Free Money for Everyone - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/free_money_for_everyone049287.php?page=all <comment><USER2> I believe that basic income would unlock a lot of hidden wealth:

1\. Many more people would try their hand at entrepreneurship, and/or re-enter education, if they are freed from the obligation to work to survive.

2\. There would be little need for minimum wage laws; unskilled labor can become primarily for earning a little more spending money, or about social roles within a group or community. The incentive for high-end labor would remain.

3\. Much more non-profit activity, such as political engagement and volunteer labor, would become feasible (including the immeasurable wealth of more time spent raising children).

4\. Let's face it: there are a lot of quasi-useless laborers out there, who are a drag co-efficient on productivity. The people who do the bare minimum to survive contribute more to the economy by staying home.

There are deep macroeconomic and budgetary challenges to such a policy, and the socioeconomic effects are hard to predict. It certainly wouldn't be revenue-neutral, though it could be offset by other reductions in the welfare state (not to mention the prison-industrial complex).

One way or another, the value and negotiating leverage of human labor is declining. As globalization spreads, domain-specific AI improves, and software continues to "eat the world", this trend will only progress. If we don't want to revert to a world of lords and serfs, basic income is the best way to preserve Adam Smith's humanistic vision of capitalism. And in the Western world, we are damn sure rich enough to afford it.

<comment><USER3> This "I believe in GBI" line rarely is backed up by objective reasoning, and grossly underestimates the percentage who would, if freed from the obligation to work to survive, indulge in whatever non-productive luxuries they can acquire. While certainly many would improve productivity & economy & education should they have the financial liberty to do so, my experience in helping many up tells me most are down for a reason which only they, internally, can change - and won't.

<comment><USER2> Many businesses make a tidy profit despite a large number of users being non- profitable "free riders" (Dropbox would be the canonical example).

My claim is not that every human would be immediately elevated to self- actualization. Obviously, a great many would stay home, drink beer and watch TV. My claim is that _civilization as a whole_ would profit; paying people who contribute nothing is merely a "cost of doing business". (And don't forget: there's still an incentive to work for those who want better beer and bigger TVs.)

<comment><USER4> _Many businesses make a tidy profit despite a large number of users being non- profitable "free riders" (Dropbox would be the canonical example)._

Having users be free riders is not the same as having employees be free riders. I doubt Dropbox has any of the latter.

 _(And don 't forget: there's still an incentive to work for those who want better beer and bigger TVs.)_

No, there's an incentive for voters to elect politicians who will continue raising the bar for how much beer and what size TV the basic income should buy you.

<comment><USER2> > No, there's an incentive for voters to elect politicians who will continue > raising the bar

I agree that there is a severe moral hazard here. However, the fact that some citizens currently vote reflexively for lower taxes, while others do not, suggests that a semi-stable equilibrium could be achieved. (This holds even if you look only at middle-class voters with significant tax burdens, rather than just "makers" vs. "takers".)

<comment><USER5> > I agree that there is a severe moral hazard here.

If the moral hazard for BI was as strong as its opponents argue, it wouldn't take so long after the idea first started being advocated for it to be near universally adopted. Since, the argument that with a UBI of $ _N_ /mo, the voting masses will always strongly prefer a UBI of $ _N+1_ /mo. applies just as much at a _N_ = 0 as at _N_ = 1000.

<comment><USER6> The article applies, but presumably zero is a Schelling point. If there's no other specific value that everyone can agree is special, it _may_ be that you would see continual upward movement only after we've made it nonzero.

<comment><USER6> s/article/argument/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> OH, god, this is incredibly stupid. This is not the way to fix the economy. The primary real value of money is that it reduces friction in trade so you don't have to jump through multiple complicated hoops to trade, say, your coding skills for a steak dinner. You trade your coding skills for money and then take money to the restaurant instead of going to the steak dinner maker and asking what he wants and then finding someone who will give you that in exchange for coding.

Money symbolizes value. Other than lubricating trade, which has real value, in itself, it doesn't really "do" anything. You can't eat it. You can't build a house out of it. If burning it to keep warm makes some kind of economic sense, then the economy is seriously fubarred.

This kind of financial manipulation does not fix any of the underlying issues that lead to financial problems. Financial problems grow out of real problems. I can testify to that first hand: I am deeply in debt and homeless due to medical problems, in essence. I am fixing my medical problems. As my medical problems resolve, my expenses come down and my productivity goes up. My debts are slowly being paid down.

We need to fix real problems, underlying root cause problems. This kind of superficial manipulation is not a fix.

Oh, god, no. I can't believe I am seeing this stupidity being taken seriously.

<comment><USER8> Counter-intuitive concepts might seem stupid at first, but if you think through the mechanics you might see that it could actually work.

For me, I have to remind myself that money is just a social construct. The real economy consists of people working and deploying physical plant and equipment to create things other people want.

Today we find that the real economy has a lot of idle resources. People who want to work don't have jobs. Factories and equipment are idle or under- utilized.

If spreading some green pieces of paper around will get the real economy moving again, the standard of living for most people will rise.

It seems wrong at first glance, but it's even more wrong to allow all these resources to waste away, unused, when so much could be done.

<comment><USER4> _the real economy has a lot of idle resources_

But many of those resources are idle because they were misallocated--for example, they were allocated to building more and more McMansions because of the housing bubble, rather than, for example, on fixing roads and bridges and other deteriorating infrastructure. Or they were allocated to building 18 million cars and light trucks a year in North America, when the market now demands only 11 million.

To some extent "helicopter money" as described in the article might help; perhaps if everyone got a $2000 check the demand for vehicles would go up to, say, 14 million a year. But would it go all the way back up to 18 million a year? I doubt it; a significant piece of that demand was people assuming that they needed a new car every 2-3 years; now many of them have had their cars for 5 or 6 years and are realizing that hey, they can save money by not buying a new car as often, without any real reduction in quality of life. That lost demand won't come back.

Nor should it. If the economy was set up to make stuff that people don't really need, that's a waste of resources that could be better allocated elsewhere. That's why I'm skeptical of the "aggregate demand" idea; it basically implies that all that's needed is for people to buy more stuff, without any analysis of the actual comparative value of the stuff.

<comment><USER8> Sure, resources were misallocated. But we're now six years into this, it's been a largely jobless recovery, infrastructure is crumbling before our eyes, and those misallocated resources are now sitting idle.

If you forget about money for a second, it seems like there are a lot of jobs that need doing, and a lot of resources that are idle.

Bridges need to be built, highways need to be paved, kids need teachers and tutors, and we're firing cops and firefighters like never before.

Why can't we match up some of those jobs that need doing with the people, trucks, and factories that are idle?

Why isn't the free market doing a better job re-allocating those resources to more productive uses?

<comment><USER4> _it seems like there are a lot of jobs that need doing, and a lot of resources that are idle._

No argument here.

 _Why can 't we match up some of those jobs that need doing with the people, trucks, and factories that are idle?_

Because most bridges, highways, schools, police and fire departments, etc. are owned by governments, not by private industry, and governments suck at doing what you suggest.

 _Why isn 't the free market doing a better job re-allocating those resources to more productive uses?_

Because governments effectively have a monopoly on many of the productive uses that currently need resources (since they own the infrastructure that needs to be fixed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is interesting because, in contrast to the (many) other discussions of basic income, the author's proposal is to make it run by the Fed, not Congress, and to distribute money on a whenever-the-Fed-wants-to basis, rather than every year.

This wouldn't really address the concerns about poverty that make many people interested in a basic income, because it wouldn't happen regularly and there's no guarantee that the money would be enough to make a difference in peoples' lives. But it could still have a good effect on the economy as a whole, which seems to be what he is aiming for.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Basic income as implemented by the native american tribe (i.e., casino profit sharing) mainly won by reducing anxiety and being a regular dependable payment.

Without regularity, it's just random windfalls, nothing you can bank against.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but that (basic income) is not the point of this proposal. The idea is that you have a lot of people that are un-employed or under-employed, but shouldn't be, which is where we are today. This is a tool to a) get them a job and b) (by driving down un-employment) increase their wages. If this tool does it's job, then they won't _need_ a basic income anymore - they'll be earning it at their new job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm amazed that anything this obviously correct is entering the Overton Window. Next we'll hear someone advocating land value taxes.

<comment><USER13> Could you explain why this is obviously correct? It's not obvious to me. To me, the Fed's current process of bidding on very liquid, publicly sold assets seems to be the most neutral way of injecting dollars into the world.

<comment><USER14> Only the wealthiest Americans (and foreigners for that matter) own the assets the Fed is bidding on. It is not neutral.

<comment><USER13> Could you please explain why the money going to wealthy people is a problem?

I think it's fine for $100 million to go wealthy people if the wealthy people lose $100 million of treasuries at the same time. It only becomes a problem if the Fed overpays for the assets. Which is why it's so important to pick giant liquid asset markets like US treasuries. Giant liquid markets are the least likely to be distorted by Fed action.

<comment><USER15> > It only becomes a problem if the Fed overpays for the assets.

Which is precisely what happened. Many of the toxic assets that are now on the fed balance sheet would have been close to worthless (if not completely worthless)

<comment><USER13> Could you please clarify which assets you're talking about? Is it the Fed's MBS portfolio?

So far your worry has not borne out. The Fed has been earning about $80 billion per year, and its MBS portfolio is worth about $1 trillion.

[http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21570753...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21570753-what-happens-when-fed-starts-losing-money-other-side-qe)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > While depression economics has many strange features, the most important one > to remember is this: with slack in the economy, it's possible to have an > economic free lunch. If our economy were running at capacity, new government > spending, for example, would tend to create inflation because the capacity > (workers, raw materials, and equipment) would have to be bid away from > someone else, thereby raising prices. But during a depression that doesn't > happen. Instead, new spending brings idle capacity into production.

I think this paragraph is really important to think about until you get it. It's easy to get wrapped up in thinking of money as a thing of value when at the end of the day it's just a proxy for goods and services in the real economy. If you don't get that... you'll go off and buy Bitcoin, I guess.

<comment><USER17> So explain to someone who's extremely skeptical of economics mumbo-jumbo why the value of money doesn't naturally increase ("deflate", to use what seems to me to be the better-is-worse terminology) to take up that slack.

In other words, shouldn't a slice of the money pie be worth a slice of the economy pie, even when the size of the economy pie, and therefore the slice, changes? How do we determine when 10% of the money supply equals 10% of the economy? It seems like what you, and the article, are saying is that a certain number of dollars always equals the same amount of, say, gold, or labor, and we just don't have enough dollars to represent all the gold and labor that's floating around. That just doesn't seem right at all; that's exactly the system we moved /away/ from according to the advice of these same economists (or their predecessors).

<comment><USER13> Human beings don't like to lower wages and prices. Also known as 'sticky wages': [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity)

There is plenty of debate over how much this matters, under what conditions it is true, and how the mechanism works. Nonetheless, there is consensus that human bias against lowering prices prevents price deflation and helps cause recessions.

This is one reason why some economists think that steady inflation or NGDP growth is good. If prices always rise, then instead of lowering them (which is psychologically hard), you can just hold them flat for the same effect.

<comment><USER17> So this provides essentially the same effect as the gold standard, no? The gold standard was an element of "stickiness" between money and gold, and sticky wages are between money and labor.

<comment><USER6> Stickiness is economically bad. We can't fix sticky wages without changing people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think we may be seeing the end of demand-side economics, or at least it's dying gasps.

If there's a gap between production and demand, you can look at it two ways: either people don't have enough money to meet the demand, or _we 're making the wrong things_.

Supply side economics said we should always stimulate supply -- demand would follow. Give breaks and incentives to keep making things, dammit! Of course, the problem here is that simply "making things" doesn't take the economy anywhere. It doesn't trickle down.

Demand siders are similarly stuck in one spot, claiming that if only people had enough money, the economy would be fine. Give the people money and the rest will work itself out. It'll trickle up.

I think that both supply and demand are moving targets, and by focusing on them we're missing the larger point: _is the money doing anything new?_ Because economies exist to grow and adapt, not stagnate. If you're dumping money on factories to produce things nobody wants, it's not growing. Likewise, if you're giving money to people to do the same thing they've always done with it, it's also not growing.

We're going to need a more sophisticated way at looking at this. I welcome the idea of giving money away. Anything that will move the conversation forward from these two simplistic and entrenched positions is most welcome.

Let's test it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Just like QE and the bush tax cuts, this would merely be a band-aid. They even covered the major problem earlier in the article... and then completely ignored it when offering solutions.

>Starting in the '80s, productivity gains were no longer shared with workers. Therefore, the wage share of the economy began to decrease. As a percentage of total output, wages have fallen from a high of almost 52 percent around 1970 to less than 43 percent today (see Graph 1). Meanwhile, inequality within wages also increased. The upshot? The rich began capturing nearly all the results of economic growth—the top 1 percent's share of national income increased from about 8 percent in the mid-'70s to about 23 percent today....they "save" by buying financial assets—which means that most of the fruits of economic growth have been channeled into asset price increases, rather than consumer price inflation.

If you just give everyone more money to increase AD via QE, tax cuts, free income or whatever else... it all gets spent and where do the increased sales and profits go? You just stay in the same cycle and have to continue sending more fed checks.

It's the same reason minimum wages don't work. Setting a lower bound does nothing when an upper bound doesn't exist.

<comment><USER20> > Starting in the '80s, productivity gains were no longer shared with workers.

Has anyone really looked into why this is? It's easy to say 'lol greed' and be done with it, but it seems silly to presume that people were any less greedy in the 60's and 70's.

'Globalization' might make a little bit of sense as to why individual companies might pay relatively less taxes to the US government, but I'd need more context than that before I'd be willing to accept globalization as the answer to why production gains aren't really being shared with workers anymore.

If the answer is that collective bargaining has been getting less and less effective over time, why is that?

<comment><USER21> Actually we're the problem. The 1980's represented the rise of the computer age and a massive acceleration in automated production. The trend is long term and shows no sign of stopping.

TLDR; As computers replace manual labor the boss pays less out less of his profits for labor and we have an economy where the rich get richer. Once upon a time profit growth equated to wage growth but modern computer technology has changed this.

<comment><USER22> Can't we fix that by redistributing computing and robotics power?

<comment><USER21> Not sure I follow your reasoning. How so?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In the cryptocurrency world, there's an interesting free money experiment being launched in Iceland this month: Auroracoin. [http://www.auroracoin.org/](http://www.auroracoin.org/)

Auroracoin's goals are not quite as relevant for the US, since we don't have a public national ID database and our dollar is incredibly strong. But the distribution of a pre-mined cryptocoin could be one type of universal income. It's also a way to experiment with relatively few consequences to the existing economy.

<comment><USER22> I hope they get this cleared up, because it looks very suspicious! [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497736.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497736.0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If this happens, then it needs to become a Constitutional amendment and guarantee _everyone_ the money, on time, no matter what. You can't have abuses like we do for the no-fly list in this case. What does someone do when there's no work and everyone receives free money, but he's excluded from the program because he pissed off the government in some way? The only solution is probably to leave the country at that point (unless he's also included in the no-fly list).

</comment><comment><USER25> "John Maynard Keynes used the idea in his 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, to lampoon the inherent silliness of gold mining, suggesting that old coal mines could be filled up with bottles full of banknotes, buried over with trash, then left "to private enterprise on well- tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again.""

And it only took 51 years until we got Bitcoin...

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's an idea!

Step 1) Take away all money from everyone make big pile 'o cash. Step 2) Give everyone an equal distribution of the big pile 'o cash. Step 3) Wait one year. Step 4) Scratch head over how some are now poor and other are super wealthy even after the great leveling.

Hmm no, maybe not such a great idea.

There is a finite amount of tangible goods that can be produced, money chases goods, markets react, prices rise. If everyone has a million dollars do you think someone will sell you his Ferrari for $200k ? No, because the value of the Ferrari does not reside within the dollar, it's only a medium of exchange used for easily trading goods and services.

<comment><USER27> Basic income can be cost neutral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I saved the economy with this one weird trick: giving everybody a free $2,000 check. But why stop at $2,000? Why not give everyone a million dollars then everyone will be rich, nobody will have to work, and we can all live like kings!

<comment><USER13> One reason to stop at $2,000 is so that inflation is limited. 2% inflation is quite manageable, historically. 2000% inflation is not.

<comment><USER6> Is there particular motivation for $2000, or just using the article's number? It seems that there's clearly _some_ optimal number, and I suspect it's >0, but I'm not sure how it should be determined.

<comment><USER13> I was just using the given number.

If this scheme were implemented, I'm guessing the number would be picked by economists at the Fed who target a particular money supply. And then that number would be criticized by people who think that the Fed is choosing to stiff the poor. For that reason, I think it would be a huge mistake to tie together monetary policy and income redistribution. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The only problem with basic income is that rents would just rise to consume it and poor people would still be poor.

BI won't work as good as it should without simultaneously shifting balance between renting and owning, for example, with progressive real estate tax to discourage investing in large amount of real estate (selling 10th house below market rate would be more cost-effective than keeping it) and to make it easier to purchase one house for yourself (because of increased supply and reduced prices).

<comment><USER30> If you read closely the article isn't talking about basic income in the usual sense. It's not suggesting paying everybody $2000 per month forever. It's suggesting a new option for the Fed to stimulate the economy on an "as-needed" basis.

So I doubt any rents would go up substantially just because once in awhile (like every couple of years) a $2000 check came in the mail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I always thought that given the UK was being run a bit like UK-PLC these days, that they might as well just declare the population as shareholders and start paying dividends.

<comment><USER32> > _declare the population as shareholders and start paying dividends_ //

Who gets the prefernce shares!?

Also, they may be issuing a profit warning rather than any dividends ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The current way that the Fed distributes money is by auction. They buy assets (usually treasury bills) at the market price. Because these assets are bought publicly at fair prices, this process is supposed to favor no one, in theory. It is a neutral policy.

The free money for everyone proposal is NOT neutral. It would transfer wealth to the poor. That is not a bad thing, but it seems odd to couple monetary policy with redistributive policy.

<comment><USER33> It would transfer wealth to the poor for about 2 seconds. Most of the recipients would quickly spend the money, which would transfer it back to the upper classes. The poor don't need helicopter drops of cash, they need a societal framework which supports and allows them to pursue real opportunities for social mobility.

<comment><USER13> Could you please elaborate?

Just because the poor spend the money in 2 seconds does not mean that the wealth evaporates after 2 seconds. They now have whatever goods they purchased with the money. And even if those goods are consumables, it's offset the spending/debt they would have otherwise needed.

I find it rather offensive to accuse the poor of wasting all the money they receive (which is how I interpret your comment). If that's not what you meant, could you please re-explain? Thank you.

<comment><USER34> I don't think the judgement was that the money was wasted, but that the money would be spent immediately by the poor, and the rich wouldn't do much with it.

If you have $5 Million in the bank and I give you $2K. The money I've given you won't change your spending habits. There is no purchase you have put off due to lack of money.

If you have $100K in the bank it's more likely you'll spend it, but not a guarantee.

If you are living paycheck to paycheck like roughly 3/4 of the country ([http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/pf/emergency- savings/](http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/pf/emergency-savings/)) then that $2k will most likely get spent. Just because it's spent doesn't mean it's wasteful.

That spending will reflect things they are living without because they can't afford it. A more reliable car. A second car so their SO has a better opportunity to work. A computer. In the case of some low end works it could mean equipment and/or space to open their own business. Better/More food. An evening at the movies. Painting the house. These are all things they can't/won't take on debt for, but could do with a windfall.

<comment><USER29> > I don't think the judgement was that the money was wasted, but that the > money would be spent immediately by the poor, and the rich wouldn't do much > with it.

Yes. But they would have to give poor something back for that money. And that's what they currently are not doing because they are waiting for the poor to produce the money they have no means of producing.

In order to manufacture the thing the rich can give poor in exchange for their helicopter money they have to increase production and probably hire some poor people which benefits poor even more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think this is an interesting policy. In fact, I think both this type of policy and the version where cash is simply distributed to everyone each month or so is also interesting, and I wonder how it would work for the mentally disabled which, unfortunately, make up a large part of our homeless population in the U.S. Then there are people like my dad who is what you might call a "crazy redneck" in that he doesn't have a bank account (never has, as far as I know) and who is extremely distrustful of the government (he basically lives in a compound out in the forest with his wife and her family..) he's sort of the black sheep of my family. How would we ensure that people who refuse to get a bank account, or who are simply unable to do so, would receive their monies?

<comment><USER36> I'm believe mailboxes are under federal jurisdiction.

<comment><USER35> Right. But one must use a bank or check cashing service to use a check.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> From the end of the article:

"The helicopter money policy ... distributes resources directly to citizens, with no limits on how they can spend it"

If the purpose is to jump-start spending, then perhaps there should be one modest restriction on how you spend a stimulus check: an expiration date.

Instead of issuing checks, the government could issue prepaid debit cards with a relatively short expiration date. (I believe some of the 2008 stimulus money was distributed via debit card, but the bulk was direct-deposited.)

For the vast majority of people, a debit card with a short expiration date would lead to their spending the money within that span; a small minority might go through the trouble of converting the debit card amount to cash and saving it, but probably not nearly as high a percentage as if it came as a check or a direct deposit.

<comment><USER38> Perhaps its just personality, but if I were to receive a stimulus debit card, I would use it to pay for one of my existing monthly expenses (T-mobile, gas, etc) and take my own funds I would've spent and save it.

<comment><USER39> Look up Steve Keen. His suggestion for a debt jubilee / universal money distribution scheme more-or-less follows on this basis, though he puts the first cut at debt.

The point is: if you spend the money, whether on retiring debt, on recurring expenses, or on new purchases, what you've received is a net increase in income. For people who are living hand to mouth (they have no surplus income, or worse, negative surplus), the money will be spent.

If you're able to squirrel some away, that's a consideration, but it's 1) built into the model and 2) it's a relatively small fraction of the total distribution (likely less than 20%).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> How did this dribble make it this high up HN? Money is a medium of exchange. It represents real value. If we just spin up new batches and dish it out, where is its value? More money will be sloshing around in the system sending incorrect economic signals which will artificially inflate certain industries. The house of cards will collapse on itself when ppl stop believing the dollar can maintain a stable value. The currency will be dumped and hyper[inflation]/[deflation] will destroy the economy until a new reliable money is surfaced.

<comment><USER41> It's obviously not creating more wealth, rather it's redistributing that wealth into an arguably more efficient distribution.

<comment><USER6> It's obviously not creating more wealth _first order_. If that money frees up demand that wouldn't have otherwise been expressed, and people providing for that demand would otherwise have been out of work, it can create more wealth. The degree to which that would happen is an open question, so far as I'm aware.

<comment><USER41> You're exactly right, I was sloppy in my phrasing. Greater efficiency creates opportunities for wealth creation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> When milk is $800 a gallon we might see the flaw of this approach.

<comment><USER13> I think the proposal is not inject additional money, but to inject the same amount of money through a different channel - giveaways instead of open-market operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> 300 million Americans x $2,000 per month x 12 Months = 7.2 Trillion annual printing of new money. Total M2 Money Supply is currently 10.5 Trillion and the entire US GDP is only 15.6 Trillion. So adding approx 70% to the money supply every year or adding 50% of GDP as new cash to the economy every year will only result in 2% more inflation??? If you believe that, I've got a dot com to sell you...

<comment><USER30> The proposal was not to give everybody $2000 per month forever. It was to add another lever to the Fed's monetary policy adjustment machine, to be used on an "as-needed" basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _with slack in the economy, it's possible to have an economic free lunch._

TANSTAAFL[1].

[1] [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL)

<comment><USER6> That is certainly the reference they were making. Contrary to popular belief, however, Heinlein was not a prophet whose aphorisms strongly apply to every scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> How did april 1st come so quickly?

</comment><comment><USER45> Wow. I think they're not kidding! Yeah, let's all just sit back and receive fiat currency from the skies! I'm sure it will work out just fine, because um.. aggregate demand _magic_!

Why not just print and hand out 100 trillion dollars to everyone? -Somehow _that_ sounds like a bad idea, huh? But there's nothing wrong with sprinkling say, 3000 times 330 000 000 dollars into the masses' hands?

<comment><USER13> To give a serious reply to your hopefully not serious comment:

Of course hyperinflation would be a concern at the $100 trillion level.

The idea behind this policy would not be to inject additional money into the world. Rather, the idea is to switch channels from open-market operations to money giveaways. Because the amount of newly created money would be the same, inflation should be about the same too.

<comment><USER45> > Of course hyperinflation would be a concern at the $100 trillion level.

If it wasn't harmful to hand out "free money" to everyone, then they could actually do it at the $100 trillion level. The difference is in the degree/expediency of harm caused. Hyperinflation would be a concern at the $3000 level too.

The point is that there _is_ no "free money". Money being "free" equates to money being worthless, and that's exactly where the suggested operation would lead.

> Rather, the idea is to switch channels from open-market operations to money > giveaways.

I see you've adopted the Fed's jargon. The massive difference between what the Fed is doing now (handing out $85B/month to banksters) and handing out money to the masses is that in the latter case, all of that money could potentially enter the real-world economy right away, thus potentially causing all the inflation it could possibly cause.

That's way different from the same amount of "nominal wealth" sitting in some bank's balance sheet, having replaced some worthless-in-reality asset's nominal valuation with the equivalent amount of money. In this case, the money is not going anywhere, and thus, not causing the inflation it could.

But the original article is thoroughly full of shit. No wonder, because the article was meant to mislead the public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm a hard money guy (I know, I know) but, dealing with a fiat currency proposal on it's own terms, with Lenin you have to ask: who, whom?

The Fed, ???

Hmmm.</comment>


India's $50 (subsidized) tablet launched. Starting sales in Nov '11 - <AUTHOR> http://gadgets.ndtv.com/video.aspx?id=212812?hp

<comment><AUTHOR> The blurb - [http://tech2.in.com/news/tablets/indias-very- own-35-tablet-t...](http://tech2.in.com/news/tablets/indias-very- own-35-tablet-to-launch-tomorrow/245822)

Specs:

Android 2.2

Wifi, _2 USB Ports_

7'' resistive display, 350g

366 mhz processor

256 mb RAM

2GB flash

microsd support

2100 mah battery

can play 1080p video</comment>


Launching So.cl - A totally different social network - <AUTHOR> http://www.so.cl/

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but what's so totally different about it? At first glance this looks like a Pinterest clone of some kind.</comment>


Did NSA Put a Secret Backdoor in New Encryption Standard? (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/essay-198.html <comment><USER2> Back when DES was being designed, IBM had a bunch of values in their S-boxes. NSA told them "don't use those values; use these values instead." People freaked that it was a backdoor the NSA put in.

About 15 years later, differential cryptoanalysis was publicly discovered. The original S-box values would have been very vulnerable to the attack, but the ones the NSA used were resistant, suggesting that NSA knew about differential cryptoanalysis way ahead of time and were suggesting ways to protect the public against its eventual discovery.

It is _possible_ that there is still some magic in there to let the NSA magically defeat DES, but we still haven't found it. Similarly, it's _possible_ that this random number generator exists for some nefarious purpose, but we have no evidence for it.

Also, this article is 5 years old (the headline didn't say so when I first read this). Schneier was in pretty big self-promotion mode at that time.

<comment><USER3> I can't find the citation right now, so treat this as apocryphal, but...

I've read an explanation that the USA's focus on security has changed in the days since 9/11/2001. At one time, the philosophy was that the country was more secure when we could all be assured that the privacy of our communications was intact.

But in the last decade we've changed that philosophy. The government's security philosophy now is that the most important thing is for the government to be able to tell what's going on.

So it may be that the parent post's anecdote is quite correct, and reflects the policy _of that time_. But in the days of the War On Terror, we can't trust that anymore.

(And OT, I believe it reflects a fundamental change in the philosophy of governance that is against the founding principles of the country, and a pretty bad thing. I believe that our strength derives from ... us -- we the people. And so strengthening the government by weakening us in fact weakens the nation.)

EDIT: fix date. Thanks, Retric.

<comment><USER4> > _At one time, the philosophy was that the country was more secure when we > could all be assured that the privacy of our communications was intact._

That's never really been the view of the U.S. government. It's always been the view that you should be able to have communications with your neighbor that are secure from everyone _except_ the US government, who obviously need to snoop in order to protect us all.

The security agencies and the police agencies have always pushed for more comprehensive and more invasive surveillance. We've had wiretapping for as long as we've had wires to tap. We crippled Internet security for years. I remember the days of separate US and international Netscape releases, due to crypto export restrictions. It wasn't until 2000 that the restrictions were truly relaxed.

<comment><USER5> US and international Netscape releases (as well as Windows and various other tools) rather indicate that the US govt was interested in secure communication for US citizens and corporations, while being able to snoop on the rest of the world.

If you need an example, pick the Clipper chip - and even that doesn't _quite_ work out, given how publically that proposal was shot down.

<comment><USER4> I think it's rather an example of how the Judicial branch keeps the other branches in check. If the NSA had its way, they'd be able to listen in on every conversation you ever have, track every site you visit, record every communication you ever make. They would do the same for everyone internationally as well. The difference is that we have the Supreme Court protecting US citizens to some extent, so the NSA cannot legally wiretap your phone just for kicks, but the Supreme Court doesn't extend the same protection to citizens of other countries.

<comment><USER6> And you believe the NSA when you can't see the warrants, know who issued them, what they contain, etc.? How would we know they weren't tapping domestic communication? You wouldn't. Any whistleblowers would be roughed-up or locked- up... much like Thomas Drake.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake#2007_FBI_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake#2007_FBI_raids)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy#Trailblazer_and_whistleblowing_prosecution)

<comment><USER4> I said that the judicial branch keeps the other branches is check. I didn't say that are completely effective or that their checks are sufficient. And I certainly didn't say that the NSA wasn't engaging in any domestic wiretapping.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I think the key word in that sentence is "legally". The following article describes the situation re: warrantless monitoring of u.s. citizens by the NSA: [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all)

The thing is that they can not bring the result of this warrantless wiretapping into court. But they probably don't want to.

From what I've seen the FBI is a lot more vocal in complaining about the impact of encryption because their mandate involves bringing cases to court so they want a formalized, legitimate way of breaking encryption when they have warrants. They would also love to have the dragnet that the NSA has to know who to watch, and I don't know to what extent they do, but the bigger difference that I see is that the NSA is not interested in launching court battles (any more) whereas that is the primary endgame for the FBI.

The problem of course is that an encryption system which can be broken in a formalized way is open to the possibility of being broken by the wrong people. You can't have your cake and eat it too by having strong encryption that can be broken by the "right" people because there is no way to theoretically describe who the "right" people are. The encryption has to work the same for everyone.

Like all big issues in society there are competing rights; the need for law enforcement bumps up against the freedom of the individual. I believe that we are comfortable enough pushing this balance more heavily towards the freedom of the individual in America that a policy of embracing strong encryption is in the best interests of everyone, but I am aware that I don't have as much knowledge about this issue as some others.

<comment><USER8> You can have an encryption system that can only be broken by the 'right' people. We already have crypto systems where any 1 of n people can decrypt the message. If you embed a public key into the algorithm, then only the algorithm's designers would know the private key needed for decryption.

Doing this in a non-obvious way seems much more difficult, but if the NSA did have a weakness to DES, it could very possibly require knowing a secret key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is quite interesting, as the NSA on the one hand needs to provide secure algorithms for the public to use, but on the other hand has an interest in being able to break algorithms.

IIRC, during the standarization of DES, the NSA has also modified some S-Boxes without giving any explanation. Only later, when differential cryptoanalysis became known to the public, it was clear that this was to strengthen DES against this particular attack (which was already known to the NSA).

The case here is more interesting though: It seems like you need to know some secret numbers (a sort of "private key" if you will) to be able to attack the PRNG. So it seems that the NSA could place a "safe" backdoor that even an attacker with the same cryptography knowledge as they have cannot break unless he himself possesses the "private key".

<comment><USER10> What sense does it make to backdoor an RNG that no normal system is ever going to use, and to do so in a public standard, and further to do so by using deliberately broken curve parameters?

It was an interesting story because it was so weird. But even had Dual EC _not_ become known to the world exclusively as "the CSPRNG with the backdoor in it", nobody would have used it anyways.

<comment><USER9> Yeah that is rather weird. A botched attempt maybe?

<comment><USER10> No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nobody used this random number generator.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps the government required defense contractors to use this one in products sold to other countries?

I don't have any evidence for that, just speculation on one reason the NSA might insist on including something like this in the spec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "In the meantime, both NIST and the NSA have some explaining to do."

Not happening. Hasn't yet, nor will it. NSA just keeps quite and watches for someone to use their particular algorithm. We should assume malicious intent and take Schneier's advice: "My recommendation, if you're in need of a random- number generator, is not to use Dual_EC_DRBG under any circumstances."

And if you "don't have anything to hide," then I propose you've given up already and cryptography is useless to you.

<comment><USER13> Not entirely. While the best cryptography is that which is secure against everyone (duh), there are a vast number of perfectly legitimate use cases for cryptography where it doesn't matter if the NSA can read your encrypted data.

<comment><USER14> I can't imagine any legitimate use case for crappy cryptography, and any crypto with a backdoor is crappy. If the door is there, anyone with the key can open it. How can you be sure who will get the key, or what their motives will be?

Good, modern cryptography offers a level of security unparalleled in the physical world, and at a processing cost which any computer can handle. Why would you intentionally choose something inferior?

<comment><USER15> The example often given is "MILITARY GRADE ENCRYPTION" - if tank driver Bob is given commands to shell a target those commands only need to be secret for a short length of time. It doesn't matter if the enemy can decrypt them by taking a week's time, because Bob will have attacked the target and gone by then.

This is, obviously, a really old example, because modern hardware makes encrypting things quick and easy, and decrypting things quick and easy. But imagine strong encryption in the 1980s - you had to balance strength with time with size and then try to cram it into low-specced hardware.

<comment><USER14> OK, yes, there is such a thing as "strong enough crypto for your purposes", and there are tradeoffs for computing power, etc.

My point was that there's no point in picking something with a known back door when there are perfectly good, non-compromised alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting... Was there any code written to demonstrate the attack?

<comment><USER12> That's a good question. I suspect if so, it was alongside an academic paper and this stuff just doesn't get attention from journalists. I'd be curious to find out but I don't have the skills to pore over the material myself.

<comment><USER2> Do you really think "academic finds back door in NSA's random number generator" wouldn't get headlines? Remember how people freaked over the mere mention of the name of "NSAKEY" freaked everyone out?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not exactly current - the article is something like 5 years old....

<comment><USER12> You'll notice the "[2007]" in the post title.

<comment><USER18> Apparently the mods added it later. There really should be some way to tell what the mods have and haven't done.

<comment><USER19> Something like mouse-over for original title would be great.

<comment><USER20> Excellent idea. I just submitted the feature request:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4580886></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Crowd Puzzle - Realtime puzzles with friends - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
This is my first true release of something I feel is pretty cool to HN. I started building this site with the idea that pieces could be purchased through micro payments. Winners of solving the puzzle would get some sort of prize and could build up credit on the site. My dreams of this were shattered by the ambiguous gambling laws of the U.S. With that said, I have no clue what to do with the site, but I haven't seen the concept anywhere else before.
You can register using Facebook or the traditional login and you will be given 50 pieces and 50 guesses. You can use those to reveal tiles on the puzzle (updates realtime) or solve the puzzle when you think you know what it is. There are currently 3 puzzles loaded into the system and they will just cycle through each other if there is a winner. I understand the puzzle subjects do not have a definitive answer, but I was planning on using artwork or people as the material as there is only one answer.
Like I said, I am not sure what to do with the site, but someone else might. Even though I have done a lot of testing, I still consider the site to be in beta. If you find any bugs, I would love to hear. Feel free to shoot me an email, spread the site to friends, or comment on what you think. I am collecting metrics on the puzzle solving to help me better understand how a user plays, so hopefully some good will come out of showing.
http://crowdpuzzle.9bplus.com/ <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://crowdpuzzle.9bplus.com/></comment>


Butterfly iQ – A cheap handheld ultrasound tool with AI smarts inside - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/imaging/new-ultrasound-on-a-chip-tool-could-revolutionize-medical-imaging <comment><USER3> Perspective from an emergency doctor. Many comments ask if non-medical persons would use ultrasound should it become affordable. I think not.

There aren't enough common medical conditions that you would monitor with a personal ultrasound[1]. Also it's a tough skill to learn without a solid background in anatomy. This would deter many.

Primary care doctors (eg family, internal, and emergency medicine) will benefit most from affordable ultrasound. We are learning that it's a powerful diagnostic tool when used along side the physical exam. Some zealots have equated bedside ultrasound to be the biggest advancement to medicine since antibiotics. This notion I feel is exaggerated, but— it taps into the underlying excitement in the medical community for bedside ultrasound.

Here are some sample cases.

Patient came in with all the symptoms and findings of a stroke— altered mental status, inability to move their left arm. Before giving the treatment for a stroke, a potent blood thinner called tPA, the doctor decided to do an informal ultrasound of the patients heart. He found the patient had a massive dissection of their aorta. The patient wasn't getting adequate blood flow to their arm or brain. Had the patient been given tPA they most likely would have died. A quick bedside ultrasound revealed a difficult diagnosis and saved the patients life.

Another case- a young female came in unresponsive and without a pulse. Her husband said she had complained of belly pain for the past several days but nothing else. While doing cpr we placed an ultrasound on her abdomen and saw a massive amount of blood in her belly. A pelvic binder was applied and we immediately started massive transfusion for presumed ruptured ectopic pregnancy. In this case the easy access to ultrasound gave us a diagnosis in under a minute.

Both of these cases occurred in the emergency department. Of all specialties I think emergency medicine has been quickest to adopt bedside ultrasound. Other fields however could benefit too. Ultrasound is underutilized in family medicine and internal medicine clinics. Making it affordable, say close in price to a stethoscope, should encourage its use in these specialties and lead to more discoveries of its use as a diagnostic aide.

1\. patients with an abdominal aneurysm may wish to monitor its size with a personal ultrasound. This seems extreme.

<comment><USER4> > Many comments ask if non-medical persons would use ultrasound should it > become affordable. I think not.

I immediately thought of a non-medical use case.

A pregnancy and birth in Singapore costs $5-20k, so an extra $2k is not that much to be able to see your baby move and grow whenever you like as opposed to having to wait for your monthly appointment (and perhaps post photos on Instagram). It's a bit much for me but I might have bought one for $100.

Some redditors working in US ER departments complained of mothers turning up with "complications" mid-pregnancy because of the mandatory ultrasound that follows, allowing them to see their child, at which point their symptoms mysteriously vanish and they head home smiling.

<comment><USER5> Luxury ultrasound is a growing business in the US. Wanna know the gender at 14 weeks? No problem, $40 in the mall. Want a DVD with a recording of the baby's heartbeat and a 20 minute video of it squiring around in 3D? $100. Want to stick that baby heartbeat into a teddy bear? Dude, you are kind of weird....$30. Sign up for our monthly "checking in on baby" package ultrasound discount.

I'm not kidding, it's very real: [http://forever- yours.us/3d-4d-ultrasounds-2/](http://forever-yours.us/3d-4d-ultrasounds-2/)

<comment><USER6> Where there's money to be had, there's someone willing to exploit it.

[http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/ultrasound-clinic-blames- identi...](http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/ultrasound-clinic-blames-identical- baby-images-on-computer-glitch-1.2906974)

<comment><USER7> And when you get caught, shout "IT WAS A VIRUS!!!! CLONING IMAGES!!"

I dont think I have ever encountered a virus that cloned images. The only way I can even imagine it true is if a malfunctioning root kit was somehow installed and affected file writes....but in 30 years..haven't seen it. Likely they were just lazy so they kept handing out the same image figuring no one would know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm sure doctors are looking forward to ultrasound scanners being common household devices, and getting 50 emails a day from panicked people convinced that their gallbladder is a tumor.

<comment><USER9> I'm not saying that wouldn't happen, but we need to get away from the idea that non-professionals shouldn't have access to their own medical information. More education and empowerment is the answer, not less.

<comment><USER10> > More education and empowerment is the answer, not less.

The crux lies in determining the boundary between education and quackery. The resurgence of antivaxxers, homeopathy believers and friends doesn't exactly help the case for deregulation here.

<comment><USER11> Is there any evidence anti-vaccine and homeopathy movements are bigger than they were in the past?

Google Trends suggests homeopathy is up a bit recently, but way down from its pre-internet peak.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=homeopat...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=homeopathy)

<comment><USER10> > Is there any evidence anti-vaccine and homeopathy movements are bigger than > they were in the past?

I'm talking about Germany here as I can't really speak for the US, where from 2011 to 2013 prescriptions rose 3.8% and OTC sales went up 23% ([https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hom%C3%B6opathie#Bundesrepubli...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hom%C3%B6opathie#Bundesrepublik_Deutschland_ab_1990)).

As for antivaxers, Europe as a whole has a _huge_ measles problem which has risen in the last years ([http://theconversation.com/whats-behind-the-sudden- rise-in-m...](http://theconversation.com/whats-behind-the-sudden-rise-in- measles-deaths-in-europe-80909)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Engineer at Butterfly Network here, very excited to see interest on HN. As you can imagine, we are hiring, there are a lot of very interesting open opportunities [https://careers.smartrecruiters.com/4Catalyzer](https://careers.smartrecruiters.com/4Catalyzer)

</comment><comment><USER13> As someone who just had an ultrasound, I think this is the right direction. I had to goto a diagnostics center where they specialize in scanned imagery. I go in, paperwork, wait, wait some more, get scanned, and leave. The technician just had me hold my breath while she put some jelly on my abdomen and moved the device around. Once in a while she would take ultrasound pictures. Snap, snap, move, breath, snap.

My GP had me go in order to troubleshoot a blood test. Now, if the GP had this device it would have saved me some time and effort, not to mention the external factors such as gas, taking up space on the road, and an appointment.

So yeah, please, GPs everywhere, load yourself with these devices as they become cheaper and cheaper.

edit: GP's to GPs

<comment><USER14> >The technician just had me hold my breath while she put some jelly on my abdomen and moved the device around. Once in a while she would take ultrasound pictures. Snap, snap, move, breath, snap.

Well, yes, and she probably went to school for quite some time to know exactly what gets a picture and what doesn't.

This is like saying "I had an appendectomy, and all the surgeon did was make some cuts an sew me up." You're not going to a surgeon because he owns a scalpel.

<comment><USER15> The GP surely has the skills to take and read the scan.

<comment><USER6> But it's not efficient use of their time.

Ultrasound techs do the imaging/take the photos, and the physician reviews them. Ultrasound techs make less money than physicians, that's why physicians are taken out of that part of the process.

It's like saying "The dentist should also clean my teeth". Well their time is better spent on procedures, leave the cleaning to the hygienist.

<comment><USER16> In the outpatient setting it might take days or a week or more to get an appointment for a formal US, then more time for the radiologist to read it, then more time for the GP to get the results and consider treatment changes then more time to get in touch With the patient. But if I as a physician perform and interpret the ultrasound in real time I can immediately begin appropriate therapy. This is the major benefit of point-of-care US as opposed to conventional US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >He also ran into difficulties with transmitting the images to the hospital's database for storage. "And saving those images is required to bill for the scan," he notes.

I think this guy is missing the point. Seems like the goal is to make giving an ultrasound so easy that it would be silly to charge for it. Just like the doctor doesn't (or at least shouldn't) have a special charge to listening to your chest with a stethoscope.

<comment><USER10> > Seems like the goal is to make giving an ultrasound so easy that it would be > silly to charge for it.

A literal ape can do an ultrasound scan if trained well enough - you still need years of training to actually _interpret_ the data you gather with an ultrasound image or by listening to a chest. This is what you pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can someone with a better understanding of the medical industry comment about the quality of this device? It seems like a small portable ultrasound device would be a great thing for diagnosis. But I understand there are all kinds of issues that might not be obvious to people without a strong medical background.

Is this as good as it seems, or are there features this lacks which prevents it from being that useful in the hospital setting?

<comment><USER19> In a hospital setting this isn't terribly useful. An ultrasound is not that big, and easily moved around on a small cart.

Small portable ultrasounds like this are gaining popularity in prehospital care (in ambulances, etc).

This isn't really a new concept though. Things like the GE Vscan have been around for years.

<comment><USER20> Certainly in a well-funded hospital, but might $2K also not look more appealing than $20K-$200K for a small clinic in a one-horse town?

Caveat, I have no idea how much a commercial ultrasound machine costs. But it's _one_ machine Michael, what could it cost? Ten thousand dollars?

<comment><USER21> Even for a well funded hospital this should mean that the procedure now becomes less expensive. Especially important for pets where you can be out of pocket for half the price of one of these.

<comment><USER22> Each of the machines at my (large academic) hospital is used for 8-12 transthoracic echocardiograms every weekday, or ~2,500 times per year. An average ultrasound machine cost $140,000 in 2016 (per [1]). If we assume that the machines last 3 years (so far I can tell you that they last at least 5 years, but let's be conservative), then the hospital gets ~7,500 ultrasounds for $140,000, so just under $20 of the cost is attributable to the machine. According to Choosing Wisely[2], the average cost of a TTE is ~$1,000. So, only 2% of the bill seems to be attributable to the price of the ultrasound machine. So, at least at major academic medical centers, the device itself probably won't make a huge change.

I could imagine the standard of care changing, however, and that might make a difference. If cheap ultrasounds become ubiquitous and more physicians are trained in their use, the use of ultrasound among generalists might increase, freeing up specialists to take a more narrow focus. I could see this technology being particularly useful in emergency and critical care settings.

1 = [http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20141216/blog/312169...](http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20141216/blog/312169995)

2 = [http://www.choosingwisely.org/patient- resources/echocardiogr...](http://www.choosingwisely.org/patient- resources/echocardiograms-for-heart-valve-disease/)

<comment><USER23> The mark-up in western hospitals notwithstanding I can see a large market for cheaper devices in countries that are not so rich.

<comment><USER22> Absolutely. This price point -- apparently 70x cheaper than the prevailing standard -- could definitely bring the technology to places where $140,000 is prohibitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So how to stop people from taking this discreet, inexpensive ultrasound device to China where parents will pay a lot of money for a black-market ultrasound to be told the gender of their fetus?

[http://shanghaiist.com/2017/07/12/ultrasound- van.php](http://shanghaiist.com/2017/07/12/ultrasound-van.php)

[http://www.havocscope.com/cost-for-illegal-ultrasound-and- ab...](http://www.havocscope.com/cost-for-illegal-ultrasound-and-abortions-in- china/)

<comment><USER25> Aborting girls in China is exaggerated and you're certainly over playing it.

What about the girls lives saved by cheap medical technology?

Certainly one theory on the gender imbalance is girls tend to get less medical care due to costs and as such die at higher rates.

<comment><USER26> Is 100 million "killed, aborted or neglected" girls exaggerated? Or do you have better sources than the Economist: [http://www.economist.com/node/15606229](http://www.economist.com/node/15606229) (Note that article is from 2010, there have been many more since.)

<comment><USER25> Dime a dozen that dispute that figure but my biggest issue is with this comment is -

> to China where parents will pay a lot of money for a black-market ultrasound

No, normal parents don't abort girls, normal parents don't infanticide girls. The Chinese are not some sort of subhuman race that on mass do awful things to their children.

Not a fan of the New Republic but it talks about the issue (and the racism behind it)

[https://newrepublic.com/article/133845/truth-chinas- missing-...](https://newrepublic.com/article/133845/truth-chinas-missing- daughters)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is absolutely interesting to veterinarians. Many veterinarians would use this as an adjunct to the physical exam. In human med, the follow up of conditions like mitral valve insufficiency is covered by insurance but in vet med, it gets expensive going to the recommended cardiology visits paying out of pocket. Plus, we can use ultrasound for a lot of routine and emergency procedures. I signed up right away.

</comment><comment><USER28> There are already a number of mobile ultrasound devices, including ones that plug into phones and tablets.

As someone who's actually done a few ultrasound courses, depending upon what you're trying to image it's not easy. It's not just about having the device, years of medical training come into play.

Also, the mobile devices have significantly lower resolution and don't seem to be super important in the hospital.

<comment><USER29> Yep, I've been playing with the Lumify ([https://www.lumify.philips.com/web/](https://www.lumify.philips.com/web/)) for a few years. I think my hospital has had it for about 5 years.

From what I can gather, this new device's selling point is the price. I'm not sure how much the Lumify is, but I had the impression that it was a few thousand dollars. And there's some talk about new AI technology packed inside the new device, what that is I am not sure.

<comment><USER30> Given the regulatory process, I would envision AI along the lines of "region proposal". That is software to highlight or draw one's attention to a certain portion of the image that "may" have X or something interesting. That's in contrast to diagnosis software where it'd say this portion "is" X.

I should add there are several hand-held portable ultrasound machines, like from SonoSite and Clarius, and would agree that the selling point here is the price point. To the best of my knowledge, the cost of ultrasound machines has gone down by two orders of magnitude with somewhat comparable resolutions. I believe the top-tier machines with the best image quality or resolution are still on the order of >$100k (Philips Epiq for example).

The cloud software offered by Butterfly should also be interesting if done well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The interesting question is who/what does the diagnosis. I've had my kids fall over a bunch of times (with a couple broken bones in there - <USER2> ambiguous, sadly) and broken a couple bones in my life too (as well as done stuff that convinced me that _something_ must be broken in there, when nothing was).

So I think there were essentially zero times when a cheap-hand-held ultrasound in that home would have added information. The question is really whether this could be enormously helpful to a GP? Can they be trained usefully to take over some of the role of an ultrasound technician and do first-line diagnosis? It'd be great to not have to do the standard schlep over to the diagnosis place, wait around, get the thing done, and wait to get the results back to the GP or specialist.

I imagine there's also a fair bit of computer "vision" work on this stuff too - I would presume people are working feverishly away on ways of reconstructing 3D imagery and actual diagnoses of an image via computer, as opposed to squinting at these mysterious pictures.

<comment><USER19> Ultrasound is not terribly useful in the diagnosis of fractures. It can detect certain types of fractures in kids under 12 or so, but can't rule out a fracture.

There are absolutely things a GP could use ultrasound for to rule in or out various diagnosis. A GP doesn't really need a "pocket" ultrasound though. A "normal" ultrasound would work just fine.

<comment><USER30> I'd be curious as to what the payment model for a GP to own a conventional ultrasound machine would look like in Canada, the US, and the UK. It's my understanding that the pocket ultrasound at it's price point would essentially pay itself earlier on while serving a purpose of being a triage tool.

Given the size and cost of a conventional cart-based machine, I think the pocket one is more well suited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is absolutely interesting to veterinarians. Many veterinarians would use this as an adjunct to the physical exam. In human med, the follow up of conditions like mitral valve insufficiency is covered by insurance but in vet med, it gets expensive going to the recommended cardiology visits paying out of pocket. Plus, we can use ultrasound for a lot of routine and emergency procedures.

</comment><comment><USER32> I saw no mention if they removed the ability for it to sex a fetus, if they haven't it will be a tool for aborting female babies.

<comment><USER33> That seems like an impossible feature for an imaging device. I guess you could train a neural network to recognize fetus gender and blur out the crotch area on the image.

<comment><USER32> They rely heavily on AI for processing the data, they absolutely could remove the ability for gender identification.

<comment><USER34> That depends on how they're applying their "AI technology." Maybe it's to improve the SNR for a given pixel? Maybe it's to interpolate additional resolution between pixels / lines? It seems possible, but not necessarily likely, that they're doing whole-image post-processing / analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> They should sell these at a huge discount in exchange for an agreement to share imaging data and eventual diagnosis back to the company, as training data for their AI. An AI that could identify medical issues on an ultrasound with greater accuracy than a doctor would be worth a fortune -- and genuinely make the world a better place.

</comment><comment><USER36> I know it's been studied extensively, but doesn't fda and others still advise caution about frivolous use?

<comment><USER28> ultrasound is pretty harmless. Consequences about frivolous use would mostly be due to unintended discoveries that might require further investigation, which can be dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Another great medical device that piggy-backs on an iPhone is the FDA-approved spirometer Wing:

Http://mywing.io

</comment><comment><USER38> There is a lot of hate in these comments for this being a surprisingly cheap and potentially disruptive technology.

I was just having a lengthy discussion with an ultrasound technician last week. He himself admitted that:

1) The classes he found for free on YouTube were just as good as his technical training and certification.

2) These new smaller devices are actually superior to the older/larger machines because the signal is processed locally rather than remotely (on the machine through the cable). He said he regularly has to deal with interference/noise from the cable itself.

The $2K price point is half anything else I have seen on the market. But I also suspect they'll be able to get this 10X cheaper within 4 years.

If nobody bothered doing this, this was going to be on my bucketlist of companies to start. It has massive potential, I'm glad somebody else is paving the way though.

Finally, medical imaging like this has already been proven to be a sweet spot and a hotbed for the modern day AI wave (even if we have another winter, it is the right tech for the right time). Similar fields, such as skin conditions, etc. has seen AI expertise trained and accurate well beyond even first world doctors.

This is a game changer for sure.

</comment><comment><USER39> Very good! I'm looking forward to this high-end gadget future. Also stumbled today over Lumu Power[1] which I will probably acquire.

[1] [https://lu.mu](https://lu.mu)

</comment><comment><USER40> What is the point of this, at all?

</comment><comment><USER41> It won't do a damn thing in the USA since it "can't" be used for diagnosis. The incumbent industry will make sure it is not approved.

<comment><USER42> That's not how FDA approval works. It's actually easier for device approval when others entered the space first thanks to the "substantially equivalent" 510(k) process. Here's a link to Butterfly's premarket approval: [https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf16/K163510.pdf](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf16/K163510.pdf)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you estimate the cost of testing as part of a dev project? - <AUTHOR> I'm a software engineer working mainly in the browser. I work for a digital marketing company. As part of an ongoing improvment of our process and dev practices I've been asked to 'Estimate and document the cost of testing as part of a development project'.
I can and do, write tests for my code but I want to make a decent effort at the above question.
There are some smart people in here. How would you go about this? <comment><USER2> Interesting question. Maybe you should educate your supervisors about the value of testing. Obviously, code without tests has little value if this code needs to be extended and maintained. Also, writing tests helps you in defining better API's, so it is not so clear what hours should be called developing hours and what testing hours. Maybe the question should have been: "what are optimal procedures regarding the writing and running of tests". You could also put too much effort in testing or have suboptimal roles in de the devops team.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of this depends on the type of coding you are doing and the needed test coverage. For example, testing a browser app that does CRUD for say a lead generation tool isn't as critical as an embedded application running a medical device.

That said, you mentioned mainly browser. One way to estimate the cost of testing (regardless of domain) is to consider what your code coverage needs to be, figure out for your language and tooling how many lines of code that is in comparison to the code it is testing, then calculate a cost based upon how long it takes to create said tests. It won't be perfect, and I'd not highlight the line of code methodology necessarily to management but it is an effective way to understand the problem. e.g. if I wrote a 2000 line module of moderate complexity and I had to write 3000 lines of test code to get to 100% coverage then my testing will likely be nearly an equal or slightly higher cost then the development, again a lot depending on tooling where code generation might help reduce the workload.

For example, I work on medical devices and associated products (including browser based). The general rule of thumb we are finding is that the cost for testing devices is roughly 1.5x the cost of the initial code creation. Said another way, if it took us 1 month to write the initial functionality, we expect it will take us 2.5 months to write the initial functionality with proper test coverage and test it all. Move to the web, node/javascript in our case, and the tooling is pretty slick and will create a lot of the boiler plate for you, so the testing there is more like a .6-.8 to 1 ratio. Meaning for every month worth of feature creation I generally estimate it will take 2.5-3 weeks of test code, so we would book 1.75 months for development & test creation for the same 1 month of features.

Mind you, this can all vary greatly depending on the team, requirements and needs. But should at least help you figure it out. For me when asked for a quick "guess", I always ballpark testing as 100% the cost of feature development for most projects. As an example, I recently was involved in rewriting some API's for our solution, we have spent as much time writing tests and testing as we did creating the initial features.

You will almost always hear pushback from people that don't understand that testing costs real time and money, but a key to it is if the testing is setup and done during feature development the cost is incremental to schedule and provides robust regression analysis and as you add features it gets more robust and takes less time to deploy a feature because testing will help validate the quality of the code.</comment>


Missile destroys Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine and kills 295 people - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/17/malaysia-airlines-plane-missile-attack-ukraine

<comment><USER2> Wonder why these are falling off the home page.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Eurocontrol said Ukrainian authorities had barred aircraft up to 32,000 feet > but the doomed aircraft was cruising at 33,000 feet, still within range of > sophisticated ground-to-air weaponry, when it was hit.

Are you kidding me? Highly irresponsible of the people who decided to take the plane that route anyway. Heads should roll from that airplane company. You don't take a plane over a war zone of which you were already warned about, and just _slightly_ skirt the "regulation" to be allowed to pass. What a ridiculous decision, whoever made it.

As for Russia, I hope the whole world turns against them now, until they cut off any sort of support they may still be giving to pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine, and they should also actively help in _ending_ the conflict. What do they hope to achieve with it anyway? Just to pester the Ukraine government on the border, out of spite that they're allying with EU? Either go full on war (but hopefully not), or GTFO.</comment>


School district says 56,000 photos were taken of students using spyware - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201016/5526/School-district-says-56-000-photos-and-screenshots-taken-of-students <comment><USER2> If this is the case that was in the news a while back, a major issue was that students were required to use the school-issued computers and threatened with expulsion if they brought their own computers to school.

If it's the same case, that's a big problem: The defense so far is that all this spyware was required for theft recovery. If so, why not allow students to use their own computers? Requiring students to use computers that invade their privacy seems extremely suspicious to me.

<comment><USER3> Suspicious, but given that this is a group of obvious control freaks we don't have to look further than "You will use the school's supplied computer and only it because _I Am The Law_."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every new article I see about this story appears to have more and more pointers towards a child porn investigation. I hope someone sensible thinks very seriously before deciding to do that...

<comment><USER5> Are you implying that you think the child porn laws shouldn't be used? I know they are abused horrifically at times, but if the accusations being made here are true, I can't even begin to call this an abuse of a child porn law. I can imagine a world in which someone could think this is a good idea without thinking through all the implications, but at the first picture of someone (anyone, child or otherwise) in an even remotely compromising position that landed on the school's drives, the sane, sensible, and basically legally- mandated thing to do would have been to immediately terminate the program. They failed this test and it is perfectly just that they be prosecuted. Deterrence is a perfectly reasonable motive here; we absolutely do not want anyone to think this is a reasonable solution to any problem.

Save your objections for the _actual_ abuses, lest you dilute your argument. (Assuming that is what you are trying to imply. Which isn't clear, though I'm not sure what else you could mean.)

(Edit: In other posts you talk about intent. As I argued above, if intent had been pure the program would have shut down at the first sign of trouble. I do not have problem imputing bad intent to these actors, again, given the truth of the accusations. If they wished the benefit of the doubt, there were actions they can and should (in every sense of the term) have taken, which they did not.)

<comment><USER4> I see your argument; actually it's very good and I mostly agree with the point made.

But still I'd prefer to see other, more applicable, laws used.

Proving somebody saw these nude images (if there are any) is going to be a huge legal minefield. And even then classing it as child pornography is difficult for a variety of reasons.

When I talk about intent I mean the intent to see it as sexual content. Clearly the proper thing to do is delete any inappropriate images - and in this respect there may be some indecency laws that apply. But CP is about the sexual abuse of children and the use of indecent material in a sexual context. This has already been watered down here in the UK to the point of making a conviction barely an inconvenience to them.

<comment><USER6> School administrators were overhead talking about how they liked the cameras because it was a mini drama of the personal lives of students in their building... how is that not clear intent? They were looking at the photos for fun. Sure you can't prove their cornea lined up with the image, but come on, have you ever heard a pedophile say 'I took the pictures with my eyes closed and didn't look at them, I just made them available to others'?

<comment><USER4> Indeed that's definite intent - but it's not sexual intent...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't help but wonder... did the light come on?

<comment><USER8> My understanding is that kids were told that this was a common malfunction and not to worry about it.

This whole thing has struck me as beyond creepy. I'm embarrassed both as a technologist and as a former educator. That this was allowed to happen is just horrifying.

<comment><USER9> I remember an article from when this story broke about how the administrators bragged about a script they wrote that would turn the camera on, but block it's output so if a user saw it was on and then loaded a program to see what was display they would see nothing.

Apparently the also ran this randomly so it would flicker every now and then...

purely despicable.

<comment><USER6> Huh, I guess I had thought they'd disabled the light somehow...

<comment><USER10> I think the light may be in hardware. It is on the OLPC.

<comment><USER3> They're Macs, Apple is wise about this and it's in the hardware and cannot be disabled without doing physical "surgery" to the hardware.

<comment><USER6> Well that's certainly the way it ought to be, if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > According to an email she sent to a co-worker, cited by Robbins' attorney, > when told that the images and screenshots from the students' laptops were > like a soap opera, Cafiero said, "I know. I love it!"

Disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER12> "During her deposition to Robbins's lawyers, she invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer questions as not to self-incriminate. One of the questions asked of her was whether she had downloaded "…pictures to her own computer, including pictures of students who were naked while in their home," the motion notes."

Somehow, I can't help but think that it would have been better just to answer the question - refusing to answer on the grounds of self-incrimination sounds just as bad or worse as answering yes to the question.

On the other hand, maybe she hasn't looked through all the pictures she's downloaded, and doesn't want to be hit with perjury as well. Or maybe it's that combined with having used a computer which was not technically hers but which was not used by anyone else, making definitions potentially a tad unclear.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is nobody in prison yet?

<comment><USER14> Because the trial hasn't taken place yet.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. This was outrageous behavior on the part of the school district, but we must remember that we have due process.</comment></comment></comment>


What's happening with Arc? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448613/whats-happening-with-arc

<comment><USER3> Personally I have a hard time seeing what the goal for Arc would be. "100 year language" seems pretty fuzzy. I mean, Lisp is already at least a 100 year language IMO so what could Arc do to make itself more so? What is it going to do that the other two popular Lisp-1s don't? The only differentiator I've seen so far is pg's confusion of terse for concise [1].

I think there is always more room for programming languages in the world, especially given how awful most of them are. I just think they need some clear reason to exist or their creation isn't worth the fracturing effect [2].

[1] Personally I use terse to mean "short and unreadable" and concise to mean "short and _more_ readable" (think: "I didn't have time to write a short letter..."). The first thing that occurred to me when I saw Arc was "oh man, a bunch of cryptic one or two letter functions. Is this meant to be programmed over a 1200 baud modem or something?" Every one of those kinds of things is something that has to be memorized, and given how much more advanced IDEs are today what's lost in readability is not made up in typing savings. For me the classic example of "concisity" is Smalltalk. Most methods are just a line or two, they read almost literally as English yet so much is said with so little. No meaningless cryptic two letter sequences but yet one line is equivalent to at least 3 lines of Java [3].

[2] I.e. users becoming party of a community of this new mostly irrelevant language A instead of helping the community of the language that would have been said to obsolete A if it had been written after A instead of before it.

[3] [http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=tr...](http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Smalltalk_and_Productivity&entry=3256379312)

<comment><USER4> I like your "terse vs concise" argument. I always felt that PG's notion of succinct is analogous to "cryptic".

Short is not always good.

<comment><USER5> It probably has a positive correlation, but isn't an end in itself.

"Short" languages typically have a programming model which makes common coding tasks _implicit_ : ML (and other languages with type inference) make most type annotations implicit, pattern-matching languages (Erlang, Prolog, ML, Haskell, awk) make a lot of de-structuring and switching code implicit, APL dialects (APL, J, K/Q, etc.) make looping implicit, concatenative languages (i.e. Forth, Joy, Factor) and tacit / "points-free" languages (Haskell and J, again) make variables and dataflow implicit, constraint and/or logic languages (Prolog, Mercury, Oz) make search implicit, etc.

It's often a net win, but some problems inevitably clash with their model - <USER2> seems important to have some kind of escape built into the language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll probably release a new version later this year. Most of the changes will be in news.arc, which is now pretty solid. Maybe I'll actually make an effort to make it installable without having to understand the source.

<comment><USER7> Graham cares about having a better programming language, but he doesn't really care enough to do what it takes to make it happen. (He has no obligation to do so, of course.)

Practical programming languages these days aren't just ways of expressing "algorithms," but toolkits for marshalling the vast information processing resources around the world (people, libraries, net protocols, platforms from microcontroller to supercluster, communications systems, etc.) The number of issues is enormous and growing. Useful programming languages have to have a whole army of specialists who provide feedback and code dealing with security, internationalization, performance, accessibility, net protocols, commercial- grade GUI wrapper/frameworks, installers, compilers/runtimes for countless platforms, scientific computing, embedded/realtime computing, frameworks of all sorts, dev tools.... Many of these things will be done poorly, if at all, if not accounted for in the design of the foundations of the language. That's the reason for the serious warts on all popular languages and the desire of many for something better designed.

Yet Graham's approach is, as always, to work privately, get feedback from the same half-dozen friends, then make announcements on a "when we have something to announce, I'll announce it, so don't bother asking" schedule. If none of his friends knows enough about international coding issues, for example, to even realize how little they know about text (something more important to Lisp than to most languages), then he'll make a silly architectural decision regarding Unicode, which he'll announce to, not discuss with, the rest of the world. Hey, if my friends don't seem concerned by it, it can't be very important, right?

This is too bad. Few languages have the potential Lisp has for creating flexible, evolvable code that can rapidly adapt to the changing world. Yes, I do think that the language matters, but it's the whole platform, not just the syntax.

But I don't think you can create a successful, practical, general purpose language these days without an army of specialist volunteers behind you. Graham's message to specialist volunteers is "go away, you're not the people whose opinions I care about," so I think the language WILL last 100 years--in approximately its current form.

<comment><USER6> My goal from the beginning was to continue where JMC left off: to continue building Lisp up from axioms till I have a more complete language. I've compromised a bit to make it something runnable, which I think you need in order to test out your ideas on programs of substantial length. But "practical programming" is not in itself the main goal.

Paradoxical as it sounds, that may be the way to end up with the best language for practical programming. It worked for McCarthy, and I think there's more juice yet to be squeezed out of this orange.

<comment><USER4> Wasn't McCarthy working on a model that's more elegant than Turing machines?

As far as axioms go, you can't get simpler than the Turing machine: it doesn't even have a notion of a variable, let alone types or strings.

I don't know about the history of Lisp other from what I've read from you, but it seems what McCarthy was working on was a more elegant model, rather than an "axiomatically pure" model.

Arc on the other hand, is trying to compete with Ruby and Python.

<comment><USER6> I believe his goal was a formal model of computation that was also good for expressing algorithms. Plus eval probably seemed like a neat trick. We take it for granted, but imagine how pleasing that must have been to think of.

I'm not trying to compete with Ruby and Python. If I were I'd be recruiting armies of people to write libraries.

<comment><USER4> I meant "compete" in terms of expressiveness. And actually that's not the only thing.

A language that can express algorithms in few lines that are very cryptic (read: hard to read) is not very useful.

I think were python hit the mark spot on is the adoption of the idea that "programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute".

And where ruby hit it spot on is "optimizing for happiness", I particularly like Matz's his idea about "harmony"[1].

      Matz> I believe consistency and orthogonality are tools of design, not the primary goal in design.

If the language forces you to carry the compiler in your brain as you try to read code, it's a bad idea.

One of the things that annoy me about lisp as a beginner, and maybe this only because I'm a beginner, is that I always have to manually compile code into the syntax tree.

[1]: <http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby2.html>

<comment><USER8> _A language that can express algorithms in few lines that are very cryptic (read: hard to read) is not very useful._

Part of Arc's design philosophy is to never inconvenience advanced users in order to serve novice ones. Long, descriptive names help people unfamiliar with a language's operators better understand what they do, but the length can become a burden once they do know.

For example, when I first started learning Arc, it would have saved me some headache if _afn_ had been named _anaphoric-function_. Now I would find that a real nuisance. I love being able to invoke such a powerful abstraction with just three keystrokes.

Here's an interesting exercise. This is the given solution to the Arc Challenge [1]:

      (defop said req
        (aform [w/link (pr "you said: " (arg _ "foo"))
                 (pr "click here")]
          (input "foo")
          (submit)))

What would you prefer that it looked like? If you replaced all the abbreviated names with long descriptive ones, you'd have something like:

      (define-operator said request
        (html-anaphoric-form
          [html-with-link
            (print "you said: " (argument _ "foo"))
            (print "click here")]
          (html-input "foo")
          (html-submit)))

\---

[1] <http://arclanguage.org/item?id=722>

<comment><USER4> I despite long names in JavaLibrariesAndFrameWorks but I don't appreciate tla aop (three letter acronyms all over the place).

Your second code snippet is actually much more pleasant to read.

<comment><USER8> Sure, it's subjective. :)

I forgot to mention though that the idea is to use the shortest names possible for the _core language operators_. That's when they're the biggest win, since you'll learn those well enough not to need descriptive names, and they cut program length more substantially since they're used so often.

<comment><USER4> Right, and I agree with that. I prefer = over define.

The problem comes when everything is "inlined".

        (def color (r g b)
          (with (c (table)
                 f (fn (x) (if (< x 0) 0 (> x 255) 255 x)))
            (= (c 'r) (f r) (c 'g) (f g) (c 'b) (f b))
            c))

This is the first thing in html.arc

I can't make sense of it, it's way too terse.

This is probably why python doesn't have a proper lambda expression.

EDIT:

After some pondering, I see what it does ..

An equally terse implementation in python:

      def limit(n, lower, upper):
          if n < lower: return lower
          if n > upper: return upper
          return n

      def color(*args):
          return dict(zip("rgb", [limit(c, 0, 255) for c in args]))

      >>> color(10, 20, 30)
      {'r': 10, 'b': 30, 'g': 20}

This is a lot clearer, without sacrificing conciseness:

      def color(*args):
          rgb_values = [limit(c, 0, 255) for c in args]
          return dict(zip("rgb", rgb_values))

By simply getting the inlined list comprehension outside the dict expression, the whole thing becomes 10 times easier to read: "Ah, it's mapping 'rgb' characters to rgb values."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why would I use Arc?

In particular, I've been playing with Clojure and enjoying that. It's still a Lisp, so it has a lot of the advantages that Arc has. In addition, it has some cool unique features and almost certainly has more comprehensive libraries thanks to being able to use Java libraries. What advantages does Arc have over Clojure?

I'm not trying to be mean to Arc lovers and call it a useless language. I genuinely want an excuse to give Arc a try.

<comment><USER10> _What advantages does Arc have over Clojure?_

It has nothing to do with Oracle's Java and vice versa.

If that doesn't seem like much of an advantage to you, you're probably right, and it isn't, and godspeed. There is no pressing need to learn Arc today. (I haven't yet, myself, though not for lack of ambition.) Arc will still be there, still unconnected to anything Java, in five years; we'll see how it feels then.

<comment><USER11> Almost unrelatedly, any idea if there's a strong push for a more current, well-maintained .NET/mono version of Clojure, now that the JVM is going down in flames?

<comment><USER12> Yes, ClojureCLR. It is supposed to work on Mono as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm playing around with it. Right now, my spare-time project is filling out the blogging software that came with the language. I am finding that it's a lot of fun to work with.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wasn't Arc meant to be a toy/academic language?

<comment><USER5> Wasn't Unix written to play _Space Travel_ ([http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~lib215/reference/history...](http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~lib215/reference/history/spacetravel.html))?

<comment><USER4> What a gem! nice find!</comment></comment></comment>