12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income - <AUTHOR> http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/12-year-study-looks-at-effects-of-universal-basic-income/ <comment><USER4> I'm glad this study is happening and I'm excited to see the outcome, but I feel like I ought to caution people who are expecting this to add this to their arsenal of pro- or anti- UBI arguments in western countries against comparing apples and oranges. My personal prediction is this study will show substantial gains in economic outcomes, health, social standing, etc for all groups that receive money. I'm guessing UBI proponents will leap on the opportunity to advocate for similar programs in western countries. If my prediction is wrong, I'm guessing opposite will happen.

I caution that either conclusion would be unjustified because this is not a UBI experiment, this is a _charity and aid distribution_ experiment. The question at hand here isn't "is UBI a wonderful thing" but rather "how do UBI- like distribution methods compare to others?" If you want proof consider that Tavneet Suri's isn't a UBI economist focusing on western countries, "her expertise is as a development economist, specialized in Sub-Saharan Africa" [1]

I object to labeling this as a UBI experiment. "Universal Basic Income" is used to describe various proposals to address inequality and unemployment in developed countries where economic gains and jobs are being automated away from the masses of low-skilled workers and up to the elite of high-skilled workers. This is far from the sub-Saharan African context where the economy is still developing and leaders are mulling how best to sustainably extract countries from extreme poverty.

[1] [http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty- directo...](http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty- directory/detail/?id=41285)

<comment><USER5> As someone who is friends who two different social workers and related to someone in family court diversions (think: parents getting their kids taken away and want them back) I can tell you that UBI isn't going to solve much of anything. These people have money to buy alcohol and cigarettes, and yet their kids go hungry and rely on school lunch programs, etc.

Also, I had a brother in law who was a raging alcoholic and stole money from his grade-school kids' piggy banks. He always had money for beer. Asshole. He did the world a favor and hung himself.

For all of them, their personal issues overwhelm their ability to be functional adults. They don't clean their houses, they don't mind their kids, they are addicted to various substances and lie about treatment, recovery, and lie about anything anytime it suits their needs in the moment. It's all lie, lie, lie.

There is nothing a UBI or anything else is going to accomplish for these people and it is a myth to believe that payments without oversight or qualifications will lead to positive outcomes. One would think the US's 50 year experiment with welfare would already provide more than enough data to prove that if you subsidize a behavior you get more of it.

Let people face death, then see how they act. Take their kids away, first, though. It's not the kids' fault their parents are deadbeats.

<comment><USER6> > These people have money to buy alcohol and cigarettes, and yet their kids go > hungry and rely on school lunch programs, etc.

Ah yes, let's blame people for their dependence on mind alterning chemicals that if abused build negative feedback loops. While at the same time, those chemicals are touted and lauded in mainstream culture. From rap's "popping bottles" to country's "whiskey makes my girl a little bit frisky".

> For all of them, their personal issues overwhelm their ability to be > functional adults.

Doesn't this happen to EVERYONE at some point, temporarily? Where something overwhelms our ability to function. Can you imagine a structure where repeated incidents lead to patterns, and the societal structures we build are not helping to correct those patterns for individuals. Yes, some people will just always make bad choices, but also, some people have never had an opportunity to actually flourish and understand how their choices are not helping. Or even, maybe they are addicted to mind altering chemicals that have literally changed the way they think.

> Let people face death, then see how they act.

If we are sharing anecdotes, my partner works as a therapist with teens with substance abuse problems in the Bronx. I'll never forget the day she called me crying, because one of her 17 year old patients was scared he was going to be attacked leaving the office because he didn't want to join a gang.

He was held up at gun point, had is phone stolen, and his life threatened. You better believe he wants to escape.

Sure, his personal issues are overwhelming his ability to function, but we have to acknowledge that society is not trying to really help him in a serious way because therapy helps, but also economic opportunity as well.

I am an extremely selfish person, and have had great success due to opportunities granted to me through privilege and access. It took a long hard look at myself, to look at someone else, even in the face of addiction, abusive behaviors and acknowledge their personhood and their struggle and say, you are a not able to function, but you are human, and we should try and help.

<comment><USER7> Helping requires some uncomfortable truths to be socially accepted. "It's all lie, lie, lie." the GP said, and he's right -- addicts in the throes of addiction lie. We have to be OK saying, this person is an addict and not really in their right mind. If we treat addiction as a mental illness, then we treat the illness and the lies start to melt away.

Some people think addiction is a moral failing; others think it is an illness. I land on the illness side. Treatment works. We can help people, but it requires throwing away the blind judgement.

<comment><USER8> > Some people think addiction is a moral failing

That is, at least in my experience, what leads to comments like these: "He did the world a favor and hung himself."

What an incredibly harsh thing to say, especially for a situation that is rarely as clear-cut as "person A is bad therefore they should die."

The uncomfortable truths you mention are like bubbles rising to the top. As a society, we're starting to think about things like alcoholism, drug addiction, childhood abuse, etc. and that will hopefully lead to having fewer of these clear-cut moral judgements. I think UBI will also help, because a lot of these mental traps (bad situation -> abuse -> drugs -> bad situation -> abuse etc.) are magnified by poverty.

What's funny is that some of the pushback against UBI (and welfare) is that same moral judgement. "We shouldn't have UBI because some people will spend it on drugs and alcohol."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any UBI study that doesn't include everyone in a society is not studying "universal" basic income at all. It's just giving some people money. It would be very surprising if this didn't yield positive outcomes for that group.

The big question marks surrounding UBI involve its implementation at a society-wide level. (What are the macroeconomic effects? What if people blow their UBI on dumb things and still end up starving?) Anything short of UNIVERSAL experimentation will not address these.

<comment><USER10> I see this argument brought up, a lot, but the problem with it is that it is unfalseifiable.

If UBI is so great, then similar "almost UBI" proposals should ALSO show good results.

I sincerely doubt that there is a magic line between "similar but not UBI" programs and "UBI" programs where the good stuff immediately appears.

If UBI is impossible to test, then we shouldn't do it.

It would be insanely risky to spend trillions of dollars on something that its proponents claim can't be tested. So we should just not implement it in the first place.

<comment><USER11> > I sincerely doubt that there is a magic line between "similar but not UBI" > programs and "UBI" programs where the good stuff immediately appears.

Maybe, maybe not. But it's pretty clear that an economy or society fits the definition of a complex adaptive system, and it's pretty common knowledge in that field that it's possible for there to be phase change transitions, where effects come suddenly and all at once at a specific level of participation of the independent actors.

Analogies include things like herd immunity, or sensitive dependence on initial conditions in weather forecasting.

<comment><USER10> I don't know much about weather but something like herd immunity is definitely testable.

Firstly, even a smallish percentage of immunity would still see population wide benefits.

Secondly, as diseases are transmitted to people physically nearby, this could be tested by immunizing a large percentage of a single population, such as a small town full of people who don't travel much.

If you are truly concerned about the population wide effects of UBI, then you could do something similar, like fund a small poor town, and give EVERYONE in that small town UBI.

Unfortunately, I expect that of such a test were attempted, you'd see the same exact criticism of it, though. It'd probably be something like "you can't see the benefits unless the entire WORLD is on UBI!!!" or some other further doubling down on the unprovability of it all.

My point being, that this scepticism of actually testing the damn thing seems more like a defense mechanism against the possibility of being wrong. It is just the same lazy approach that everyone has for their pet theories, as a way of deflecting any and all criticism by declaring it unfalsefiable

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If anyone has doubts about UBI, consider the great A/B (or rather B/W?) experiment the government ran as part of the New Deal. One group was provided subsidies for housing (analogous to UBI) and another was not - decades later, the initial modest help compounded to leave one group much more prosperous than the other. I'm willing to bet on the outcome of this study.

[https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten- history...](https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of- how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america)

"African-American families that were prohibited from buying homes in the suburbs in the 1940s and '50s and even into the '60s, by the Federal Housing Administration, gained none of the equity appreciation that whites gained. So ... the Daly City development south of San Francisco or Levittown or any of the others in between across the country, those homes in the late 1940s and 1950s sold for about twice national median income. They were affordable to working-class families with an FHA or VA mortgage. African-Americans were equally able to afford those homes as whites but were prohibited from buying them. Today those homes sell for $300,000 [or] $400,000 at the minimum, six, eight times national median income. ..."

<comment><USER13> What you describe in not UBI, it's discrimination. I think it's pretty clear that if you exclude certain group from preferable markets, and sideline them to be able to buy only second-rate and third-rate goods, then you'll find plenty of examples where they end up at a huge disadvantage. It's not a test of UBI, it's a test of whether restricting access to a market can hurt a group against which it is used. I think we can all agree that the answer to this question is a definite "yes" \- but it has no connection with UBI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if I'm understanding this correctly - maybe I'm missing something significant here, but it says they're giving people 75 cents per day per person? How is ~273 buck a year going to provide any kind of valid measurement? Even at poverty levels of income, you're not talking about an amount of money that reasonably effects anyone's social mobility. I'm having a hard time understanding how this providing even an academically interesting insight into the effects of UBI. Am I missing something big here?

<comment><USER15> From my understand this is going to the poorest of the poor in Kenya, because the median Kenyaian monthly salary is ~800 USD.[1][2] So this UBI experiment does not seem to be for the average population, more as a form of welfare. Still interesting and meaningful research, but not the long term UBI experiment many are waiting for.

[1] [http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary- survey.php?loc=111&loct...](http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary- survey.php?loc=111&loctype=1)

[2] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=80%2C000+KES+in+usd&t=osx&ia=curre...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=80%2C000+KES+in+usd&t=osx&ia=currency)

Edit: Source [1] seems to be unreliable. See below comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17013632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17013632). So while the number is wrong, it does seem that this UBI is still targeting the poor.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, somehow I missed that, this makes much more sense but then raises some fundamental questions regarding the potential pigeon holing of UBI as a tool whose efficacy is primarily shaped by the state of the economy in which it is deployed (ie this study is highly dependent on the underlying economy being that of a severely under developed nation state).

<comment><USER16> Maybe I'm being slightly too cynical, but that's pretty much inevitable. A great deal more "scientific knowledge" than you'd probably be entirely comfortable with knowing involves taking a point sample of some space and applying it way, way away from where the sample was actually taken. If this study succeeds, then you can expect the HN commentariat to be citing how BI has been scientifically proved to be a good idea until the end of time, and if this study fails, the opposite.

Even better, there's really two types of BI going on here. One is as a mechanism for poverty alleviation, by getting capital to people who have none. Not just "not much", but _none_. The other is as a solution to the as-yet mostly future problem of the work force being automated out of existence in every industry that people below a certain IQ threshold can work productively in. Expect those to be conflated freely, even though in my opinion they're two different problems. (If you squint really hard, yes, they blur together, but don't ignore the fact that you're squinting.)

<comment><USER17> As one of the likely cheerleaders, without the tax credit, it's not UBI. (In my humble opinion) This is pure charity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As with most economic questions, science is very difficult and limited in what it can tell us.

That's because economics is a social science, and you never know exactly how people are going to react. A study of one culture might not apply to another, and a study in one timeframe might not apply to another.

So we will probably see a lot of "hmmm... that's interesting" kinds of things that might not be repeatable. And lots of good and bad effects may be unmeasured or unmeasurable.

<comment><USER19> Your claim is also largely true for drug trials. There is also huge variability due to genetics, cultural placebo response, variations in diet among cultures, cultural or individual symptom expression, and so on. Every science faces an enormous amount of confounding variables.

Doesn't mean we should stop doing drug trials, or economic trials in this case. Well designed experiments can be informative, even though care must be taken to generalize them.

<comment><USER20> >Your claim is also largely true for drug trials. There is also huge variability due to genetics, cultural placebo response, variations in diet among cultures, cultural or individual symptom expression, and so on.

I work in pharma (biologicals) - though not as a scientist - and you're overstating the differences. The genetic variance of humans is within a very narrow band. The superficial differences are not relevant to the vast majority of pharmaceutical products. In any case, how our human biology reacts to pharmaceutical substances is VASTLY different from humans' economic and social interactions. You know to a very high degree of certainty how an antigen will produce an immune response much much more than how pricing your headphones at 50 dollars will get you more customers, or raising wages by 10% will give you a 20% increase in productivity.

>Every science faces an enormous amount of confounding variables.

I don't think (macro)economics/human psychology are sciences. Aside from my own opinion, it is certainly debatable - Unlike biology and physics which are firmly in the science camp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

The concepts of social welfare really make me want to visit the Scandinavian nations to see how they get it right and how it is compatible with their their social culture.

As an American I really don't see social welfare working the US without dramatic shifts in the social culture.

I also see taxation as a huge factor. The US needs to eliminate income tax in favor of other tax programs. The state of Texas has high property taxes but no state income tax and the results to the state economy are fantastic. Wealthy people can deduct all manners of things from income taxes, but there are exceedingly few deductions from property taxes. It naturally punishes the wealthy more, such as the goals of a graduated income tax, since it is a percentage set by the local city against the value of the property. People who do not own property do not pay property taxes, so less wealthy people are naturally excused from such taxation.

Property prices in Texas are generally low compared to much of the rest of the country, which means more people are capable of owning property and thus contributing to property taxes. For example the value of my house in Texas is the equivalent of the minimum down payment for a similarly sized house in California, which I could never afford.

With a universal basic income more people would be capable of owning property, thus having a higher standard of living, and also thus further contributing to property taxes.

<comment><USER22> > _People who do not own property do not pay property taxes, so less wealthy > people are naturally excused from such taxation._

The less wealthy have those property taxes rolled into their monthly rent, so I fail to see how you can make that claim.

<comment><USER23> It should be evident that if the alternative is paying rent AND income taxes, then the less wealthy are relatively better off in the case of no income taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> IMHO, they should compare their results with Kiva. Kiva provides zero-interest loans, so donations are not wasted, but used to create sustainable economic society.

Give fishing rod, not a fish.

[https://www.kiva.org/](https://www.kiva.org/)

<comment><USER24> Can anybody explain that downvote? 8-[ ]

<comment><USER25> Not a downvoter but the post feels off topic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whatever you think of UBI, you won't be able to point at the results of this study and make any compelling argument that UBI works or doesn't work.

For UBI to be tested effectively it would, at a minimum, need be implemented at a national level and include everyone in that nation.

For one, that is the only way to see the macro economic effects. Second, in this study the money falls from the sky. No one is being taxed to pay for the UBI nor is the currency being debased.

In any case, if it works, people like me will point to these flaws. If it doesn't work, the pro-UBI camp will have their set of flaws to argue.

Finally, this study seems to suggest that 'success' is determined by what percent of people on UBI work. Instead they should be measuring people's standard of living improvement, if they work or not.

</comment><comment><USER27> For those who are not aware, GiveDirectly is a charity, not some kind of government agency. If you are pro-UBI, put your money where your mouth is and help with the experiment by donating.

<comment><USER28> It's quite possible to be pro-UBI but not think that exogenous charity provides a decent model for studying UBI, which is an endogenous transfer program, or that Kenya is a relevant model for the kind of places one is most concerned about implementing UBI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > People who advocate for a universal basic income say it will be a way to > pull people out of poverty. Skeptics think a universal basic income will act > as a disincentive for people to work.

IME, advocates tend to say it is a better way of alleviating the symptoms of poverty than means-tested benefit programs and that, _compared to means tested programs_ , it provides greater ability to take advantage of (and less disincentives to) other existing means of lifting oneself out of poverty in the developed world.

And skeptics _and advocates_ both agree that it will reduce economic compulsion to work, but advocates argue that the reduction to structural disincentives and barriers to development and outside income involved in both means-tested aid programs and the trap that is necesssry-but-dead-end work would outweigh that in the conditions prevailing in the developed world.

While it may be certainly interesting to study the different models of exogenous aid provided in the study here, I don't think it's particularly relevant, other than tangentially, to the core arguments regarding UBI because the design is wrong and the environment is wrong, and should not be viewed as a study of UBI so much as a study of charity models which might have some incidental relevance in discussions of UBI.

</comment><comment><USER29> Didn't Finland just roll their UBI experiment back?

If I remember correctly they tried it on the small sample it didn't have a meaningful impact and they calculated it would be too expensive to try the whole country, but I could be meant remembering wrong.

<comment><USER30> Yes, you did read that:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700](http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-43866700)

Though there was an attempt to walkback or reframe that article:

[http://www.kela.fi/web/en/-/contrary-to-reports-the-basic- in...](http://www.kela.fi/web/en/-/contrary-to-reports-the-basic-income- experiment-in-finland-will-continue-until-the-end-of-2018)

<comment><USER31> > Finland's two-year pilot scheme started in January 2017.. But it will not be > extended after this year

Sounds slightly different than the parent's phrasing -- the trial was not "walked back", they just decided not to invest more money in it.

Given that the research hasn't been completed, it seems perfectly reasonable for the government to decline to extend the trial; I'd think it sensible to wait until they have analyzed the results before making any decisions (unless they have already seen some early data).

> "The employment effects across the whole experiment will be available by the > end of 2019 or at the beginning of 2020."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'd like welfare to be a system that gives people food, shelter, clothing and hygiene rather than "free money".

also that shelter would allow people to run a business without fear of that free stuff being removed from under them.

it would help battered wives/husbands and young adults get on their feet.

would also help governments build those desperately needed (communal) homes that they promise.

</comment><comment><USER33> motivation to work is non linear. With low UBI amounts people dont starve, but still have incentive to work. One of the biggest problems with welfare in the US is that you lose benefits that are equal or greater to the amount you make from work, when you start to work, so there is a huge disincentive to work.

If UBI was implemented in the US, 100K would make most people lazy and have them drop out from the workforce, but would 5K?

A more likely outcome is inflation which results in whatever dollar amount the UBI starts as, effectively moving close to $0 as prices rise.

<comment><USER34> Someone always brings up this inflation argument in these threads, where does it come from? It does not increase the amount of money in circulation. It's just like other forms of income transfers.

<comment><USER35> Monetary inflation is not the only source of inflation. There is also cost inflation. If renters suddenly have additional disposable income, landlords will raise the rent to absorb the additional disposable income. And the same with housing buyers and sellers. Unless there is a mass migration from urban to rural areas, there will be a cost inflation that exactly equals the additional disposable income.

Cost of living adjustments will just make things worse. Annual increases in the basic income adjusted to inflation will cause an inflationary spiral and eventually hyperinflation. This is not a minor concern.

<comment><USER34> Of course some prices will rise and some will fall, because the new taxes will reduce income from different consumers than the biggest beneficisries are. If we want to prevent any price rises of poor people's products, this same argument could be used again any improvement in poverty / income equality, whether market based or income transfer based.

If this is the wrong direction, should we make opposite changes - <USER2> wealth in fewer hands?

Anyway, in general it is not the case that prices would rise to consume all citizens' disposable income, foreastallyng all improvement in living standards. Your comment seems to conflate localized price changes with total real change stopping inflation, without justification.

<comment><USER35> > this same argument could be used again any improvement in poverty

UBI is particularly susceptible because it is a one-time universal increase in income. The increaes is very predictable by landlords and housing sellers.

> If this is the wrong direction, should we make opposite changes - > concentrate wealth in fewer hands?

Means-tested welfare, minincome, negative tax, minimum wage increases - <USER3> these are better than UBI. UBI needs to die as a meme.

> in general it is not the case that prices would rise to consume all > citizens' disposable income

I believe that this is the case under UBI. Based just on housing alone! Even minimum wage increases are subverted by price rises. UBI would be costly and have minimal positive impact with the possibility of massive negative impact. It is the worst of all worlds.

People need to understand that there are two UBIs - \- Right wing UBI where welfare is liquidated and the proceeds distributed (to the tune of $8k/yr) -> increased income inequality, medieval levels of poverty \- Democratic UBI where $24k is given to all and sundry funded by taxes on high income individuals and corporations + printing money -> hyperinflation, economic collapse

Neither of these are futures that we want. Please consider alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Thinking not having money is the issue of Kenya is belatedly false. Corruption, wars, extorsions, won't be solve by more "free" money.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think this article misrepresents "skeptics". "Disincentive to work" is really only one reason to be skeptical, and I'd argue not a good one. I'm more concerned about potential unintended consequences that wouldn't manifest in small scale studies such as this one. For example, suppose UBI leads to inflation after 5 years but only once it is truly national-scale. Small-scale studies may not even look at this metric, or be able find correlation if they did. By the time it was apparent, choice would be to roll it back and cause social upheaval, or continue inflation, both of which could hurt the people UBI is designed to help most.

Obviously I don't have any data to know if UBI leads to inflation or not, but that's sort of the point. Ideally we'd have data on this and other effects beyond just "does it help individuals?", but those effects may be difficult to test.

<comment><USER20> But your objection would apply to all economic policies. Why is this any different?

<comment><USER37> Well, I do tend to hold that objection for lots of economic policies ;) Governments can be really bad at foreseeing things like this and slow at changing direction once they are detected. Obviously one can take that too far and do _nothing_ out of fear of unintended consequences. But to the degree we can think through those potential outcomes and devise ways to test for them, we should.

<comment><USER20> >But to the degree we can think through those potential outcomes and devise ways to test for them, we should.

What are some of those ways to test it that you suggest? This study isn't focused on your particular concern of inflation.

<comment><USER37> Right, it'd be really hard in this case. Only being armchair-level interested in UBI I'd have to be content hoping that real economists and UBI researchers would come up with ways to test or at least address the risk. Maybe there are ways to do computer models around that, or ways to structure a roll-out so that it is very clearly a "trial" until various macro impacts can be measured. Another way to test, at least in the US and similarly organized governments, is to rely on states to implement. 50 different parallel experiments measuring UBI vs no-UBI impact. The trick would be to measure fairly and transparently, and react without political spin and bias, which I don't really see happening soon.

My other motivation for posting is hoping that reporters and other HN readers would see there is skepticism besides just "it'd make people lazy".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing that I am surprised that nobody talks about, when discussing UBI is the fact that the USA already has UBI for a largish segment of the population.

The US UBI program is called social security. It is just a check that is given to old people with which they can use for whatever they want.

Why can't we study what this group of people does with their money?

<comment><USER38> Having free money after a lifetime of working that you feel you contributed to seems different from having it available before you've worked before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The problem with UBI is not the idea itself. It's the unintended consequences and edge cases.

For example, it might be that UBI causes people to work MORE and die sooner at riskier jobs (like working oil fields). What is the net effect of that?

Also, what if it doesn't do much more than inflate prices to the point that people still have to work just as much? Could it just reset the sort of "zero point" higher?

What if people have an in-built need to work to have value in life? Would paying them not to work cause their life to lose its value and increase suicides or other negative behavior?

Also, will people start having more kids to somehow get more UBI benefits?

Large system changes mean serious consequences that go beyond the obvious. Anyone who has ever worked on a large software system surely have experienced this.

I don't expect failure, but I do expect some seriously weird and unintended outcomes that are non-obvious.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is a great study and I hope it nets some value. UBI has already been tested in Canada and other areas of the world where it was abandoned.

The outcome, I would guess, is very circumstantial. Perhaps in Kenya, where there is lack of infrastructure and high corruption, giving people money will result in greater improved quality of life over providing subsidized services.

In Canada, I would argue that subsidized services (free healthcare, education, maternity leave, etc.) are more important as they guarantee that a person cannot possibility fall into the debt trap. Perhaps the ideal is something in between: cash (UBI) and services.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder what size a community needs to be for UBI to function in a self- sustaining way. I'd like to see some game theoretical research into it too if anyone has pointers?

<comment><USER42> That's a good question. By the same token: is there a _maximum_ community size that can support UBI?

<comment><USER41> Quite possibly, things like distance and number of participants would most likely change the dynamics.

That's why I was wondering about the game theory part, so it could perhaps be modelled and tested in software. Running large scale UBI experiments is pretty slow and expensive, so tuning the parameters in the real world to make it work is going to take a very long time and cost a lot of money.

<comment><USER23> How exactly do you plan on modeling how people are going to behave after receiving the aid? That's what these real-life experiments are trying to do in order to inform their models.

It's not like economists don't know how to build models...

<comment><USER41> I don't know what I would model or how - that's why I was asking for pointers :)

And I in addition to economists, I would be interested in seeing contributions from physicists, computer scientists and machine learning researchers. This paper was super interesting - [https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03058](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03058), as was this - [https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.06376](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.06376)

But would like to see UBI specific papers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> When studying UBI isn't it hard to control for the fact that only a small group is receiving funds, rather than every unemployed/underemployed person in the country (which would be the case if UBI became federal legislation)? As jobs are automated, we will need to do something...

<comment><USER44> I think the answer is yes. Also, if everyone just gets $X, will prices also rise by some Y close to X as people will feel less attachment to this $X as it was free? I've yet to see a truly thoughtful model of what all will happen. For example, UBI is said to replace all the bureaucracy of today's welfare programs. That is a lot of people that will lose their jobs, including the cycle of the people who used to supply goods and services to those people. Some of those companies will close and layoff more people, etc., etc. It doesn't go infinite but it definitely cascades. We can see proof of this in old steel towns or some place like Detroit. As good jobs dry up, it starts an economic slide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> To me it seems like the only way to make a true study is to do it on a self- sustaining population, in other words very little to no outside money. The cost saving by the community should fund the income rather than the general population funding a tiny population. That will always work.

It is generally agreed (and obvious) that a universal income is beneficial the crux remains though how we pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER46> Title should include the word "will" as it is just getting under way. No conclusion yet.

<comment><USER45> it's grammatically correct, albeit misleading

<comment><USER46> I didn't have an issue w/ the grammar, but the misleading description. :) It's a significant difference between a study starting and having a conclusion (or even partial data). In my mind, it's the difference between clickbait and non- clickbait headline, even though the article is very interesting.

This is at the University PR section of [http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174](http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174)

<comment><USER45> misleading as in people think that the study starts when the trail ends, when in practice the study starts when the trail starts (because people aren't aware of this)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I would much rather we have a jobs program.

Anyone who needs work can get it at $15 per hour and up, depending on what the job is.

There is a whole lot we need doing. If we do that, we are worth more, and we get something meaningful in return for a direct economic stimulus.

Our infrastructure needs refurbished. Our homeland needs a cleanup, and could really benefit from some care and feeding. Our parks can be improved, making them attractive in the same way we did before.

I don't feel UBI makes sense. It's just a payoff, and it's real value will be diluted. Too easy to just adjust it up or down to throttle work needs, buying power.

<comment><USER48> In some countries, rising automation means there are no jobs to be had, or that skilled persons fall down the ladder until they're working unskilled jobs. We pretend its 98% employment, but folks with degrees are working food service.

A 'jobs program' in this environment is doing no good. There are already 30M people in service jobs (The lowest paid), and they're being automated away right now. We can't retrain them all to be engineers; we don't even need 30M more engineers. What are we to do? The solution won't be 'do what we did before' because, we've never been in this situation before.

Oh, wait, in England they were in this situation when weavers were replaced by textile mills. Their solution: let the weavers starve and die. Maybe not the answer we want today.

<comment><USER49> "In some countries, rising automation means there are no jobs to be had"

Source on this claim? Interested in the topic and would like to read more.

<comment><USER48> In the US, automation is growing explosively. When factories 'come back to the USA' from India or China or wherever, its not because they're paying enough to attract Americans; its because they automated and don't need (hardly) anybody.

Further, bank teller and fast-food worker are the next to be automated away. Its happening everywhere, with touch-panel counter service.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Patient Change Agent - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/the-patient-change-agent-fd8548f04777 <comment><USER2> This resonates with me a lot, being at the "burnout" stage of trying to achieve organisational change from below. Although I'm not really sure what I could have done differently, given the immediate problem seemed to be that my line manager was too busy to see me outside a 1-hour-a-week status meeting with others.

The linked article [http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places- to...](http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene- in-a-system/) is absolutely fantastic.</comment>


25 underrated books on persuasion, influence and understanding human behavior - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/08/26/25-underrated-books-persuasion-influence-understanding-human-behavior/ <comment><USER2> Hey, thanks for putting this in front of me, chances are I'd have missed the list otherwise.

Anyhow, can anyone recommend some absolute must haves from this list? I'd love to order a few books on this subject.</comment>


Tech Interview Torture Chamber - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattfriz.com/?r=1/#/outbursts/tech-interview-torture-chamber <comment><USER2> This forgot the 2 month waiting period between the onsite and the offer.</comment>


Crazy LORA ranges today - <AUTHOR> http://rent-a-pilot.nl/archives/190 <comment><USER2> Some context: LoRa is a new, private and spread-spectrum modulation technique which allows sending data at extremely low data-rates to extremely long ranges. The low data-rate (down to few bytes per second) and LoRa modulation lead to very low receiver sensitivity (down to -134 dBm), which combined to an output power of +14 dBm means extremely large link budgets: up to 148 dB., what means more than 22km (13.6 miles) in LOS links and up to 2km (1.2miles) in NLOS links in urban environment (going through buildings).

From [https://www.cooking- hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/extrem...](https://www.cooking- hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/extreme-range-lora-sx1272-module-shield- arduino-raspberry-pi-intel-galileo)

<comment><USER3> To me, this is not extremely long range, in comparison to a Pactor modem over HF, which can reach over 1000 miles, as I've seen on a sailboat passage from Hawaii to California. It requires more power - 150 watts or so, if I recall correctly, and bit rates can be low as a few bits (not bytes) per second with poor propagation. Being able to stay in contact with family in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is pretty awesome.

<comment><USER4> It's extremely long range for low-power devices. LORA is mostly used for sensors, trackers and other miniature, usually battery/solar powered devices that need to run for months or sometimes years unmaintained.

<comment><USER5> For those interested in playing around PyCom (MicroPython devices) are great. As an example the LoPy 4 supports LoRa, Sigfox, Bluetooth and Wifi.

[https://pycom.io/product/lopy4/](https://pycom.io/product/lopy4/)

<comment><USER6> I got one of those but only having one. I can think of some uses for it if I had two but with only one, couldn't do much with it.

<comment><USER5> Keep in mind that's not exactly true. There are gateways that can be used such as "The Things Network": [https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 503'ing here for me, so here's an cache link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://rent- a-pilot.nl/archives/190)

Also, I've been part of the group looking at LoRa at Lancaster University for some time, and am currently working on part of a commercial deployment too. Here are a few papers published on the topic by Dr. Martin Bor, and occasionally myself (all the top ones are LoRa): [https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=WhN1gGwAAAAJ&hl=...](https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=WhN1gGwAAAAJ&hl=en)

<comment><USER8> Internet Archive link: [https://web.archive.org/http://rent-a- pilot.nl/archives/190](https://web.archive.org/http://rent-a- pilot.nl/archives/190)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm soldering a a LoRA-based board right now. During design process we calculated the power budget and found out the power consumption is so absurdly low the main factor is battery shelf life.

We live in the future.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've done Long Island to Virginia with 3W on a portable at 146 MHz, but the range being seen on 800-900 MHz around Netherlands is quite amazing.

I would agree it must be tropospheric ducting; I'm not aware of any other propagation mode that could be at work here.

<comment><USER11> That's impressive. It must have felt pretty amazing!

There was a guy in one of the FM DXing groups on Facebook recently who posted a video of a French-language Canadian FM broadcast station he picked up from the Florida panhandle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> LoRa has become the tool of choice for the high altitude balloon community. At least in the UK, you're restricted to 10mW in the 434MHz band when airborne. People have been pretty successful at getting (very) slow-scan video from balloons at 30km altitude.

<comment><USER13> [https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet](https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet) is an example of using a RFM98W lora module with a raspberry pi/RTLSDR reciever (albeit at 115kbaud in FSK mode, but 50mW of tx power gets ranges of over 100km)

<comment><USER14> That is freaking interesting, 115kbps may seem low compared to usual broadband connections, but it's a lot in the embedded world. Also it would be more than enough to get very high quality voice communications. Codec2 which already does wonders with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that rate comes to mind. How long before someone puts LoRa encrypted walkie talkies on the market?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it me or maybe you also have doubds about LoRaWAN use cases? (LoRa is physical layer, way of encoding bits with rf, but you need protocol. LoRaWAN is open standard, which is being implemented and used by TTN community)

So for me main drawback of LoRaWAN is limited number of ACKed packets (gateway which can talk to thousands devices can use only 1% of airtime (simplified) and you have to divide it by number of users [https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/duty- cycle.htm...](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/duty-cycle.html)), so you are allowed to have 10 packets per day. Any other data can be send in way called " send and pray"...

Would you build industrial device for telemetry while you can not be sure about your data? For example energy monitoring with 15 min periods. You can't be sure that your data arrives.

So ranges presented here is matter of luck but not reliable link.

Maybe ISM band limitations should adopt to LoRa which is more resistant to errors.

Or protocol should be changed (symphonylink has protocol for unlimited ACKed frames, OTA etc)

Just my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER16> Archive link:

[https://archive.is/e7oGG](https://archive.is/e7oGG)

</comment><comment><USER17> That article should probably start with a couple of sentences answering "What is LORA?"</comment>


Peter Thiel's Palantir Saw Coronavirus Coming. Now It Braces for the Impact - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiels-palantir-saw-coronavirus-coming-now-it-braces-for-the-impact-11587461402 <comment><USER2> Thiel has by far the strongest relationship with Trump of any prominent tech person, so I'm quite surprised that Palantir hasn't been more front and center to the government's whole COVID response.

Especially given that Trump's brain appears to be wired to try to impress people with "look at all the high-quality people I have working for me"....Karp is at his best when he plays the eccentric, slightly disheveled hacker-genius to large crowds of credulous non-engineers. Would be a perfect fit to put him in the daily briefing mix.

</comment><comment><USER3> That paywall, though.</comment>


Announcing TypeScript 0.9.1 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/typescript/archive/2013/08/06/announcing-0-9-1.aspx

<comment><USER2> I sometimes find myself torn between dynamic typing (great for rapid prototyping) and static typing (great for tooling and compile-time error checks).

I'm a big fan of TypeScript's approach, which gives you the best of both worlds. Start with fully dynamic code to explore the problem space, then add more static guarantees as you firm up your design.

I haven't had occasion to write a big web app recently, but I'm itching to find one so I can put TypeScript through its paces.

<comment><USER3> I think the greatest advantage to static typing is the IDE support. Compile- time error checking is overrated, and in my several years of writing JavaScript, I've never seen a bug in production that could have been prevented with static analysis. That might be because I know the language well, but it's not a feature I need.

"What's true of all bugs? They passed a type checker and they passed the tests!" \- Rich Hickey

<comment><USER2> Your point is well taken, but I think it has value. Compile-time error checking is useful because it gives you flexibility to make changes in a big program. It's kind of like a big suite of automatic tests that make sure all the parts of your program talk to each other correctly.

Does it catch everything? Can you stop thinking critically? No, but it's still nice to have.

This sort of goes hand in hand with IDE tools (e.g. "change method name" sorts of things), so I don't think we necessarily disagree.

> I've never seen a bug in production that could have been prevented with > static analysis.

That seems unlikely to me.

I do application penetration testing for a living, and I'll often use static analysis tools in my work. (Both robust, established tools and ad hoc scripts.) For example, check out Brakeman for Rails apps. These tools find actual bugs in actual production software.

Do they find everything? No, you can't rely on them completely. But they're still nice to have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone have experience with using TypeScript with existing libraries like Angular.js?

I know that there are definition files for it [1] (and many other popular libraries), but unfortunately I haven't had the time to check out their quality.

[1] [https://github.com/borisyankov/DefinitelyTyped/tree/master/a...](https://github.com/borisyankov/DefinitelyTyped/tree/master/angularjs)

<comment><USER5> We are building a webapp using TypeScript and Angularjs and we are quite happy. It takes some time to set up everything, we even created our own yeoman generator, but at the end I think it's worth it.

<comment><USER6> That seems like pretty awesome, are you hiring?

<comment><AUTHOR> i am (we use typescript + angular + node) but you'd have to be willing to move to thailand. can apply at novaleaf.com/career

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't heard much about TypeScript since its original announce. Are any big projects using it? Does anybody have some commentary on their experience using it and where they think the project is going?

<comment><USER8> My project isn't huge, but larger than it could have been using idiomatic javascript.

The scoping with modules and the typing really helped since I'm familiar with C# and having "everything light up" in the IDE. Saved a ton of time letting a compiler catch things instead of writing tests.

I tried coffee script, but found the copy/paste option for javascript that I have already written won me over.

<comment><USER9>
        Saved a ton of time letting a compiler catch things instead of writing tests.

Types should never mean writing less tests :/

<comment><USER10> Static typing means automatic language-integrated type-checking unit tests. I would bet a lot of dynamic language unit testing has to do with compensating for the lack of proper type checking. It's just like using patterns compensates for lacking language features.

<comment><USER9> I don't like to think about type checking as unit tests because they approach the problem from a fundamentally different direction, and I worry conflating them could lead to writing the sort of bad unit tests people are talking about here.

Type checking, or static analysis in general, checks for the presence of a particular class of errors.

Unit tests check for correct behaviour, and in doing so imply a lack of any errors, types or otherwise.

While it can be good to use unit tests to check for regressions in a specific error, the core of your tests should be specifying the behaviour of your system, not trying to catch out any specific class of errors.

If your tests are busy looking for specific errors, there will always be some that you miss (type checking, even in Haskell, misses a lot of classes of error). If your tests check for correct behaviour, there can be no errors.

Of course, writing tests with perfect coverage and specifying all the behaviour is impossible, even more so when you've got actual features to get out the door. So any static analysis you're comfortable with can be great for making up some of the slack, but let's not pretend that in most cases we shouldn't now need to be writing those tests to check it does what it's meant to.

The place where this approach sometimes falls short is on the public API boundary, as I mentioned in my other post. Types can be useful there, so maybe my original assertion was a little too strong, but still types should very rarely mean less tests.

(Apologies if the post is a bit all over the place, redrafting on a phone is hard)

<comment><USER10> I understand your point, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Announcing LeapMotion TypeScript API: [https://github.com/logotype/LeapMotionTS](https://github.com/logotype/LeapMotionTS)

</comment><comment><USER12> Irrelevant, but a site that lets you comment without putting an email? I like Microsoft.

<comment><USER13> Agreed.

It's little things like this that add up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem with TypeScript is its requirement for definition files which are most of the time outdated. That makes it unusable in a real project where many JS libs live together. (not saying that's the case all the time)

<comment><USER15> No, it's not a problem. You don't need the definition files if you don't care about getting the supporting static typing on external libs.

It is completely doable to simply let the external libs call to be dynamic and guard your core code with static typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Traceur Compiler is good alternative:

[https://github.com/google/traceur- compiler](https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler)

however its development kinda stopped in last months

</comment><comment><USER17> Love how folks here love to discuss the merits/demerits of a language (not the version of the language) EVERY TIME a new version is announced. This works for every language.

<comment><USER18> Me too. But I don't agree that it works for every language.

Often the stuff that "just works" doesn't end up producing a lot of chatter on the intertubes, at least not nearly as much as something that looks seductively simple but turns out to be much harder in practice.

Another example I like is Lua: elegant, mature, and used in some very very big applications. If there was ever evidence that a codebase was high quality and nearly bug free, it's that. But when was the last time we had a good flamewar (with namecalling) over Lua?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I hope that they keep the possibility of running it stand-alone and not force Visual Studio down their users's throats.

<comment><USER20> Why are you concerned about this? I didn't see anything in the announcement that would suggest it.

<comment><USER21> Cause it makes it windows only.

EDIT: to add, I like the idea of typescript (it's a much smaller step than compared to something like Dart). But their tooling is all around Visual Studio, which ties you to Windows. I don't dislike Windows, but I want my development tools to be cross platform (which is why I like Sublime Text, Eclipse, and similar tools).

<comment><USER22> > _but I want my development tools to be cross platform (which is why I like > Sublime Text, Eclipse, and similar tools)._

Still not sure why you're complaining. There's great support for TypeScript for Sublime, Vim, Emacs, Intellij IDEA and Eclipse.

[http://msopentech.com/blog/2012/10/01/sublime-text-vi- emacs-...](http://msopentech.com/blog/2012/10/01/sublime-text-vi-emacs- typescript-enabled/)

[http://blog.jetbrains.com/webide/2013/02/typescript- support-...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/webide/2013/02/typescript-support-in- webstorm-6/)

[http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/typescript](http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/typescript)

<comment><USER23> This seems a little disingenuous. I bet Intellij already has great support, but the top link you give there for Sublime Text, emacs and vim doesn't really give anywhere near the level of support you get in Visual Studio. Literally just syntax highlighting! In Visual Studio you get at least error highlighting/completions/code generation/navigation/refactoring.

There are definitely attempts to bring the language service to other editors but when I tried them last (just before the 0.9 release) they seemed either featureless or very slow. If someone can recommend one for sublime/emacs/vim that they actually use I'd be very appreciative!

EDIT: related thing that annoyed me: the language service is part of the TypeScript repo but as far as I can see from there is no official documentation on how to go about leveraging it for other editors! I admit I can kind of understand this until the language is less of a moving target. The best way to get started for now seems to be looking at third party efforts like [https://github.com/clausreinke/typescript- tools](https://github.com/clausreinke/typescript-tools).

<comment><USER22> > _This seems a little disingenuous. I bet Intellij already has great support, > but the top link you give there for Sublime Text, emacs and vim doesn 't > really give anywhere near the level of support you get in Visual Studio. > Literally just syntax highlighting! In Visual Studio you get at least error > highlighting/completions/code generation/navigation/refactoring._

It's a little disingenuous to expect environments that are typically more text editor than IDE and much more lightweight (Sublime, Vim, Emacs) to have all the features of an IDE with as new as TypeScript is. Much of those features require much more work than they would to implement in Intellij or Visual Studio, which have great APIs for building plugins with those sort of features[1] even for the community[2].

[1] [http://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/IntelliJIDEA/Custom+...](http://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/IntelliJIDEA/Custom+Language+Support)

[2] [http://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin?pluginId=5055](http://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin?pluginId=5055) (The third party Lua plugin for Intellij for example)

<comment><USER23> Sorry for the poor choice of word on my part, I admit I was using "disingenuous" incorrectly there. I just thought the description of sublime/emacs/vim having "great" support for TypeScript might give someone the impression that something beyond syntax highlighting was supported.

I don't doubt that it's more work to support more than syntax highlighting, but that doesn't change the fact that the support in those editors is sub-par when compared with lots of other languages. For example I can install SublimeLinter and have basic error reporting for python code, or SublimeJEDI and have code completion and go to definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chris-at I appreciate their efforts but this is the 'buggiest' release yet.

</comment><comment><USER24> We need support for it in something like Monodevelop / Netbeans / Eclipse. A lot of the benefit I experience from strict(er) typing comes from the real- time help an IDE gives me - without a Windows/VS licence, I hardly feel compelled by Typescript at all.

<comment><USER25> works well with webstorm/phpstorm but i agree , useless without realtime help in a IDE.

Sometimes the compiler issues an error it is really hard to get what's wrong without visual clues , unless one likes to count lines and columns and switch between command line / text editor all the time.

Does the TS compiler even work with Syntastic(vim) by the way ?

I like TS , i use modules , classes and short hand functions declarations , but not the type system which doesnt make sense to me. It doesnt make sense with javascript and force back devs in all these java EE like patterns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anybody know whether Typescript still filters comments?

<comment><AUTHOR> it's a command-line argument --removeComments, install and run tsc.exe with no args for the full list of options

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Solid alternative: [http://ckknight.github.io/gorillascript/](http://ckknight.github.io/gorillascript/)

<comment><USER28> It doesn't look like GorillaScript has static typing, which I thought was the point of TypeScript. I think a great alternative in that space is Roy [http://roy.brianmckenna.org/](http://roy.brianmckenna.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Am justing waiting for them to implement "await".

<comment><USER30> I think you might be waiting for awhile unfortunately. Implementing await would result in a lot of autogenerated code. Typescript is largely meant to be almost 1:1 with the Javascript it produces.

Anders talks about that problem in this video: [http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013/9-006](http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013/9-006)

<comment><USER31> One proposed alternative to await (for CoffeeScript) that is more one-to-one with the generated JavaScript: [https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/issues/2762](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/2762)</comment></comment></comment>


Gucci sues Alibaba over 'counterfeit goods' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32781236

<comment><USER2> I was waiting for this to happen. Almost every big company could sue them.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone actually make any money from Affiliate Advertising? - <AUTHOR>

I have been using commission junction and link synergy for over a year to advertise products in addition to adsense, but not one sale have I experienced.<p>Am I an odditity, or is this pretty normal? <comment><USER2> When I was in college, I paid all of my expenses- food, rent, and out of state tuition doing affiliate marketing on the side. This was not throwing up banners on a site, but rather running PPC campaigns to affiliate offers (arbitrage). I also learned incredibly valuable marketing/PPC/getting traffic skills I am applying to my startup.

Go to affbuzz.com and read all of the blogs there, you'll learn a lot about how to actually make money with affiliate marketing. (Step 1: Stop using CJ).

<comment><USER3> What would you recommend in place of CJ? Direct affiliate relationships?

<comment><USER4> affiliate marketing = using $1 to make > $1. how to do it, varies from pple to pple, some use ppv, ppc, jv, etc. like @il said it...affbuzz.com is a good place to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I ran a modestly successful affiliate site from 2002-2006. I did very little work, and could have done much more to succeed (in retrospect), but it did provide 20% of my income during that time. I recently attempted to relaunch the site after a few years away, but found that the market is much tighter than before (I made only a handful of sales during a two month test run; I also believe that consumers are now more skeptical of affiliate marketing sites.

I think that given the right market and some hard work, it's possible to make enough to live from affiliate marketing, but I've found that I prefer to work with friends on more ambitious projects.

</comment><comment><USER6> Depends what you're selling, and how you sell it. I make maybe $10 a month posting affiliate links to Twitter, but it's because I'm trying to share things with people, not trying to make cash.

You'd better believe that somebody is making money on all of those "flat tummy" ads you see all over the web. A few years ago, black hat SEO got a lot more competitive -- you've really got to do criminal things (like hack people's Wordpress installations) to rank of highly competitive terms.

A lot of the people who were doing black hat SEO switched over to pay-per- click promotion of landing pages that push affiliate offers... Some people make pretty good money that way, but you can easily blow $500-$5000 on advertising before you've got figured out a campaign that actually makes money...

I know of a guy who spent about $3k a day on ads and made $5k in revenue. You've got to watch it like a hawk because if something goes wrong, you can burn cash pretty quick

</comment><comment><USER7> Affiliate ads are more suited to sites loaded with product reviews, discussions, comparisons, etc. The sort of tips that shoppers look for, combined with an affiliate product link, creates the difference between a stray ad, and a valuable sales proposition.

AdSense effectively determines/auctions PPC placements. Affiliates attempt to recreate the AdSense magic in large part by building content around links to products--in other words, marketing.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a numbers game. I'll take a guess and say that you are running a blog. In that case, contact some companies and sell some ads directly. It's a long shot in all directions. At most, you should be able to sustain a hobby. If I'm wrong about the blog, sorry -- I have a blog that has a similar problem, but it's a hobby.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, you can make tons of money from affiliate marketing.

Doing it "ethically" is another question however. If you want to make money fast and big, its pretty necessary to learn blackhat techniques.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. So affiliate marketing is on a completely different level to adsense.

What I have been doing is use affiliate links no different than adsense, that is find 250 by 250 image links and put them on some location on my website.

I gather that I have been doing it all wrong and affiliate advertising is fundamentally different from say adsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes - some people make absurd amounts of F-U money from affiliate deals.

</comment><comment><USER11> there are guys pushing a few hundred thousand dollars worth of offers a day. It's a huge huge industry, but you can't just toss up some banners and expect to profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you then mean that affiliate ads are not quite suitable for an informative website and do not quite compare or supplement adsense. I suppose I mean to ask, do you mean affiliate ads are fundamentally different from adsense, in the way that say walking and driving a car are different.

<comment><USER11> They really are on different levels. You can push an affiliate offer through a review site, through an email list, through ppc ads, ppv traffic. Adsense is pretty ordinary, and works in situations when users want more than a site or page can deliver for the most part.

<comment><AUTHOR> So it is not a good idea to put an affiliate banner on a normal page, hence perhaps why I have not gotten a single sale. Affiliates just require a different strategy?

<comment><USER12> you need to recommend products. I've had some success w/ list posts full of recommended products.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SSL Labs Client Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html <comment><USER2> Ah very nice, they were hinting about adding this.

Was previously using [https://cc.dcsec.uni-hannover.de/](https://cc.dcsec.uni- hannover.de/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I asked about something like this on the sec.SX[1] and at the time it was vaporware. I am glad to see that it is now available. This is a lot better than "openssl s_server"

[1] [http://security.stackexchange.com/q/38084/4564](http://security.stackexchange.com/q/38084/4564)</comment></comment>


Lean Startup junkies - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2011/01/lean-startup-junkies.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29&utm_content=Twitter

<comment><USER2> It continues to amaze and amuse me how the absurdity of two screen-reading, monotone, talking cartoon bear-like things can so effectively and hilariously illustrate real life absurdities. Did the Xtranormal creators do that intentionally, or did they just stumble on this by accident?

</comment><comment><USER3> Buzzword galore ;-) Reminds me of <http://mongodb-is-web-scale.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> LMFAO... that was choice shit. "I could be in a fucking coal mine and those damn junkies would still find me to buy my product." We should all be so fortunate...

</comment><comment><USER5> LMAO ... I was so hoping he'd use the word "pivot" :-p

</comment><comment><USER6> Could it please be a little less vulgar and still be brilliant?</comment>


The Dirty Secret Behind the Salesforce $1M Hackathon - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/hackers-and-hacking/b839268fb82d/ <comment><USER2> If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...</comment>


Kevin Mitnick signs tell-all book deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/uber-hacker-kevin-mitnick-signs-tell-all-book-deal-

<comment><USER2> Amazing how long you can milk one stupid story. If he gives up the names of the people that supplied him with his exploit tools --- or even just their handles --- there will be drama.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Kevin Poulsen story is incredible in Jonathan Littman's The Watchman.</comment>


Standup Meets Bagel - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/silicon-satire/stand-up-meets-bagel-8c48d815cc75 <comment><USER2> It's like a suicide note from Nicholson Baker.</comment>


Mobile Airbag Deploy When Device Is Dropped - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/B5xe3ug <comment><USER2> At first glance it looks fairly similar to the diagram in this one: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US7059182B1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US7059182B1/en)

There was also this Bezos patent that made the news a few years back with actual airbags: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110194230A1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110194230A1/en)

I'm certainly no patent lawyer and don't have any sense of how different such a device would have to be to be non-infringing and novel enough to patent. In any case, congratulations to him for actually building a working prototype.

<comment><USER3> Good find on that first patent - it's pretty much exactly the same thing unless the sensor and control mechanism are somehow quite a bit different. It wouldn't stop Chinese case manufacturers from making this, but this would make it pretty difficult to get a new patent for what's shown in the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This amazing airbag contains neither air nor bags! But I really can't think of a better, clearer word for it.

<comment><USER5> Shock absorber? In any case, I'd like to see higher drop tests. Wonder if it would have helped a week ago, when I dropped my phone while rock climbing and it shattered on a slab ~150 ft below.

<comment><USER6> That's probably not a very common occurence - wouldn't a lanyard do a better job there? (instead of "I dropped it and it landed somewhere in a 100 ft radius, probably in multiple pieces" it would be "I dropped it and now it hangs right there, 1 ft away")

<comment><USER7> > That's probably not a very common occurence - wouldn't a lanyard do a better > job there?

Nope, little plastic arms

<comment><USER6> I'm not replying to what you think I'm replying. To summarize: little plastic arms are not useful against dropping a phone from 150 ft. Because: 1. they are not made to absorb a shock that large, 2. even if, the phone would bounce, 3. even then, you're looking for a phone in a fairly large area. Easier not to drop it all of 150 ft in the first place; most people dropping phones do so from human-comparable heights, and that's where the little plastic arms _are_ useful.

Clearer now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be really awkward if this was in your pocket and you decided to plop onto a couch

<comment><USER9> That's trivial to fix, just don't activate it when the proximity sensor says it's still in your pocket.

Though I can imagine some other false positive scenarios; like when you intentionally toss your phone onto a soft surface like your bed. The added protection is probably worth the minor inconvenience of having to reset the mechanism every time that happens though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The retracted springs take up a ridiculous amount space in the phone's case; don't expect this in your device any time soon. (By which I mean: ever). A version for laptops could be fantastic.

The shock absorption capacity is greater than necessary; experience shows that a simple silicone bumper is effective. The device _can_ take a certain number of G's; it's not exactly an egg. A bumper also reduces drop incidents by providing grip. (Aluminum cases can dent through a bumper, though.)

A simple through hole or other means of strap attachment allowing a phone to be put on a string takes less space. "Bungee cord for your phone!" Cameras have strap attachments; it didn't catch on for phones due to the obsession with smooth design, perhaps.

<comment><USER11> phone goes in and out of pockets too often for it to be attached by a bungee cord ... that'll never work either

<comment><USER10> Cord terminates in or near the pocket. Could be self-retracting onto a little spring-loaded winch.

People had pocket watches on chains in the Victorian era.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks very clever, but also like it could take an eye out if it deployed while the phone was held up to your face (or, indeed, was dropped while held over your face).

I'm very fond of the concept, but I think the implementation needs a lot of work.

<comment><USER13> It could probably deploy some more "eye friendly" prongs in the future. Probably some that weren't shaped like knifes.

<comment><USER14> > more "eye friendly" prongs

This is a scary collection of words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of the airbag for cyclists that's designed to replace your helmet: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjygqMULVmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjygqMULVmw)

It's a cool concept, but at €299 I'd rather just use a normal helmet.

<comment><USER16> It's there to save your life potentially. €299 seems cheap in that regard.

<comment><USER15> My $50 polystyrene lid does that too.

Regardless, they're not legal in Australia, so even if I wanted to, I couldn't use one.

<comment><USER17> What is not legal? Is the helmet mandatory in Australia and airbag is not a legal replacement, or are head-airbags illegal?

<comment><USER15> Yep, helmets are mandatory in Australia for all riders, and the airbag isn't certified as a helmet in Australia.

<comment><USER17> Are there more, less, or an equal number of bikes around now, after such legislation was passed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am not sure I'd like my phone to do this in my pocket while riding a roller coaster.

<comment><USER19> Use light sensor in addition to accelerometer.

<comment><USER13> What if you drop it at night?

<comment><USER20> Phones have pocket detectors already. They use infrared distance sensors mostly.

<comment><USER6> ...and the complexity increases by orders of magnitude. With all the decision logic, the added latency might register as "drop...thud...oh hey, weren't we supposed to deploy something?...legs deploy"

<comment><USER21> I think you grossly overestimate how much latency another variable to the decision logic would add. Keep in mind that this is computed onboard, not by bluetooth to the phone or anything. So it can be done by a dedicated chip checking 100 times a second if accelerator value ~= 0G and a proximity sensor detects nothing.

<comment><USER6> The previous comment noted that "phones have [suitable sensors]". Duplicating those in the board would work, but even then - checking every 10 ms will mean a far higher battery drain (and yes, we've just complicated everything at least one order of magnitude, this point still stands).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is an absolutely beautiful solution. Respect.

</comment><comment><USER23> I initially thought the article was going to describe someone's OnStar caused the airbags to deploy in their Malibu when they dropped their iPhone.

I was moderately dismayed this was not what happened, but the device is nevertheless really cool and may have some practical applications.

</comment><comment> martin-adams It's a really great concept. This would however be quite scary to have deploying against your face which would be a no-go for me. I do occasionally drop my phone and the case I have does a good job. What I worry about is dropping it on a brick or stone where the impact is centered in the middle he screen.

<comment><USER24> I don't have a case and have dropped (and thrown) mine. As long as you're not throwing it directly into the ground the iPhone is honestly pretty sturdy.

<comment><USER25> 6,234,123 shattered iPhone screens and back plates beg to differ

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is cool and possibly quite useful. Definitely a good engineering challenge/project. Others have already pointed out some safety issues and a few others have then questioned likely are those scenarios.

For me though one of the big downsides would be while traveling. This thing would never be allowed through airport security as a carry-on. It looks like mini knife like objects encased in a soft rubber casing. Yes, one can always take it off and store it in a checked-in bag. But if you forget then you will be forced to choose between dumping it or not boarding the flight. Not to mention the extra cavity search one might get as a bonus.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice, now it needs some armor casing and it will be just like a cockroach. My pocket surveillance device will now be impossible to destroy!

</comment><comment><USER28> Everyday I throw my phone onto my bed when I get home, I'm not sure how I feel about this product.

</comment><comment><USER29> I thought about a similar solution about a year ago, but mine involved embedding small spring loaded pins into the front, back and sides of phone that would pop up when the phone was dropped.

<comment> King-Aaron > Talking on phone while walking

> Trips over

> Metal spike/pin into temple

<comment><USER29> Please. The pins would be dull and rounded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't get it. Isn't rubberized case a far better solution?

Smaller, lighter, and fewer moving parts.

<comment><USER31> A rubberized case wouldn't protect as much. ie, the phone feels more impact from a similar fall except for maybe multi-story drops where most cases don't do anything anyway. Also, this protects the screen from falling onto an uneven surface (think gravel) whereas a rubber case won't help at all, even if it includes one of those annoying plastic screen covers

<comment><USER32> Also, cases without bulky screen protectors can't adequately protect curved displays, which are increasingly common nowadays, from falls on non-level surfaces.

<comment><USER33> It's almost as if that's a stupid design.

Unfortunately, it's the consumer that pays for that, literally, since they'll have to buy a new phone if it breaks (a win for manufacturer, so long as they buy the same one anyway).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What problem does this solve? Prevent aluminium dents? I've dropped my unprotected phone so many times I don't even know how people manage to damage their screens.

</comment><comment><USER35> Well we've been thrown out of the Worldcup as Group Last, but we've at least got him to come up with a solution to one of the worlds most visible customerfacing problems in consumer electronics. I'd consider this a bottomline win for Germany.

<comment><USER36> How are these even remotely related?

<comment><USER37> Time. It's how we group many information.</comment></comment></comment>


Basic Git Commands - <AUTHOR> http://mjhea0.github.com/blog/2013/10/11/basic-git-commands#.U2av8Kn32tk.hackernews <comment><USER2> Highly consider using 'git revert' instead of 'git reset' especially if you're pushing to a public repo.

<comment><AUTHOR> can you please elaborate?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should a 60-year-old get started with programming? - <AUTHOR> Suppose an able 60-year-old, who has never done any programming but is smart and tech-savvy as a user, wanted to get into some development work - both as a hobby/interest, but also with a look to maybe get some supplemental income from it in the coming years working remotely.
What would be a good way for them to get started? Which area could be a good fit? How could they look for remote work / monetize their hobby in the future if they find they have aptitude for it?
Perhaps one of you has had some experience in this area. <comment><USER2> I'd recommend Python. It's very beginner friendly, there are plenty of tutorials, and there are a lot of advanced libraries. [1]

Don't read the manuals, follow a few tutorial. Try to think a variant of the exercises in the tutorials and try to code the variants too. (Each person has their own style, I don't like reading the manuals. You may like to read the manuals.)

Try to find a problem in your area that is easy to automate. Some thing that is small, repetitive and boring. It's good to make a few toy/small projects that make something that is useful for you.

I don't know how realistic is to expect some side money from this, but if you are an expert is some field sometimes you can use programing to solve exactly what the people in that field needs.

[1] I prefer racket. It has a strange syntax, so sometimes people get scared of it. The advantages of racket are easier to see when you have been programing for a while, so start with Python and then try other languages later.

<comment><USER3> >Don't read the manuals

I second that.

<comment><USER4> Until you are more experienced. Then you should ignore tutorials and read the manuals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Given that even something like building a web page has become extremely convoluted, understanding the basics can be difficult.

My suggestion have a mentor, who is an experienced developer guide you. ( I volunteer, you may contact me...)

>Which area could be a good fit?

This is actually tricky to answer. Almost all areas of software have some demand for people all the time ( I do not have numbers). Your bigger hurdle will be that people will rarely hire if they learn you are 60 years old.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with gus_massa about Python as it is probably the simplest mainstream language but in recent years has moved way beyond being a toy/educational language to major commercial use. Try building something "real" like a simple program to store details of your DVD collection, a calendar/diary or whatever. Most importantly forget about being 60. It's irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER6> I suggest installing a basic Linux distro or even Linux From Scratch. Get a taste for command line tools and an overview of the environment that supports programming. Its a vast ocean of possibilities. Start anywhere since its a hobby. Have fun and learn the principles of implementing solutions. There are tons of Youtube videos that spoon feed any language you choose to learn.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you plan to try to do remote work, you need a network. With all due respect, 60+ is late to build a network for generic programming contracts. I would suggest that you focus on your current network. What do those people need from a programming point of view. Target languages/technologies that match that niche.

If the programming is only for fun, then don't worry about the network And focus on what is most interesting to you.

</comment><comment><USER8> I suppose the first question is which type of programming are they interested in? Web pages? Embedded - where you build something with Raspberry PI? etc etc

Is this just to remove boredom in old age, or starting a new career? For pure programming I recommend whichever language they can get a obtain that has a GREAT debugger. If not then you, as their friend get to help them debug.

</comment><comment> Pete-Codes I'd tell them to go on Indiehackers for the business side of things.

To be honest there are probably tons of problems people in their 20-50s totally ignore that a 60 year old could make lots of money from.

If they have imposter syndrome, send them to www.nocsdegree.com

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm going with Common Lisp as my first language:

[https://oneofus.la/have-emacs-will-hack/2011-10-30-common- li...](https://oneofus.la/have-emacs-will-hack/2011-10-30-common-lisp-is-the- best-language-to-learn-programming.html)

Based on what others have said, I figure it'll give me an edge when learning other languages.

(but I'll also work through SICP)

I also ordered a copy of Brian P. Hogan's Exercises for Programmers:

[https://pragprog.com/book/bhwb/exercises-for- programmers](https://pragprog.com/book/bhwb/exercises-for-programmers)

</comment><comment><USER10> Pick your passion. Start with tutorials. RTFM. You need to work through a project.

</comment><comment><USER11> > _who has never done any programming_

Suggestion/hope for anyone looking to answer this part--please answer this:

\</comment><comment>-- What does the map of the programming terrain look like? \</comment><comment>--

I have come across so many articles/tutorials "for beginners" that suffer from the Curse of Knowledge, forgetting that total beginners may not even be able to parse why something like:

" _Pick a language, read the manual, and try to do something in it_ " that jstewartmobile offered is in fact good advice.

Thanks for hearing me out!

</comment><comment><USER12> As others have said, follow your passion - whether that's games, Web apps/sites, productivity software, or something else. Choose very small projects.

If you want a specific direction… work through this short, free ebook. It will be useful no matter what you do: [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non- Programmer%27s_Tutorial_fo...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non- Programmer%27s_Tutorial_for_Python_3)

</comment><comment><USER13> I would argue the least amount of age bias is in cobol and then c++ and then .net

cobol is also pretty easy to learn. Most of it will be maintenance of insurance and financial software. But basically nobody's looking to get into entry level cobol maintenance.

[https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Mainframe+Cobol+Programmer&exp...](https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Mainframe+Cobol+Programmer&explvl=entry_level)

</comment><comment><USER14> Its important to consider what their goal project is. Narrow all technologies to their goal product. If they just want to learn programming, I would suggest learning Ada because it is clear and has very good compiler errors. This is very bad advice if they want to build websites.

Have them ask a seasoned industry representative to write a soft syllabus with resources based on their interest

</comment><comment><USER15> Pick a language, read the manual, and try to do something in it. Grind it out!

If you already have safe money, that's one hell of a runway, so I wouldn't even bother looking for "work". Make a product and sell it. That way you have have equity, so if you get sick, or want to goof off for a few months, checks will keep coming in.

</comment><comment><USER16> Python, its easy to learn and you can find a lot of tutorials on youtube.

</comment><comment><USER17> perhaps an easy way to get a taste for building things is with no-code tools</comment>


PlatformIO: a cross-platform code builder and the missing library manager - <AUTHOR> http://platformio.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> A cross-platform code builder and the missing library manager (Atmel AVR & SAM, Freescale Kinetis, Nordic nRF51, NXP LPC, ST STM32, TI MSP430 & Tiva, Teensy, Arduino, mbed, libOpenCM3, etc.)

PlatformIO is independent from the platform where it is running (the only requirement is Python, which exists pretty much everywhere).</comment>


Ask HN: How to grow as a Software Engineer? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
I have been working as a Software Engineer for a few years and have worked at a variety of companies (big, medium, small) and it was fun working as a Software Engineer writing code and building systems. However, lately, I have started thinking about where to go next. Writing code is fun, however, as the technology changes, I feel that anybody could just learn a new programming language/ technology of the year.
How could one grow as a Software Engineer and continue to differentiate oneself from the rest of the pack ?
What has your career progression been ? What could be a logical next step for a Software Engineer with a few years of experience ? <comment><USER2> Depends on what your goals are. I'm like you, have a couple years of experience as a software engineer. Looking back, I think I have definitely improved a lot over the years since I've graduated, but seems stuck in a void that is between a junior programmer and an expert programmer.

For me, I think as this point is to decide whether I should go for breath or depth, explore or exploit - to be a generalist or a domain expert so to speak. Both are hard, and you really have to work at it.

As you have said, technology changes every 6 months or so, it's almost impossible to catch up with the pace of the tech world. After awhile you will realize that chasing after the hottest technology is a futile pursuit. I think eventually, after sufficient exploration of a landscape, you will have to choose a couple of interestes and become a domain experts in them. You can't be a 1 trick pony because that trick will not always be in high demand, but you can't be a jack of all trades and master of none as well. So pick a couple areas and concentrate on them is my best advice. If you are a Web developer, and you like it, then be good at it. Learn all the latest and greatest tricks on HTML5/CSS/JS, hell, learn how the browsers process rendering so next time you are stuck with a UI bug, you can use a theoretical framework to debug it, instead by going through the drudgery of trial and error every time. If you are into programming languages, take Peter Norvig's advice of learning how to program in 10 years. Learn all a handful of languages that are representative of different paradigms and be enlightened. If you are into systems or networking, brush up on your ninja C skills and write some messaging servers and clients. Join some open source projects that you are interested in.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm, logical next step for someone with a few years of experience - it's very difficult to say. What has your experience been in ? The points you mention are very generic so it's quite hard to respond :). However the general logical next step for a software engineer is to become a better software engineer and to learn to work in teams more effectively. Perhaps take up end to end ownership of larger systems.

</comment><comment><USER4> The best way to grow as a software engineer is to build or create new things. A Website or an application. Work on open source projects. Keep experimenting!

</comment><comment><USER5> Quit your job.

Find freelance work or join a startup.

Seek out programmers that are better than you.

</comment><comment><USER6> First question is: what books are you reading?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a CS degree so I have read the basic texts on Algorithms, Operating Systems, Compilers.

I recently got through the Design Patterns book. I was thinking of picking up either a new language (Go) or start the "Mastering Regular Expressions" book, not sure which.

<comment><USER6> Have you considered reading some software engineering classics as well?

 _Code Complete_ , _Rapid Development_ , _The Mythical Man-Month_ , _The Pragmatic Programmer_ , _Peopleware_ and _A Discipline for Software Engineering_? (The last one is controversial).

<comment><AUTHOR> I have read Peopleware. I was thinking about getting The Pragmatic Programmer next. I somehow feel that just reading books without doing anything with the knowledge doesn't work.

The books I enjoyed the most were Richard Stevens' Network Programming and Unix Programming books. Those books teach you a ton of things while helping you implement something useful. They were very hands on. I haven't been able to find anything similar in a long while.

<comment><USER6> I think we're on different pages. The books I recommended aren't API, framework, language, CS kinds of books. They're books which discuss being a software engineer.

Are they immediately applicable? Sometimes. Are they applicable for the rest of your career? Definitely.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>