Twilio Stock Price - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:TWLO <comment><USER2> For a bit more context:

Twilio announced its first earnings after the IPO

It's tripled since IPO price of $15

Today they're trading around $48.70

[http://amigobulls.com/articles/is-twilio-inc-stock-a-buy- aft...](http://amigobulls.com/articles/is-twilio-inc-stock-a-buy-after-the- earnings-beat)

<comment><USER3> I don't know anything about IPOs, but isn't that bad for Twilio? They could've potentially made double or triple what they did originally, right?

<comment><USER4> There are enough moving parts and conflicting incentives within the system that it's unlikely to be that simple. In theory, yes, they may have underpriced their IPO and left some money on the table, but that isn't necessarily the worst thing. In general, it's better to be thought of as a company that's outperformed expectations than underperformed them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How did a stock ticker chart make front page of HN?!

Is harmmonica trying to pump&dump?

I swear, this site is turning me into a grumpy old man...

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking it was odd to submit a stock quote myself, but then I thought this is totally relevant to HN because Twilio's one of the few "startups" (realize it hasn't been a startup for a long while now) that's actually made it public vs the new world order where companies stay private forever. I thought it'd be interesting to get folks' take on how crazy its public valuation is though. Full disclosure: I _did_ buy the stock and I fully expect this to pull back significantly sooner than later, but I can't bring myself to sell it either, which is even more maddening because I think the valuation is crazy and if I was some pundit I'd say "stay the hell away from this thing at this price" (full disclosure part 2: I'm not a pundit of any sort).

<comment><USER6> I sold all my shares today. I know jack about finance, but my gut said that $60 is too high.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that was a smart move. I'm similarly ignorant of the nitty gritty financial details of how stocks end up priced where they are priced, but I do follow a bunch of (mostly tech) companies and more or less invest/gamble on "feel" (ie, do I like and understand what they're doing, how is the stock currently priced, do those high level financial multiples make a little bit of sense against their peers and what's the competition look like). I was buying into Twilio because I'd been following their story for years and just think it's a good, solid business that will be able to grow steadily as a public company, but there's nothing steady about what's happened with the stock price. I _want_ to pull the trigger and get out. Hard part is actually pulling it. Glad to hear you locked in the gain. Maybe you'll inspire me to do that today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My biggest fears of investing in Twilio is outlined in this page: [https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/security/anti- fraud](https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/security/anti-fraud)

It's good that they have this page at all, but fraud must be a significant percentage of their business.

</comment><comment><USER8> I invested in a VC fund that bought Twilio in the early rounds. Will I get shares? When will they arrive? Can I short the stock or buy puts in the meantime?

<comment><USER9> No, never, yes (but that's completely unrelated to your VC fund)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully this'll encourage more startups to IPO.

<comment><USER11> 8 year old company that charges for their service. Definitely some great things for startups to learn here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey startups going public: Investment banks are screwing you.</comment>


Fab plants are now making superfast carbon nanotube memory - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/2929471/emerging-technology/fab-plants-are-now-making-superfast-carbon-nanotube-memory.html

<comment><USER2> The article appears to be a rehash of this Nantero press release:[1] That says "Signaling a new era in memory, Nantero's NRAM has already been installed in multiple production fabs..."

This technology has been around for a while. Lockheed Martin built a 4MB NRAM back in 2008, and sent it up with a memory tester on a Space Shuttle flight in 2009.[2] That was done in conjunction with Nantero; they had an arrangement for government products. The technology is inherently rad-hard, so it's useful for space operations.

This technology has been two years from volume production since 2008.[3] It's not clear why it hasn't reached production yet. It clearly works. It may just cost too much.

[1] [http://nantero.com/nantero-closes-30m-series-e-round-its- nex...](http://nantero.com/nantero-closes-30m-series-e-round-its-next- generation-memory-nram-now-installed-in-multiple-production-fabs-around-the- world/) [2] [http://www.nsti.org/events/NNI/sld/pdf/65.pdf](http://www.nsti.org/events/NNI/sld/pdf/65.pdf) [3] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/devices/na...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/devices/nantero_sells_business_unit_to)

</comment><comment> mark-r It's being produced at 7 different fabs, but will still take 2 years for them to "begin rolling off production lines"? Something doesn't add up.

<comment><USER3> From TFA: "They are sample chips/test chips in preparation for mass production, which requires the product designs to be completed."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this bad news for HP - others will have access to something like/as good as a memristor?

<comment><USER5> FWIW, this predates the memristor. There are several types of RAM all trying to replace NAND and DRAM. It seems likely that one will win, with a couple others for niche uses (IIRC MRAM is already favorable for some aerospace applications due to its resistance to switching from cosmic rays).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Almost infinite number of write cycles" is the subtitle. Really now?

<comment><USER7> Inside the article: "According to Nantero, NRAM can withstand 10^12 write cycles and 10^15 read cycles -- an almost infinite number."

<comment><USER8> What's hilarious is calling 10^12 "almost infinite." Your CPU clock cycles that often in 10 min.

<comment><USER9> You write to your RAM, or even more pertinently, your SSD, on every CPU clock cycle?!

How many times _have_ you written to the same cell on your SSD? Current NAND chips have a write cycle limitation of somewhere around 10^6. Apparently a Taiwanese firm got it to 10^9 in 2012, but I'm guessing that hasn't arrived in production yet. So they have raised the write cycle limit by somewhere between 1000 and 1,0000,000. If you're wearing out your SSD once a year (I'll assume you are using it for swap or something), they've increased it to 1000 yrs. That's pretty much the minimum. So "almost infinite" seems reasonable.

<comment><USER10> It's almost infinite by disk standards, but still fairly finite by RAM standards.

The fastest DDR3 is PC3-17000 which has a write speed of 17000MB/s peak. Or roughly 16GB/s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3_SDRAM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3_SDRAM)

Assuming that you re-write your entire RAM every second, that's 10^12 seconds or about 32000 years. [https://www.google.com/search?q=10%5E12%20seconds&rct=j](https://www.google.com/search?q=10%5E12%20seconds&rct=j)

But if you're writing to your RAM at a 10 microsecond interval (say you're doing something like a firewall or HFT) and you keep re-using the same few megs of RAM then instead of 32000 years it's more like 4 months.

So it's fantastic for "durable" storage, but definitely not as good as SRAM or DRAM in general. The lifetime of SRAM and DRAM are both going to be based on the lifetime of the silicon which is roughly related to the temperature of the chip and the thermal migration of dopants. Hotter means more energy for dopants to move, but generally measured in many years or decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> See the last comment on that page about this being mechanical in nature.

</comment><comment><USER12> So, something akin to magnetic relays at the nanometer level?

I have a hard time believing the durability presented (especially with remarks on how it might as well be an infinite number) for a process that involves movement and contact points.

So, if it's been tested continually for 10 years, why are the fabrication technologies behind? This sounds like marketing for vapor ware with as much hype shoved between the specs.

<comment><USER13> >I have a hard time believing the durability presented for a process that involves movement and contact points.

Since the contact points are CNTs I would believe it. Only diamond has a stronger lattice binding those carbon atoms.</comment></comment>


Photogram - <AUTHOR> http://photogram.co/ <comment><USER2> What is it? I don't want to create a new account to find out if this is an interesting service for me.</comment>


Apple lawsuit tests if an employee can plan rival startup while on payroll - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-nuvia-lawsuit/apple-lawsuit-tests-if-an-employee-can-plan-rival-startup-while-on-payroll-idUSKBN1ZK16R <comment><USER3> If what Apple alleges is true, the ex-employee was particularly brazen about his competitive activity on company time and using company property. IANAL, but if you're planning a startup while employed somewhere else, have a wall of separation between the two. Don't use _any_ resource that has any sort of relationship to the employer other than through you. That includes property, equipment, time, employees and infrastructure. You are not only better protecting yourself legally, but also showing respect to your employer by not misusing/countermanding their resources.

<comment><USER4> IANAL, but what does not using company time mean for salaried employees? I'm never "on the clock" vs "off the clock" in my current role, I just have target dates to hit.

<comment><USER5> Where I am (Australia) an employer is not allowed to pay a salaried employee less than they'd earn working the same hours as an equivalent role paid on a per hour basis.

When I've had employers try to claim weekend/evening work was "theirs", I've sent them a link to that legislation and a pro forma invoice for all my time during employment with them for the difference between 168 hours per week at equivalent hourly rate and what they've actually paid me so far. That nicely sets the tone for further discussion.

(I only got threatened with being fired on the spot once for doing that, on which they did not follow through, and I was already interviewing elsewhere anyway...)

<comment><USER6> > Where I am (Australia) an employer is not allowed to pay a salaried employee > less than they'd earn working the same hours as an equivalent role paid on a > per hour basis.

IIRC the wording in Australian legislation is that employers can require full- time employees to work "reasonable overtime". So that doesn't sound right - <USER2> least, not as a rule across the board. Perhaps under certain awards.

Even then, it's fairly useless wording. It does nothing to resolve disagreements between employer/employee as to what's reasonable. An extra hour once a year? 10 hours every week? Big difference between the two.

<comment><USER7> IIRC (usually) the "reasonable overtime" request is closely followed by a clause saying that, over the course of 4 months, you still must do an average of 38 hours/week or something to that effect.

How often it's 'enforced' is, like you said, probably isn't great

<comment><USER6> Australian employment law is the most bizarrely vague field I've ever come across.

"Reasonable overtime" is only one example - there's a whole host of other really basic questions that you can't get simple, definitive answers to.

For example, can I employ someone on a 12 month contract? What about 24 months? 36 months? At some point, they become a full-time/ongoing employee and get the benefits of unfair dismissal/redundancy, which means the whole "fixed- term" thing becomes meaningless. The problem is, it's _never clear at what point that actually occurs_.

Gut feeling is that this is because all politicians know it's an absolute minefield, so none of them is willing to touch it. Better to leave it vague enough that no-one can accuse them of favouring business or employees, because no-one really has any clue what's going on. Kick the can down the road and let FWA deal with it.

<comment><USER8> As far as I know, after working for more than 180 days in a tax year they become an employee.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like you're referring to the "employee" versus "contractor" question, which is a whole other distinction.

I'm talking about "full-time employee for a fixed-term" versus "full-time employee on an ongoing permanent basis".

In both cases, they're employees, not 'contractors' (so you withhold PAYG, pay their superannuation, etc).

But in the first case, you don't have an obligation to continue employing them after (say) 12 months.

The second, you are obliged to do so, so you can't turn around and say "we just don't want to employ you any more" after 12 months. You need to follow the redundancy provisions or terminate them for cause.

The problem is that it's not explicit whether businesses can actually offer the first type of contract (or more specifically, that if I employ someone on an 18-month, it's not explicit that they can't claim a redundancy payout when those 18 months end).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this a traditional thing to do at Apple? After all, Steve Jobs condoned it :)

"After several months of being sidelined, Jobs resigned from Apple on September 13, 1985. He told the board he was leaving to set up a new computer company, and that he would be taking several Apple employees from the SuperMicro division with him."

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

<comment> cia-killer He wasn't being paid by Apple while he was working on NeXT though (at least I don't believe). I think the issue arises when the person is working for Apple then starts to work on their own company, not sure though

<comment><USER9> >He wasn't being paid by Apple while he was working on NeXT though (at least I don't believe).

He resigned on the same day he told them about NeXT, which had already had a good amount of work put into its planning (including poaching several apple engineers). I think it's reasonable to assume that before he resigned, he was being paid.

<comment><USER10> IIRC, there was a lawsuit which was settled. Check old Infoworld or other traderags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The irony here is amazing. Woz built the Apple I while being employed by HP and now Apple making sure that doesn't happen again.

<comment><USER12> Not really a fair comparison. While Woz was at HP, he wasn't the executive/leader of their personal computing division.

I don't see how anyone can fault Apple here when the person doing this was leading their entire chip division.

Scenario: I own car washes and hire someone to run and manage one of my locations. I pay them well and put them at the helm of the entire location. This person is able to completely learn the ins and outs of my business and in the meantime is slowly working on poaching other members of my staff and getting things lined up to open a competitive car wash.

Who's side are you on?

<comment><USER13> > Whose side are you on?

I'm on the side of allowing all employees, including executives and rank and file employees, to quit and work for a competitor without being sued. This is how a competitive labor market is supposed to work.

<comment><USER14> > quit and work for a competitor without being sued

"Quit" is the operative work here. The employee in question was building the competitor using Apple resources. He didn't quit and work for a competitor. He worked for a competitor and then quit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel that the law needs to have more customization due to power imbalances than it does today. Google cloning a startup's product should be less legal than a startup cloning Google's. A low-level employee should have few restrictions on planning a startup while employed, but a senior exec making millions has more power to stay unemployed for some time, a greater insight into his employer's business, etc, and perhaps should have more restrictions on the same. But business law doesn't usually have any such calibration for situation, the way that criminal law does where they take into account who you are and what situation you are in to determine a punishment.

<comment><USER16> I see what you mean, but that would kind of change "equal before the law". Laws should apply equally to everyone. Otherwise, you would have the same kind of twisted lobbying as we have now, but it would be on an uneven field, and the people with money would eventually turn the situation to _their_ advantage. At least if everyone's equal before the law, you can appeal to everyone in trying to repeal or change laws.

<comment><USER17> That's the difference between equality and equity. I'd argue that people push too much for the former when the latter is sometimes more appropriate. I'd say this is one of those times.

Since we're talking about the idea of different treatment under the law for rich vs. poor (well, "comfortable", in this case), tax law in the US is a fine example: the more income you make, the higher your marginal earnings are taxed.

<comment><USER18> > Since we're talking about the idea of different treatment under the law for > rich vs. poor (well, "comfortable", in this case), tax law in the US is a > fine example: the more income you make, the higher your marginal earnings > are taxed.

That's technically true, but misleading.

The long term capital gains tax, which is what most high income earners end up paying, maxes out at 20%, which is lower than most of the regular income tax brackets. It's the reason some CEOs opt for a $1 salary.

<comment><USER19> Capital gains tax generally only applies to assets that have been previously taxed as income. Equity grants whether to CEOs or normal employees alike are taxed as income at vesting time with subsequent gains taxed as capital gains. Capital gains taxes apply to both the rich and the poor, with the latter paying a whopping 0%.

<comment><USER20> >> Capital gains tax generally only applies to assets that have been previously taxed as income

No, it does not apply to previously taxed assets at all, only to an additional income you made from those assets. Equity grant is taxed when you excercise your stock options based on their current value. If the stock price goes up later, capital gains tax is only applied to the amount you gained, not the whole sum.

<comment><USER19> >No, it does not apply to previously taxed assets at all, only to an additional income you made from those assets.

I would call that applying to previously taxed assets. Unvested RSUs (read: not taxed yet) that gain considerably over many years prior to vesting are still wholly taxed as regular income. Without additional income, there is nothing to be taxed therefore there shouldn't be any confusion as to what I mean by that.

Stock options are only one type of equity grants, the other being RSUs which have a cost basis of $0 and therefore the entire sum is subject to income taxes at vesting. Exercising stock options is not free, you must pay to do so at the exercise price which is done using post-tax cash, which again, had to have been taxed as regular income at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Man I hope Apple loses hard on this one, but more importantly in the long run I really think _Apple_ should hope they lose hard, too. A vibrant startup ecosystem can have tons of benefits for any platform company like Apple.

California may have tons of shit wrong with it politically, but man did they get it right when it comes to making non-competes and non-solicits unenforceable. Coming from Texas, non-competes and non-solicits have a _huge_ stifling effect on startup formation in the tech world. I've hit it myself, and it is a major pain in the ass. Most companies have a non-solicit of fellow employees for a full year after you leave. Of course if you start a startup you're going to want colleagues you really liked to come work with you.

I hear about other states and locales that say they want to "be the next Silicon Valley" and I just laugh if they have enforceable non-competes and non-solicits.

<comment><USER22> Employee non-solicitation is in fact enforceable in California, e.g., see [https://hkm.com/los-angeles/non-competes/non-solicitation- em...](https://hkm.com/los-angeles/non-competes/non-solicitation-employees/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> When I worked at Apple there was mandatory training on non-compete, which included a lesson example that it would be in violation to create an iPhone app for _gardening_. Nuvia's genesis seems egregious in comparison. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

<comment><USER13> Let me get this straight: You work 50+ hours a week (40 of which Apple actually pays you for) at Apple on official Apple projects. Then you buy an Apple computer with your own money, spend a bunch of your own "free" time at home writing a new app for Apple's iPhone, and submit it to Apple's App Store. Now Apple apparently has the gall to demand 100% of the revenue rather than their (already generous) 30% standard cut?

Talk about egregious.

<comment><USER24> It depends. There are some jurisdiction that argue, you are suppose to take rest and do your own personal stuff during your free time. Not working. Hence you are not allow to have a 2nd Full Time Job which will degrade your 1st full time job's performance.

<comment><USER25> My company doesn't get to tell me what I can do during my free time, does yours? Do you think that's normal?

<comment><USER24> I think it is normal in Good Faith. Your Company is paying you for your full time job, most people describe it a 9 to 5 when it is not. You are working during those hours, traveling back to home and then "resting". While traveling is not counted inside your working hours, some laws protect employees from the moment they step out of their home to work.

While it is entirely up to you what you do in your free time, but if your free time activities hinder your Full Time Job's performance, then it is a problem. And your employees do get to tell you what to do. You cant party all night and come back to work feeling sleepy just because it is "your" free time.

And that is especially true for someone in higher up position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >allowing the case to proceed but barring Apple from seeking punitive damages.

> Apple is not suing Nuvia itself or any of Williams' co-founders and it did > not allege any intellectual property or trade secret theft.

What exactly would Apple get here then if ruled in their favor? Petty revenge? A message they can send to current employees? Comp for hours he spent on the phone?

<comment><USER27> They'd probably be claiming ownership of the new company based on the fact that they own their employee's work product.

In reality they will get far enough into the case to determine whether or not they (likely) own any of the business and then settle for a tidy sum or some stock or something like that. They're probably also interested in locking up an IP the company owns (which is probably more important than the money).

Sending a message is a nice perk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't get how Nuvia competes with Apple though. Apple isn't in the server chip business... they just are in the mobile chip business. That is, unless Apple is admitting they're designing their own Arm-based CPUs for their data centers?

<comment><USER29> Just abstract it to chip provider.

<comment><USER30> That's not reasonable and is not the same market. There are chips which manage jet engines, MPTT solar panel chips, FPGA's, etc. You cannot possibly claim those are relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How is it even a "rival"? Apple does not make server-grade CPUs. Nuvia does not compete with them at all. I hope to dear god Apple fails at this.

<comment><USER32> Mac Pro Rack:

[https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac- pro/rack](https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/rack)

<comment><USER33> Wow, TIL. Does this even make sense financially for anyone?

<comment><USER32> Looks like it starts at only $500 more than the desktop version but I didn't bother comparing specs. I have a friend with a 192GB new Mac Pro he's using for video production and he's currently testing it and finds it outperforms his HP Z8, he's very happy so far.

<comment><USER31> Does it have the same CPU as Z8? Because if it does, I don't see how it would "outperform" Z8. It's a PC, in a nice, expensive machined case.

<comment><USER32> It actually has a slower CPU, and fewer of them, according to him. But these kinds of machines are where GPUs, architecture, and software all come into play. Cores, bus speeds, subsystem speeds.

There's vastly more to computer performance than the reductionist "It's a PC, in a nice, expensive machined case". In fact, that sounds condescending and dismissive rather than a comment in search of enlightenment.

<comment><USER31> But all of those things you've enumerated are available in a PC - Apple only makes the board and a few smaller unimportant chips that don't affect performance. You're not comparing apples to oranges when you say that MacPro is faster somehow. It'd run at identical speed given the same CPU, same GPU and same RAM.

<comment><USER34> There might be benefit from some of the extra bits available (the specific GPU in Mac Pro is not exactly easy to replicate elsewhere as it's a custom twin GPU setup with extra bus for cooperation with another unit if necessary) + the FPGA codec card that might be exploited by the stuff he does for work.

Replacing a software-only codec with hw accelerator card would go a long way to explain performance difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Lucky Californians. Here I am with a non-compete clause that prevents me from working in my industry for 12 months...

<comment><USER36> How are you supposed to survive if you can't work in your field for a full year? And then if you are required to work in another field, you are going to get punished by the interview process when you try to come back.

<comment><USER37> In finance, where non-comptetes are regularly enforced, the answers are typically 1) garden leave [1] and 2) generally not, it's a built-in expectation.

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

<comment><USER36> Ok, that doesn't sound so bad now, kind of a 12 month PTO, which is unheard of anywhere else. What am I missing?

<comment><USER37> One big thing that makes it not as good as it sounds is that it's just your salary. In the industry, that can easily be less than half of your total compensation with bonus. Not that that's anything to sneeze at, but it certainly adds to the opportunity cost of switching roles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Apple sued Williams in August, alleging that he breached an intellectual property agreement and a duty of loyalty to the company by planning his new startup while on company time at Apple, spending hours on the phone with colleagues who eventually joined the venture."

If that's the case, then "no" that shouldn't be allowed.

<comment><USER39> The article does go on to say:

> The case will likely hinge the specific facts of Williams' planning for > Nuvia, Palefsky said. Given that work at modern tech jobs rarely sticks to > traditional business hours, it may be difficult to untangle whether calls > were made during company time or personal time.

That's actually a pretty fair thing. Apple may define, for example, its "company time" as any time the office is open and accessible to employees -- which is a pretty wide window.

<comment><USER40> But like most tech companies they give their employees a lot of freedom to adjust their hours. If the employee is free to take an hour during the normal workday to pick up groceries, it stands to reason they can use it to recruit their friends for a venture.

<comment><USER17> Yes, that's what I was thinking too. If it's normal and commonplace for someone to step out for an hour to run an errand, how is that any more "company time" than ducking into a conference room, or (safer) heading to the garage and sitting in your car to make some recruiting phone calls?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm really interested in the findings. How can Apple prove any of these claims?

<comment><USER42> I wonder if they would use his iphone data (assuming he has one)?

<comment><USER43> Would that be admissible in court?

Does Apple just have carte blanche access to any data they have?

I mean, I guess so, there's probably some EULA I haven't read.

But I'd think their privacy stances would let you sue them if they snooped through your iCloud backups.

Unless it was a company phone in which case their employees probably have a separate EULA like most corporate devices.

Just like you hopefully wouldn't stream a torrent over your corporate VPN.

<comment><USER44> In a case like this, they would just request the information through a legal procedural called "discovery" in which a party is required to turn over requested information relevant to a legal matter to the opposing party.

In short, it doesn't matter if they don't have EULA or technical access to the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > According to a copy of Williams' agreement that Apple attached to its > complaint, the contract required that Williams "will not plan or engage in > any other employment" that competes with Apple or is directly related to the > company.

"You may not engage in work, necessary for your survival, with anyone but us." \- how is this not one step removed from slavery? Unless he works for Apple, all he's allowed to do is untrained labor!

And just like forced arbitration, this will become a standard element of contracts if we allow it.

</comment><comment><USER46> So much for being open minded about ever working for Apple. This is extremely hostile to individual freedom

<comment><USER33> Doesn't seem hostile or unreasonable. He was a senior director that potentially stole IP and also committed a breach of contract by poaching employees.

I'd say if he _did_ do those things, that seems like something that would merit serious legal action.

<comment><USER47> It doesn't seem Apple is even claiming he stole IP. Apple's complaints seem to be [0]:

1\. "Breach of Contract" in starting a competing business while employed there, which was apparently prohibited in his employment contract.

2\. "Breach of Duty of Loyalty", again for starting a competing business while employed there.

There are no claims around theft of trade secrets or violation of copyrights or patents. This seems like an overreach by Apple, but Williams also seemed to be playing with fire by being fairly cavalier in breaching his contract with an employer known to be litigious. It will be very interesting to see where the courts land on this.

[0] [https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/12/10/apple_v_gerard_williams.pd...](https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/12/10/apple_v_gerard_williams.pdf)

<comment><USER48> He also had access to employee's personnel files, which included salaries and stock vesting dates. This gave him info on who to recruit and the best time for that employee to leave. That's a bit different than asking a co-worker if they'd like to quit and join a startup.

<comment><USER47> That doesn't sound illegal or especially unethical, and probably in itself isn't even a violation of his employment contract (though solicitation probably was). If he was deliberately depressing bonuses or promotions to get people to leave, that would be different, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> > duty of loyalty to the company

Oh please my sides, they hurt, I can only laugh so hard.

<comment><USER33> Not sure why you're laughing, this is an actual legal term: [https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary- responsibi...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary- responsibility-corporations.html)

<comment><USER36> That's for directors and stockholders, not random employees.

<comment><USER33> > Apple filed the lawsuit in Santa Clara County Superior Court against Gerard > Williams III, who left the company last year after more than nine years as > chief architect for the custom processors that power iPhones and iPads to > start Nuvia Inc, which is designing chips for servers.

<comment><USER36> Chief architect. AKA engineer.

<comment><USER33> His LinkedIn literally says, "Senior Director": [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerard-williams- iii-27895aa/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerard-williams-iii-27895aa/)

It's not like he was some kind of low-ranking IC engineer

<comment><USER17> Director in this sense does not mean what it means in the definition for "duty of loyalty", which is talking about board members, not (even high-ranking) employees.

<comment><USER44> Wikipedia is good for a broad definition of the term "duty of loyalty" but in CA that duty extends to all employees (see e.g. [https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/sd-fi- eaton-26...](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/sd-fi- eaton-26-story.html)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I get the impression he's trying to extort Apple into buying this new company — which, if true, is not cool man

<comment><USER30> Putting a price on his skills and talent? How dare he!</comment></comment>


"Taking the Cryptic Out of Crypto" – Jason Rosenstein from Portion - <AUTHOR> https://www.dapp.com/article/taking-the-cryptic-out-of-crypto-ama-highlights-jason-rosenstein-from-portion <comment><AUTHOR> We asked Jason: "What are the barriers to entry the bigger art market and have more people on board to create and trade the art on portion?"

He says: "The major barrier to entry is 'taking the cryptic out of crypto". Right now there are as many cryptocurrency users as internet users in the year 1994. For the rest of the population to trade art on Portion we must obfuscate blockchain as much as possible (while still keeping it decentralized)."</comment>


Life in Technicolor – One month wearing color blindness-fixing glasses - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/seeing-in-techicolor-one-month-wearing-enchromas-color-blindness-correcting-glasses/ <comment><USER2> While many of us are not "color-blind", we are all color challenged. This is because we only have three cone-types, assuming you aren't a tetrachromat.

I had a thought experiment: Suppose you breakup visible light into six bands. You then create two filters based on these bands. One filter would pass only bands 1, 3, and 5. The other filter would pass bands 2, 4, and 6.

Now suppose you put one filter over your left eye and the other filter over your right. Over time, could you learn to see the world in hexachromatic color ? Could you finally differentiate monochromatic yellow from composite red and green ?

To digress further, I previously wrote a Google Cardboard App that randomly shows a red square in only the left eye, only in the right eye, or both eyes. Surprisingly I could not answer correctly if the red square was only shown to my left vs. my right or both. I am not sure if I could learn to do this. Perhaps it is a limitation of the visual system. I was hoping to introduce a new visual effect for VR headsets but it doesn't look promising.

<comment><USER3> Whoa. Sounds cool, but a small market. Enchroma & competitors might already have the filters figured out -- maybe not too hard to get to manufacturing?

Birdwatchers and entomologists would go ape if you could include UV bands, but I don't think you can do that with a filter, since we can't see UV at all -- you'd have to use a custom camera.

How much does it cost to manufacture a CCD with a custom filter -- replace Bayer GRBG with ... IR-R-G-C-B-UV or something? I'm guessing quite a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It turns out that watching YouTube videos of people seeing color for the first time can turn even the shittiest of days into a good one. I just lost 30 minutes down the rabbit hole. Interesting that it's not just color that I take for granted every day, but the fact that the world appears so sharp.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is what native advertising looks like.

<comment><USER3> It looks like he received a free press sample, but beyond that I don't think he received any inducements. I'd call it more a product review plus a description of what it's like to be colorblind.

> EnChroma is not a new product, nor is it the only set of glasses aiming at > colorblindness (see 2AI Labs, for instance). ... EnChroma even offers a > "Product Testing Program," where would-be wearers can apply to earn a free > pair through participating in certain company initiatives (like talking to > the media).

And although he clearly likes them, it's not a breathless endorsement. More a reflection on the impact of sense deficits and their technological aids.

> I can certainly live without the EnChroma glasses, of course. At 30, I've > spent three full decades viewing the world in my own peculiar fashion, and > I've been just fine. But then I think about 6-year-old me, staring in > disbelief at the purple ocean, and believing it to be blue. And I think > about all the confusion and trouble it could have caused had I not been > identified as colorblind.

I liked the article because of its depth and reflection, even as a non- colorblind reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is a paid ad.

<comment><USER7> Maybe the most enjoyable one I have come across on the internet.</comment></comment>


Did Google Reverse-engineer Windows? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/chrome-antics-did-google-reverse-engineer.ars

<comment><USER2> * As far as I can tell, the rev-eng EULA clause is never really enforced.

* Every closed-source vendor in the world --- and many open source vendors --- include this clause. They all get reversed.

* There are a number of rev-eng/copyright "outs" that apply specifically to security and compatibility research.

* It's unlikely that the Greenborder team did the original reversing work; anything having anything at all to do with Microsoft's runtime protections has been picked apart with tweezers ten times over.

* The code itself cites an external source (uninformed.org, a must read for systems developers).

* For all Microsoft's "documented" concerns about reversing, they go further than any other systems developer to help reversers, for instance by publishing the PDB debug symbols for the majority of all their binaries.

* Active, aggressive Microsoft reversers like Skywing also hold MVP certification.

* Other active, aggressive Microsoft reversers have been hired by the Sysinternals team.

I think this is much ado about nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> > True enough, Chrome's source code contains a link to uninformed.org's > description of the DEP control on XP SP2 where the undocumented function is > described.

But don't let that stop you from including DEP in your thesis. That would ruin the flow.

</comment><comment><USER4> > there's the new V8 JavaScript virtual machine with its boasts of near-native > code performance,

What does that even mean? Your JavaScript will run as fast as highly optimized assembly? Or even normally compiled C? I think not.

It does JIT JavaScript to machine code, so in that sense it's _exactly_ "native code performance"</comment>


Why is the American dream dead in the south? - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/why-is-the-american-dream-dead-in-the-south/283313/ <comment><USER2> I'll repeat my usual complaint about the 2009 intergenerational mobility survey cited in the article as demonstrating the U.S. has lower income mobility than, say, Denmark. It's a survey of _relative_ mobility, which in a society with a much narrower ("equal") income distribution will show more "mobility" even with much smaller absolute income changes.

Suppose the middle 80% of earners in nation A make between $50,000 and $70,000, while the middle 80% of nation B make between $20,000 and $100,000. If across one generation a father in nation B making $50,000 has a son who makes $100,000, that represents substantially _less_ "mobility", as this survey defines it, than a father in nation A making $50,000 who has a son that makes $70,000.

The difference between income distributions in Denmark and the U.S. are likely not this stark, but I bet it's significant. AFAIR the survey makes no attempt to account for this.

<comment><USER3> That's a fair criticism. It's certainly true that given some assumptions about random income changes, there's more mobility in narrower income distributions than wider ones without anything "real" happening. I do think it depends on what the study is trying to show, though, which in part depends on where in the web of arguments and counterarguments in falls.

One very common argument I hear from Americans is something like this: it's true that (some of) Europe has lower income inequality than the US. However, Europe's inequality is more entrenched and hereditary, and therefore actually worse than America's in social effects, even though in magnitude it seems less bad. The difference between wealthier and poorer parts of society, this argument goes, is higher in America, but this is not as harmful because the divergence is just based on what you make of yourself and changes generation to generation, rather than being based on rigid notions of class or heredity like in Europe and persisting across generations. So the European rich man might only be 10x as rich as the poor man, while the American one is 100x, but the European has this 10x difference predestined from birth, whereas the American's 100x arises only during life.

This study seems to show that particular narrative doesn't quite go through: the U.S. has a larger class divide _and_ it persists across generations more than Europe's smaller class divide does. The second part may well be redundant, as you point out (it might only persist more because it's larger), but that doesn't necessarily make the problem any less bad.

<comment><USER2> My point is that I don't think it shows that, and just because the U.S. is such an "unequal" society. Moving from the 40th income percentile to the 20th in the U.S. represents a major absolute gain in income and presumably quality of life. I suspect it's not as dramatic a change in Denmark along either measure. To the survey, they're the same magnitude of change, and there's no accounting for the more impressive absolute change in the American case.

<comment><USER3> But flipped the other way around, the more impressive American absolute change is only an artifact of its larger inequality. Danes are not moving around between $15k and $40k incomes, because nobody makes a $15k income (minimum wage is $38k/yr). So that whole bit of the "American dream" mobility has just been cut off, with no loss to society...

Relative position also matters quite a bit. In Denmark, you can be born on the lower end of society, and end up as one of the country's elites, with greater probability than is the case in the US. I take this as the "Horatio Alger" myth: you are born to a dock worker, and end up President of the USA, or CEO of a Big Company, a unique trajectory only possible in America. But you are actually more likely to make this dockworker-to-PM or dockworker-to-CEO transition in Denmark, contrary to the myth! Put differently, who constitutes the elite in Denmark is less determined by parentage, whereas the American political/economic/cultural elite is more heredity-determined, because the differences from birth are too large to overcome. I think this question of which stratum of the previous generation's families this generation's CEOs/etc. come from has significant implications for society: if it's only from last generation's top-20%, this produces a multi-generational elite, which is generally bad. It could well be that one way to combat the emergence of a multi-generational elite is simply to reduce income inequality.

<comment><USER4> Hmm.

Steve Jobs

Sergey Brin

Jeff Bezos

David Koch

Michael Dell

Bill Clinton

<comment><USER5> And it may also have to do with your definition of 'dockworker' ; Dell's mom and dad were a stockbrocker and an orthodontist; Clinton was working-class but not poor; same with Jobs (he was adopted at birth, dad was a mechanic, and mom an accountant); Brin's dad is a Math prof and his mom works at NASA; seems Koch's grandad was wealthy (I can't find more on wikipedia; it also says he went to MIT and doesn't mention scholarships, so his family was probably well- off).

<comment><USER6> Koch family were not bad off..

[http://exiledonline.com/a-peoples-history-of-koch- industries...](http://exiledonline.com/a-peoples-history-of-koch-industries- how-stalin-funded-the-tea-party-movement/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "American dream" is a lie rich people tell you so you will work for them til exaustion, you know: "because if you work hard you get there".. meanwhile they are in their big yachts, playing poker and laughing at you.. :)

Do what you love... work hard in it because your work is just fun.. make time for your family and loved ones.. you may or may not do enough money from your work.. to support your family, friends and the good moments with them..

Of course.. society must support people movements towards prepare them to work in whatever field make them happy..

If everyone is in the place its supposed to be.. the world would be a better place..

If you think like everybody else, you will end up like everybody else.. so live up your own dream.. find it out.. dont follow this sort of hivemind dream.. this is something from the television/radio era.. where people were supposed to listen and obey (you know.. the elite)..

Now its the internet era, a era where your interaction counts, where you can count as a individual even in million-people societies

Have the courage to be a individual

<comment><USER8> [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/do_what_you_love_love_what_you_do_an_omnipresent_mantra_that_s_bad_for_work.html)

<comment><USER7> This article is full of logical holes in it.. im kind of lazy right now to argue about it.. but its trying to prove a point it dont prove, and yet.. it argues about a lof of other things that have nothing to do with their first statement..

For instance, if we really think in social inclusion, we can reform our educational systems, in a way it will matter less the individual social class, and more its talent and its own potential..

So maybe the people that would be real out of the DWYL would be the less "gifted" people and not the individual in the lower social classes..

And for people that didnt find its own way in life.. may experiment to work with the DWYL folks.. doing some work that are more manual.. they may find their own ways like that.. experimenting..

Also, when im washing the dishes for instance.. its a very good time for me to do some zen meditation.. it really clean up my head.. and i have new perspectives over things im thinking of..

What i've noted is that, by starting to do one thing that you love (and i do not come from upper class) , i started to love other things that i do not love at first..

And in my "past life", where i did not like most things i was working on.. (for several different reasons).. it starts to bitter even sweet things with time.. and i've stopped before everything became bitter.. myself included..

So no, thank you! The people that created this article can do what they dont want if they like.. because of the greater good.. you will ending doing what _they_ tell you.. you know.. the big guys in whatever game you are on..

I believe in organic structures.. if you stop to observe nature.. things are pretty well organized.. and working very well (we are a proof of it) without anyone managing it.. everything fits well, and each individual do whatever it has to do.. there some inherent natural order in it.. we have it too.. and we can do it even better giving the amount of intelligence we have

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I lived in the New Orleans suburbs (metairie) and then Georgia. Neither place had any decent public transportation. Metairie at least had sidewalks something Georgia just does not have. I cannot safely walk to any store. I cannot even safely walk around my neighborhood. Cars own the roads and pedestrians have to move out of the way or get hit. I hate it.

Luckily I can afford a car, something that I can't imagine living without. I have friends that have lost jobs because their car broke down and they couldn't afford repairs. Then they don't have any job which leads to even more issues.

</comment><comment><USER10> Cross-county comparisons are useless without adjusting for race, especially looking at the south where a major fraction of the bottom 20% are black. This is a group that faced de jure segregation until just a couple of generations ago, and continued to face de facto segregation today. Making it just about the "super rich" whitewashes the legacy of segregation,that continues to affect income mobility in the U.S. versus Europe. And its something even liberals are eager to do, because frankly its shameful that in places like Atlanta, most of the poor blacks still live in the neighborhoods their grandparents were segregated into.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think we have our answer. From the study:

Finally, the strongest predictors of upward mobility are measures of family structure such as the fraction of single parents in the area. As with race, parents' marital status does not matter purely through its e ects at the individual level. Children of married parents also have higher rates of upward mobility if they live in communities with fewer single parents.

Here's the map of incidence of single parents by region of the country:

[http://www.nccp.org/publications/images/svf04a_fig3.jpg](http://www.nccp.org/publications/images/svf04a_fig3.jpg)

<comment><USER12> This is tricky because correlation != causation. It's also plausible that poverty results in fewer marriages, rather than the other way around. A decent argument to that effect:

[http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/4938.html](http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/4938.html)

<comment><USER13> _It 's also plausible that poverty results in fewer marriages_

This an interesting link, but it is a garbage argument. Marriage as a time series is just as plausibly (if not more-soe) inversely related to wealth. People were more poor and more likely to be married in the pre-war years (one example). Furthermore the rate of dissolution in marriages is also (in recent times) correlated with increases in wealth (postwar prosperity). Its far more likely that social causes (both technological and cultural) drive family structures. Wealth is perhaps a boundary constraint in some contexts. This latter would best explain recent trends that show a bifurcation (but this is more ~last decade or two).

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't be so dismissive.

The Hamilton Project has found marriage rates are decreasing across the board, but far faster in lower-income groups [1]. The marriage rate of those in the lowest income percentile have dropped almost 30%, while the highest income percentile has dropped less than 10%.

Of course, these are not absolute values, but I think it's hardly a "garbage argument" that poverty results in fewer marriages. There a number of other sources that have similar conclusions.

[1][http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/jobs/posts/2012/02/03-jobs- gr...](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/jobs/posts/2012/02/03-jobs-greenstone- looney)

<comment><USER13> This is quite similar to my comment in the last sentence.

But more importantly, the broad counterfactual that before WWII, broadly speaking, people were more married and less wealthy.

Furthermore its highly plausible that (so-called) breakdown of marriage (in the post-war) is correlated with non-wealth effects, such as the sexual revolution fostered by hormonal birth control and the spread/use of class A drugs (ie: culture, technology). So, in addition to wealth not explaining marriage rates (broadly) at the scale of long- time, in the short term it has competition as an explanatory variable in the micro-analytic sense. Thirdly, and importantly, the relationship of marriage as a utilitarian tool for <gaining> wealth is an altogether diferent layer of abstraction. It may be, for example, that people (in the jane austen era) married into wealth as a tactic of wealth-creation. Or, alternatively, people are for-going marriage (as in the "cant have it all generatinon") as a means to facilitate of wealth creation (or, even: protection). But these are wholly different effects/causes than the broad relatinships of wealth to marital status. They involve the precise staus of marriage itself. Furthermore, they may or may not have any bearing on the develepment of Children...so far, children haven't even been a consideration in the determinants of marriage (ei, access to sex, wealth acquisition, weath protection). The status of children may wholly be an emergent phenomenon (of marriage) or it may actually be linked to the quality of the principals (absent special instituyional support).

So, in the big scheme of things, waving around macro stuff is a bit hand- wavey. It's quite a bit more important to look at the micro-analytics and actually (a) assess them; and (b) apply them to the context at hand.

On that, I think I agree with the author of the linked essay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The study compares numbers who reach the top quintile of _national_ income levels on a regional basis. It's no surprise, then that the poorest part of the country has the fewest people who reach the top quintile. I'd like to see the numbers if you control for regional income differences. How often to kids born into the lowest quintile of Charlotte's income distribution make it into the top quintile of Charlotte's income distribution? And how many people in Charlotte are in the top quintile of national income distribution. I'm guessing it's a lot less than 20%.

<comment><USER16> Regional income variation certainly seems significant for the single measure picked for the article. There's more detail in Derek Thompson's article [1] with maps for both "absolute upward mobility" and "relative mobility" measures. Even though it uses national income rankings as a base, the "relative mobility" measure compares outcomes between people growing up in the same commuting zones. That should exclude the affect of differing regional incomes. It's broadly similar, but more variation is visible in the South than in the other maps.

Area income seems to offer a compelling explanation for one local result highlighted in the paper [2]:

"San Francisco has substantially higher relative mobility than Chicago: y ̄100 − y ̄0 = 25.0 in San Francisco vs. y ̄100 − y ̄0 = 39.3 in Chicago. But part of the greater relative mobility in San Francisco comes from worse outcomes for children from high-income families. Below the 60th percentile, children in San Francisco have better outcomes than those in Chicago; above the 60th percentile, the reverse is true."

Someone on a >60th national income percentile in San Francisco is going to be in a much lower local income percentile. That would make them relatively disadvantaged in comparison to someone on a >60th national income percentile in Chicago. And if they leave the city for somewhere with a lower cost of living, even if they stay in the same local income bracket as their parents they will appear to be doing worse in terms of national income ranking.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the- geog...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-geography-of- the-american-dream/283308/)

[2] [http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_geo.pdf](http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_geo.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it doesn't make sense to compare wealth across the nation due to different costs of living. In some areas top wages are extremely rare since the cost of living is very low. For instance, the average salary in NYC is much higher than one in kansas, so the chance of moving from the lowest to the highest will be higher in nyc since there almost no chance of the highest in kansas at all.

<comment><USER18> Yes. There is a tendency for some to grossly misunderstand the sheer scale of the USA. We have cities with populations of whole countries, able to support extremely high wages, and remote sparsely populated areas completely unable to support any "upward mobility". The South areas being derided suffer relatively higher populations with no ability to support higher wages so there is no mobility other than move to Atlanta or the like, which does nothing for local wage increases. The Northeast has more world class cities to lift the surrounding counties, as does the West coast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _"...Because the American Dream is dead in too much of America..."_

We are quickly reaching the point on HN that we are becoming a parody of ourselves. What is this tripe? Why are we consuming it so greedily?

Look, the poor in America today are tremendously better off than before. And yes, I find it interesting as a hacker to observe statistical data, I also know enough to know that methodology and meaning count for a hell of a lot here. It's one thing to note relative percentage differences in relative quintile rankings. It's quite another to end your article with this over-the- top emoting.

Come now, is it not obvious that the quintiles area completely different now than, say, 40 years ago? Is it not obvious that things like public transportation are probably meaningless when applied to a geographic area this size? How about the fact that the people in, say, rural Florida in 1980 are probably not the same ones that would be there in 2010? Does migration between states play a role? Illegal immigration? Do poor people self-select certain areas? More provocatively, what's the actual movement compared to the movement desired?

I love statistics, but far too often we try to beat meaning out of aggregate information that just isn't there. Then we bandy around whatever meaning we've drudged up to support our pet theories. One of the reasons I love startups so much is that to address a market you take statistical data and then _test it_. That's what we're missing here. We have a lot of hand-waving, correlation, generalizing, and blame. Not so much with the reproducible testable hypotheses. A little more of that and a little less soft, squishy social sciences, please. Otherwise this place is going to start looking like a meeting of the royal astrologers: lots of posturing and invective but very little of value.

You guys are consuming this great fluffy social sciences mish-mash and treating it as if it were the same as recent results on the mass of the Higgs- Boson. They're different categories of information. All science is provisional, but the soft sciences are the most provisional of all. Bears remembering.

<comment><USER20> You think HN is becoming a parody... _because_ people are starting to be concerned with income inequality?

This whole business about the poor having it better than ever is literally pap produced to assuage the conscience of white collar americans- only slightly more sophisticated than "how can you be miserable if you have a refrigerator?".

If you think books like _Better Angels of Our Nature_ , or whatever else informs your idea that we're barreling towards a bright utopia, constitute some sort of vanguard in the Social Sciences you're just intellectually lazy.

<comment><USER21> Whether it assuages the conscience of white collar Americans or not, the fact is that the poor in America have it pretty good. The average poor person in America is overweight, not starving, and enjoys a standard of living far better than most people in developing countries. I have trouble relating to anyone for whom that isn't a relevant fact in any discussion of poverty.

I grew up poor, in the south, and am now comfortably middle class (still in the south). In my experience, the thing that keeps poor people poor is an unwillingness to put long-term success above short-term pleasure. Poor people buy cars they can't afford; they blow off work to go to the club with their friends; they have children young. Many poor people work hard, but very seldom are they working _toward_ anything beyond the next paycheck, or the next beer.

<comment><USER20> to what do you attribute your ability to overcome the trappings that keep your peers down? genetic makeup?

a huge chunk of HN directly or indirectly makes their money from _advertising_. what do you think that industry is about if not fine-tuning the mechanisms that get people to buy stuff that they don't need?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I live in the Rust Belt and this headline reads strangely to me. My personal experience is that times are tough in the northern US too. Anecdotally, I've heard that many of the places in the US that are growing economically are in the South.

<comment><USER23> I would like to verify this account of the Rust Belt. The manufacturing jobs that were not exported ,relocated mostly to the Southeast leaving only Healthcare and lower paying Retail and Service sector jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The American Dream is a logical fallacy. It has but only outcome which is self-destruction. How can the normal distribution exist without mediocrity and poverty?

What's truly disturbing how conservative politics can flourish so predominantly amongst the least likely to benefit from them[the south].

<comment><USER25> you can have a normal distribution without poverty. poverty isn't 'having less than everyone else', poverty is struggling to survive. the american dream isn't "nobody is poor", the american dream is "work hard and you won't be in a struggle to survive."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This seems to be the "upward mobility" version of the American dream. Not the white fence+wife+dog one.

<comment><USER27> I would say, that you are right, but I would define the "fence+dog" one as not the original "American dream", even when many people are content with fence+dog.

<comment><USER26> So many people seem to think that that's the dream that I've almost given up saying anything.

#3 and the Carlin quote from #2 probably make a good point: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=american%20dr...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=american%20dream)

<comment><USER28> Re #3: Were Clinton and Obama in top 1% when they were born?

<comment><USER27> The point is not, who is President of the US, but who says what the President of the US has to do.

<comment><USER28> I was specifically referring to [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=American%20Dr...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=American%20Dream&defid=257599)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would not say, that the American dream is dead completely, but I would say, that it is dead for very big parts of the US people in practice, even if they still dream the American dream.

</comment><comment><USER13> _5\. Family Structure. Forget race, forget jobs, forget schools, forget churches, forget neighborhoods, and forget the top 1—or maybe 10—percent. Nothing matters more for moving up than who raises you. Or, in econospeak, nothing correlates with upward mobility more than the number of single parents, divorcees, and married couples. The cliché is true: Kids do best in stable, two-parent homes._

This is classic.

</comment><comment><USER29> I noticed that Eastern Nevada has one of the highest mobility rates according to this study. This surprises me. That side of the state is one of the least populated areas and the most desolate. I wonder if there is a statistical bias at work here.

<comment><USER30> It's easier for noise to have large effects in small populations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > So what makes northern California different from North Carolina

Did this study take into account cost of living differences? California's more expensive. There are a number of reasons for that, some historical, some coincidental, some because of the weather. But, regardless of the reasons, if you're measuring income on a national scale it is simply far easier for someone in CA to be in the top 20% than for someone living in a comparatively cheap area of the country.

<comment><USER32> Boy, when you overlay their map with this one, something sort of jumps out at you...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to- work_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law)

There is no mobility without stability. The south is so levered in favor of owners and controllers of capital that the poor have no shot.

Double this up with per capita spending on students k-12 and this gets generational really fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> An article similar to this one also showed divorce rates being higher in Conservative areas (the South) due to stress and strain on families caused by: 1) A lack or limitation of contraception, planned parenthood programs, sex education and abortion options which lead to more children being born when the family isn't ready yet. 2) Marriage at a younger age when families aren't yet stabilized. 3) A focus on a family over education and career stability.

<comment><USER32> This whole thread should devolve into the death spiral of poverty you are leading towards here... you can pick many down-ramps in.

Institutional lubrication for an unmanageable impact due to child birth being encourage or enforced upon the poor. This further reduces that wealth per capita of the poor which spreads institutional support thinner, increases demands upon those trying to work, adds perverse incentives to NOT have more than a single income in a household, segregation of rich/poor, etc.

Each stressor for those on the lowest rung reinforces or draws them into other rational decisions which lock the poor into being poor.

Don't be poor Don't be uneducated Don't be a single parent Don't be a woman Don't be disenfranchised politically Don't be unemployed Don't be short-term- viewed in financial habits Don't be sick Don't drink/smoke/cope with chemicals or food Don't be fat Don't be injured without adequate health insurance Don't live in poor areas Don't work in labor-unfriendly areas etc. etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A large portion of lifetime earnings variation is genetic.

[http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/46326/](http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/46326/)

</comment><comment><USER35> When I found H.L.Mencken, I was somewhat astonished at the essay "The Sahara of the Bozart".

A search will produce the text, and Lew Rockwell has a good piece about it here: [http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/gail-jarvis/h-l- mencken-n...](http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/gail-jarvis/h-l-mencken-neo- confederate/)

</comment><comment><USER36> I hate when people make a generalization like "the south" to grab headlines. If you look at the map you can see the story is more complicated. Liberals and conservatives both do this. Conservatives complain about California, liberals complain about Texas. But the truth is there are regional economic and ideological diversities in both states.

</comment><comment><USER37> it's dead in the north too. I just marched through New Hampshire with both liberals and conservatives that are fed up with big money in politics. there's still time to renew our democracy, but it's running out fast. [http://nhrebellion.org](http://nhrebellion.org)

</comment><comment><USER34> Regarding the old canard that low marriage rates cause poverty: Iceland is a pretty solid counter example. High rates of single motherhood and low rates of poverty.

<comment><USER38> I havent seen any causational data, merely correlational data.

<comment><USER34> The claim is made in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps they woke up. No wonder they are moody. I'm always a bit moody when I wake up.</comment>


Show HN: Meet the Problem Canvas - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/makelytics/introduction-to-the-problem-canvas-166f47d7597d <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: The Problem Canvas takes a scientific approach to "deconstruct" a problem worth solving. We are trying to bring objective measurement to a discipline which thus far has been 'artsy' [Customer Development].</comment>


My Facebook Interview Saga - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rlotun/entries/12052007a.html <comment><USER2> I am increasingly becoming convinced that facebook, and most tech businesses-- are totally clueless about interviewing.

Its definately much worse than it was 10 years ago.

Companies are starting to get proud of the fact that they are incompetant at interviewing-- because they think someone "failing" their process means they have a high bar... but the reality is, they let in clueless people with trendy skills and exclued the people who had a clue.

And thene the clueless interview based on trends and the company becomes yahoo (or facebook- they are heading for a fall.)

What do I mean by clueless trendy people? I expect that if I interviewed at facebook, and told them in the interview that I thought unit tests were a waste of time, I wouldn't get hired.

The reality is, I know unit tests are a waste of time, and I know abetter way to develop software. But unit tests are the trend (a trend created by pointy haired idiot non-programmers, believe it or not) and now the clueless will exclude the superior based on this-- and be smug in doing so.

I guess this is the natural way of things-- popular music devolves from mozart to britney spears.

<comment><USER3> So what you're claiming is that established companies _and_ startups are wasting time hiring people with bogus qualifications -- they're all paying a productivity tax that you've found a way to evade! Isn't that _great news_? Shouldn't you be thrilled?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves: we can have a big party after the company you start to hire all these great undervalued programmers finishes up its IPO.

<comment><USER2> Uh, no, I'm just saying that their hiring practices are messed up nad thus they often hire good people for the wrong reasons and exclude good people for the wrong reasons, and sometimes hire bad people for the wrong reasons.

Like Zuckerman saying only hire young people-- some of the people he'll exclude that way would have been an asset to the company, and some of the people he will hire because of that policy are going to be a drag.

<comment><USER4> Facebook has done a _shockingly_ good job of handling their growth and it was mostly young hard core unix hackers that did it. You can't argue with the results.

Just be honest: you're angry at Facebook because you think they wouldn't hire you due to your age. Just like you're angry and jealous that YC is making "kids" (as you call them) rich by giving them a huge headstart.

You indirectly compare yourself to Mozart. Claim to have an amazingly great way of developing, but of course don't say anything about it. Flatly claim Facebook developers are "clueless" and your methods are "superior". You're too much man, I already have Comedy Central.

<comment><USER2> Sigh. Confusing correlation with causation is exactly the kind of foolish error that I'm talking about.

I think its a very childish response to accuce me of being angry or jealous because I have a different opinion, tht is strongly held.

But its simply dishonest to put words in my mouth like that.

I have not made claims to be great, and I have not said my methods are superior to facebook... nor have I said anything derogatory about YC, especially when YC funds college age students-- I think the college age generation are the perfect candidates for the YC program.

Its really quite sad that you have demonstrated exactly the errors I am pointing out in facebook in your defense of them-- you have reacted in a narrow minded and judgemental way-- attacking me personally, rather than the position I have taken. This kind of political correctness is exactly what Facebook is doing when they don't hire people based on skills, but based on other factors such as age and, well, ideology.

Further irony comes from you attacking my skills when I have not relied on argument based on my "superior" skills, and further, what skills do you have? Not that they would be relevant-- but if you had sufficient skill you should be able to make a counter argument based on the state of the art and advanced techniques. In short, by attacking me, you show you do not understand the technology well enough to make a technological argument, ironic since technical skill is where you criticized me.

Even saying I'm jealous is a childish pathetic personal attack on my skills.

Anyway, for the past 20 days I've been off doing... and you'll notice I have no posts here in that time period. Meanwhile you have made 28 comments here in just the last 3 days.

How's _your_ startup going?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Too bad I didn't find this before my facebook interview! =P

</comment><comment><USER6> whoa. he didn't get the job? I am so fucked.</comment>


CamSpace Creates a Wii For Everyone (Minus the Nintendo Console) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/11/camspace-creates-a-wii-for-everyone-minus-the-nintendo-console/ <comment><USER2> Now that is really great. Can't wait!</comment>


Analyse Asia 75: Braintree in Asia Pacific with Tyson Hackwood - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2015/11/21/episode-75-braintree-in-asia-pacific-with-tyson-hackwood/ <comment><AUTHOR> Synopsis: With Tyson Hackwood, Head of Asia at Braintree (under Paypal), we discussed the footprint of the online payments company in Asia Pacific. Starting from Tyson's early career in online advertising and premium mobile services in a 2G or WAP world, we discussed how he moved into the mobile payments with Paypal and subsequently to Braintree. During the conversation, Tyson offered his perspectives on Braintree's opportunities in a mobile first Asia world, and the best practices in how merchants can leverage their online payments platform. Finally, we discussed some of the interesting case studies that came out with Braintree's recent launch in Asia with Singapore, Malaysia & Hong Kong leading the charge.</comment>


Will you buy a Secure/Anonimous Notebook like this? - <AUTHOR> http:///anonimando.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> the price seams 20% + the hardware price.</comment>


IQ and Religion - <AUTHOR> http://hypnosis.home.netcom.com/iq_vs_religiosity.htm <comment><USER2> This is complete bunk.

Why? Because firstly, IQ is flawed because it fails to take into account different forms of intelligence - for instance, an African living in the bush may not be as good linguistically, but will be a far more "intelligent" hunter than the average western person. IQ tests have been _repeatedly_ criticised for failing to adapt to cultural differences, and are effectively geared towards a western understanding of human intelligence - essentially, it's like comparing a long jumper and a sprinter, having them both sprint, and then declaring the sprinter is a better all-round sportsman.

Religion could also be linked to, for instance, poverty or desperate conditions. It's all very well sitting back in our cities with power and relatively good pay and oodles of free time, philosophising to ourselves and declaring that god could not possible exist, but for people in packed, impoverished slums, religions serves as a motivator, either by being the only thing that gives people hope, or principally because one is taught it at a young age and doesn't have the time or education to question it with science or reason. This has nothing to do with a "lack of intelligence". Religion is also a much greater part of society - think about England several hundred years ago - many of the great minds were religious, simply because it was just the given thing to be, it was the Zeitgeist.

Apologies for the aggressive tone, but this study just reeks of cultural imperialism and sneering at others without really attempting to understand anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> This graph might tempt you to believe lower IQ implies higher religiosity. In reality it's much more likely that poverty leads to both lower IQ [1] and higher religiosity [2].

Correlation does not imply causation.

[1]: [http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/06/poverty-and-the- br...](http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/06/poverty-and-the-brain/) [2]: [http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest- world-...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world- poorest-nations.aspx)

<comment><USER4> Although I agree with you, this is not evident from the graph. There are some really poor countries on there with good IQ and low religiosity.

<comment><USER5> You can't discus religiosity without also discussing the local culture.

In my country (Romania, claimed IQ average in the article being 94), because of the local culture and even though I'm sure there are plenty of atheists and agnostics around, people that are not religious do not usually admit it, because that brings with it the disapproval of society at large. And the local culture does shape the society you live in, being a powerful force against misfits.

In fact, based on my own observations, I think that religiosity is also directly linked with poverty. Due to the economic recession, the orthodox church here has never been more popular in the last 100 years, or more wealthy.

Btw, I am religious, while my IQ is well over average.

<comment><USER4> Again, I agree. I'm just pointing out that this graph doesn't support well the theory of religiosity's correlation with poverty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, religion (mythology) is the result of humans not understanding something and attempting to explain it using fantasy elements. Which is very normal and natural.

So if a society currently lacks the education or intelligence to understand complex scientific principals of course they're going to use fantasy to try to understand the world around them. Once people understand the world around them using non-fantasy or non-religious explanations, they usually abandon religion.

The way I see it, science and religion are just 2 different ways of achieving "understanding". All humans want answers, and will get those answers using which ever method, science or religion, they have access to (sometimes both).

So apparently:

\- Religion causes people to have low IQs (No)

\- People who are religious are usually of a lower intelligence (Not really)

\- People who are of a lower intelligence usually tend to be more religious (Yes, usually)

\- Some people are both very intelligent and very religious (Yes)

If these observations are true, how much of society will be offended by them?

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm mostly amazed at the low average IQ in the bottom scoring countries.

My understanding is that having an IQ score below 70 has historically been the definition of mental retardation.

Intuitively I feel there must be some severe cultural bias present in this data (or what it measures). The alternative explanation being that most of the population of Africa would be, on average, mentally retarded...

Maybe someone with a better grasp of statistics (or IQ tests) can clarify?

<comment><USER2> Perhaps it's because IQ has it's own fair share of problems and focuses on specific types of intelligence. It also has massive cultural bias.

Some would go as far to say it's entirely meaningless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm fairly skeptical about IQ, but levels of religious belief may correlate with wider social factors. An interesting source is:

Gregory S. Paul. _Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look._ Journal of Religion and Society, Vol 7, 2005.

<http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.pdf>

Quote: "In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion … None of the strongly secularised, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction." Within the US, "the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and midwest" have "markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the north-east where … secularisation, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms".

</comment><comment><USER9> Where is Switzerland?

Correlation is not a causation. In poorer countries the importance of religion is generally higher and the quality of education is generally lower. On the other hand, in wealthier countries religion prominence comes down to cultural traits. There's Canada/Finland and there's UAE/Switzerland.

(edit) IQ is not lower because nation is more religious. IQ is lower because the nation is poorer. It is also more religious for the same reason. Wealth is the cause. Plotting two derivatives agains each other is fun, but makes little sense.

<comment><USER10> Why make the assertion that wealth is the underlying cause?

I think it's more likely that it's more religion -> less wealth -> poorer health -> lower IQ.

After all, ultimately, wealth is not a cause, but an effect. Wealth is produced; it doesn't fall from the sky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At first sight it looks like "More religious = Less IQ". Somehow I doubt that. Religion is not one value. Some religions are anti-knowledge (at least for woman and specific minorities). In Western Europe religious schools (Catholic, Protestant etc) are known to teach at a higher level. In my area they are in high demand due to the quality of their education, even for non-religious parents. (The level of "fanatic" religion is not high here).

</comment><comment><USER12> The irony is that the religious tend to be extremely educated and in history served as teachers of many things.

The Catholic Church believes in evolution (although its not exactly dogma). Pope John Paul II:

In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.... Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.

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

Dual Masters, Higher than avg IQ, & Catholic.

<comment><USER13> > _The Catholic Church believes in evolution_

How is this reconciled with Eve being created from Adam's rib? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER12> EDITTED ----

I probably should write that this is my opinion. Spiritual genesis vs physical genesis is described in the Old Testament.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Per this analysis, the US manages to be more intelligent than any other equally- or more-religious country, and more religious than any other equally- or more-intelligent country. Perhaps the US national motto (adopted 1956) should be extended by a few words: "In God we trust _but also verify_ ".

</comment><comment><USER15> "IQ is not lower because nation is more religious. IQ is lower because the nation is poorer."

I am mystified as to why people assume that education provides a higher IQ.

IQ is ability to learn; the brains ability to solve problems in an independent way and has nothing to do with education. If a person who rarely thinks deeply begins some form of education then they will receive a spike in IQ but it is not lasting.

A good way to think of it is the ability to think outside the box. There is no increase of IQ from education although a person with a high IQ may score better in an academic environment (or not if they are easily bored). Education is about memorizing facts whilst IQ is the ability to think.

Wealthy people don't feel a need for a God but poor people do.

<comment><USER16> Malnutrition can lead to low IQ: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_and_intelligence#Bi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_and_intelligence#Biological_influences)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't seem to understand why anybody would make such a correlation. I think the avarage IQ depends on how wealth and how well developed your country is, and not how many believe in religious stuff.

<comment><USER18> You're looking at it the wrong way. Of course saying the average _IQ_ depends on religious belief is nonsense[1], but the other way around ie. saying the _likelyhood of believing in religious stuff_ depends on how high your IQ is might make sense to some people.

1\. Religion tends to suppress and influence education, if that has any effect on the _IQ_ of the population has yet to be proven

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks remarkably similar to last year's Calamities of Nature graph..

<http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=619>

</comment><comment><USER20> How are these data valuable without corrections for other potentially explanatory factors like wealth/GDP, education, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER21> What on earth does this have to do with startups and hacking?

Answer: nothing! You can downvote me all you want, but it's been flagged right off the front page.

</comment><comment><USER22> what pattern does this study tell? I couldn't make much sense.

Being more religious means you move towards lesser IQ?

<comment><USER4> I hope you're joking.

Anyway, for me this stokes my confirmation bias that the stupider a person is, the more likely they are to believe in ridiculous nonsense.

It also shows that the U.S. is sorta smart for how religious they are.

<comment><USER23> Soooo then it goes against your confirmation bias, right?

<comment><USER24> The US is an outlier.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Chrome extension for watching Amazon Prime video together - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/prime-party/fcngjpblanflfmbkdkheajgobilapkfa <comment><AUTHOR> I created a netflix party clone for amazon prime. I have not tested it thoroughly and need feedback if anyone here watches primevideo with friends.</comment>


California's $500-billion pension time bomb  - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-crane6-2010apr06,0,6247734.story

<comment><USER2> The article is good, but has one big error: the statement that existing pensions are contractual obligations and must be paid.

Go back a few decades to the bankruptcy of Orange County California. Unions negotiated away a large part of pension obligations to members.

When (not if) the state of California goes bankrupt, those obligations will not go away entirely, but will be reduced through bankruptcy negotiations.

<comment><USER3> The article is correct, in that the US bankruptcy code doesn't cover states. There is literally no legal way for a state to go bankrupt, and thus no way to force renegotiation of the pension contracts through bankruptcy court.

Of course the day may come when the state pension funds simply have no cash left and stop paying benefits, and the pensioners will then sue to enforce their contracts. It's hard to predict what might happen then. Unions might be strong-armed into accepting a cram down. Courts could order the legislative and executive branches to increase taxes or reallocate funds. Who knows?

<comment><USER2> Question: so counties are allowed to go bankrupt, but not states? States can not print money, and many states including Arizona where I live are coming up short paying for essential services.

<comment><USER3> That's correct. Counties and municipalities can go bankrupt under Chapter 9. [http://www.uscourts.gov/bankruptcycourts/bankruptcybasics/ch...](http://www.uscourts.gov/bankruptcycourts/bankruptcybasics/chapter9.html) There is no provision for states. It's an unprecedented situation so I don't think anyone can predict what will actually happen when they inevitably run out of cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The NYT article on the same subject - <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/business/07pension.html> \- explains why:

"Currently, governments discount pension values by using the return they expect their pension investments to earn over the long term. For most public pension funds, that means about 8 percent. In California, the teachers' fund uses 8 percent, Calpers uses 7.75 percent, and the University fund uses 7.5 percent... After the researchers applied a risk-free rate of 4.14 percent, equivalent to the yield on a 10-year Treasury note, the present value of the promised benefits ballooned. The researchers came up with a $425 billion shortfall for the three funds."

<comment><USER5> Compounding the issue, in an attempt to achieve those investment rates the pension funds have invested heavily in private equity funds. However during the bubble private equity went on an unsustainable spending spree and those funds are certain to lose large amounts of money when large numbers of bought out companies can't make principal payments that come due in 2011 and 2012.

The last time that private equity ran up a bubble like that was in the late 80s. The institutions that invested in private equity funds then were the S&Ls. That was a much smaller bubble than this, and we all know how well _that_ turned out...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is what happens when deferred "defined" benefits spanning decades are controlled by political machines that operate under 2 or 4 year election cycles.

Unfortunately, politicians get elected on the pork and candy they hand out NOW, not for the fiscal health of state pension funds 30 years from now.

</comment><comment><USER7> all the more reason for Californians to retire to Florida or some other state where they won't have to help pay for everybody else's retirement.

Its really about time the taxpayers were put in charge of what is spent and borrowed. The interests of legislators and taxpayers are clearly not aligned.

Switzerland has referendums on everything the legislature does and so can we.

Most of these ridiculously expensive commitments and the gymnastics undertaken to hide them would be stomped in the polls.

If we copied Switzerland's system in general, a lot of things would begin to improve. With more things under local control, there would be less shifting of costs to the unsuspecting.

<comment><USER8> Part of California's problems (certainly not all!) are exactly _because_ the taxpayers have too much control of what is spent and borrowed. The number of social welfare things that appear on the ballot when voting time comes around is crazy, but no-one will vote for the taxes required to support them. Only if the state politicians had full control of the books could they say "there's no money for this" and not have their hands forced by the voter to spend money they don't have.

Californians want a welfare state, but won't pay for it, and you can't have it both ways (personally, I prefer the welfare state and higher taxes, but that's just me).

<comment><USER7> which is why I think we should consider radical decentralization too.

The Swiss have another great thing too with their decentralized cantons. You can actually LEAVE your canton and join another one. Or start a new one.

This is the ultimate in discipline for government. Competition!</comment></comment></comment>


LIVE Bitcoin Jeopardy Game. Play for Real Money. Winners Get Paid Instantly - <AUTHOR> https://ihb.io/2015-06-25/news/bitcoin-jeopardy-19049

<comment><USER2> Really cool way to show what Bitcoin can do. A live gameshow is awesome.</comment>