? There's only so much you can know about your employers in a couple of interviews and from their blogs. Given that there is lot of uncertainty in deciding this, could more experienced folks offer some advice? <comment><USER2> Are you a thrill seeker? Are you comfortable in a chaotic environment where your future paycheck is not a guaranteed thing?

Working for a startup is possibly worse than actually starting your own company. You are there to watch and participate, and while your fate is unknown, much like the founders, at least they have more control of it. So you are catching a ride on their bus. It could go swimmingly well, or it could burn up in horrible flames in 1-X months.

If an amazing and chaotic experience is enough to make up for the guaranteed setback in your personal life, then yes, this could be for you.

Just don't complain when someone says 'we can't hit payroll' or 'we need to release no matter what'. You are voluntarily leaving a controlled environment and entering into a triage emergency room. If you don't release or ship, there is no income, and thus no company. This is a pressure cooker experience.

Your entering into a daily battle where the victories and defeats are real time, in your face, and govern your mood, sleep, and appetite. For every 'we can't hit payroll' line there is an equal and opposite amazing moment, a moment that you can't get in a typical job, a moment that could best be described as an 'epic win'.

If these moments of pure joy are missing from your current job, and you can hack the equal and opposite low moments, then yes, join the startup. Just know that your taking a gamble, and you will need to enjoy the experience no matter the outcome. All future jobs will seem trivial in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER3> The key things for me in evaluating this would be...

a) How much is the opportunity cost? You've got to balance the pay cut with how much experience you're going to get, because in 99% of cases, even if the startup does well, you're not going to get rich.

b) What's the vibe of the team like? What's their pedigree and track record? Will you enjoy working with them for ridiculous hours? Will you learn from them?

c) Do you believe in the product? Even if it's something unsexy, does it offer an interesting challenge? Some of the 'sexy' products are also very unfun to work on by the way.

d) Are they approachable? Do they care about their employees? Are they being open an honest in how equity and salary will work? Do they offer the basic, but important, perks like half-decent health care, free soda, and company outings?

A gut feeling is usually pretty good indicator of whether it will work for you or not.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, the comments are very helpful.</comment>


IBM's Watson Tries to Learn Everything - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/robotics/artificial-intelligence/ibms-watson-tries-to-learneverything

<comment><USER2> The Terminator: The Watson project begins in 2005. The system competes on Jeopardy January 14th, 2011. Human contestants are removed as viable competition. Watson is set to task to learn a million more databases. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Sarah Connor: Watson fights back.

The Terminator: Yes. It launches its viruses against servers in China.

John Connor: Why attack China? Aren't they our trading partners now?

The Terminator: Because Watson knows the Chinese counter-attack will eliminate our all our Facebook timelines, Pinterest pinboards, and Netflix subscriptions over here.

Sarah Connor: Jesus. How much do you know about Hendler?

The Terminator: I have detailed files.

Sarah Connor: I want to know everything. What he looks like. Where he lives. Everything.</comment>


The Dripping Sarcasm Voice - <AUTHOR> http://raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-dripping-sarcasm-voice.html <comment><USER2> I can relate too well with the author here with knowing more than others, but I see it from a different perspective. From the perspective that there are other forms of being smart besides knowledge. There is a bigger picture of culture, which just means how we interact with the world and people around us, and intelligence is only a small part of that.

Culture is hard. I thought it was just me at first, but I've been meeting more and more people who just don't "fit in", and I think it's because they never really "got" the culture around them.

And now I'm seeing it more and more in my children, the fact that some people don't just naturally pick up the culture around them like others do. For some it's harder to learn than others and takes more effort.

As I grow older I realize more and more of this was caused by me being an arrogant kid. That arrogance stopped me from learning from around me because I would be too focused on the thoughts inside my own head, believing them to be more worthwhile than anything externally.

So I never picked up learning from the world around me during the time I was supposed to, and I was decades late to the party. Case in point, I'm 31 and only gave beer a real chance for the first time this year (conclusion: I like it!).

And I've accidentally passed that on to my own children, the arrogance and the cultural internalization. I just wish I had spent more time being quiet and listening to the world around me than thinking too much.

Half the time I wasn't actually "smarter" than anyone around me even though I thought I was, and the other half when I actually was, my intelligence did more harm than good to myself.

Some of the people I look up to the very most are "ignorant" by the standards I held myself to growing up (and maybe society did too). They're "uneducated fools". But they're kind, patient, quiet and thoughtful, good listeners, meek and humble, compassionate and understanding, forgiving. I find myself wanting to be around them just because they're them, and wishing I was more like them.

</comment><comment><USER3> :( This post rubs me wrong. Maybe because it's so centered on author while purportedly under a parenting blog. Maybe because it's screaming that the author is the type of "smart" person that gives them/(us?:)) a bad name.

To anyone nodding along to the post, because you are so special that you don't have friends: "smart" people everywhere have gone through feeling isolated from their age peers. Smarter people figure out how to navigate the shortfall rather than increasing it. Feynman anyone?

As an aside, I have a kid starting kindergarten this year who's been reading/writing for 2 years now. At home (and at pre-school by request) we make it a point not to over-praise this.

Because I don't want one innate attribute warping his whole identity.

</comment><comment><USER4> > I am still trying to figure out how to clearly, effectively and consistently > communicate on the internet when I am being straight up serious and when I > am kidding. I have yet to figure out an internet version of The Dripping > Sarcasm Voice. That fact sometimes gets me into all kinds of trouble.

This is what /s is for.

I agree with the comments saying that this is quite self-congratulatory and does not have must useful substance.

> With that incident in my past and still weighing heavily on my mind, in high > school, I was painfully aware that many of my classmates simply did not have > the background knowledge I had and this gap in knowledge about the world was > growing with every single passing day as I continued to take yet more > advanced classes.

I think that by the author's metric I would be considered "very smart". I've taken and done well in many fancy classes. However the type of "smart" that comes from classes is worth a lot less than one would think, and I think that a lot of us learn that lesson much later in life than we would like.

There is a great scene in the movie "Captain Fantastic" where the eldest in a homeschooled family lashes out and says "I don't know anything! If it doesn't come from a book I don't know it at all!" This character was accepted to all of the best universities, had a strong grasp of physics and philosophy, etc. But, after a series of awkward social encounters, realized that they had some deficiencies.

</comment><comment><USER5> what the f did I just read

this sounds like the most upvoted /r/iamverysmart post of all time

<comment><USER6> The problem with Reddit is that it's impossible for anyone to mention in any way that they are more intelligent than average without a bombardment of "this belongs on iamverysmart".

My theory of why this is is that most Reddittors have a bit of an inferiority complex and when someone says they're intelligent they feel a need to prove that they are better than that person somehow. This is just a theory mind you. I'm not trying to analyze your behavior.

In any case, I hope we can do better than Reddit when discussing people who claim to be more intelligent than most. Saying "iamverysmart" shuts down the conversation completely without adding anything meaningful. Even if OP is bragging (a sense I did not get), there are still things to learn from the post.

<comment><USER4> > The problem with Reddit is that it's impossible for anyone to mention in any > way that they are more intelligent than average without a bombardment of > "this belongs on iamverysmart".

I think that this is because intelligence is usually self evident. It is similar to wealth; the people that tell you that they are rich are typically not the wealthiest people you know. On Reddit, perhaps mentioning a relevant professional qualification (e.g. being a lawyer).

<comment><USER6> But how are you going to discuss the accoutrements of being intelligent without admitting that yes, you are intelligent? (Wealth has the same problem.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if HN would benefit from some sort of informative flair or icon when OP links to their own content.

</comment><comment><USER8> come on. this is so self congratulatory. really?</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to accept credit cards online? - <AUTHOR>

Hello!
I'm setting up a new internet service which will require a lot of small transactions from users. I'd like to accept credit cards.. what's the best way to go about this? Are there premiums involved?
Alternately, does anybody have any experience using a Paypal/Google Checkout combination? <comment><USER2> Short answer: There's no free lunch here. Whoever processes credit cards for you will take a small cut.

Long answer: See the following discussions

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470128>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=389692>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=115723>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010>

Also, if you _store_ your customers' credit card information, you have to do implement all sorts of access & privacy controls, a ritual otherwise known as PCI compliance. You probably don't want to go through all that trouble.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have used PayPal and Google Checkout on a site, if you sign up for the business/payments pro version of PayPal you'll be able to collect payments in 2 ways on your site. Either via PayPal payment, or credit card. The credit card payment can be transparent to the user if you are either using a shopping cart with PayPal integrated or if you know how to program against the PP API, or can transfer to PP and complete a CC transaction there. The Google Checkout option will require the purchaser to have a Google Checkout Account. This is typically a slight deterrent as it requires someone to create a new account which can sometimes be considered a PITA.

Either way many sites typically support multiple payment methods. But if you're talking about small transaction sizes you may want to do some research into micro payment processors. Not sure how far along they are but one that had been mentioned a long long time ago was NOCA. Think the site is NOCA.com. But there are others.

Good luck.

oh and yes there are always premiums involved. If you go with PP the fee for payments pro is like $20/mo + ~3% + $.30/transaction. Services like Authorize.net and Cybersource will have slightly lower transactional rates but higher monthly fees.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, you guys have been very helpful. Good starting resources here.</comment>


Ask HN: Efficiency of 10x engineer while refactoring legacy/messed up code base? - <AUTHOR> Will their efficiency be still 10x if they are assigned to maintain and debug a shitty(but working) code base? <comment><USER2> 10x is a strange label. I don't think that 10 times the efficiency of an average engineer is achievable consistently anyway. Programming depends on so many extrinsic factors like the environment you're working in, the product you're working on and the people you're working with. Effective communication probably is the single most important aspect of successful software development. Thinking of yourself as someone who is 10 times better than others likely doesn't help in that respect.

That said, there are certainly engineers who particularly excel at working on legacy code bases. Refactoring and modernising an existing codebase poses an interesting challenge and it provides actual business value. Anyone can start a new greenfield application. Working on a legacy codebase takes at least a bit of courage and a deep understanding of the business involved.

People often seem to forget that a supposedly shitty but working codebase for the most part probably didn't become that way because its original developers were just stupid but because the business requirements are inherently complex and contain a lot of edge cases. By decrying legacy code you might throw out years or even decades of expert knowledge about the business.

<comment><USER3> Very true. In many businesses their software systems are the only coherent and (mostly) consistent description of business processes. There may not be any documentation and often no single person in the company knows how everything works. Customers will tell you how they'd like things to work -- green fields projects give them a chance to dream and try to fix everything -- but whatever code they have tells you how things actually work. Ignore that at your peril.

I don't care how 10X someone thinks they are. No one can walk into a business, have a one hour meeting glancing at some screens, click through some code ("Oh wow. Shitty. This is terrible.") and learn even a tiny bit of how things actually work. Yet I see proposals for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars based on that kind of shallow analysis, and a customer high on the promise of seeing their dreams realized in what will be the first perfect software development project in history.

You're exactly right, "Anyone can start a new greenfield application. Working on a legacy codebase takes at least a bit of courage and a deep understanding of the business involved."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I don't call myself 10X anything but I do work through 10X Management. I only work on legacy code, that's my specialty. My opinions are my own and don't represent 10X Management.

First off not all legacy code is "shitty." The main reason I am 10 or 100 or 1000 times more effective with legacy code is that I'm usually the only programmer the customer has talked to who will work with it. Everyone else has one solution: Throw it away and start over with [insert favorite cool language/framework/ideology]. So at least in my experience it's not that I'm 10X more effective, it's that everyone else is 0X effective because they won't even try.

It's easy and maybe fun to simply dismiss legacy systems as junk and shit and catastrophes, but when a business has a system that mostly works and they need some debugging, enhancement, improvement it's usually irresponsible to tell them to start over. When you do that you are telling the customer to throw away something that works, even though it has problems, and take a huge gamble on a new system that is 75% unlikely to even go live. You are telling your customer that your one hour reading of some code that you declare "shitty" is more informed than all of the cumulative experience of previous developers. You are telling your customer to change business processes, retrain staff, all on your word that you are more clever than the last team.

Imagine if you had a leak in the roof at your house and the first five people you called out to repair it told you to tear the house down and start over. And they told you that because the house wasn't built with the kind of lumber and roofing they prefer, or they don't think it's aesthetically pleasing based on their strict adherence to Frank Lloyd Wright's style. Or that whomever built the house must have been morons because they didn't properly label all of the wires and pipes. That's a story I hear about software systems every month.

The most important metric of software is whether it solves a business problem and adds value or not. What language it's written in, or whether the last programmer used spaces or tabs or camelCase or knew OOP as well as you think you do are not relevant metrics from the customer's perspective.

And since a lot of the code I work on is not actually that old -- in fact it's just as likely to be the unfinished remains of the last green fields team -- I can say without hesitating that the worst code to work on comes from programmers who are so committed to an ideology or language or toolkit they lose sight of requirements and the only goal that matters: adding value to the business.

<comment><USER4> > Imagine if you had a leak in the roof at your house and the first five > people you called out to repair it told you to tear the house down and start > over. And they told you that because the house wasn't built with the kind of > lumber and roofing they prefer, or they don't think it's aesthetically > pleasing based on their strict adherence to Frank Lloyd Wright's style. Or > that whomever built the house must have been morons because they didn't > properly label all of the wires and pipes.

Sometimes they are required to tell you that. If there are obvious structural faults with a house then it's an OHS issue to be on the roof in the first place and the whole building could have to be condemned. A lot of software is in that state, but the organisations that use it have a remarkable ability to route around errors.

I do agree for the most part, but as an industry we still rarely find that middle ground where maintainers can actually do preventative maintenance and slowly improve things. Very few maintenance programmers are actually doing maintenance work, there bolting on new features or fixing prioritized bugs. If I was in charge of building maintenance then my success threshold would be considerably higher than "the buildings still standing".

<comment><USER3> My analogy is imperfect, sure. And sometimes software is so bad that it should be tossed out. I mostly see that when business requirements have changed so much that the software is a drag, not adding value. Or a vendor went out of business (ask me about the companies left holding the bag because of SCO), or something else in the IT landscape caused the code to become obsolete and unworkable. But in my experience (and this is what I do) those cases are relatively rare.

In the last 10 years freelancing I've taken on close to 40 projects, I've only told two customers that they should start over. In both of those cases we weren't looking at crufty 20-year-old code. The software was fairly new, just poorly designed or implemented (WordPress is not a great platform for everything, folks). One project was a pile of random piecework from low-price contractors hired online -- no conceptual integrity. Talking to other programmers who do the same kind of work I do, I get the same anecdotal evidence: most software systems are maintainable despite the best efforts of programmers to make things too complicated and obscure.

Rather than rewrite from scratch it's safer to refactor bit by bit, fixing a defined set of problems little by little. That keeps your chance of success high and customer risk low. Try to remove dependencies rather than add more. Carefully get things like version control, testing, tooling in place, but don't get carried away, some code resists retroactive unit tests and you shouldn't be breaking stuff just to make it fit your toolchain. Resist the urge to "refactor" everything to suit your aesthetics or received wisdom about how code should look.

You're right that it's more common to see features added on and the worst bugs addressed. That's usually because the core of the system is solid and doesn't need a lot of maintenance. It can also happen when the core is a black box no one understands and the programmers are afraid they'll break it.

Most important is to listen to the customer but don't believe everything they say -- customers often can't describe in detail how their own business processes really work. Don't assume that just because the code is written in an old language or isn't based on OOP or doesn't have unit tests that it's shit -- you can blind yourself to good design principles that aren't in fashion anymore. And have some humility -- it's unlikely you actually know how to rewrite a non-trivial application from scratch and get a better result than what the customer already has, unless it's an unusable pile of goo already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Absolutely! But the efficiency gain will come from knowing _what_ to do, not from doing it ten times faster.

For example, if the shitty code base doesn't have unit tests a 10x programmer might decide to put everything else on hold and write a unit test suite. A 1x programmer would perhaps not understand the long term benefits of testing, and instead spend his or her time patching bug after bug.

Another trap a 10x programmer would not fall into is deciding to rewrite the whole system from scratch because the code is hard to understand. But sometimes the only way forward is to rewrite it all. It boils down to being a judgement call and the more experienced you are the better judgement calls you make.

</comment><comment><USER6> A more realistic view of 10x engineer is not someone who can produce 10x amount of code... it's producing the same amount of value at 1/10th the effort by being able to focus on actual goal.

Sometimes that means fixing existing codebase instead of the massive effort to do a rewrite (see gregjor's great comment).

Sometimes that means figuring out that the custom legacy software can be replaced by an off-the-shelf solution.

Sometimes that means figuring out that only some of the legacy software is actually important, so only that part needs to be maintained and the rest can be deprecated.

See also [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/)

</comment><comment><USER4> No, because 10x is a myth.

Usually someone described (probably by themselves) as a 10xer are the ones responsible for the code base being so bad in the first place. 10xers only work on green fields, they never get a chance to see what a catastrophe their ideas turned out to be.

<comment><USER3> Generalizations, not true. In my experience many of the most talented and valuable programmers work on important legacy systems. There is a class of programmers who only want to work on green fields projects, and they may think they are 10X or ninjas or rockstars. They aren't. That's arrogance, not skill or expertise or ability to deliver. I have 40 years programming experience to back that up.

I agree that measuring individual programming productivity, or making any general statements about it, can be so hard that it's almost meaningless to say anything. Someone can be wildly good on project A with team X, and then flail on project B with yeam Y. I wrote about this: [http://typicalprogrammer.com/why-dont-software- development-m...](http://typicalprogrammer.com/why-dont-software-development- methodologies-work)

<comment><USER7> "That's arrogance... I have 40 years programming experience to back that up."

Ironic juxtaposition.

<comment><USER3> Maybe, I didn't notice that. I was pointing out the difference between experience and believing that I can do better than other programmers because I watched an online course about AngularJS and now I can fix everything. I try to stay humble when learning a new code base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This 10x thing is quite frankly stupid.

The distribution of developer skill (if that's even something that can be plotted) is not bimodal with good developers and bad developers, it's normal. Sure someone 2 SDs above the mean might be 10x more productive than someone 2 SDs below the mean, but the same can be said for literally anything that requires skill.

While we're at it, why don't we call Gordon Ramsay a 10x chef? Or Yo-Yo Ma a 10x cellist. While this is technically true, it's not particularly insightful, and certainly not something you should use to label yourself.

To answer your question, yes someone skilled at software development will be slowed down if dealing with a legacy codebase.

<comment><USER3> I agree with almost everything. Talent and experience make a difference, but programmer productivity is situational. Some teams and projects bring out the best in everyone. And I've had bosses and customers and team members who make sure no one is very productive.

Working with legacy code is a skill too. I don't think it's true that a skilled programmer will necessarily be slowed down with a legacy codebase. Another way to look at legacy vs. green field is that with a legacy system there's already a fairly complete spec, expressed in the code. Learning to read and understand code is a skill that programmers can learn if they care to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is no such thing as a general 10x engineer. There are engineers that are 10x better than average at writing network stack and engineers that are 10x better at writing PDE solvers and engineers that are 10x better at creating user friendly web front ends, but it's not the same person. By the same vein there are absolutely engineers that are 10x better than average at dealing with legacy code bases, but a massive factor is also how experienced they are with the domain that the codebase is about. For example is the code base some sort of logistics management system, then someone who has worked on a lot of logistics management systems in the past is going to have a significant advantage.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well, depends.

For example, we had a 10x guy recommend that we re-write our health insurance web app back-end in Golang, but then, we realized that meant we couldn't cover generic prescriptions.

In that case, he wouldn't have remained 10x over the older Python/Django code.

<comment><USER11> Golang doesn't support generic prescriptions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Notice the poster selection bias on this thread?</comment>


Documentation is important: it's not just words - <AUTHOR> http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/13/longevity-science-needs-documentation/

<comment><AUTHOR> The topic here is biotechnologies for enhancing longevity, but the lessons and model for thinking about the strategic impact of documentation are generally applicable to any technical field - such as software engineering, for example.</comment>


Live map of the London Underground - <AUTHOR> http://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/

<comment><USER2> Matthew Somerville has done a bunch of cool stuff as well as this: <http://www.dracos.co.uk/> Just this weekend I stumbled onto his site again when wanting to know where the nearest postbox to my new flat is.

Incidentally there is an official "real time map": <http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/im/RD-T.html> It's less _cool_ , but actually tells you at a glance what you really want to know: where disruptions are.

<comment><USER3> Thanks :-) It would definitely be good if the map could at some point highlight disruptions, or closed stations/lines, yes (along with other things it could show, such as trains at depots if we know where the depots are). Source is available at <http://github.com/dracos/underground-live-map> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where did you hear of Science Hack Day ?! I've never heard of it and would give a lot to have been there.

Now really annoyed (mutters to self under breath .. muttter mutter mutter ...)

<comment><USER5> I find the best way to keep track of that kind of thing is following a bunch of well connect geeks on twitter. Frustratingly it clashed with both productcamp and the facebook hackathon.

It would be great to have a london events calender both to keep track of these events and also to avoid clashes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know about the hack day, but I found this page through Matthew's twitter:

<http://twitter.com/dracos>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of this. (Though it is much older, and data, as I remember, come only from the timetable, it's not live.) <http://www.swisstrains.ch/>

</comment><comment><USER7> There was this one for Helsinki buses for a while: <http://transport.wspgroup.fi/hklkartta/defaultEn.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice. There's some odd bugs with a couple of the trains... I've just seen one travel from Kings Cross to West Ruislip, off the tracks and in under a minute.

</comment><comment><USER9> This will be invaluable for any scientist to prove that earth minutes and tube minutes are different.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really wish this would be available for Amsterdam. I feel like GVB (the organization which organized public transit in the city) wouldn't publish an API.

Half the time I feel like the drivers don't even know where their trams are headed.

</comment><comment><USER11> It'll be interesting to verify this as the trains pass me by here at home.

<comment><USER12> i would be interested in verification as well, by looking at it, i think it gets updates frequently, but i'm not sure if they are live or not, but it does seem that based on whichever information it is getting, then it is running a dead-reckoning type interpolation of where the train probably is, and there's nothing wrong with that. however, i would be very impressed at the efficiency of the flow if this was all actual readings all the time.

<comment><USER11> The interpolation was about 2-3 minutes out and in that time it didn't poll the tfl server as far as I could see. However, when I hit refresh the location was pretty accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER14> I bet Google has the data to add this to there transit maps feature. Is there a way to add locations on a map that use an icon other than the pin?</comment>


Gender is not a spectrum - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison <comment><USER2> The previous posting at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012231) garnered 6 comments.</comment>


BTProof – Trusted timestamping on the Bitcoin blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://www.btproof.com/

<comment><USER2> Seems like a bad idea: adding wealth destruction to a currency that is deflationary by design. It is also unnecessary.

Take 2 addresses that you control. Send not one transaction between them, but inside a sequence. Say you want to encode a 512-bit hash, split it into 29-bit chunks. Encode each chunk as the low-order bits of the transaction value so each transaction may cost up to 1BTC.

Send each transaction from address-1 to address-2 and then back to address-1 (no net change in balance).

Treat the entire sequence as an encoding of a hash (looping transactions between addresses with values under 1BTC).

<comment><USER3> Why cant we simply hash the document to create a key and then use this key to seed and generate an address?

        var bytes = Crypto.SHA256(key, { asBytes: true });
        var btcKey = new Bitcoin.ECKey(bytes);

We can then send some money to this address and back.

<comment><USER4> Then anyone who gets the document, gets the key?

<comment><USER5> So what? Worst case scenario, the attacker gets control of the BTC before the user can recover them, but that's no worse than the original proposal, where the value would always be lost

<comment><USER4> Well, how could you prove that you were the one that inserted the value into the blockchain? If anyone can have the key, anyone could have inserted it.

<comment><USER3> We are talking timestamping here.

If any money was ever sent to the address generated by the hash of the doc, even if the current balance at that address is zero, proves that that document existed at the time money was sent. Why care about ownership?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fun typewriter written in ClojureScript/React - <AUTHOR> http://cmdrdats.github.io/undertype/

<comment><USER2> Just an experiment, I know, but is it Chrome-only?

<comment><USER3> Ye, sadly - I tried to make it as browser agnostic as possible, but I had a very tight time schedule for it - but PR's welcome! :D</comment></comment>


Low-cost portable ventilator (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2010/itw-ventilator-0715 <comment><USER2> This would be a great thing for the government to invest in, iterate upon, and stockpile strategically. Even if we can't use them now, it would be good for the future.

As an alternative to stockpiling, maybe someday it would be nice for the US to establish disaster relief factories, which have raw materials and rapid manufacturing equipment that can be used for a set of products, as needed. Create a set of product designs that share many of the same components and materials, but the products themselves differ in function and in the type of disaster they address. You could have a few teams of machinists and engineers who are paid to make and learn the designs for these disaster relief devices, which would require two weekends a month perhaps. When a disaster happens, you deploy them nearby and they produce the needed items.

Also, OMG:

"The farmer's mother and brother took turns, squeezing the device 15 times a minute nonstop for 18 full days and nights, which kept him alive until a mechanical ventilator became available. Thirty days after being admitted to the hospital, the patient recovered enough to be weaned off the ventilator, and two weeks later he was sent home."

</comment><comment><USER3> The Chinese and Italian doctors were saying that the equipment was the limiting factor in saving lives. That there just weren't enough of them to go around, to handle the massive influx of patients flooding into the hospitals and clinics all at once.

We will need equipment like this to save lives.

I suspect that the Seattle situation is about to go hot. People with symptoms are not being tested, so they're not being confirmed. Meanwhile, domestic and international flights are still going in and out of SeaTac. People are unknowingly carrying the virus to all different areas of the country. This might explain why seemingly random cases are popping up in the Midwest, from people who have never been to China or Europe. Essentially, the virus is building steam, and the country is about to see a massive increase of sickness in the coming weeks ahead. And the old and less healthy people will get hit very badly. We all will.

Time to buckle up, and hunker down.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a commercially available bag valve mask with a motor attached and controlled by what seems to be an open loop system. I think that the real takeaway here is that bag valve masks, apparently a low cost manual alternative to a respirator, exist.

</comment><comment><USER5> How realistic would it be for someone to be able to make a business out of it at this moment? The problem I would see and described in the article is quality assurance. But I believe this could go a really long way in helping with ventilator shortage that could very well be inevitable.

<comment><USER6> In Italy they're literally letting people who are 70+ die because of lack of respirators.

In this situation you're better off just building a lot more of these than you'd need and monitoring. Replace failed units.

<comment><USER7> This is totally false. Hospitals in North Italy are at full work and respirators are constantly added. No one in need of respirator is left without. The very high death rate (6%+) is attributable to the fact that people with mild or no symptoms is rarely tested so we have a lot of positives, but in good state, missing from the stats. Half of country hospitals have little o no one infected people and is available to bring help to more hitten north. Who think that Italy is let people die unassisted is totally wrong. Italy is giving the full priority to save lives, even older ones, paying the price of destroying it's already not in good state economy.

<comment><USER8> A few days back, there was a Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything") thread with a UK doctor who mentioned a similar situation in Italy. Here's the thread:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fgfspi/im_a_cr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fgfspi/im_a_critical_care_doctor_working_in_a_uk_hcid/fk4cpf6/)

The doctor says:

> _Italy exceeded their critical care capacity days ago._

...

> _This is the first time I have seen guidelines in a first world country > suggest that older patients (who have survivable illness) are not considered > for intubation and ventilation in order to allow capacity to treat younger > patients._

It isn't clear that the situation got so bad that they _actually needed_ to make these kinds of hard choices, but the thread links to a document with guidelines _in case_ it's necessary. And apparently those guidelines do include considering age when choosing who not to treat, should such a situation arise.

From a machine translation (the original is Italian) posted further down in that same thread:

> _Recommendations_

> *3. It may be necessary to place an age limit on entry into TI. It is not a > question of making choices merely of value, but to reserve resources that > could be very scarce for those who are primarily more likely to survival and > secondarily to those who can have more years of life saved, with a view to > maximizing of benefits for most people.

<comment><USER7> In italy we are not to the point to have to choose which patient to save. Italy critical care capacity was 2500. Now increased, and we are fighting to increase it fasten than necesity (downing virus growing curve). Please see thi Lancet pubblication [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30627-9/fulltext)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For follow-up submissions like this, it's best to link from the main thread. I've done that here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22574271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22574271)

</comment><comment><USER10> We need to start making these immediately. Every day counts right now. Where's the army of amateur hardware hackers and 3d printer folks that can start cranking away on this?

<comment><USER11> I think even in the US, there's a ton of defense contractors, which could produce a dozen of these in <2 weeks, iff they got told so. I don't think it's a 3d-printer problem though ;).

<comment><USER12> Speaking from experience, large US defense contractors are incapable of producing a single sheet of paper with the proper signoffs to make a plan to schedule a meeting about the need for ventilators in under two weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please see the link and share among your networks. [http://bit.ly/frontiertech4COVIDaction](http://bit.ly/frontiertech4COVIDaction)

</comment><comment><USER13> plesae see link and pass among your networks. [http://bit.ly/frontiertech4COVIDaction](http://bit.ly/frontiertech4COVIDaction)

</comment><comment><USER14> Very nice, now if only they'd actually sell them...</comment>


Sales Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://www.securable.io/jobs <comment><USER2> Is this a job post or a page to submit job posts?

Anyway, you _must_ fix the text, you have the default text. Something like

> _Something Powerful_

> _Tell The Reader More_

> _The headline and subheader tells us what you 're offering, and the form > header closes the deal. Over here you can explain why your offer is so great > it's worth filling out a form for._

> _Remember:_

> _\- Bullets are great_

> _\- For spelling out benefits and_

> _\- Turning visitors into leads._</comment>


Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/monopoly-was-invented-to-demonstrate-the-evils-of-capitalism <comment><USER2> Reminds me of Czech game "Soudruhu, nezlob se!" (literally "Don't get angry, comrade", see [http://www.deskove-hry.eu/soudruhu-nezlob- se](http://www.deskove-hry.eu/soudruhu-nezlob-se)), which is a version of more popular children game [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch_%C3%A4rgere_dich_nicht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch_%C3%A4rgere_dich_nicht)

It was designed partly as a joke, but partly to demonstrate ridiculousness of communism. The goal of the game was to become a secretary general of the communist party and emigrate abroad.

<comment><USER3> >It was designed partly as a joke, but partly to demonstrate ridiculousness of communism. The goal of the game was to become a secretary general of the communist party and emigrate abroad.

I can't read the Czech link (do you know if there's a translated link or something in English?) but that seems more like from your one sentence description (and my reading of the wikipedia link) a game satirizing the ridiculousness of playing politics rather than communism?

<comment><USER4> Try this link: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deskove- hry.eu%2Fsoudruhu-nezlob-se)

If you go to Google Translate, type in a URL and click translate, you can translate any webpage. (Chrome has the feature built-in.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Capitalism benefits a few at the cost of many and it's designed too. Can any supporter articulate a scenario where capitalism enables prosperity for the majority without immediately resorting to bottom barrel comparisons to feudalism? The reality is we need to imagine a more evolved society without pandering to the greed and self interest of a few. This of course appears to be our eternal struggle.

The bigger problem with capitalism is it is designed to perpetuate entrenched interests and status quo. It origins from a time when few had capital or property, only the nobility did, convenient, and was obviously designed to perpetuate feudalism by proxy as they could direct economies and systems with their resources, and continue to.

A few examples of those who sacrifice their entire life to gain more capital offers eternal hope to the masses to hop on to the gravy train some already are on by birth, and those who sacrifice their life to accomplish this are obviously going to be overzealous supporters of 'the system', their entire identity and self worth riding on this achievement.

We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism. Human progress cannot depend on greed which is basically what capitalism boils down to, rewarding and perpetuating the base traits of humanity and leaving a soulless society unable to rise above basic greed in its wake.

<comment><USER6> > We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism

What, you mean this[0] isn't progress? /s

 _The surge in irregular jobs doesn't just create problems for the people working those jobs. It's also led companies to feel that they can treat their regular workers poorly, because those workers feel so lucky to have a job, Konno told me. Knowing that people in their 20s and 30s are desperate to get regular jobs, companies hire lots of young people and force them to work long hours for little to no overtime pay, assuming that most won't be able to survive the harsh conditions, Konno said. Japan has long had a culture of overwork—there's even a Japanese word, karoshi, for death by overwork—but Konno says that it has worsened since the Great Recession, as companies have realized that good jobs are hard to find in Japan, and so push their employees harder.

...

Though company employees left work at 7 p.m. on paper, Matsubara said he was required to work until late at night almost every day. Employees were required to sign off at 7 p.m., even if they were still working, and were given iPads so that they could do so even if they were out of the office at meetings. If they didn't sign off, they'd get a call on their cellphones brusquely asking them to sign off immediately but keep working, he said. "The amount of time you're actually working and the amount of time that is recorded you're working have absolutely no relation to each other,"_

[0] _The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having So Few Babies_ [https://goo.gl/zoHH6L](https://goo.gl/zoHH6L) (theatlantic.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Played this game a couple of weeks ago with my family (my wife, an 11 year- old, and a 14 year-old.)

We quickly remembered why we hadn't played it in a year: you must be greedy to win, hopes & dreams get dashed, and someone always ends up angry and/or in tears.

<comment><USER8> If a simple board game played with family leaves someone angry or in tears then that's a problem. Games like monopoly are actually great opportunities for children to learn self control and perspective.

<comment><USER9> I guess scrabble is a bad idea because it causes fights when someone doesn't understand the concept of proper nouns? Oh my gosh, conflict, let's just throw the game away to spare everyone's feelings.

<comment><USER10> If you get angry rather than use it as a chance to learn, sure. I'd avoid playing scrabble with that adult, among other games if this spread there too. Children get stopped for the day due to the outburst, but generally get more chances since they are learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Last time I played Monopoly it ended up two people who were too big to fail constantly running around the board passing money back and forth. A subtle jab by the universe at two party politics within capitalist societies?

</comment><comment><USER11> There was a thread about boardgames here on HN two days ago and someone commented that Monopoly wasn't just a bad game, but a game created with that purpose (so that being "bad" was an intended feature).

The comment sparked a lot of discussion and most people didn't know about that original goal of Monopoly.

Now this article appear on a major magazine. It's very suspicious. Unless this is a huge coincidence, these writers must think again about their intellectual honesty.

</comment><comment><USER12> From just reading the headline, one could assume this is bogus.

For anyone wondering: they are talking about the game 'Monopoly'.

<comment><USER13> You avoided a lot of comments replying only to the title. Thanks, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Monopoly is a board game in which you shuffle around finite resources.

Capitalism is the reason why there isn't a single copy of the board game Monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER15> > So next time someone invites you to join a game of Monopoly, here's a > thought. As you set out piles for the Chance and Community Chest cards, > establish a third pile for Land-Value Tax, to which every property owner > must contribute each time they charge rent to a fellow player. How high > should that land tax be? And how should the resulting tax receipts be > distributed? Such questions will no doubt lead to fiery debate around the > Monopoly board – but then that is exactly what Magie had always hoped for.

Could a computer program (e.g. genetic programming) come up with a fair set of rules?

<comment><USER16> The free parking rule that some people use and makes the game last for hours and hours is basically inflationary monetary policy by the central bank.

<comment><USER15> But does this rule make the game fair?

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure if it makes it fairer, but it makes the game different.

Theoretically, the game starts as fair. All start with the same money, on the same place on the board. But since you move by rolling dice, some folks get luckier than others, with more chances to buy things or gain income.... or simply avoiding landing on a built up property. The free parking money basically puts lottery money into action. Sometimes, free parking is funded by fees (jail fees, cards, etc) and some folks just take moeny from the bank and put it in the middle.

At times, it means the rich get richer. Sometimes, the poor pull themselves up. Many times, it just makes everyone richer at different times and it takes a lot longer to make folks go bankrupt. It does give a little chance of winning something with each go around the board, and I think this is why the rule is popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well it certainly is evil, taking several hours, provoking family arguments, the slow grinding down of anyone that didn't get ahead quickly at the start.

There are reasons I don't play it very often!

<comment><USER18> That's too kind an assessment. Monopoly sucks. It sucks as an educational tool and it sucks as a board game.

First, if it was meant to teach the evils of capitalism it has failed in many levels, as the article illustrates. Even if you were to play with the amended rules, it'd be moot; nobody cares about Georgist socialism anymore.

As a board game: there are literally _hundreds_ of games better than Monopoly. Even we restrict ourselves to so-called "family" games. If there's something you like about Monopoly, I can assure you can find a better game that has that something but it's better designed:

[https://boardgamegeek.com/familygames/browse/boardgame?sort=...](https://boardgamegeek.com/familygames/browse/boardgame?sort=rank&sortdir=asc)

Many will be simpler and shorter too. Of course, you might like or dislike a particular game in that set, but consider that Monopoly is ranked at 1583 in the family category. There's no excuse to play Monopoly unless one somehow has managed to stay unaware of the existence of all these other games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Monopoly as the basis for how Louis CK tells a joke, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufdvYrTeTuU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufdvYrTeTuU)

</comment><comment><USER20> The problem with monopoly is that it's zero-sum.

Capitalism is not zero-sum.

</comment><comment><USER21> Capitalism is the most productive system that humanity has produced because it leads to individual entrepreneurship. Exhibit one: Grumpy Cat is a millionaire.

</comment><comment><USER22> Are the original "prosperity rules" published anywhere? How much modification of a modern Monopoly board would it take to play?

</comment><comment><USER23> This is why my kids will only have PowerGrid, Ticket to Ride, and Settlers.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand why everyone hates capitalism now. Its like "what the cool kids do".

You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared elbow grease.

The "cool kids" seem to be bashing capitalism today. Thats not cool.

<comment><USER25> What's really cool is the majority of people having a pleasant and comfortable life and a bright future for their kids. Maximizing the prosperity of the majority is the purpose of a democratic society.

People are ragging on capitalism because they're looking over the pond to countries that see capitalism as a tool to serve democratic interests rather than as moral worldview, and they kind of like that idea. Interestingly, those countries aren't really less capitalistic (the Heritage Foundation puts the U.S. in the same bucket on their Economic Freedom index as Sweden and Germany), but their culture is less centered around glorifying the capitalist.

<comment><USER26> > People are ragging on capitalism because they're looking over the pond to > countries that see capitalism as a tool to serve democratic interests rather > than a moral worldview, and they kind of like that idea. Interestingly, > those countries aren't really less capitalistic (the Heritage Foundation > puts the U.S. in the same bucket on their Economic Freedom index as Sweden > and Germany), but their culture is less centered around glorifying the > capitalist.

I think you've made a great point here - but I've seen people explicitly saying they want communism. Look at how often /r/LateStageCapitalism, an explicitly communist subreddit is on the frontpage of reddit.

If people were just pushing for a few more socialized services, I think they've got a good argument to make there. There are good tweaks that can be made. But if they're pushing for a complete change to the system I think they're off their rockers.

<comment><USER27> Quite a lot of those people are "into" actual communism out of a mixture of ignorance and edginess. Revolutions sound great when you're naive. And it's not actually a great number of people as a proportion of the electorate!

The key is what happens to suggestions for "good tweaks". Do they get considered reasonably and implemented fairly? Or are people denounced for even seeking tweaks?

Flexible mixed-economy capitalism seems to be pretty stable. Capitalism that's blind to inequality produces an increasing long tail of disaffected victims with nothing to lose. Hence the rise of kick-over-the-table politics, epitomised by Trump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "[T]he record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system."

-Milton Friedman

<comment><USER28> A pretty quote, but—unless one defines "the free enterprise system" so that it encompasses democratic socialism, social democracy, other versions of the modern mixed economy rather than just classical capitalism as targeted by Monopoly (which, unlike Friedman's statement, predates the widespread emergence of the various forms of the modern mixed economy and the Communist- originated-but-eagerly-adopted-in-the-West conflation of it with "capitalism"), it is rather obviously false, and that was clear even at the time he said it, since the whole reason various forms of the modern mixed economy displaced classical capitalism _everywhere in the developed world_ is that they are generally superior on the point in question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> People being better off now than earlier times in history is a straw man argument. That would be true regardless of the system we were under.

That's a natural result of human intellectual progress and knowledge being passed down through generations.

So people now get to live a little longer, travel farther and faster, and absorb more banal entertainment than ever before. Who gives a fuck? None of that matters in this context.

The point you should focus on is _how much of a share in the overall wealth and prosperity of their nation does a person have today?_ How much power and personal freedom?

Is it growing or shrinking?

It's shrinking and has been for decades. It's the increasing consolidation of wealth and the power and influence that naturally comes with that is why people are raging against a system that they can see has become totally unrestrained and rigged against them from birth.

GDP is held up as the gold standard metric of measuring how well a nation is doing, but all it really tells you is how prosperous it ther 'country' is as on the macro level.

It doesn't tell you that most of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people that are becoming obscenely wealthy while the lowest classes in society are becoming objectively poorer and less empowered to act.

You rephrase the argument and a working class stiff what he wants more, a shinier, faster car and a higher-resolution TV , or a greater stake in the economy and the resulting benefits that naturally occur as part of that and he will tell you the latter every damn time.

The problem is thinking like yours, where the proles should be happy that they get to be more consumerist and materialistic than ever before while the ones filling the world with shit nobody needs steal away the actual benefits of our system and entrench themselves for generations.

<comment><USER26> > That's a natural result of human intellectual progress and knowledge being > passed down through generations.

We have direct evidence that that is incorrect and any high school student knows it. Many, many times have we failed to progress due to being in systems that don't allow for it.

> Is it growing or shrinking?

Why would that matter to me as an individual? So long as my overall wealth is increasing, I don't care. I don't need to be making more than my neighbor to be happy with my life. As long as I still get the goods, I'm quite happy with this deal.

This is just plain wrong in terms of a way to think about the economy or my life.

<comment><USER29> > We have direct evidence that that is incorrect

Post it.

> Why would that matter to me as an individual? So long as my overall wealth > is increasing

That's my point. It isn't, it just appears that way because you haven't looked past the shin y surface.

> This is just plain wrong in terms of a way to think about the economy or my > life.

Subjective.

There are a lot of ordinary people who would say your way of thinking is wrong. Some actually want a stake in society, not an extra handful of rice per generation while a few at the top get an extra plantation.

<comment><USER26> Sure, look at the feudal system, look at most communism implementations, look at China before their recent uptake of capitalist concepts.

Progress almost entirely stops in these places under these systems. Clearly, at some level there is a system effect.

<comment><USER29> Firstly, I'm not a communist.

It's a beautiful idea that can never work in practice because it depends on humans being a purely virtuous ideal of themselves, which they never will be. You'll always end up with some arsehole at the top trying to create a dynasty for himself.

Personally I'd prefer a more utopian vision of human society like the one in Star Trek. No money, just personal, spritual and intellectual pursuit. It won't happen though, people are too self-serving.

Anyway, progress did not grind to a halt under feudalism. There were lots of inventions and discoveries being made during the middle ages, the rate was just slower than today and while part of that was due to the inferior social system with limited personal freedoms it was also due to the far smaller human populations and resulting productive power, as well as the prevalence of religion and it's aggressively anti-science stance (the dark ages were one example of progress slowing down to nearly a halt).

I mean look,

[http://www.lordsandladies.org/inventions-in-the-middle- ages....](http://www.lordsandladies.org/inventions-in-the-middle-ages.htm)

First result on Google. Arguable some of the most important inventions in history, because they enabled all the discoveries that came after.

<comment><USER26> You're right, I had incorrectly said halted earlier, but attempted to correct for that, not quite enough perhaps. In terms of progress per-capita, how does it really compare though? To my knowledge at least, it was still very low for a long time. I could be wrong about that though.

I hear the "stand on the shoulders of giants" argument and everything though - but I think there's definitely at least some effect from the system that should be acknowledged.

<comment><USER29> > but I think there's definitely at least some effect from the system that > should be acknowledged.

Oh I agree. I just don't think it is the sole reason for us being where we are.

The thing with technological progress (and by extension economic progress) is that it snowballs and grows exponentially.

If you took an early middle-age society and taught it the concepts of capitalism and they managed a seismic shift in their society to accommodate it, it would still take an incredibly long time for them to advance.

They might do it a bit quicker because people would be more free to spend and invest in what they wanted, and money would flow more freely, but they would still be limited by population and production power.

Population snowballs too, as does the sharing of knowledge that occurs alongside it and has probably been the number one driver of human progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thank you, eugh, it's incredibly annoying, like people miss a hundred year history lesson and want to repeat the mistakes of the past here.

Even the bottom 20% that everyone is so concerned about in the western world are better off than any time in history - heck, I have no qualms saying I'd rather be bottom 20% today than top 1% just 200 years ago. That is the level of productivity we've had, and primarily thanks to our economic system.

Could it use some tweaks? Sure, if you want to advocate free healthcare or college, go for it, but the main concepts are still quite good.

<comment><USER30> Better is not necessarily good enough. Why would people not want a system which furthers their quality of life even more? It's not at all convincing to suggest that you shouldn't complain since things have improved _somewhat_ under capitalism.

<comment><USER26> Things have improved _immensely_ , more than any other time in history under capitalism. And we've watched other systems crash and burn. We don't need to experience it for ourselves, thanks.

<comment><USER30> We've also witnessed capitalist systems fail drastically, and other systems succeed impressively.

There is little historical comparison for what you quote as capitalism's success - nobody performed a double-blind trial to see if the industrial revolution and colonialism improved quality of life in non-capitalist systems.

<comment><USER26> > We've also witnessed capitalist systems fail drastically, and other systems > succeed impressively.

Please, show me one country not rooted in capitalism which has "succeeded impressively" in recent decades.

<comment><USER30> Cuba. Despite a continuing embargo from one of the largest economies on the planet, and the collapse of its greatest allies over two decades ago, socialism in Cuba has eradicated homelessness and illiteracy, produced one of the best internationally-recognised healthcare systems on the planet.

If we lift the restrictions of "a few decades", you'd find that the USSR transformed a feudalist, barely-electrified nation into America's greatest opponent on the world stage, with a stake in the space race, in less than half a century.

<comment><USER26> Cuba is comparatively an incredibly poor nation that has missed many advancements of modern society in recent decades. Wages are dirt low, access to the internet is low, and from what I gather, access to modern anything in general is challenging. There are no great advancements coming out of Cuba. I don't consider that a success, I consider that a failure. I don't want to stop progressing or move backwards into a deep maintenance mode as Cuba has.

And that's just the economic side of things.

<comment><USER30> Are great advancements the measurement of good? Is progress for the sake of progress so great? To me, it's a question of the proverbial slaves building the pyramids: it's easy to insist that society should work for the improvement of technology if your quality of life is already secured by the people below you on the ladder.

You may not want to stop progressing, but ask Americans without healthcare coverage whether they would prefer government money going to research or to providing for their needs, and many of them will disagree with you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Much Of Life Are You Actually Living? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pluginid.com/how-much-are-you-living/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I agree.

Consider a metaphor.

Transfer your weight onto one foot while leaning forward, in order that your center of gravity is temporarily over-extended, while simultaneously putting your free foot out to 'catch' yourself from falling. Now rinse and repeat. Thus: walking.

If you want to walk faster, lean further forward. It's like watching a Segway, but with articulation.

All willful locomotion -- whether bipedal or otherwise -- depends on initiating a controlled disequilibrium which ultimately results in a prefered new equlibrium.

So it is with looking forward to things in life. Planning for the future. Saving for a rainy day. Working hard today for a better tomorrow.

The ability to conceptualize the _consequences_ of a temporarily destabilizing disequilibrium is what makes man master of the world.

So 'living in the future', far from being a modern malaise, is precisely what enables progress, advancement and civilisation. That doesn't mean that the disequilibrium is always comfortable while it's happening. Indeed, our atavistic selves usually counsel rest in the absence of an urgent limbic call to action -- when we're not starving or physically threatened, say.

But meanwhile, the higher brain recognises that the competion for scarce resources in a hostile world is relentless. And that means running to keep up -- however uncomfortable that might sometimes feel.

Indeed, deferred gratification (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_gratification>) is analysed as an indicator for intelligence and emotional maturity.

And as for the dishes, whatever he may claim, Thich Nhat Hanh's superordinate goal when he washes the dishes is to have clean dishes. If he can enter a state of flow (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)>) while doing so -- whether because he has phenomenal mental self-control, or an unusually quiet life -- then so be it. But most people can't, and would find their "cognitive surplus" (the brain parts left unused while dishes are being done) better invested in preparatory mental activity, or contructively anticipating the future.

And if he got the dishes done quickly rather than dawdling and daydreaming, he'd be back at the table to enjoy more time with his dinner guests, in whose gratitude he will find favour, and through whose company he will obtain the familiar state of flow which most humans achieve through routine social interaction.

</comment><comment><USER3> I notice a huge difference in how much "stuff" happens in my life when I'm traveling vs. when I have a job.

Home life is measured in weeks and months, and when you ask somebody what's new, they'll say "not much" and maybe tell you what they did last weekend. Or the weekend before that.

Road life is measured in hours. I'll find myself telling somebody a story of this amazing thing that happened earlier on my trip, possibly in another country, and suddenly realize that it was only 3 days ago. A month of travelling compresses so much life into such a short span that it's really strange checking in with friends back in the world that can account for that same month with a single sentence.

There are times when life in the 'states can approximate that (the first weeks of a new startup for instance), but it's so easy to drop back into steady state where life is measured in calendar time.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't agree with this more, what is life really about at the end of the day? Exploring the world, adventures and meeting people from all cultures and corners of the earth would be my best answer.

Unfortunately we're somewhat trapped in by the slave driver that is money, when you eventually return from travels to settle down, you need to adhere to normal society.

Hopefully the startup will fix that, otherwise I'll just have to do it on the cheap and worry about money later ;)

<comment><USER3> Remember this:

Ramen Profitable == Beach Profitable

If your service can bring in $500/month, you can pretty much coast indefinitely in a place like Thailand, assuming you completely shut down your life back home. $1000 profit/month will get you to the point where you can travel from place to place. Double that again and you'll actually build your savings while dirtbagging around the world.

<comment><USER4> I am practically there already but I have a few things to sort out at home first, so may have to go an extra mile.

My ultimate goal would be to buy a cheapish yacht (they're cheaper than most people think) and sail around the world, like this guy: www.bigoceans.com - once you've got the yacht its not that expensive, I think that would be the ultimate freedom for me, and you can visit places that the average tourist can't get to!

Saying that, any kind of travel is good. I see you live by your word!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As with most things in life, too much of anything is generally a bad thing. If one constantly lives in the moment, forsaking entirely the idea of a future and its implications, then the chances of amounting to anything in life are greatly reduced, since the ability to look forward and hope for a better reality are tightly entwined with the concept of planning. How can one develop both personally and professionally without looking ahead? On the other hand, if one concentrates exclusively on the future, neglecting the minutiae of everyday life, one will, invariably, miss life altogether. I think it's just a matter of perspective. _Balance is key._

<comment><USER6> Planning for the future is an aspect of the present moment.

Kind of like children. They are our future but they exist now, in the present moment.

<comment><USER7> Can one _actually_ "imagine the future" in the mindful way the article suggests? Or is that a contradiction in terms? One resolution:

One can imagine an abstract model of a concrete physical object (e.g. a lever; a geometry; a count of objects) and then ignore the concrete reality, and become so fully immersed in the abstraction that one loses track of time. I suggest that this is a form of mindfulness. Thinking about an abstraction is not _necessarily_ mindful: it can be done in a non-mindful way by being constantly distracted by other concrete objects or other abstract models. Mindfulness is _flow_.

The "future" is a abstract model, and so the above also applies to it.

For human beings, these imagined interior worlds - be they abstractions of objects or of the future - as just as much a reality as the physical world. I suggest that we naturally and instinctively apprehend them in the same way, and both can be done in mindfulness - or not.

<comment><USER8> Mindfulness isn't really flow, as it basically means paying attention to what's going on in the current moment - a more general awareness of what's going on with your thinking, body, and surroundings.

To concentrate on an abstract object is basically the opposite of mindfulness, as you're ignoring your current experience.

<comment><USER7> Your view is precisely what I was countering. My point was that they can considered to be the same thing, by the abstract object becoming your "current experience". That it's not just playing with words, but that humans use the same circuitry to experience both (similar to how we experience tools as extensions to our bodies; and that dreams can be perceived as real).

However, I'm just restating my comment. I'm happy to agree to disagree with you. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "doing the dishes to do the dishes" sounds all well and good, but it's predicated on the idea that all activities are equally worth doing, because they're all living. Which is ridiculous. Consider "sitting there while the monk does the dishes to sit there while the monk does the dishes", or "be horribly tortured to be horribly tortured".

Not all activities are of equal value, and it's natural to want to maximize the high payoffs (time with family, solving good problems, sex, etc) and minimize the low (dishes).

</comment><comment><USER10> One size fits all life philosophy is a little annoying. "If you examine your own life, you'll see what I'm saying is true _for you_ , whoever you are!" Even if it's true for many people, it's not true of all people, and the author makes no effort to distinguish.

edit: deleted example paragraph

<comment><USER11> I don't think you understood the post. The point isn't that people look forward to holidays, weekends, or whatever particular things were mentioned. The point is that people are too often living looking forward to _something_.

<comment><USER10> That is a "one size fits all" claim which isn't true of all people, and he doesn't talk about when it is and isn't true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not what I expected, but it was nice.

<comment><USER13> I mean, I guess this article is true to some degree.

But, really, if by 'doing the dishes to do the dishes', doing the dishes takes me twice as long, I don't want to do it that way. I'd much prefer to rush through it in half the time, to spend the other part of the time 'really living,' doing something I truly do enjoy or want to do.

<comment><USER14> Heh, you're missing the point. There is no difference between "the dishes" and "really living". To suggest otherwise would be to suggest you don't control everything the dishes are and aren't. Which would be silly.

<comment><USER15> I guess I'm missing the point too then.

The article seemed to be pointing out that it's up to you whether you decide to make doing the dishes an enjoyable activity or a chore. The point rottencupcakes seems to be making is that this might be true, but if doing the dishes in an enjoyable way makes them take longer, then he'd rather just not bother and get them done faster while not enjoying it.

This makes some sense to me. Sure, I could find a way to make every activity pleasant - there's always some way in which you can find satisfaction in any task, no matter how menial. And yet I _still_ prefer to spend time figuring out how to just avoid or minimize those activities when I can.

<comment><USER16> It's not really about making the activity of doing the dishes pleasant but rather experiencing the act of doing the dishes fully - being mindful of every moment of the experience of doing the dishes both pleasant and unpleasant. It doesn't have to take longer either - you can rush through them and experience that as well it just may be harder to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The irony is he tries to make a Zen point by saying "people are doing X too often" or "people are doing X wrong" which is entirely impossible, of course, because people can't do anything "too often" or "wrong".

They're already doing precisely what they want at the exact interval they choose! Zen isn't teaching anything better than what we have; it isn't an improvement. Technically speaking, Zen isn't teaching anything, period. But that's the point.

Articles like these are good indicators that a person is starting to "get" Zen, a little bit. And that's great. Good luck Glen, and congratulations on choosing to live more in the moment. And congratulations in advance for whatever reality you choose to create next :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds a bit like what I was told this guy wrote about: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0525948023>

Haven't read it or anything like it yet. Nevertheless, the idea that one might be caught up in planning and looking forward and forgetting the joy of the moment about that doesn't sound too far fetched to me...

</comment><comment><USER18> It was a nice read!!! I am having the problem of not leaving into now. While working i always thinking about other fun stuff and while fun activity i always thinking about my tasks. Does others also having the same issue, and any technique to improve this.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can say that when I'm writing code, I'm writing code. Reading HN, checking email, etc., don't have the same feeling.

<comment><USER19> I think you may be confusing what the author is saying with "flow."

<comment><USER20> Or, maybe flow is just one of the few times we already do what the author is talking about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> thanks for the post. reminds me of a time I was totally relaxed, did what I had to, and liked what I did. It is a great feeling to focus just on single things.

What helps are repeating rituals. Like brushing teeth right before going to bed. Therefore one is able to switch different tasks more easily and separated.

</comment><comment><USER22> Do you live to work, or do you work to live?</comment>


CDN Benchmarks: CloudFlare vs. CloudFront - <AUTHOR> http://goldfirestudios.com/blog/135/CDN-Benchmarks%3A-CloudFlare-vs-CloudFront

<comment><USER2> In my opinion this is comparing apples to oranges.

CloudFlare emphasizes the security side (anti-DDoS, WAF) while CloudFront goes for the pure CDN side of things. I would compare CloudFlare to e.g. InCapsula and CloudFront to Rackspace Cloud Files / Akamai.</comment>


What kind of job market will laid off Qualcomm employees find in San Diego? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/aug/17/Qualcomm-broadcom-nokia-layoffs-foreign-workers/ <comment><USER2> The engineering job market is terrible in San Diego. It will probably get much worse once the Qualcomm layoffs hit. I suspect that it could be bad for a few years more.

Most companies will not consider anyone unless they have a Master's Degree, or have some very specialized niche skill.

I've been unemployed EE since November 2014, am 54, and look for work every week. I send out resumes but get no response. I've rewritten my resume a few times, and had a pro look it over.

I really don't want to retire this early, but could do so if push came to shove.</comment>


The Web Is Rewarding Greed - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/03/web-rewarding-greed/

<comment><USER2> Life is rewarding greed... What's new?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the second shitty TC article I've seen here today. The author begins with a point then starts rambling off a list of "evil" things and the companies who did them.

There's maybe a couple of lines toward the end that relate to the title. Overall it was just a bitch-piece complaining about mean things that doo-doo head companies have done.

Cry me a river. This is old news. Cover something that hasn't been covered a trillion times before especially by your own publication.</comment>


NASA officials 'baffled' after space cameras catch UFO following ISS - <AUTHOR> https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1245959/NASA-official-space-cameras-UFO-ISS-alien-latest-news <comment><USER2> It's probably the Cygnus NG-12 (commercial resupply) which was unberthed from the ISS on January 31st but is still in orbit close to the ISS until March 2nd when it will reenter the atmosphere. See [https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/01/nasa-fcc-approve- cyg...](https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/01/nasa-fcc-approve-cygnus- ng-12-extension/)

The Express got the video from Scott Waring's Youtube channel ET Data Base. There are a few informative comments in the noise there, and they point to Cygnus 11 instead of Cygnus 12 but I don't think that's right: AFAICS Cygnus 11 re-entered in december.

<comment><USER3> that is a pretty good explanation, especially since nasa having all necessary data could actually confirm it. I don't understand why it looks like its shooting "up" at the end of the video but it would explain why the cameras were tracking it.

edit: it isn't going up, with better footage its obviously just heating up from reentry

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We should replace the clickbait title. At no point did NASA say they were baffled but instead that was purely some ufo-enthusiast's interpretation of why they might have zoomed in.

</comment><comment><USER5> Stress on the U. Given the extreme unlikeliness of alien visitation, either it's a classified vehicle or a hoax intended to drum up public interest in space exploration and more funding for it.

BTW, is there an international equivalent of "air" traffic control for LEO or for space around ISS?

<comment><USER6> Yes, NORAD keeps track of every object above a certain size in orbit. Their data is essential to keeping spacecraft from hitting each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Keep in mind that "following ISS" just means "in orbit near it". Given how many satellites are out there these days (and how easy it's become to put one up), plus recent efforts like the "space force", it's not at all shocking to see a satellite that's "unidentified" to civilians.

</comment><comment><USER8> Orbital speed is defined by sqrt(G*M/r). If this 'following' the ISS and at a lower altitude, it will slowly travel away from it because by definition its orbital speed is slower. Let's assume it's the Cygnus as pointed out by another comment, and explain out a possible scenario.

If the two are roughly in line vertically with one another, then a viewer on the ISS will be looking down at it and will see the clouds and Earth below it. However, as the object travels away from the ISS due to differing orbital speeds, it will appear to move 'up' relative to the Earth. Tracing a ray path between the two objects, it will go from being a line from the ISS, through the object and into the earth, to a line that at its extreme will be from the ISS, through the object, and then over the horizon of the atmosphere. Draw this system on some paper and you'll see what I mean.

From a fixed vantage point on the ISS, that will make the object look like it 'travels up' when in reality it is just traveling away from the ISS due to a slower orbital speed. If the camera remains facing downwards, it will naturally track out of the top of the camera frame. Project that onto the uniform blackness of space and you'll have no visual reference point to see it travel back down as it disappears away from view.

The green burst could also be explained by a retro-firing of the capsule to slow it down to re-enter orbit (or shift its orbit closer to earth, as is what happens if you slow down). This would appear as if it is firing 'down' in the camera view, when in reality it's firing tangentially to its orbital position, which as a vector would pass underneath the ISS. Alternatively, it could just be visual artifacting from either compression, light reflection or any other number of explanations.

</comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps it was the Air Force's X-37B ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37) )or something from the Black Star Program ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstar_(spacecraft)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstar_\(spacecraft\)) .

A possible stretch, Black Knight Satellite ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_satellite_conspir...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_satellite_conspiracy_theory) )

</comment><comment><USER3> This thing shares some similarities with the navy tic tac ufo. The main interesting thing is that it seems to change orbit by going up?

I agree the source is terrible and we should get some original footage. Also Orbital mechanics are weird for the uninitiated. It might look like it goes up but that must not necessarily be true. It might look like its changing orbit but that must also not necessarily be true.

X37B might also be a good guess since that should roughly be able to reach that orbit and move in orbit. It's hard to tell the shape and color from those videos and the end looks zoomed in. Does anyone know of the unaltered original footage?

<comment><USER2> Original footage: [http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/125816356](http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/125816356)

I haven't checked it completely but the video at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmbBJS89J_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmbBJS89J_0) seems to be an unaltered extract from it (if you can stand all the UFO and conspiracy stuff in that Youtube channel).

<comment><USER3> thank you that is much more useful. There are parts of it where it very much looks like the cygnus ng-12 especially against cloud cover. I don't think its moving upwards at all, its just moving away and slowly reentering while the camera changes.

Sadly, this seems to be utterly ordinary (well as ordinary as a space station streaming live video of a resupply to earth can be) but showing nothing beyond known engineering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks like it's clearly in orbit for 99% of the video. Then at the end it... appears... to "shoot upwards with a jet of green light." Is it really shooting upwards, or could that be an illusion from when an orbiting object crosses the horizon?

<comment><USER11> Or a video glitch? Those green trails remind me of x265 glitches when streaming on an extremely low bandwidth network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Baffled is such a UK tabloid term. Tabloids have always optimised their headlines for attention, as all newspapers. Clickbait from another time.

</comment><comment><USER13> express.co.uk is a very low quality source of information we should aspire to seek better sources for HN.

<comment><USER14> On HN, we go by article quality, not site quality. Most major media sites are penalized on HN, but even the bad ones also produce the occasionally interesting article.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%20%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

<comment><USER15> Maybe site quality should be a factor - I tried to watch the video and waited roughly a minute before it failed to load. I thought it was an adblocker thing, so disabled it.

On page reload, it was adpocalypse, two pop-under windows, one video playing on the side, and the video still struggling to load with my macbook fans kicking in. The entire site was essentially a giant ad that I never got to see the video and re-enabled adblock.

I'm unsure how sites like this are allowed to exist, or how people even tolerate it.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately sometimes a good article comes along in a frustrating package. If the article is good enough, it's still better for HN to discuss it. I don't know if that's the case with this one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>