Tech Innovation in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/12/tech-innovation-in-china/ <comment><USER2> Two huge advantages the Chinese have over Silicon Valley when it comes to innovation: Cost and Market Size.

Cost of innovation is at an all time low and is getting lower in China. VC money is increasing, more talented engineers are on the market and more of them are willing to try start ups. You wouldn't be renting office in San Francisco (a 2nd rate city with 1st rate cost) competing for a small talent pool against tech giants, and hiring/firing employees cost much less. You can hire a great software engineer (great as in they'd have no problem passing Google/Facebook interviews and successfully work there) for about $40k USD/year.

Market size is also tremendous in China. I remember talking to a Chinese engineer and they told me when they turn on A/B test for features, the small percentage of users that gets hit with the test are numbered in the 10s of millions. When you roll out a startup the adoption numbers are staggering, as in even with low marketing effort it's not difficult to see over 100,000 downloads within a week. Silicon Valley started the "fail fast, try again" mentality, and the Chinese has been perfecting it through practice.

One last thing that impressed me: The no-bs attitudes and pure capability of these young entrepreneurs. Few of them are worried about generating PR through the Chinese equivalent of TechCrunch, or super worried about upkeeping a pretentious blog with periodic entries of psuedo-philosophical opinion pieces. Many of these guys were super hard working students their entire life, and passed the absurdly rigorous Chinese University Entrance Exam and got into elite schools, and now believe in the hardworking + intelligence > anything else formula.

We are going to see a lot interesting things from the Chinese tech scene in the coming decade.

<comment><USER3> The property market in China is extremely manipulated, so you could be asked to pay SF rates in Beijing or Shanghai for space that isn't obviously worth it. And if you want to go after the international market, you can't really do that here: startups focusing on China work great, startups focusing on the rest of the world fail compared to SF given a huge lack of perspective that comes with a closed internet (e.g. what the heck is Facebook? Is that like WeChat?).

Talent...if you can find it, great! But the discount is like 70%, not 50%, that 40K USD/Year (20k RMB/month) dev is going to be junior/not that experienced in a city like Beijing.

I haven't run into these young entrepreneurs yet, though I can totally believe they exist! However, in the bigger companies, there is still deference to authority, lots of face exercises, pretension blogs, and so on. Things are totally moving here, but they are only posed to take over China; they aren't in competition with the valley.

<comment><USER4> Come to Guangzhou! Rents are sub-Boston/Portland/Denver, and the air quality, weather, and food are better! Plus easy access to Shenzhen and HK.

Agree on the perspective issue. Even crappy US tech companies know more about China than Chinese companies will ever know about the US. I mean, look in the hallways of any US tech company and there are more people from abroad than in a Chinese tech company. People here have a pretty sheltered, ethno-centric outlook which is only an obstacle if you really are trying to launch something international.

<comment><USER3> The market is incredibly manipulated. You can find reasonable rents in Beijing and Shanghai if you look hard enough. But it's this lack of transparency that works against non-local companies wanting to do stuff in China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another neat story from NPR on a specific piece of hardware tech from China: the hoverboard.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/11/27/457404184/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/11/27/457404184/episode-666-the- hoverboard-life)

<comment><USER6> It's my recollection when they went down the rabbit hole on this one, ultimately it was determined the most likely source was from a person of Chinese descent in Portland Oregon who started a Kickstarter for something very similar to a hoverboard and thus the direct precursor?

<comment><USER3> From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing_two- wheeled_boa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing_two- wheeled_board)

> Shane Chen, an American businessman who founded the company, Inventist, has > made an early claim of inventing the device.[5] Chen started a Kickstarter > for Hovertrax, in 2013. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Chen > voiced his frustrations regarding patent rights in China. He claimed that > Solowheel, his self-balancing unicycle, was copied by other manufacturers > after it appeared in Happy Show, a Chinese television show.[6][7] In August > 2015, Mark Cuban announced plans to purchase the Hovertrax patents from > Chen.[7] Also in 2015, the American company, Inventist, claimed to hold > patents and announced its intent to pursue litigation.[8]

> The fast pace of the Chinese manufacturing industry makes it difficult to > pinpoint which Chinese company was the first to manufacture the device. > According to Wired's David Pierce, the device was likely invented as the > "Smart S1" by Chic Robotics, a Chinese technology company founded in 2013, > and associated with Zhejiang University.[4] The Smart S1 was released in > August 2014, and found success at the 2014 Canton Fair trade show. The > company patented technologies associated with the board, but due to China's > lax patent enforcement, the product was copied by several Chinese > manufacturers.[4]

> As of June 2015, the board is made by several knockoff manufacturers in > China – a pattern common in the country's technology and industrial > sector.[9] The copies vary greatly in price and quality, and may exhibit > various defects.[4] Most of the boards are produced in mass manufacturing > factories in Shenzhen, China.[10] Some newer boards have incorporated > Bluetooth speakers, allowing the driver to play music.[11]

<comment><USER6> That's an interesting rundown. It's sad the guy got essentially fleeced of his inventions, but in a karma like fashion the outfit that would have benefitted in turn got fleeced.

I'm going to guess Kickstarter is a decent place to mine for ideas in a place with lots of line manufacturing plants and a loose regime with regard to patents.

I'm wondering if Kickstarter isn't firewalled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lower opportunity cost makes Chinese young adults more willing to try new things, including starting their own business. In developed countries, salaries are much higher. In China, university graduates only get RMB3000/ month(less than USD500). They have less concern on what they have to give up. This makes Chinese more willing to gamble on new opportunities.</comment>


Buy your own petabyte cluster - <AUTHOR> http://www.capricorn-tech.com/powerstore.php

<comment><USER2> What's so special about this? 160TB per rack isn't that much. With 2TB drives in [http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/826/SC826TQ-R8...](http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/826/SC826TQ-R800LP.cfm) you can get 480TB per rack, and once [http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/847/SC847E16-R...](http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/847/SC847E16-RJBOD1.cfm) comes out you'll be able to get 900TB per rack. Though cooling may become a challenge...

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone have any insight on pricing for a couple 2 TB nodes? I hate talking to salesmen just to get a ballpark price.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hate to look like link-spam, but my company is about to blow this out of the water. Can't give out specs yet, but let's just say: > 1PB/rack. If you're interested, put your email addy in. We won't abuse it.

<http://exaset.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Capricorn was actually spun off from the Internet Archive project to develop the storage tech needed to, well, archive the Internet.</comment>


TingoDB – Embedded Node.js Database with MongoDB API - <AUTHOR> http://www.tingodb.com/ <comment><USER2> How does this compare to something like NeDB?</comment>


Writers Are More Prolific When They Cluster - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/06/british-irish-writers-london-clustering-dickens-woolf/590884/ <comment><USER2> In 'Working' [0], Robert Caro spends pages on how much being able to join a community of writers meant to him when producing 'The Power Broker.' The New York Public Library set aside a room as a workspace explicitly to house writers working on books.

A passage from 'Working':

And these writers provided more for me than merely the glow of their names. In my memory, no one spoke to me for the first few days I was in the room. Then one day, I looked up and James Flexner was standing over me. The expression on his face was friendly, but after he had asked what I was writing about, the next question was the question I had come to dread: "How long have you been working on it?" This time, however, when I replied, "Five years," the response was not an incredulous stare. "Oh," Jim Flexner said, "that's not so long. I've been working on my Washington for nine years." I could have jumped up and kissed him, whiskers and all—as, the next day, I could have jumped up and kissed Joe Lash, big beard and all, when he asked me the same question, and, after hearing my answer, said in his quiet way, "Eleanor and Franklin took me seven years." In a couple of sentences, these two men—idols of mine—had wiped away five years of doubt.

[0] Caro, Robert A.. Working (p. 76). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious how spaces like this are run. Who identifies the need, finds budget or space, then operates. Is it invite only or kind of underground word of mouth?

<comment><USER4> That particular example is discussed here: [https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/02/nyregion/authors-seek- mus...](https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/02/nyregion/authors-seek-muse-in-a- room.html)

Apparently one had to have a publishing contract to be admitted. I'm not sure how elitist that actually worked out to be.

There are also membership-funded places like [http://www.writersroom.org/](http://www.writersroom.org/)

I know more about how this works in the arts, where the relevant term is "residency". Access to exclusive residencies is usually allocated on the basis of previous career success, and they are usually funded by endowments of some kind. It's an example of institutional support for artists, and the top residencies are extremely elitist. There are lots of humble ones too, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The major thing I struggled with transitioning to being a writer from the tech world is the challenge of creating feedback cycles. Writing can be a lonely affair, since outside of writing rooms, it's not naturally collaborative, unlike the business world, where you get constant feedback from peers, bosses, customers, the market, etc.

The advice from published authors I know is that the highest correlation with eventually getting published is to have a weekly (or regular) cadence with an intimate critique group of small size. The critiques themselves are useful, but even more important is the social pressure to produce.

I've always wondered how famous authors seemed to all hang out with each other, like C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. I realized the question was poorly formed: famous authors tend to cluster because they got to know each other _before_ they were famous. They improved their craft together, and each person's success levels up the group.

<comment><USER6> I wrote a tweet thread on building a writing habit:

[https://twitter.com/nemild/status/1113441095323492352](https://twitter.com/nemild/status/1113441095323492352)

Consistency and having social pressure were critical for me.

Also, check out Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (book)

<comment><USER7> Great thread, thanks for sharing. I've found a lot of what you said to ring absolutely true in my own experience (only recently started publicly sharing content). I also _love_ writing on a typewriter, it's such a great tool for focusing on moving forward as opposed to obsessive, premature editing.

Do you have any thoughts on finding/developing your writing community?

<comment><USER5> Usually workshops are a good place to find folks at your level, and those that go are usually eager to connect, and maybe even start a critique group if that is what you want.

You can also try larger cons that are aimed at your vertical, but I've found that workshops attract people who are more actively engaged in improving their craft. Those are the folks you want to mingle with.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the suggestion! I currently live in Tokyo, which is big enough I _should_ be able to find some writing communities, but it might be a bit challenging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty self-evident if one actually attends any collective meeting of serious writers who have actually published(for money paid by people who are not immediate friends/family) or intend to publish. It's similar to why hackathons are so productive. Being within your peer group and talking shop with people who meet one's own passion is incredibly rewarding regardless of experience level or background- people who are knowledgeable are listened to with fascination, and people who are less experienced more than welcome the lecturing!

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the same with other creative works.

Visual artists work that gains value is highly correlated with their network to begin with.

Right school, right galleries, never ever being seen in a lesser gallery. It makes me sad when an artist who wants to monetize is celebrating the mere fact of being on display as validation, when that very act is undermining the value of their work forever. Is the alternative of being in a prestigious gallery achievable for them? Probably not, and they should consider resigning to that reality if their time is valuable.

I think this is not known because when I listen to many talented and aspiring artists the things they value are so at odds with the things that would make them valuable. Things like "I never had formal education" being a bragging point to an aspiring artist not being aware thats not a bragging point to the people that the artist wants to assign value to their work.

<comment><USER10> > It makes me sad when an artist who wants to monetize is celebrating the mere > fact of being on display as validation, when that very act is undermining > the value of their work forever. Is the alternative of being in a > prestigious gallery achievable for them? Probably not, and they should > consider resigning to that reality if their time is valuable.

If they accept that the alternative is not achievable then being on display in a "lesser gallery" is as good as it gets. So why shouldn't they celebrate? There's room for successful-but-no-superstar artists.

<comment><USER9> > If they accept that the alternative is not achievable then being on display > in a "lesser gallery" is as good as it gets. So why shouldn't they > celebrate? There's room for successful-but-no-superstar artists.

Again, I don't think many aspiring artists are aware. They focus on mastery of a craft and also want to make money. They feel that these things are correlated. They aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm reminded of the Florentine Camerata[1] here. They were a group of intellectuals that met at Giovanni de' Bardi's house during the second half of the 1500s, and their discussions of music (amongst other things) led to the development of opera.

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

</comment><comment><USER12> This isn't a unique characteristic of writers, or creatives for that matter. This is a well studied phenomena, especially in Urban Economics, called Agglomeration.

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

The HN audience should be pretty familiar with this already considering how much we talk about startups and labor markets--proximity breeds productivity. Startups breed more startups, software jobs breed software jobs.

But it extends beyond that even. This is, in part, why similar stores cluster. The "cost" of doing business goes down when you're near other people who are doing the same business, for a variety of reasons. In writing, "cost" is feedback and gathering inspiration. Its hardly different at all.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how much of this correlation is from the publishers as opposed to interaction between writers who would wind up comparable in present day status.

Breaking it down further it brings to mind mapping with more data than we probably have. Like say if they found "muse correlations" with everyone - mapping productivity and interactions. Like say being in the Shelley's social circle was associated with a 5.0 but the one copy writer of no historical note has a 4.5. Of course if someone was prolific enough they might cause anyone who interacts with them to have a high number as a sheer mathematical side effect.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting, seems to prove Paul Graham's essay on how cities influence behavior as correct[0].

[0] [http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html)

<comment><USER15> I loved that essay. Thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not just writing.

Being around a group of highly-skilled peers sets the bar. It exposed your shortcomings and gives you a resource to remedy them.

<comment><USER17> When I was programming I loved working in an office with other teams. The buzz with the other creatives, coders, artists, musicians, really helped me to develop what I was working on. If I was 'in the zone' I could be totally focussed for hours but when I needed a mental break, or to chat over ideas there were always others around to do that with.

I've sometimes worked at home which can be great for a few days of pure coding but for the longer term development I really relish having other peers around.

I once did a project, about six months work, purely from home and although I was disciplined enough to work I feel I was nowhere near my best because of the isolation.

This is why I find it strange the drive a lot of people have to work at home, for me it's nice occasionally but it just doesn't work for my creativity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I moderate a small writing subresdit and discord. I can't speak to how useful it is for other participants but for me it's been tremendously helpful in keeping my writing front of mind, not to mention the writing sprints that take place there represent a significant amount of my output. Interacting with other writers has been the best way to improve my own writing as well as develop new ideas and inspiration.

<comment><USER19> What's the subreddit?

<comment><USER18> r/litfiction The subreddit is pretty inactive but the Discord is a great place, if a little quiet: [https://discord.gg/JuGRMYP](https://discord.gg/JuGRMYP)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't think the clustering needs to be geographic; isn't NaNoWriMo based on essentially the same principle? Seeing how far along your peers are can be a useful kick up the fundament when you're lagging behind.

<comment><USER21> Never underestimate the power of the NaNo forums, or subreddits, or general forums that open a NaNo board. It's not just about pacing, it's about communication.

<comment><USER22> Online forums are great, but I wonder if they're missing something nevertheless for lack of physicality.

One of the more interesting papers I read last year was "Knitting Community: Human and Social Capital in the Early Transition into Entrepreneurship", Kim 2018 [https://goo.gl/1AfwZG](https://goo.gl/1AfwZG) on knitting enthusiasts on the Ravelry knitting forums [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravelry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravelry) \- despite being eminently digitizable, participation in offline knitting circles still appeared to be a big predictor of knitting success & innovation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My main two hobbies are writing and board game design right now. I've been in a local writer's group for probably going on a dozen years now, and have been designing games for about half that (although only seriously the past three years).

While I've made several pretty good friends from the writer's group, and gotten a few things published through them, some useful critiques, encouragement, etc, I don't think I've gone anywhere near as far with that I have in less than half the time in the game industry.

I think part of that is the act of writing is completely solitary, whereas game design, while it has solitary parts (working on manuals, sell sheets, thinking long and hard about what direction to take the game, making prototypes, etc), the process tends to be highly collaborative.

I.e. I'll playtest your game, then you'll playtest my game. After (or sometimes during) the game, we'll brainstorm new ideas, go over what works, what doesn't, maybe change the rules mid-playtest, etc.

Whereas in my experience with writing, you might share a passage from time to time and get some feedback on it, or recruit someone to beta read something you've written, but it's a lot slower process and a much bigger commitment (if you're writing novels at least). It could take them several weeks to finish your book (if they ever do at all), and if they suggest anything structural, like "I don't think taking the book in this direction worked here", you might have to rewrite half the book to incorporate that change and see if it makes it better.

Short stories are easier, and I've gotten some good feedback on my short stories before.

But even the heavier board games out there tend to require no more than about 3 hours of a player's time (still a lot, even to me, I prefer about 90 minutes or less), but you could still make an Saturday afternoon of it, including an hour of feedback, and get home in time for dinner.

And not only that, but you'll often get multiple people's feedback with one playtest session.

Much, much harder to get a commitment for as long as it takes to read a book. And unless you set up storytime hour where you read out the book, just about everyone you recruit can only experience it by themselves, so it's a lot more work to get that feedback from people.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's the Manhattan Effect, named for the Manhattan Project.

Or if it's not called that, then it should be.

</comment><comment><USER25> Doesn't the data seem to reflect the clustering effect for writers in London has waned. As you approach the 21st century that clustering effect goes toward the population line.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's much more likely that serious writers cluster and that serious writers are more prolific.</comment>


Interest Rates: When Zero Is Way Too High - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jan2009/db20090119_561565.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis <comment><USER2> Instead of inflating the dollar, the Fed should force banks, savings & loans, credit unions and other lending institutions to mark to market the assets they're holding. Kick out people who can't pay for their homes and put those homes on the market. Until this source of the problem is corrected, all other moves will be futile.

Many will lose homes but consider that, without that "bad" loan, they would have been renting instead. Now suppose we consider all payments they have made as a form of rent - then their situation doesn't look so bleak. Instead of paying off interest on a big loan, they were instead paying rent for a place more luxurious than they could otherwise afford. Not a bad deal really, but one whose time has ended.

The honest bunch of us must tolerate this crappy economic environment simply because politicians fear the phrase "losing their homes". Maybe Lakoff is correct - the secret to control is framing the debate.

<comment><USER3> > Instead of inflating the dollar, the Fed should force banks, savings & > loans, credit unions and other lending institutions to mark to market the > assets they're holding.

Mark to market is why the institutions that went under already went under. They were cash positive, but couldn't meet their reserve requirements when the markets for their assets disappeared.

Mark to market is absurd for illiquid assets. The fact that I can't sell my house today doesn't mean that it's worth $0.

For illiquid assets, honest valuation involves time averaging. (This cuts both ways - the value doesn't jump just because a fool overpaid for a comparable asset.) And yes, some penalty for illiquidity.

<comment><USER2> >Mark to market is why the institutions that went under already went under. They were cash positive, but couldn't meet their reserve requirements when the markets for their assets disappeared.

Yes, and more will have to disappear to resolve this situation. The sooner the better.

>Mark to market is absurd for illiquid assets. The fact that I can't sell my house today doesn't mean that it's worth $0.

Unfortunately it means precisely that. The home is worth $0 (or less) when offered for sale on the market.

Don't confuse the market's valuation with some other personal valuation of "worth".

Long-term investors holding cash may justify their purchases by using time- averaging, but they are very rare and getting their attention is difficult unless you have 100s if not 1000s of homes to sell in blocks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Inflation would also help with national debt, and considering how high it is, I think it's inevitable.

Inflation, and a weaker dollar would also help import/export imbalances. A weaker currency would help the US, and hurt outside investors.

I think it's all but inevitable.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, America clearly doesn't want to enter recession and let markets bottom out. The government appears to be solidly against this.

Now, you can fight off the short term effects of recession, and it's typically popular politically. But there's some real ramifications. Here's how it probably goes:

Causing inflation is extremely likely to weaken the dollar, which hits first and foremost the people making the lowest real wages. The people making the lowest real wages have little power to strike or collectively bargain that organized or semi-skilled labor has, little to no control over pricing like professionals have, and no places to invest money in real assets to shelter money from inflation. The poor get screwed the hardest in this whole inflationary gig, on the money supply of things.

When quality of life drops in America, especially for the most poor of people, then the government needs to decide to try to counteract that. They do this by increasing subsidies and welfare. If these programs are large enough to counteract the heavy inflation, they're quite expensive. Ironically, this further increases inflation, and leads to either (1) a weaker U.S. dollar, or (2) higher taxes, or (3) both.

In the case of a weaker dollar, you've now changed currency trading and interaction across the entire global economy. China and Japan are both looking at much stronger currencies vis-a-vis the dollar than in recent years, which sets off all sorts of unplanned chains of events.

As for taxes - most people dislike being taxed simply by virtue of having less money and things. As far as I can tell, most people don't like paying taxes and instead prefer to keep their money. However, raising taxes while simultaneously intentionally raising inflation has a particularly interesting outcome: Money and capital flow out of your country really fast.

Why? Due to inflation, people don't want to carry your currency or bonds. The value of the currency/bonds is going to be worth less next year than today, so you need to move it to an asset that you expect to increase in value or hold its value - a commodity, equity, or real estate perhaps.

Now, due to higher taxes, people have less risk tolerance. This is because typically (unless you're a bank, or in good with Washington) government doesn't pay you if your business fails, and does tax you if you succeed. That means that people invest less. Which normally might mean people holding cash reserves while looking for a change, but during inflation - people need to put the money _somewhere_ , or else it'd get inflated away and you'd have less at the end of the year.

End result? Because people will seek to invest their capital (due to inflation), but be less inclined to do it in the USA (due to taxes), you get less long term investment in American industry. That means less long term employment created, less machinery bought, less real estate developed. Money that would get invested in Nebraska gets invested in Chengdu, or Goa, or Sophia.

Now, I'm a global sort of guy, and I happen to quite like Chinese people, and Bulgarians seem quite cool to me, and I hear Goa's a great place. So it's not a net loss for the world. But it does seem like a curious policy for the U.S. government to pursue.

It's especially ugly for for the poorest people who have the least control over their wages. And in a brutal double-edged fashion, Chinese, Indian, and Bulgarian industries become more efficient and cheaper which further causes less demand for American-made goods. The result? Greater unemployment. Which further depresses wages.

Messing with the money supply right now might suit some special interests (maybe like a bank with lots of bad debt on their books, that's holding assets that have crashed from an artificial high, that needs to liquidate those assets in order to pay obligations while nearing insolvency... hmm...). But it doesn't seem to serve the poor, the middle class, or the wealthy Americans very well.

<comment><USER6> To be clear, the Fed is not trying to create inflation. It's trying to prevent deflation. The extreme measures it will have to take (such as the 'helicopter drop') _might_ produce future inflation (it's not certain, as it depends on future demand for liquidity and the rate at which the Fed can recover the money it has injected), but in the choice between certain deflation and possible inflation, possible inflation will always be the right choice. In the choice between certain deflation and certain inflation, inflation would _still_ be the right choice.

Historically, inflation has not hit the lowest paid the hardest. That's because inflation causes a reasonably uniform increase in prices, which includes the price of labour. It may be that the weakening of unions means that this effect will not occur this time, but a fall in the value of the currency suggests that prices should rise across the board, so this should be our working assumption. Usually, inflation is a transfer of wealth from those with savings to those with debts. It could conceivably help the worst off. In comparison, deflation will certainly lead to mass unemployment and will hurt the poor very badly, especailly those with debts.

You say that inflation will lead to higher welfare costs, but deflation will lead to far higher welfare costs due to mass bankruptcy and unemployment.

Furthermore, deflation increases the real value of government debt, and the depression caused by it will destroy tax revenues. This results in a higher risk of soverign default, which potentially causes a run on the currency.

In fact, almost all of the problems caused by inflation will also occur with deflation, only they will be far more severe. So that's why it makes sense for the Fed to pursue this policy. It has bad consequences, but they are minute in comparison to the deadly consequences of deflation and mass institutional failure.

<comment><USER7> Why does deflation cause unemployment and bankruptcy? It would make logical sense (to me at least) that if the dollar increases in value, then that would be better than the dollar losing value?

<comment><USER6> An increase in the value of the dollar is not an increase in total wealth (and similarly, a fall is not a loss of total wealth). A change in the value of assets is always a transfer of potential wealth from one person to another. This change may stimulate wealth-creating opportunities in the economy (e.g. increasing bond values will encourage the creation of more bonds, which means more investment in productive business) or it may thwart them (e.g. the loss of value of sub-prime securities has frightened people away from lending) but the price change itself doesn't create or destroy real wealth (goods and services).

If dollars were to rise in value, it would constitute a transfer of wealth away from people with debts and towards people with cash savings. The first effect is that people will no longer be able to service the increasing real value of the interest on their debts, leading to default.

But the more serious secondary effect is that a rising dollar encourages people to hoard money rather than spending it, as dollars tomorrow will be worth more than dollars today. The result is a liquidity crisis, where everyone refuses to consume or invest. The liquidity squeeze makes dollars even more valuable, and so the effect is self-perpetuating, until eventually the economy grinds to a halt.

The worst historical example of deflation is the Great Depression, where local communities were having to invent their own currencies to make up for the extreme dollar shortage. The Great Depression is the reason central banks have positive inflation targets. Although inflation is bad, a small amount of inflation is a fair price if it reduces the risk of self-perpetuating deflation.

<comment><USER8> "People with debt", by definition, don't have wealth to transfer. Debts are _supposed_ to go up over time, which is the point of _interest_. The only reason I should borrow money is if I can invest it to make a better return.

The situation should not be such that most people are in debt. People with wealth are free; those in debt, not so much.

> a rising dollar encourages people to hoard money rather than spending it

This is also referred to as conservation, frugality, delayed gratification, and saving for a rainy day. Placing value on the future is generally regarded as a good thing.

The effects of deflation really are terrible. Look at the tech sector where Moore's law assures that prices on computers are always dropping. I don't think I know anybody who owns a computer - everybody is waiting for them to get cheaper before buying.

<comment><USER6> People with debt have an income with which they service their debt. If the real value of the debt increases, the real value of the money they pay to service it also increases. Thus their future wealth is decreased.

If one person hoards dollars, they are being frugal. If everyone increases their liquidity preference, real wealth is destroyed. The gratification is not delayed, but lost forever. You are committing the fallacy of composition.

Moore's law is not deflation. Deflation is a persistent rise in the general price level, as measured using a representative basket of goods.

Have you never delayed buying a new console because you knew the price would drop soon? I have.

<comment><USER9> _Moore's law is not deflation._

Actually, it is. Moore's law implies a continuous decline in the prices of computers.

 _Deflation is a persistent rise_

Decline.

 _in the general price level as measured using a representative basket of goods_

The defined goods area can be broad or specific, and in any direction. There has been consistent deflation, for the past several decades, in the area of computer products. Individuals and groups (companies, etc.) that tend to value computer products highly also tend to delay their purchases of those computer products in anticipation of price declines, i.e. deflationary action.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I meant rise in the value of money.

If you're going to define deflation as a fall in the price of any basket of goods, then you're just using it to mean 'the price of something went down'. You can do that if you want, but it's hardly helping the conversation.

<comment><USER9> _If you're going to define deflation as a fall in the price of any basket of goods, then you're just using it to mean 'the price of something went down'._

That would be the same thing as a rise in the value of money.

 _You can [flexibly define things narrowly or broadly] if you want, but it's hardly helping the conversation._

Do you use a different word for "temperature" for the temperature in your home, because some other parties use the word "temperature" to mean "gobal temperature"?

Different economic actors will value different things at different rates. Economic actors that happen to value computers highly will indeed perceive a rise in the value of money when computer prices drop.

<comment><USER6> But deflation is _not_ defined that way. It's defined as a decline of the _general_ price level, and this is measured using a basket of goods that is intended to reflect general prices. You can pick holes in the problem of measuring 'general' prices if you want, but that is nevertheless the definition.

<comment><USER9> _deflation is_ not _defined that way. It's defined as a decline of the_ general _price level_

And the term "general" is also defined. It can mean general within a nation. It can mean general worldwide. It can mean general on a continent. It can mean general in a state. It can mean general in an economic sector (food, computers, cars, clothes, houses, etc.). Etc.

So, we have to use a different word to describe non-general price declines? If so, what word would you suggest? <http://www.google.com/search?q=deflation+prices+computers>

Why would it be OK to use the word "temperature" in different contexts, but not the word "deflation"? What about the word "pressure"? Should we use a different word for _tire pressure_ , because of the fact that "pressure" is also used in other contexts?

<comment><USER6> If temperature meant 'global temperature' then it would indeed be wrong to use it to describe your room temperature. But it doesn't mean that, so it isn't.

 _> what word would you suggest?_

How about 'falling prices'?

 _> And the term "general" is also defined._

Now you're just trolling.

<comment><USER9> There is a general temperature in my refrigerator. There are also more- specific temperatures in my refrigerator. Each of those specific temperature areas can also be described as general, because within-them are yet more temperatuire areas and of even-greater specificity.

There is also a general temperature of my home. The general temperature of my fridge contributes to that. In turn, the general temperature of the top shelf of my fridge contributes to the general temperature of my fridge.

<comment><USER6> Oh dear, IHBT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In related news, "hair of the dog" is not a sustainable hangover cure.

</comment><comment><USER10> the solution to the financial problems is quite simple: production must be larger than consumption.

For the last years it has been the other way around, especially in the US.

If you don't adress this you will only postpone the problem.

<comment><USER11> > production must be larger than consumption.

What would you do with the excess?

<comment><USER10> Pay off all the debt that has accumulated over the last ten years.

<comment><USER11> OK. I guess your advise was US-centric then.

<comment><USER10> he he, yes a bit ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This summarizes the dilemma of the current market.

The problem is that directly inflating our way out has other ramifications.

One idea would be for the Federal Government is to directly subsidize risk in certain well-defined areas by paying some of the interest on certain loans through the Small Business Administration.</comment>


Bloodshed Dev-C++: Portable C/C++ IDE for MS Windows - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html <comment><AUTHOR> The link above doesn't say this is a "portable app" per-se, but the context by which I discovered it was via pendriveapps.com: [https://pendriveapps.com/dev- c-portable/](https://pendriveapps.com/dev-c-portable/)

Might be useful for anyone doing small C/C++ between home & school computers.</comment>


Language detection with Google's Compact Language Detector - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mikemccandless.com/2011/10/language-detection-with-googles-compact.html <comment><USER2> Nice. I've been using a call to the Google online translator to achieve the same result - [http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/language/translate?...](http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/language/translate?q=Hello&v=1.0&langpair=|en)

<comment><USER3> are there published api limits on this service?

<comment><USER2> I'm not aware of them. I'm using this in a high volume/non critical capacity and it seems to be okay. I should keep better stats though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tha-dude Nice! I wrote a .NET wrapper myself, never got around to a Python extension though. One question - did you experience any memory leak issues with the CLD? Said, .NET wrapper DLL seems to leak and I never really checked if it was the C++/CLI I added on top or the actual CLD native C++ code. I doubt the latter since (according to my basic understanding) nothing is created in the original code which needs to be cleaned up manually. Before I start debugging mixed- mode .NET applications I just wanted to be sure.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great library! Here are bindings for PHP: <https://github.com/lstrojny/php- ccld>

</comment><comment> sick-boy _"You must provide it clean (interchange-valid) UTF-8, so any encoding issues must be sorted out before-hand."_

In most cases you have to know the language in order to guess the encoding and convert to UTF-8 if necessary. Mutual recursion...

<comment><USER5> Mark Pilgrim reversed (or ripped out, can't remember) the encoding detection that Firefox uses. It has done a fairly good job for my web crawling:

<http://pypi.python.org/pypi/chardet>

<comment><USER6> In my experience chardet misclassifies very often iso-8859-1 as iso-8859-2. I saw the misclassification even in small spanish pages, which were using only the typical spanish characters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> johnx123-up I thought that the detection is easier with Unicode ordinal value map table

<comment><USER7> I am assuming it will recognize languages even when they are using the same character sets. No?</comment></comment>


One day, a computer will fit on a desk (1974) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTdWQAKzESA&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> The Apple I was launched just two years after this in 1976 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I)</comment>


Show HN: Funky Bunny Avatar - <AUTHOR> http://www.funkybunnyavatar.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> A tiny app 'weekend-project' for kids. Basically my girlfriend's character artwork made interactive. Fun to do. First iOS coding experience, and have to say that the entire process went very smooth (save for a 10 workday App Store review time).

Fun fact: all the art is SVG — so the file size is pretty small and you get nice crisp graphics on the Retina iPad for free. Years and years ago I looked into SVG for audio synthesizer interfaces - but rendering was waaayyyy to slow back then. Now - no problem, even on a ARM device! :)</comment>


Ask HN: Selling other people's goods through my online store - <AUTHOR> (NY, USA) After 4 years, we're finally building a shopping cart to sell goods through our site - for now, just t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, etc... with our logo on it but the purpose of the store was to sell a book my partner wrote last year.
The book and the garments are a no brainer - their our goods, we'll collect and pay tax on the sales and thats fine.
The problem comes in that my partner wants to sell other people's books, without having to pay tax on it.
He had originally thought that we would just link to their book on their site and they can deal with the sale - in which I rebutted - I wouldn't put it in the store then - the store implies we're selling something. If it's just a link to somewhere else, it should go on a different page.
I came up with 2 options -
1 - find out who does the sellers printing - and make a payment directly to them when my customers check out - then, our bank account doesn't reflect the purchase and we don't need to deal with taxes - we've become a gateway per say.
2 - process the payment myself - then pay the seller the exact amount (taking no profit - just to drive traffic to my site) - then in the tax man's eyes - it's a wash.
Any other ideas on how to deal with this?
Are there any CC gateways that can take an API call and split the purchase money into multiple accounts?
I suppose I could have the seller setup an account at stripe.com (CC gateway I'm using) and just make another API call and fund them that way? I don't forsee selling more then a dozen 3rd party books. <comment><USER2> Your missing another, potentially large cost, shipping and handling.

Buying the books even at retail (with your tax ID) might be a better option for you and the customer, to avoid the cost of shipping.

It sound like the few hundred bucks in inventory cost isn't going to be a deal breaker for you.</comment>


Automating Mathematics PolyMath, Type Theory and Learning - ur-whale http://math.iisc.ac.in/~gadgil/presentations/SummerCSIISc.html#/46 <comment> ur-whale Really interesting story of a new math proof starring, among others, Terence Tao.

But the meat of the story is not the proof itself, but rather how it was constructed and led to a wider program for CADTP (computer assisted theorem proving).

The first part (the proof itself) is interesting in itself, but the _really_ cool part starts at ~ slide 20.</comment>


Rumor: China's ethics board reviews 20 popular online games, bans 9 - <AUTHOR> https://www.resetera.com/threads/rumor-chinas-ethics-board-reviews-20-popular-online-games-bans-9-including-fortnite-and-pubg-requires-changes-to-11.86374/ <comment><USER2> If the post is accurate as a translation/source, I doubt those stated reasons are the true motivations, since citing 'blood and gore' for Fortnite seems absurd.

I speculate it is more likely a way to carefully manipulate the competitive landscape for a highly-lucrative industry (gaming), so as to favor local companies (and yes, I see Tencent is impacted). This should really be brought up in the on-going trade negotiations.

<comment><USER3> Blood and gore used to be enough reason in Germany to get a game altered?

<comment><USER4> The point was that there is no blood and gore in Fortnite, therefore the cited reason can't be valid, and the true motivation must be something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I noticed that all these games are the usual heavy hitters with one notable exception; Dota 2.

Very curious because dota 2 is definitely violent and has some scantily clad women (not as far as LoL but I don't think censors really care about differences).

The reason this is curious is because China is Dota's largest audience and Valve has announced that TI9 will be held in Shanghai. Important to note that this is a huge tournament with the largest prize pool _in all of esports_ (T8 was $25.5 Million).

Recently Valve banned a player from participating in a tournament in China for making racist remarks towards the Chinese in a public match and many believe that this is Valve bending to Chinese interests. [1] Valve has also recently announced that they will be releasing Steam China after years of working with Perfect World as a middle man[2] .

Valve has censored heroes and abilities to appease Chinese Censors and has been able to more or less keep it only on the Chinese Client. [3] (Rip Skeleton King)

Interesting times ahead with more and more games and films entering the Chinese market.

[1][https://www.foxsportsasia.com/esports/dota2/990684/valve- iss...](https://www.foxsportsasia.com/esports/dota2/990684/valve-issues- statement-officially-bans-kuku-from-attending-chongqing-major/)

[2][https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/11/17451484/steam-china- anno...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/11/17451484/steam-china-announced- valve-perfect-world)

[3][https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Low_Violence](https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Low_Violence)

</comment><comment><USER6> The linked post has been updated and now says it's an unconfirmed rumor ; I think it would be better to add this information in the title.

<comment><USER7> Added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's probably all bullshit reasons as usual with the CCCP to let their local market to compete with local stuff.

> Fortnite by Epic Games/Tencent (Blood and gore, vulgar content.)

This has to be the most ridiculous reason, Fortnite banned for blood and gore? It's just a cartoon game.

<comment><USER9> It is probably a mistranslation, they obviously mean that the "battle royale" theme is too violent: a bunch of strangers are gathered and have to kill each other until the last one.

Personally, I enjoy that kind of games, but the fact that they display smiling cartoon characters killing each others can make some people even more uncomfortable.

On steam, a game where you play a school shooter was recently banned. Can cartoon graphics and absence of blood make a school shooter acceptable?

<comment><USER8> You could argue about that but what about blood and gore? There's not even any blood in the game.

<comment><USER10> Maybe it is not meant to be taken too literally and just means violence, may even be an artifact of the translation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting in light of the leaked CIA profile on Xi Jingping (Current leader of the Chinese communist party)

[https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09BEIJING3128_a.html](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09BEIJING3128_a.html)

A choice quote:

       Xi knows how very corrupt China is and is repulsed by the
       all-encompassing commercialization of Chinese society,
       with its attendant nouveau riche, official corruption,
       loss of values, dignity, and self-respect, and such "moral
       evils" as drugs and prostitution, the professor stated.
       The professor speculated that if Xi were to become the
       Party General Secretary, he would likely aggressively
       attempt to address these evils, perhaps at the expense of
       the new moneyed class.

<comment><USER11> The road to hell...

The reason hardly anyone knows the names of important party members after Deng Xiaoping and before Xi Jingping is that it was policy. Deng recognised the dangers of creating a cult of personality, such as he had witnessed (and suffered) under Mao.

Xi is quickly reversing this, presenting his person and ideas as central tenets of the party. It's a direction that should cause concern, since I think it's mainly Deng's policies that laid the groundwork for China's rise and current status on the world stage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://i.imgur.com/qnSbTxM.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/qnSbTxM.jpg)

rows 1-12: 责令改正 "changes ordered".

rows 13-20: 暂不批准或者退市 " _temporarily_ not approved or leave market".

</comment><comment><USER13> It is great to see a rumour posted on NGA, then badly translated and posted onto reddit and now reposted on some other messageboard with some editorialising and now reported as fact on HN.

<comment><USER14> Interesting. I forgot NGA as one of the influential online forums in China when I wrote about that topic.

For those who don't know, NGA was originally a forum about World of Warcraft (the online game). Then it got popular and became more generic , similar to the "wow" subforum on Baidu Tieba (Chinese equivalent of reddit, but earlier than reddit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The irony would've been so amusing had they completely banned Diablo. Considering how Blizzard made the new diablo mobile game mostly because of the Chinese market.

</comment><comment><USER16> Keeps too many from studying or working I guess..

</comment><comment><USER17> What is the solution to China either constantly banning our products and then cloning them or counterfeiting what's not banned? We're losing billions.

<comment><USER18> Their country, their rules. The US has no God given right to world domination with their products.

<comment><USER19> Just as long as we're on the same page here when the US debt spirals out of control forcing a default on China-owned T-bonds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Its likely somewhat obvious but "Harmonizing" and "inharmonious" are Chinese Government euphemisms for censorship and banned political speech.

</comment><comment><USER20> [Off-topic] - What's with all the "China is evil" articles lately ? Are there any websites (non-chinese) where I can find news about positive advancements in the country ? This whole anti-China hype train got me intrigued.

<comment><USER21> Well, in the Xi era China has a) become more of an overtly fascist dictatorship and b) harder for Westerners to make money in, so because of b) there's more incentive to focus on a)

Still lots of great stuff happening there, so long as you're not an ethnic minority, religious, LGBT, disabled, an addict, mentally ill, interested in social change, or too poor to afford your own private oxygen and food supply

<comment><USER20> Ethnic and religious minorities are also persecuted all over the US and Europe, it may not be physically (except if you're black in the US) but there's definitely a psychological warfare being declared against these groups through mass media and culture (movies, tv shows, literature ...). I'm not too sure we can give lessons to the Chinese government on this subject.

<comment><USER22> > are also persecuted all over the US and Europe

Persecuted? I mean, maybe there's social stigma. But I can start a local chapter of "<some_minority> support group" and no one is going to knock on my door and disappear me in the night. I can make a website that's entirely dedicated to criticizing my government, and my internet connection won't be blocked. I can jaywalk across the street without a CCTV camera auto-detecting my face, associating it with my Citizen Social Credit score, and then having it be broadcast on a massive digital billboard to shame me in front of thousands of people.

Okay, that started to drift from your original point a bit, my bad.

<comment><USER20> > But I can start a local chapter of "<some_minority> support group" and no > one is going to knock on my door and disappear me in the night.

Absolutely true. But you WILL not be given access to venues to host events, and you will most certainly be labeled a "violent activist group" or (if you're from a particular religious group) be accused of "feeding the fire of terrorism". With all the negative consequences that come with that. (This is not science fiction by the way, it happened in a certain west european country not too long ago).

So yeah, I'm not sure it's a better deal.

I wasn't trying to start a flame war or anything. I just find the hate towards china very curious and very dangerous. What bothers me isn't necessarily the negative criticism it's rather the fact that we're accusing them of things the US and Europe have been guilty of for centuries, but you're right we're drifting away from the main topic of the article.

Thanks for replying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In UK they use the PEGI rating system for games that influences the design process. They also have OFCOM, ICO, HMRC and even more. Chinese companies cant sell games in the UK without complying with all the laws. Sounds like another case of dictator knows what dictator does. Perhaps china is retaliating for canada locking up a huawei executive for violating US sanctions on iran, or maybe china is exercising its import customs rights just like the heavy handed customs enforcment as demonstrated by the US and the UK

<comment><USER24> That's a completely pointless observation.

PEGI is a pan-European (note: not solely UK - it's an industry body) rating system. It doesn't censor content or creativity, it just recommends that younger people can't buy extreme content. It's not active censorship.

Ofcom doesn't apply to games - it's TV, radio, phones, communications regulator (Office of Communications).

The ICO regulates data protection and privacy. In what way is this related to game and creativity censorship?

HMRC is tax collection. The _only_ way this can affect game design is via tax breaks - these tax breaks are not predicated on specific creative requirements.

So - how is the UK in any way similar to China in terms of game censorship?

<comment><USER23> Perhaps you answered your own question. Uk has many cards up its sleeve to censor china for whatever reason it needs.

<comment><USER24> I just pointed out how the UK does not have cards up it's sleeve.

But as you seem to know something I don't, please enlighten me - any examples of the UK government actually censoring games?

<comment><USER23> Games are media. Even the app store has censorship requirements that you must follow. You can lobby to your government to introduce more stringent cencorship laws on Chinese exports to your country if you want, because, well, its just not fair that chinese has inport laws, just like many other countries.

<comment><USER24> Thank you for not answering my question.

<comment><USER23> my first comment illuded to the eagerness of the hacker news community to engage in china bashing. I also pointed out that censorship is considered during the design process. Here is a list of games we are allowed to know about before PEGI was enforced. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games)

Games you are not allowed to know about would be sympathic to the cause of afghans, iranians, iraqis, syrians and many more things that sell newspapers and political elections.

<comment><USER24> Pointing out hypocrisy in the Chinese government's policies (competition, human rights, etc.) is not 'bashing'. Just as pointing out those things in other governments is not X bashing.

The reason it seems to occur more often with China is because China is the rising power, and probably the power of the 21st century - its actions will be scrutinised because its actions have major consequences for the rest of the world.

I will happily 'bash' my (UK) government over a whole range of things. Censorship in creative industries is not one of them. China has a long history of creative suppression and censorship.

I would assume that games sympathetic to the causes of Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, and others are not 'banned' or creatively stifled, just that there is no commercial interest or reward in such games. This is not censorship by a government. There's nothing stopping anybody making games on such subjects.

That's the difference between China (and other similar governments) and, for lack of a better category, western governments. China's government will intervene in creative processes, western governments will not.

<comment><USER23> China is no different than england. Anybody on the raw end of English foreign policy knows that.

<comment><USER24> Errm, OK.

That has nothing to do with what we're talking about - government interference in creative industries.

It seems you just have an axe to grind.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ProtonMail: Alleged data breach was a "hoax and failed extortion attempt" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/9xovso/dont_believe_everything_you_read_online_about/ <comment><USER2> I'll continue to shill for the company's services unless anything becomes evident. Nobody has offered anything that ProtonMail / ProtonVPN wasn't able to explain adequately.

Nobody else I'm aware of offers their own data center infrastructure, which is extremely important as it's a key single point of failure in all other VPNs and email service. There is no better option for most people.

Obviously if you're going to use ProtonMail, it's always technically better to encrypt your emails with PGP or the like on top of it, but I still stand by my firm recommendation of their services.

I'd like to imagine ProtonMail is in the same set as Lavabit. I think many services portray themselves as if they're in said set, but I think its cardinality is very, very small.

<comment><AUTHOR> Protonmail now support PGP encryption.

(Also noted by a dead comment.)

<comment><USER3> To be honest they always supported PGP encryption (they are the biggest contributor and lead Openpgpjs development). Since July it's possible to also send encrypted messages to external contacts.

ProtonMail is actually very committed to OpenPGP as a standard (it's evident by their engagement on the OpenPGP Mailing List).

<comment><AUTHOR> Protonmail hadn't supported arbitrary sender or recipient keys. They've just issued a big update announcement that they're doing precisely that.

<comment><USER3> It works since July see this blog post: [https://protonmail.com/blog/address- verification-pgp-support...](https://protonmail.com/blog/address-verification- pgp-support/)

I don't know why they announced it now but I've been using it previously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tend not to trust ProtonMail that much after seeing this thread: [https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn...](https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn_and_tesonet/) This is a reddit thread that criticizes ProtonVPN (same company as ProtonMain). The mod in charge of the sub offers a rebuttal to a criticism against them. Afterwards, the mod in charge of that sub locks it thereby preventing the accuser the ability to reply to that claim.

Now it is possible that nothing wrong happened, but every time a business tries to censor a criticism against them, I tend not to give the business the benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER5> Was it the CEO who locked the thread, some developer, or some PR person? There's a difference though between an emotional reaction by an employee and a company's policy.

edit - I read the thread, it appears to be one of the original researchers from the project and a deliberate choice.

I thought PIA was fairly reputable - does anybody know any actual facts around the incident?

<comment><USER6> When you say "PIA", are you referring to PrivateInternetAccess, or did you mean ProtonVPN?

<comment><USER5> private internet access

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although the extortion is almost certainly false, this is a good moment for protonmail users to review their opsec procedures. Relying on a central authority for anything is risky, and the more valuable a central point becomes the bigger a target it gets...

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad ProtonMail exists and would gladly shift my family domain over if it weren't so prohibitively expensive for the most basic of features :/

Although, I guess you get what you pay for. They're really communicative, even for their free offering.

<comment><USER9> Maybe I'm misreading something, but they appear to cost 4 Euro a month. How is that "prohibitively expensive"?

<comment><USER10> FastMail tiers are US$3/5/9 per user per month, so €4 doesn't seem wildly unreasonable.

<comment><USER5> I used to use protonmail. I think the reason I switched to fastmail was the calendar support and the ability to use thunderbird easily on linux. Possibly to sync contacts easier too.

When protonmail introduces those I'll be taking another look at them, but they're taking a while.

It was a nice service while I used it.

<comment><USER11> How do FastMail, ProtonMail, and Migadu stack up against each other nowadays?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Usual 4chan (and maybe ulterior actors) action, throw manure around, see what sticks.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why are those right wing conspiracy theories? Sorry I don't really understand the context. They just don't seem to have any political content to me but that is probably just ignorance on my part.

<comment><USER14> I think demonizing CNN is a favorite on the right and I know "Rampant pedophilia among high ranking government officials" is big among QAnon folk.

<comment><USER5> As an outsider to american politics, CNN seems a bit silly in how they present information. Just my opinion though, they give off a weird vibe compared to the boring news I prefer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> a 4chan larp ends up as a denial on hackernews? is this notable?</comment>


How do you get people to care? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tagxt.com/post/581

<comment><USER2> You can't force people to like your site, be interested in your content or return. There's no magic bullet (if there were, I'd be able to pay off my student loans.)

In your particular case, I would politely suggest that there's nothing particularly unique about tagxt in terms of user-experience, nothing novel in your approach to the format. As such, and as with the many forum/bbs sites already in existence, your primary draw will probably be the community and the kind of threads you have... I'm hanging out on Hacker News because the programming/hacking content interests me, for instance, not because the layout of HN is particularly clever. If this was Sports News, I wouldn't be quite as interested. It's all well and good to sell the sizzle but at some point there also needs to be a steak.

tl;dr give them something to care _about_ or wait for the community to build itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about not spamming HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> meh, gotta try something. i'm desperate.

also, these are legit submissions/questions.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any Enterprise Rails application you know of? - <AUTHOR>

Thank you everyone,<p>I've been preparing a value-of-Rails presentation to an enterprise audience. Does anyone happen to know enterprise Rails apps for demo/reference purpose? <comment><USER2> Skytap Cloud: <http://skytap.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Github

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure that it's a good example. They seem to use a custom architecture : <http://github.com/blog/530-how-we-made-github-fast> .

Maybe the OP should talk about basecamp/highrise/whatever from 37signals ?

<comment><USER5> We do offer an enterprise product called GitHub:FI.

<http://fi.github.com></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf

<comment><USER2> Summary: "Because it means life is not incredibly unlikely (after all, it occurred on two planets in our own solar system); ergo what must instead be incredibly unlikely is the ability for life to progress to the point where it can spread across the galaxy (after all, no other life form has contacted us); ergo we are doomed."

<comment><USER3> We need a tldr service where summaries can be put in one place and embedded in other sites such as HN.

<comment><USER4> The author had a good point to be made but took too long to get it across.

<comment><USER5> He had a good point and took so long to make it so carefully because he knows that if he doesn't, people will make all sorts of dumb comments & objections.

This HN submission actually isn't even all that bad as far as it goes; check the comments on some of Bostrom's submissions to other, more popular, fora and you'll be routinely smacking your forehead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with saying 'there is no extraterrestrial life because we haven't observed it and it would probably be here by now' is that there is always the first wave of lifeforms who would come to the same conclusion.

You could make a good case that we are part of this first wave: -The stars created after the big bang would not have had any heavy elements and therefore wouldn't have had the resources to create life. -These stars lasted ~10Bn years before they started to go nova (which creates the heavy elements for the next generation of stars) -Based on our experience, it takes ~4bn years for life to evolve in a planetary system. -Therefore the first lifeforms wouldn't appear until roughly 14bn years after the big bang. -The universe is currently 14bn years old.

<comment><USER7> _The problem with saying 'there is no extraterrestrial life because we haven't observed it and it would probably be here by now' is that there is always the first wave of lifeforms who would come to the same conclusion._

True, but that a form of reasoning inevitably gives a wrong conclusion under rare circumstances is only a weak argument against it.

 _-Based on our experience, it takes ~4bn years for life to evolve in a planetary system._

I don't think we have a strong reason to believe that there's something special about that length of time. Not much change happened on Earth for most of that time, suggesting dependence either on stochastic evolution of a few things like photosynthesis (so 4bn probably isn't much more likely than 3bn) or on something like increasing solar output crossing a threshold (it's doubtful such a threshold would be crossed at ≥ 4bn years at every location). That aside, even a few tens of millions of years is plenty of time for life to cover a galaxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wait. So this guy doesn't want us to find life, which would be super cool and advance scientific knowledge significantly... because it might mean that human civilization might not last that long in the timescale of the universe?

I mean, I think we knew that already. The vast majority of species that have lived on Earth have gone extinct, and almost all of the rest have evolved to be completely unrecognizable. It's unlikely we'll be an exception to that rule, and I'm okay with that.

<comment><USER9> Bostrom is untroubled by the idea that humans will evolve to be unrecognisable; but he hopes we will indeed have those descendants.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but for all he knows they'll have the intelligence of the common house fly. And not only is that incredibly unlikely anyway, it's essentially no different from dying out altogether. And who really cares? None of us will live that long anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is one possible (plausible) answer to Fermi, I think:

Some various assumptions:

Space travel is limited by the speed of light and the faster you are going, the more energy it takes to go a little bit faster. Relatively is more or less correct and absolute that way. No Star Trek "hyperdrive" is possible.

Nope, you can't extract energy from a quantum vaccuum or any other such tricks.

Nope, you can't actually scoop up all that much fuel in inter-stellar space. Most viable solar systems don't have all that much practically accessible fuel for inter-stellar voyages. Transmutation of matter into arbitrary elements is possible, but not practical at scale.

You can't, therefore, have (material) trade routes between any but perhaps the closest stars. Even then, the total mass of material you are trading in a unit of time is doomed to be disappointingly low - there is hardly any point to bothering.

With assumptions along those lines, "colonization" per se would not exactly be possible -- if by "colonization" we mean building any kind of empire.

At the very best, a species could accomplish a kind of "panspermia" -- sending out "seeds" to whatever stars are in reach, but once a seed is launched, its subsequent evolution is pretty much on its own. In a few cases, if one lucky civilization is close by a second, resource-rich solar system, _maybe_ you get get a little bit of mining going. But such opportunities would be cosmologically rare and even more rarely economically viable.

Worse, sending out seeds to a near-ish solar system and letting them do what they will would be dangerous to the life back in the solar system of origin. Right now, it doesn't appear that their is a hostile, alien intelligence anywhere in the galactic neighborhood. If we did a good job of launching "seeds", we'd increase the odds considerably.

In short, there will never be a point at which it makes any kind of economic or existential sense for us to begin a colonization project - and the situation doesn't look like it would be all that different for other imaginable forms of life.

So why not signal? Well, we already do a bit. Perhaps in a few years we'll have found some not _too_ far off (but far enough!) solar systems that look like they might host life -- and we'll point some lasers at them and start sending "pings" to see if anyone is home. If other solar systems are already doing that, it would be very hard to detect from here on Earth.

In other words, one answer to Fermi, but not quite the "Great Filter" that Bostrom posits, is simply that galactic colonization is a practical impossibility and, to the extent there is intelligent signaling that spans solar systems, it's a lot more directional and harder to detect than anything you could easily find with a few radio telescopes.

<comment><USER11> That seems unlikely to me. There's easily enough energy and matter around in our solar system to make a journey to another, and as far as we know, there's plenty of energy and matter in other solar systems also.

So a sufficiently advanced civilization could construct a self-replicating probe that heads to each solar system, replicates and recharges itself, then heads on to the next stars until the whole galaxy is populated.

From the perspective of the civilization sending the probes, this is relatively cheap; just the price of the materials necessary to build a single ship capable of carrying itself outside the solar system, even if it takes hundreds of years to get anywhere.

<comment><USER10> A "self-replicating probe" is either so weak in capability that it would hardly amount to colonization, or so strong in capability that it would amount to a rival life form. What functionality would you build into such a probe and by what means would you prevent a "boomerang" effect wherein it comes back and causes problems in the home system?

Additionally, if all you are talking about building is a device that would, encountering our solar system, take up residence in orbit, take pictures, and report "back" - how do you know there aren't already several of them present? It would be rather hard to tell!

Colonization on Earth always had economic incentive. Populations migrated for economic opportunities, even if the selection of who did and did not migrate was heavily political. Colonization, as opposed to mere migration, was pretty much always, more or less by definition, for resource extraction. The colonized pay taxes and/or their raw materials and unique finished goods are exported back to the empire, and/or their local economy is converted to the coin of the empire's realm and taxes are extracted. It doesn't seem like any such program of empire building could work at inter-stellar scales unless there is some surprising physics that we've yet to discover that allows super- luminal communication and transport.

Fermi is "wrong" if intelligent, space-faring life only "works out" given the rules of physics at roughly the scale of our higher organisms and if, for organisms at that scale, colonization is not a viable option. There's no need for any "Great[er] Wall" than that.

<comment><USER11> > A "self-replicating probe" is either so weak in capability that it would > hardly amount to colonization, or so strong in capability that it would > amount to a rival life form.

Why do you assume that? There are plenty of self-replicating machines on earth that have been extremely successful at colonizing their environment, but we would not typically view them as "rival life forms".

> What functionality would you build into such a probe and by what means would > you prevent a "boomerang" effect wherein it comes back and causes problems > in the home system?

The simplest method would be to have them accept any order signed by a standard public key. I'm not sure why people tend to assume that a self- replicating machine cannot be controlled. There are plenty of self-replicating programs that are controlled very effectively.

> Additionally, if all you are talking about building is a device that would, > encountering our solar system, take up residence in orbit, take pictures, > and report "back" - how do you know there aren't already several of them > present?

Because if have been many intelligent species in our galaxy over the past billion years, it seems unlikely that all would be careful to remain undetected. Certainly our species has little interest in hiding its activities.

> Colonization, as opposed to mere migration, was pretty much always, more or > less by definition, for resource extraction.

Plenty of species on Earth colonize new environments without bothering to send resources back to their origins. And there have been plenty of human colonizations not linked to a controlling empire, especially when we were just hunter-gathers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> <http://xkcd.com/638/>

<comment><USER7> Do floor tiles occur naturally?

Even if we can't intercept their communications, we should be able to see their works. The universe looks far too natural to contain much technologically advanced intelligence.

<comment><USER13> How much of the universe have you searched so far?

I think that's the point of the xkcd strip.

<comment><USER14> No, that we may be looking for the wrong _things_. The ants could search every floor tile on Earth, but they wouldn't find pheromone trail messages from us. The modest scale of SETI is just a secondary point.

On the other hand, how exactly do you find things without looking for them - wait to get stepped on? :)

<comment><USER13> Perhaps I was too terse. The point of the xkcd strip is that the ants conducted a very shallow test (looking for life that was most similar to theirs) and then gave up. The post I responded to made a similar comment generalizing about the nature of "the Universe", which is indicative of the same fallacy.

Which is the point of the xkcd strip (the alt-text makes it even more clear). It isn't about ants, ants don't read xkcd. The point is that despite all of what we've done we have barely scratched the surface of knowing or understanding the universe. We are as ignorant of the nature of intelligent life in the universe, even whether it exists outside of Earth or not, as the depicted ants are of human civilization. Far more so, in fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an interesting article, well worth posting.

However, to all those saying it needs a "tl;dr": I agree with you. In fact, academic writing has included this concept for decades; it's called an _abstract_. And this article could use one.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, the consideration fails unless the possibility of a common origin is excluded. Just because we find life nearby doesn't mean that the great filter is not already in our past. On Mars specifically, it would be near enough to allow for the possibility that life has somehow migrated from Earth to Mars, or vice versa, or to both from some other source. Finding life far enough away that intelligently developed spaceflight would be the only way for it to migrate would indeed be a depressing thought, but the possibility of migration must be ruled out first if we find life nearby.

</comment><comment><USER17> It could be something more mundane. The signs we're looking for are stuff like radio signals, which we'll probably be using for how long? 500 years out of the Sun's 10 billion lifespan. That's a pretty big filter already.

Plus, if light speed is really impossible to overcome, then distant stars get less interesting as a civilization progresses. 100 years didn't mean so much for a given population 5000 years ago (not for its individuals, of course), but already are about 3 paradigm shifts these days.

</comment><comment><USER18> If we evolve into some sort of 'post-human' form, maybe the assertion that we 'have to' colonize everywhere breaks down. I think it's a stretch to assume that every potential life form eventually wants to colonize space. If we as humans or post-humans figure out how to balance our need for resources (by not having to mine space) I think that could change things dramatically.

However I didn't go to Oxford/MIT so I really don't know jack.

<comment><USER19> The problem with this line of argumentation, and a number of other lines of similar argumentation, is that you've explained why a _given_ entity might not want to colonize space. What you haven't explained is why _every_ entity ever in existence anywhere will not want to colonize space. It's not enough to hypothesize the existence of a single future "space hippy" who just wants to live in harmony with nature, man, you have to explain why every post- human(-equivalent) from every species in all the observable universe (or at least all our galactic history) has not chosen to colonize space.

All our current technology says that all future civilizations may have radically greater resources than us, but still finite. Finite resources means there will still be some sort of internal competition. Competition implies that one solution to the local competition is to pack up and head for the next star system to exploit. This logic then applies again from that system once it has been tapped out. It borders on the inconceivable that it is physically possible to colonize the stars, that intelligent life is common, and it is easy to get to "post-human-equivalent", but absolutely nobody has ever chosen to colonize the galaxy. One of those axioms is wrong (including, potentially, the finiteness of future civilization's resources).

This argument is mentioned in the paper, I'm just re-drawing your attention to it. It's a big one that is very important when talking or arguing about this; the answer must not cover 10% or even 99.9% of the cases because if intelligent life is that easy the galaxy still ends up colonized long before humans are sentient. It must cover 100% of the cases across an unknowably wide variety of intelligent life forms in an unknowably wide variety of initial conditions.

It's a tall order and most, if not all, of the self-loathing answers like "intelligent life like humans just suck so hard that they all die" really don't hold up under scrutiny very well; _all_ life forms pollute themselves to death? Any problem we can _see_ , some other life form somewhere will have solved. All life forms develop weapons technology and war themselves to death? Even hyperintelligent bees who early in their human-class civilization's history figured out how to share one mind such that war is impossible? All life forms ever decide to just stay home because they learn to live in harmony? Even on Earth you can see that while some humans may make that choice, other humans quite rationally never will.

And the whole "harmony with nature" thing isn't even a very rational idea if you get down to it, it is a _very_ human form of romanticism that I seriously doubt will be a universal among the stars. Not destroying that which you need to live is rational, but posthuman technology generally implies that you no longer need your original natural environment to survive; I seriously doubt that _all_ civilizations and individuals will fetishize their ecosystems the way some humans do, an ecosystem now distinctly more primitive and choatic than their own technology.

(One reason why it matters if a species has infinite resources is that it may mean that it is possible for a species to create it's own universe and migrate there, which would make sense for a lot of reasons, especially if they can guarantee that no other species can ever find it and muck with it. Be it a real universe or an advanced simulation, doesn't matter. "All civilizations, before advancing to the point they can colonize the stars, discover a method of creating a new sub-universe or performing infinite computation in finite time, and instead colonize that new infinite realm since it is so much safer" is an appealing answer since it solves the Fermi paradox in a way that implies a happy future possibility for humanity, but we're running out of physics that might contain such a possibility. It gets to the point where even if we figure out how to trick a string into performing infinite computation it wouldn't matter anyhow since there may be no way to manipulate a string anyhow, for example. This also falls afoul of my own argument above... _every_ member of the species must choose this, _no_ member should have doubts about it and decide to just safely colonize space anyhow and perhaps choose that answer in the indefinite future.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> He doesn't address the possibility that the start of life is "the great filter", but after that point, microbes were shared between planets in our solar system via metoerites, impacts, etc.

In which case it wouldn't matter what we found on Mars.

<comment><USER9> He does use the word "independently", presumably to take this into account.

<comment><USER20> Right. But that is a big assumption of his position. If there is life on Mars and it is DNA or RNA based I would say the independence assumption is less certain. Then the author can go on happily assuming that the "filter" is probably behind us. Not sure why that is such a big thing though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe I'm missing something, but finding live on Mars would just be a single data point. It would in no way provide a meaningful forecast to our own fate.

<comment><USER6> It would be a second data point. If we the Earth was our only data point, we couldn't say whether life was a common trend or an anomaly. But if Mars had life, then we would at least have proof of the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice, but there is also of course that old line of thinking that expansionist civilization did exist, and Earth, in fact, was colonized.

<comment><USER23> There's an alternative explaination in `Burning the Cosmic Commons: Evolutionary Strategies for Interstellar Colonization` (<http://hanson.gmu.edu/filluniv.pdf>):

"Attempts to model interstellar colonization may seem hopelessly compromised by uncertainties regarding the technologies and preferences of advanced civilizations. If light speed limits travel speeds, however, then a selection effect may eventually determine frontier behavior. Making weak assumptions about colonization technology, we use this selection effect to predict colonists' behavior, including which oases they colonize, how long they stay there, how many seeds they then launch, how fast and far those seeds fly, and how behavior changes with increasing congestion. This colonization model explains several astrophysical puzzles, predicting lone oases like ours, amid large quiet regions with vast unused resources."

The point of the submitted article seems to be already mentioned in:

"The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It?" (first version August 1996) (<http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html>)

"Humanity seems to have a bright future, i.e., a non-trivial chance of expanding to fill the universe with lasting life. But the fact that space near us seems dead now tells us that any given piece of dead matter faces an astronomically low chance of begating such a future. There thus exists a great filter between death and expanding lasting life, and humanity faces the ominous question: how far along this filter are we?

Combining standard stories of biologists, astronomers, physicists, and social scientists would lead us to expect a much smaller filter than we observe. Thus one of these stories must be wrong. To find out who is wrong, and to inform our choices, we should study and reconsider all these areas. In particular we should seek evidence of extraterrestrials, such as via radio signals, Mars fossils, or dark matter astronomy. But contrary to common expectations, evidence of extraterrestrials is likely bad (though valuable) news. The easier it was for life to evolve to our stage, the bleaker our future chances probably are."

Both links are from the collection `The Economics of Science Fiction' (<http://hanson.gmu.edu/econofsf.html>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> a great filter in the future could also mean a movement to a new kind of existence, not necessarily an extinction. like an exodus to a virtual world.

</comment><comment><USER25> A few thoughts:

1\. The current rate of technological advancement is so steep as to make even 100 years hence, a nanosecond in the grand scheme, absolutely unknowable.

2\. Sufficiently advanced technologies would be indistinguishable, intentionally, a la Star Trek's noncontact per Federation agreement.

3\. In terms of the author's "Great Filter" idea, maybe some fraction of the supernovas observed by astronomers are really interstellar industrial accidents.

<comment><USER5> > 2\. Sufficiently advanced technologies would be indistinguishable, > intentionally, a la Star Trek's noncontact per Federation agreement.

 _would_ be? Why on earth would they inevitably - every single one of them - develop such a civilization? We most certainly haven't; we'll set aside a few areas as parks, but even those are heavily contaminated by our civilization.

Why wouldn't they make Dyson spheres around all their stars - spheres which ought to have shown up on our infrared surveys - and use that energy? Think of all the computations and matter they'd be wasting by just letting the star blaze away. A few parks, sure, but an entire universe of them?

That point sounds like wishful thinking. 'They'll be, like, cosmic hippies man - they won't _want_ to go around harshing Mother Nature's groove.'

> 3\. In terms of the author's "Great Filter" idea, maybe some fraction of the > supernovas observed by astronomers are really interstellar industrial > accidents.

Then why aren't the astronomers & astrophysicists in a tizzy about how all these supernovas simply don't mesh with the well-thought-out models? Supernovas are the outcomes of processes which take millions upon millions (or billions) of years to finish. I doubt their models of include a random fudge factor to explain away alien Homers.

<comment><USER25> 2\. "...cosmic hippies man -" We are not hippies (there are some) but we have to struggle to get permission to remove a beaver dam even if it is flooding our home, and we are far from ADVANCED! The reasons for noncontact may be as beyond our comprehension as a sump pump is to a beaver.

3\. Don't get too attached to current favorite theories-Dark Matter-Dark Energy-etc(massive fudge factor) because they are always subject to reinterpretation when new data is uncovered. "Difficult to see, Always in motion the future is."

<comment><USER26> Ridiculous Yoda quotes aside...

Which "we" are you referring to? Your idealized American conservationist, Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians? Tibetans? Chinese? North Koreans? Australians? Indians? Nigerians?

There are many human cultures on our planet which haven't created bureaucracy preventing them from taking advantage of natural resources, and some of them are as technologically advanced as any other culture on our planet.

<comment><USER25> I'm sorry you missed the point. I think I offended your sensibilities, but I was referring to all mankind and how we do care about other forms of life and propose that more advanced civilizations would even more so.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NetNewsWire 5.0 RSS Reader Rebuilt from Scratch, Now Free and Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://wptavern.com/netnewswire-5-0-rss-reader-rebuilt-from-scratch-now-free-and-open-source <comment><USER2> I hail to this new wave of software that is coming back. Best RSS reader so far I've tested and I was an old user of NNW. I am starting to add more and more blogs since most of the authors I followed still write. I can't stand Twitter anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any recommendations for a windows RSS reader?

<comment><USER4> I am simply using FeedLab from the store.

<comment><USER3> Thank you. A decent RSS reader is one of the few things keeping me from switching back.</comment></comment></comment>