Google I/O 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://events.google.com/io2016/ <comment><USER2> Lots of Project Tango + AR/VR presentations. I'm willing to bet the next Google/Nexus phones will have tech from Project Tango built in and become standard on future Android phones. Lots of apps/games could be built for it (and some that have been already built will debut during I/O). It could be one of those things that differentiates Androids from iPhones. Take a look at the 'Introducing Project Tango Area Learning' talk for May 18 for an example.

More info on Project Tango - [https://www.google.com/atap/project- tango/](https://www.google.com/atap/project-tango/)

<comment><USER3> tango is not the only game in town

SVO: Fast Semi-Direct Monocular Visual Odometry 25 Feb 2014:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YnIMfw6bJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YnIMfw6bJY)

<comment><USER4> SVO is very interesting, but Tango is much more than that. Tango also has hardware for depth perception, something that SVO does not offer.

As a side-note, the guys at ETH Zurich are friggin' amazing and they do so much cool research. A big fan here!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool: Talks about NDK, ART, and maybe just maybe, they will fix audio latency.

Not so cool: Game keynotes seem to keep spreading Play Services PR instead of talking about making games, available frameworks and tooling, like on Apple and Microsoft conferences.

</comment><comment><USER6> Lots of Firebase - wild guess, but I assume Firebase support will be integrated in Android Studio extending/maybe replacing the current Cloud- Endpoints feature (which is unfortunate, because I use it extensively).

<comment><USER7> I hope they won't do that. I believe those approaches do a disservice to Android in general.

For instance, it really annoys me when Android Studio pushes you to add app indexing stuff, which in turn needs Play Services to work. Play Services unnecessarily bloats my APKs, so I go great lengths to avoid it.

I prefer a more agnostic Android Studio (and Android in general) rather than gravitating towards Google sponsored add-ons.

<comment><USER8> How you do in-app and push notif (GCM) without Play?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hope we hear more from ATAP. They had some really interesting projects last year I'm hoping make it further towards market.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, but what's ATAP?

<comment> k-mcgrady Very strange you were downvoted. It's Google's 'Advanced Technology and Projects' group. Incubator run by an ex-DARPA guy. Projects are given two years.

<comment><USER11> Ex-DARPA gal, actually:

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

<comment><USER12> Regina Dugan now works for Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It doesn't look like they're really talking about anything new this year. A little bit about android auto but as far as I can tell, that's it.

<comment><USER14> This happens every year. They don't announce a lot of sessions until the keynote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found a bug in Safari os x: don't be logged in, go to the schedule, expand one of the topics, click the plus sign and you'll get a message that says something like "log in to save" in the lower left. Now you can no longer click the window shade to close the popup, you have to click the 'Full Schedule" link.

I'm in love with the 2d/3d font and the way it animates both in the color cycling and number changing into one another. Its one of those things that I wish I would had thought of doing (knew how to do)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if I'm going to be able to download the version of Android which was announced at last year's Google I/O before they announce another one this year?

Don't ever change, Google.

<comment><USER17> Huh? Android 6.0 Marshmallow? It's on my phone right now.

And the next version (N) is already announced: [https://developer.android.com/preview/index.html](https://developer.android.com/preview/index.html)

This comment does not really make sense.

<comment><USER18> I'm guessing he is running a non-nexus device.

<comment><USER19> I have it on an HTC One M8 on T-Mobile. Maybe he has a manufacturer that doesn't like to update ( _cough_ Samsung _cough_ ) or a lazy carrier. But non- Nexus devices definitely get updates somewhat regularly now. Most manufacturer/carrier combos definitely got their act together compared to a few years ago.

<comment><USER16> I'm on the Sony Z3. Apparently some varities of the Z3 in some countries on some networks are getting marshmallow at the moment. But not mine, yet at least. It's not just Samsung who take ages updating, or who ignore the deal they're supposed to have with Google to provide major updates released within 18 months of the release of a device.

<comment><USER20> He, some versions of the Z3 are getting the N(!)[1]. I'd say it's probable that it's your carriers fault, the Marshmallow updates for the Z3 have been out for a while.

[1] [https://developer.sony.com/develop/smartphones-and- tablets/a...](https://developer.sony.com/develop/smartphones-and- tablets/android-n-developer-preview/)

<comment><USER16> I've an unlocked phone, so in my country I'll get it before those with phones locked to a network. You can use sites such as xpericheck.com to confirm that currently 7 locations have MM on the D6603 variant of the z3 phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They are having it outside at Shoreline? oh boy.

<comment><USER22> _The opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of Google._

I attended I/O a few years ago (prior to joining Google) and really enjoyed the Moscone Center. Mainly because there was lots of hotels and restaurants in the area. Lodgings around the Google campus are pretty sparse, this feels like a mistake to me. Being able to walk to your hotel after a long day of focusing/listening was definitely nice.

That said, being able to visit the Google Campus if you've never been there is really nice. As well, I'm betting this will greatly reduce the costs of hosting the event and those funds can be used in a different way. And with Google's fleet of buses, it looks like they will pickup and drop people off at the hotels they have rooms blocked off at.

EDIT: as drl42 points out, the mascone center is undergoing renovation and probably wasn't available.

<comment><USER23> Hosting this in MV is just... weird. All the hotels suck, there's no food, nothing touristy to do, etc etc.

I don't understand your note about costs. Google has infinite money. Even mid- tier meetings are held at Moscone, so I don't think it's that expensive.

Are the I/O hordes really going to be visiting the Google Campus? For what reason?

It's pretty weird.

<comment><USER24> I lived in Mountain View down the street from Google the last few years but here's where people will/should be going:

Hotels: If you want something nice, you're going to go to Palo Alto or Downtown San Jose. If you're fine with budget basics, hit all the hotels along El Camino between Sunnyvale and Palo Alto. Personally, I would choose the Hampton Inn on Moffett Blvd. between the 101 and Central. It's clean, pretty cheap, and two blocks from Castro St. with all the restaurants and stuff.

Restaurants: Castro St. and Downtown Palo Alto are your best bets. There are a lot of options on Castro St. so expect it to get crowded but the food is actually pretty damn good. This is not Michelin rated new American food like in SF, so stick to the Asian options if you don't want to go wrong. Get Hot Pot at Little Sheep or Sushi at Sushi Tomi or any of the other 5 ramen places within walking distance. In Palo Alto, you can get finer dining options.

Touristy Things: The museums and cultural options are more limited so take a short CalTrain ride directly to SF if you want that. If you have the weekend to spend, Mountain View is about an hour closer to Santa Cruz than SF is so head over there to get your tan and enjoy the beach.

<comment><USER25>
      > Touristy Things: The museums and cultural options are more limited …

CHM is ten minutes walk down Shoreline. If you don't think that's worth the trip to the otherwise insipid sf bay area, then I don't want to be your friend.

<comment><USER26> CHM is great and the docents there are fantastic. The Cantor Center at Stanford has a great little collection of art. There's also a TeamLab exhibition at PACE in Menlo Park that I hear is wonderful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is the entire event going to be outside? Or are they going to use a tent in the vast parking lot space like they do for festivals?

</comment><comment><USER28> Umm .. how do you get a ticket?

<comment><USER29> Google I/O tickets are difficult to get - you apply, and they choose who can purchase a ticket by lottery.

One of the reasons for this is that they used to hand out swag worth more than the ticket price (latest Nexus phones, etc).

This makes sense for Google - increasing developer mindshare and experience on their platforms is worth more than the device cost. But this also had the effect of "everyone" applying for Google I/O to get the swag, even if you are not too excited about attending the talks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't find ARA in the schedule :(

</comment><comment><USER31> huh?

</comment><comment><USER32> Hasn't this been announced for a while? Is there a reason this got submitted? Did the schedule just get released or something? Title should probably clarify.

<comment><USER33> Schedule was released about an hour ago.

<comment><USER34> > Mythbusting HTTPS: Squashing security's urban legends

This one sounded interesting until I read the the abstract... I was hoping to hear some reflections on actual security.</comment></comment></comment>


Groupon Co-founders invest $4M in fast-growing E la Carte (YC S10) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/30/e-la-carte-raises-4m-from-groupon-co-founders-to-bring-tablets-to-the-restaurant-tableside-experience/

<comment><USER2> I used a spiritually similar system at a sushi shop (try saying that five times fast) last week. It's fifteen flavors of wonderful.

About a year ago, I think I said something to the effect of "A/B tested restaurant menus would print cash." (Edit: here we go: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2046426> ) If they're getting +12% sales just on superior interaction design (versus actually talking to a human -- and I have no difficulty believing that the average interaction with a device measurably beats the average interaction with a human for at least some restaurants on axes both customer and owner care about) I predict very, very, very nice things in their future when they decide to take an engineer or three aside and become a data company in addition to being a devices company.

Sprinkle a little code on a techphobic multi-billion dollar industry, watch wonderful stuff happen.

<comment><USER3> I love tech, but if I went to a restaurant and they had that, I honestly wouldn't go back.

They gained 10% from those who stuck around and points to them for working the up-sell on side orders, but how many left never to return? To quantify the value of tabletop ordering systems is not as simple as saying "oh look, a 10% gain in average order value" it's much more complex than that. And without the customer numbers and order value variance it's hard to truly analyze the success of the proposition.

<comment><USER2> I respect that you may not like this technology. I think you are perhaps overestimating how hard it is to quantitatively or qualitatively judge what customers think of it.

Qualitatively: ask your waitstaff if they keep getting called over by customers saying "I pressed the devil box and it didn't work! I hate this!"

Quantitatively: you get credit card numbers and email addresses. See who comes back. (Bonus points: if they don't come back, _ask them why not_.)

<comment><USER3> If they don't come back you can't ask them why not. That's the point. It's a function of the level of competition. If it's a competitive location and you lose that customer, they're practically gone forever.

<comment><USER2> _If they don't come back you can't ask them why not_

If you're collecting their email addresses to give them their receipts, this is probably not as problematic as you think.

<comment><USER4> A random restaurant is _not_ getting my email address, for any reason, ever.

<comment><USER5> Why not? I barely receive spam at this point, and it's pretty easy to block people that abuse the address.

On the other hand, I'd love it if the places to which I've never returned asked me why, and then changed as a result and invited me to try again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is pretty gimmicky, although that might be good enough for a certain subset of casual bar food kinds of restaurants.

If you want a more efficient restaurant, this is certainly not the best way to get it. Put the menu up on a big board like McDonalds, Chipotle, Panera, or other already high volume eateries like street vendors. Want to be even faster? Cut down the menu complexity. Fewer menu items means less customer analysis paralysis and a more streamlined kitchen. Anyone in the restaurant business already does at least some data analysis on every sale and have regional and store by store A/B testing. I mean, they have to know what's selling when they do inventory and order more food.

What doesn't make you more efficient (i.e. turn orders and tables faster)? Giving just one menu to a table full of people then include a bunch of games and surveys on it. But if you want to have a table gimmick to keep people around ordering more appetizers and rounds of beer, this might be the ticket.

</comment><comment><USER7> _Groupon's largest shareholder and chairman, Eric Lefkofsky, has a back story investors might want to know._

[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/10/groupon-eric- lefkofsk...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/10/groupon-eric-lefkofsky/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I was surprised to see the latest E la Carte job ad (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2935090>) claim an investment from an unnamed Greplin founder. The company's only 1.5 years old and the founders already have 4.7MM in funding (per CrunchBase) and are doing angel investments. Neat.

<comment><USER9> One of the Greplin cofounders previously created Zenter: [http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/19/google-acquires-zenter- to-f...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/19/google-acquires-zenter-to-fill-out- coming-powerpoint-application/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, this is a great idea. I have seen this tech before (well similar) in japanese restaurants around my area but the problem is the functionality was very limited and the user interface blowed. This however looks very nice to use. I think the main thing the restaurant owners who adopt this technology need to get a grasp of his how to properly integrate this with their customer service staff.

I would presume there would be some retraining also such as how to handle technical failures during an order (what to say and how to still keep it streamlined through old _manual_ methods) but if all that stuff is sorted this looks great !

I mean playing games when your waiting and nutritional information is great. I do that tim ferris diet and knowing if something has sugar or the _forbidden_ ingredients in them would be good to know. Also it would provide important info to people with allergies to nuts and other similar kinds of foods.

</comment><comment><USER11> I saw similar interactive menus in Japan, esp. for Yakiniku. Their systems are relatively crude, but more than adequate. Press a button to summon your server, choose items off the menu, etc. I actually think you'd want more durable, and less fussy (and expensive) than a tablet for this application.

Either way, I hope this takes off.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is not for everyone, but there are times when this is perfect: Happy Hour, Lunch, Dining with "Cheap" friends (splitting the bill).

This would never replace "regular waiter service" but for those who want faster service, with no questions, it's a win-win.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not touching that thing. I hope there is a supplemental app that you can download to your phone instead. Yes, I realize menus would have germs on them too, but this seems like the kind of thing 3-year-olds would be given to salivate on to keep them occupied.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, but I suspect if ONE major restaurant chain were to sign them after a pilot, they'd be making at least 3-4 mil in revenue a year and would have exceeded whatever 15-20M valuation they just received.

</comment><comment><USER15> This could be seen as an improved Automat[1]

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat>

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a risky move for a startup to associate itself with Groupon founders. It would be like pushing a 401k fund managed by Bernie Madoff's son.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like this but thinking where retail automation is going makes me a little sad.. Store cashier and waitress jobs are the only ones remaining for women with no degree or marketable skills... In 10-20 years i think we will see less of them!

<comment><USER18> Women?</comment></comment>


US Court Grants ISPs and Search Engine Blockade of Sci-Hub - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/us-court-grants-isps-and-search-engine-blockade-of-sci-hub-171106 <comment><USER3> As someone who works in academia (Europe) I understand that scientific papers need hosting and server space and such, but does it really help humanity that all advances will be behind very expensive pay walls? I would argue otherwise. The current trend is not sustainable nor favorable for anyone except parasitic publishers.

Edit: I understand the website was breaking the law, but this seems like symptom treating

<comment><USER4> The law doesn't operate by going back to first principles ("will it really help humanity?") in every case. We've decided copyright is reasonable as a concept, and we evaluate each case by reference to the rules of copyright, without creating special exceptions all over the place.

Nor are any special exceptions necessary. Absolutely nothing prevents scientists and academics from publishing in open-access journals. Scientists and academics do so to cash in on the prestige of the "branded" for-pay journals. Given that they do this voluntarily, why should the law step in and ameliorate the collateral effects of their conduct?

<comment><USER5> This presents some pretty extreme view points as if they're perfectly reasonable.

I doubt you could find any member of the public who would say "Yes" if asked "Should research you paid for cost you money to read?".

No reasonable person would agree with the rules as they are if they were introduced today, we got here because it's not an election issue and special interests and lobbyists have distorted rules written centuries ago massively in their favour.

<comment><USER6> > I doubt you could find any member of the public who would say "Yes" if asked > "Should research you paid for cost you money to read?".

Isn't that a claim that the public may have against the researchers, rather than against journals? A journal is merely _offering_ a publishing service, and the public may, if they deem that service unacceptable, demand of the researchers that they do not use it.

<comment><USER7> > and the public may, if they deem that service unacceptable, demand of the > researchers that they do not use it.

Many hiring requirements for researchers is that they have a published paper in X journal. Usually these journals are run by Elsevier, who takes copyright _from_ the researchers. Are suggesting that the public lobby universities to change their hiring practices? (In which case you had better have a good alternative, otherwise you'll most likely be laughed off)

Anyway, your putting the burden on _the public_ feels like just another way of saying "Someone else should do it". You're a member of the public, have _you_ set up anything to demand that researchers not publish in certain journals?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't want to be that guy, but nothing here seems outlandish. A website is actively violating US law, didn't show up to defend itself, and now facing an injunction. The same happens for foreign entities that do not comply with US law.

I'll be interested to see how far this goes, and if any ISPs start blocking the site. With the whole Net Neutrality debate, I'm curious to see if the ISPs change their stance when they start getting ordered to block sites.

<comment><USER9> The blocking of the site by ISPs and search engines is the bad part, IMO. Other than that, it seems pretty standard.

And it's kind of dumb, because they could just get a new domain name, like many of the other torrent sites do. It's effectively worthless.

<comment><USER10> This is the key takeaway from the article. As much as I agree that researches deserve fair compensation for their work; I also believe gate-keeping academic knowledge is also wrong. It's not surprising that the US legal system found against Sci-hub. Issuing the legally binding statement, that blocking a site by ISP and search engine level, is the real problem. It sets a very tenuous precedent.

<comment><USER11> How do researchers get paid under the current system? My understanding is that the journals do not pay the scientists that produce the articles. Am I mistaken in this?

<comment><USER12> They are paid ether by their respective universities/institutions/companies and/or they pay themselves from the grant money they were awarded for a specific project.

<comment><USER13> But the key point is that they're not paid by the publisher _for_ the publication, they're paid _to produce_ the publication by others. The publisher is just gets it for (basically) free and then profits off the fees.

<comment><USER14> In fact, you may very well also be paying to get your research published. They get you coming and going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thankfully there's TOR and other methods to get around this. I disagree completely with the courts. Long live Sci-Hub

<comment><USER16> The worrying thing is that now there's a single point of failure: Elbakyan. She has the power to cut off anyone she wants to, and she did it in the past to some Russian university that dared criticize her.

<comment><USER17> Do your part and start mirroring parts of it! [http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent/](http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent/)

<comment><USER14> Okay. I've got a dedicated seed box but it is only DSL. I have ample disk space.

What am I looking at, at that link? Is there a 'mirror the whole damned thing' torrent and how frequently should I update this?

I already mirror a bunch of Linux ISOs, so it's not a problem to add more.

<comment><USER18> Looking at the dates on the file list, I suspect not, and that the way you keep up to date is to keep adding the new torrents as they come out.

Since torrents are immutable it makes sense... would otherwise be a pain to update.

<comment><USER14> I'll add the most recent. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I fail to see how the injunction is not a violation of the first amendment right of search engines and ISPs to display any legal content they want--and we are talking about legal content here (links). It is clearly improper under DMCA, but it seems to me such injunctions are simply unconstitutional, DMCA or not. Anyone care to explain the twisted logic of the court here?

<comment><USER20> First, the Court sees Sci-Hub as essentially hosting the copyrighted materials. From the order in _ACS v. Does_ :

> ...Sci-Hub has copied elements—and, in many cases, the entirety of—those > works, and that Sci-Hub has distributed those works by allowing individuals > to download the works from its website, all in violation of the Copyright > Act.

But to entertain your argument of First Amendment protections, linking to infringing documents is pretty clearly incitement of imminent lawless action as established in _Brandenburg_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is not going to do anything. Libgen.io or [https://libgen.pw/](https://libgen.pw/) if scihub is down.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what are the challenges against implementing an open "near-full- automated" journal?

\- anyone can submit a paper. which is stored in the yet to be reviewed section.

\- only users with confirmed university affilation / users that published more than X papers can opt in to become a reviewer.

\- a reviewer is randomly selected to receive a review offer [in his indicated field] which he can accept or decline.

\- the user and the reviewer are than linked together anonymously and their correspondance is stored to be published with the paper under review section.

\- after that the reviewer makes a decision.

\- when enough reviewers have made their decision, the paper is marked as rejected, or moved to the published section according to a majority rule.

\- if the paper failed,the user then can choose to either:

       * (modify the paper = optional) and resubmit

       * keep the paper public but indicate it failed the
         review process

       * delete the paper

\- if the paper gets published,trusted users of the site can then leave feedback (through the UI) to indicate:

      * whether they could reproduce the results or not:
      this might help alert the author if there are unclear
      parts in thier methodology description.

      *  if the paper was helpful/intresting to them.

      *  add community questions under the paper, which can
          be answered by the author / or a trusted user.

\- authors can edit their work to correct in anytime they want [ allowing a faster correction of mistakes] , change history is kept to prevent abuse.

from a programming point of view it doesn't seem that hard to do. so what are the relevant obstacles?

<comment><USER23> Problem with journals is not technological, but a coordination one (same as with p-value).

If every scientist "defects" to open-access journal - everyone is better of. But if only a handful do that they will lose impact factor and will take a hit to their career.

Addition: This is commonly known as Nash Equilibrium[0].

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have been following this judge, Leonie Brinkema for about twenty years. Her court and rulings are interesting and amusing. It seems to me like she lets a lot of nonsense fly to rule in favor of her personal beliefs or patrons or whatever they may be. I think I have caught her applying different rules at times. This might be an abusive technical default judgment, considering the actual value of the works and other issues like process service shenanigans that are common with these judgments.

I would love to hear what her rationale for this dollar amount is. After watching her for so long, the "airplane" level of "unbelievable bs" in her transcripts and rulings makes me want to wager the answer is among: they're my friends; I like this type of plaintiff; this is the order they presented and I simply signed it without consideration or review.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe they need to block sci-hub so scientists finally wake up and do _something_. I mean everyone i know loves sci-hub because it feels like a real upgrade for searching the literature. A lot of ppl will be mad if it is closed down.

The science community needs to come up with some kind of intermediate measures since open access publishing is not really catching up. For example, there could be laws that prevent publishers from withholding the copyrights from the authors, so the authors can always upload their papers and their commentaries for free elsewhere (i 'm sure _someone_ will make a nice website for that - <USER2> already have arxiv &bioarxiv). Universities can continue paying their subscriptions to the journals , but blocking the right to free access to publicly-funded works is highly unethical.

</comment><comment><USER26> Today is Alexandra Elbakyan's birthday. Not a good time to receive bad news

<comment><USER27> Free publicity is hardly bad news ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ok IPFS fans, here's your chance.

Can you build a better boat?

</comment><comment><USER29> It is not obvious to me that the judge intended to order worldwide ISPs unaffiliated with sci-hub to block all traffic to sci-hub. Seems still to be referring to sci-hub's ISP.

The reference to search engines is odd, though. Hypothetically, a search engine indexes documents from that court case, and the documents name the address of the outlaw website. Does that violate the order?

</comment><comment><USER30> Do articles that are published in journals meet some sort of specification? If you find a study that was published in a journal do you automatically find it more credible than a random article you find on the internet? If so, what has the journal done to achieve that credibility.

The way I see it, the value academic journals provide is to verify that the study is from a reputable source. It's not the distribution of the articles that you are paying for, it is the curation.

Something like Sci-Hub would not be able to exist without the publications first verifying that the studies are legitimate.

I know very little about the world of academic publishing, so I'm not sure if my take on this situation is totally off.

</comment><comment><USER31> This sounds like the perfect use case for IPFS.

</comment><comment><USER32> I support Scihub and all efforts to make the body of human knowledge and scientific research freely available to all humans... especially if any of the research has been funded by taxpayer dollars.

I believe that at most, these journals should enjoy a limited copyright that expires after a short time (1-10 years?) after which the papers should be freely available.

That being said, this is disappointing to me:

> Sci-Hub was made aware of the legal proceedings but did not appear in court. > As a result, a default was entered against the site.

This response creates no opportunity to argue a compelling case for why scientific knowledge should not remain pay-walled by publishers and/or establish new legal frameworks for copyright of scientific knowledge.

Here is a bonus article from Priceonomics I'm a big fan of (that I'm sure has been shared here before) about why paywalled science is Bullshit:

[https://priceonomics.com/post/50096804256/why-is-science- beh...](https://priceonomics.com/post/50096804256/why-is-science-behind-a- paywall)

<comment><USER33> >This response creates no opportunity to argue a compelling case for why scientific knowledge should not remain pay-walled by publishers and/or establish new legal frameworks for copyright of scientific knowledge.

You somehow think this would have been the correct platform to do that? While being a target of a copyright-infringement lawsuit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Government research grants need to require that papers produced are available online for free. This would rapidly change the academic publishing situation.

<comment><USER25> many funding bodies do. but what to do about older papers?

<comment><USER34> Maybe a law reducing the length of copyright on academic papers to a few years.

<comment><USER25> actually thats not a good idea. A paper may already take 1+ year to go from experiment to publication, it should be open for everyone to read immediately to be most useful - science moves fast.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Developing your first Khan Academy exercise - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stchangg.com/blog/7-tips-for-developing-your-first-khan-academy-exercise/ I wanted to share some things I learned while making my first Khan Academy exercise - this is primarily intended for beginners to web development.
Please let me know if you find this useful/give feedback on how I can improve it.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> This is the second person from IMSA I have seen on Hacker News' front page in the past 24 hours.

<http://roshfu.com/2012/02/17/did-you-hear-we-got-osama.html>

Titans!

<comment><USER3> lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a look at contributing to KA's exercises, but found the documentation quite hard to follow (it's more of an assortment of articles rather than a coherent guide), it would be good if someone put together a step-by-step guide to development.

<comment><USER5> Also, it may be worth checking out the walkthrough video and extended docs here, linked from @stchangg's post: <http://khan- exercises.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quick Note: Chorme's Private Browsing does not cache anything. No need to mess with configuration.

</comment><comment><USER7> Article does a great job of setting expectations for the audience and linking to resources for pre-req information. Thanks!</comment>


The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bearer-of-good-coronavirus-news-11587746176 <comment><USER2> This article is just bad. It's ~2000 words of Ioannidis fan service sandwiching just ~200 words attempting, and failing, to sum up the controversy behind his Santa Clara study, the one statisticians were dunking on with screen shots on Twitter. If the article is supposed to be explaining the controversy behind Ioannidis' C19 work, it needs to actually engage with that controversy, not simply attribute it to a political movement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fear is a virus.</comment>


Programmers are distraction for your startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tightstartup.com/programmers-are-distraction-for-your-startup/

<comment><USER2> While the phrasing seems to be insulting to the demographic that this site cares too, I don't think he is wrong fundamentally. Also note that he is specifically talking about programmers doing actual work, not consulting/discussing ideas with programmers. Asking whether this platform idea could ever work is great, getting someone to write a website that gives you X, Y and Z features before you know whether those features are core is bad.

Put another way, he is saying to focus on prototyping in the most lean way possible. If Google spreadsheets can work to try out your idea, hiring a programmer is certainly not something to do before you have tried out your idea on the stable, free, always available platform.

And honestly the underlying idea might not be too far off for more technical minded problems. Figure out what your product is, then build stuff around it. More failures than can be counted are centered around technology that didn't work out and more importantly _wasn 't required for the core product_.

It isn't that programming isn't important, it is the usual lean mindset, until you have a good idea of what your product is supposed to be, having a programmer working on structure for it is at best overly eager, at worst a complete waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER3> DR: If you can develop your startup's "product" without writing any code, then writing said code anyway would be a distraction.

The author gives a couple examples of startups that started off with a Google spreadsheet or an e-mail list. If that doesn't sound like your tech startup, well, then programmers will be kind of important.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll offer a counter-thought to the carping about how stupid this is, the _ad hominem_ attacks, etc.

The author is correct, at least for some ideas and some founders.

The author also points out several successful products that grew from decidedly low-tech, sub-optimal incarnations.

Technologists - and I consider myself a recovering technologist - are often distracted by the shiny, by the optimal, by the novel. Sometimes a product is a functional but ugly hack of adequate pieces assembled to prove whether or not an idea works, and, with a few very rare exceptions, is or should never be, at least not out of the gate, optimal.

Sometimes technologists have cool ideas they build out into eventual products that once in a while become the core of a business. That can be a very long cycle.

Business guys just keep doing business, much to the consternation of many of us tech guys.

Product people talk to users, spend money on surveys, hack shit together, and see if things work, if ideas stick.

Are we still fans of "fail fast" on HN? I haven't kept up. If you want to fail fast, do it for cheap, and do it low tech.

IM(NS)HO, of course. YMMV.

<comment><USER2> > The author also points out several successful products that grew from > decidedly low-tech, sub-optimal incarnations.

I don't know if I would call Google spreadsheets low-tech and sub-optimal. It isn't very well optimized but it hits all of the important points for a prototype, cheap, scalable and high uptime.

I totally agree though, the idea that you shouldn't get distracted by the implementation you dream of is very solid and one that is purported as important here all the time (just phrased differently).

<comment><USER5> I think PeterWhittaker is saying that Nomad List's version that was running on Google Spreadsheet was a suboptimal one (a prototype if you prefer). It doesn't mean that Google spreadsheets is low-tech or suboptimal (it's not).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's true that you shouldn't write any code before you have some sort of backing design planned. However, the role of a programmer is similarly important, even in the design phase. If you're making anything that has to do with computers, a programmer is usually the one who will tell you what is or isn't possible. That's important, no?

This piece of advice is either inadvisable or just poorly written. IMO: Design, prototype, clean up. If you can do that without a programmer, cool. But chances are that you'll need one, either to tell you that you're wrong, or to tell you how to do it better. Code isn't the only thing programmers produce.

This article was brought to you by "Tech Lead at SmartHires (YC S14)" apparently.

<comment><USER7> He's also listed as a "Fail Expert"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a general principle. Functionality is an asset, but code is a liability. You should write as little code as possible.

<comment><USER9> If you write as little code as possible you would still do it wrong. A working prototype won't follow DRY, etc.. So mostly it will end up with more lines than a good prototype would be.

I mean nobody is perfect, some design decisions are mostly wrong at the first days, but that doesn't change anything, as long as you can keep running and that's what running at scale means. Drive a car with 140 km/h and replace all parts while driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think a lot of people don't get the idea of a tight startup. Most comments refer to the old lean aproaches. In a lean startup you would build an MVP and you might need programmers for that. The tight approach proves the business and innovation without actually knowing the product. Please refer to [http://www.tightstartup.com](http://www.tightstartup.com). It is totally obvious that programmers are a distraction for a tight startup (in most cases).

</comment><comment><USER11> It should be noted that the contrarian article title ("Programmers are distraction for your startup") is deliberate, which is why there are so many comments in response. It's a linkbait title with plausible deniability.

Also a note to people who write blog article with such titles: HN has a flame war detector. It's not a smart idea.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would never invest in a tech company that had more non-engineers then engineers. Especially if they didn't have a ready product.

My experience with such companies is that their focus is on office decoration, rather then the product.

If you are not the engineer type, make sure you hire three of those to make up for it. :P

</comment><comment><USER13> Strongly disagree. If you have a really good idea and you start to attract users,youshoulddefinetely start coding. Otherwise, someone can launch a product and that users will start to use that product.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of an email I once got.

"Hey, we are 5 business guys with an idea and need you to build it!"

</comment><comment><USER15> The title is a little bit of hyperbole, and I know this is going to get a lot of comments saying things like "this is fucking stupid", but this is actually pretty insightful. Building stuff before you know you're building something somebody needs/wants is very risky and can be a total money/time/attention sink. _To the extent that it 's possible_, it IS a good idea to try and validate the product idea BEFORE writing code.

If we've made one big mistake at Fogbeam over the years, I'd actually say that it's building too much of the actual product, instead of using mockups and dummied-up demos and what-not just to test the demand for the concept. Early on I had a lot of mindset of "We need to build a fair amount of this, so we can show it to people, so we can find out if they need/want it or not". But honestly, we could have done wireframes, mocks, backend-less demos that were totally dummied up, etc, just to test the concept in front of potential customers.

So yeah, I'd say, don't get too caught up in the headline, but read the article and really think about what the author is saying. IMO, there is some valuable truth here.

</comment><comment><USER16> You know what I consider a distraction? Fucking _electrons_. Seriously. Half the time, they seem to be killing people. You know that people who do nothing wrong sometimes get killed by electricity that comes _from the fucking sky_ , like out of nowhere? It's like these prima donna electrons want to obey fundamental forces instead of build products!

We should seriously consider an electron-free lifestyle. I don't mean that we swear off electricity. I'm saying that we get rid of all of fucking chemistry (which is dominated by interactions of outermost electrons of atoms). It's a fucking distraction. We don't need it. Sure, our brains will need to use a different fundamental particle for neurons to signal each other with, and we'll have to evolve an exotic chemistry to replace our current composition, but you hear about pentaquarks every day. It can't be that hard, with all the modern science... oh, wait.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on this site, though I admire the author's love, of commas.</comment>


Want to help the poor and transform your economy? Give people cash. - <AUTHOR> http://chrisblattman.com/2013/05/23/dear-governments-want-to-help-the-poor-and-transform-your-economy-give-people-cash/ <comment> mc-lovin This is a great article. Not because it proves a particular point (we should accept the evidence no matter where it leads) but because of the clarity of the article, and the fact that it accurately represents the academic paper: on a cursory reading of the academic paper, the randomization is truly as good as they sell it in the linked article.

I think this is potentially a big step forward in our understanding of development. It challenges the assumption that the main thing holding back development is a lack of investment in human capital (training) rather than a lack of access to physical capital.

The only issue I have is whether you can expect the same results from one-off payments, as an ongoing basic income, and whether we can expect the same results for the whole population as the group that was selected, who seem to form a very specific group.

<comment><USER2> If I recall correctly, it has been shown that Basic Income Guarantees[1] (free cash without means testing besides citizenship) works incredibly well for both developed and developing countries. This article comes as no surprise, but is well-written and compelling which is a great boon to BIG. Despite stereotypes of poor people, basic income is used very effectively with little administrative cost (not for booze and gambling? how bizarre!): \- People work more and for a higher wage (exceptions: recently pregnant mothers and students) \- Domestic abuse plummets \- People are unemployed LONGER, but use that time to find a job they like more (or create their own!)

This form of welfare has been supported by people on the right (Friedman, Hayek) and left (Russell). I'm really disappointed it isn't used to greater effect. Voters and tax-payers have simply no faith in those damned poor people to make the right decision it seems.

Here's a great story from in Canada, where it was referred to as Mincome [2]

BIG also works well in India, where women, in particular, benefit[3]. A further benefit is it is highly corruption resistant. There are no tests, forms, etc. If you're a citizen, you get cash. Done.

Please, anyone, show me some research that shows BIG doesn't work well. Cheers

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee>

[2] A town without poverty? <http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100>

[3] <http://www.soas.ac.uk/news/newsitem84314.html>

<comment> mc-lovin You are making very big claims without adequate references. The study shows the effects of a one-off payment, to a highly selective group (note that I'm not implying their randomization was bad, but that both treatment and control groups were very special relative to the whole population), an a particular developing country.

You may personally believe that this is part of a general phenomenon that applies to highly developed countries, to all groups of people in that country, and in the long term not just the short term, but you have presented little evidence for the claims in your first paragraph (I read all the links).

You seem to view BIG as somehow unique, when in fact it is functionally equivalent to progressive taxation plus welfare, when welfare is only conditional on income. It is also hard to argue against because it treats redistribution, which is a sliding scale, as something absolute: it suggests an (imaginary) bar for "basic" income.

I personally believe systems where welfare is primarily conditional in income, but weakly conditional on searching for work or getting training (such as Australia's) are optimal for developed countries. The government can be far more generous when it adds some strings to welfare, than when it is simply giving out money. The only issue is whether countries with different governmental frameworks can copy Australia's model.

In short, you seem to be overlooking what I consider the real interest of this study, which is its specific relevance to developing nations.

>Please, anyone, show me some research that shows BIG doesn't work well. Cheers

That's a very asymmetric way to think about the evidence for and against a particular policy.

edit: The specific problem with your evidence, is that on a such a broad topic, I would expect to see an academic review of the literature. What you provided was [1] wikipedia, [2] an interesting example with no control, and [3] something that wasn't an actual academic study, but a description of a program and it's alleged benefits without any peer-reviewed study demonstrating these benefits.

<comment><USER3> > I would expect to see an academic review of the literature. What you > provided was [1] wikipedia

I expect this is why you're seeing downvotes.

<comment> mc-lovin If you look at that article, you will find it does not provide evidence for any of the claims in the post. That's not the fault of Wikipedia, as I explained, this is an extremely broad and complex issue, and most academics won't directly cover it because "basic income" is too vague a concept for them.

But that was the point I was making in the first place: you cannot cite three sources and then claim to have the evidence on your side, when these three sources don't provide the evidence that would be needed.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I assumed that whatever followed "If I recall correctly" would likely not be expertly sourced. I did look at that Wikipedia article-- it has 102 references, many of them offline. So hell if _I_ know if there's evidence in there, but I'm certainly not complaining that I don't know where to read more for myself.

But like the GP-- It's something I want to believe, it's very well- credentialed, and I've seen some encouraging but inconclusive evidence. So naturally as a skeptic the main thing I'm looking for now is the strongly negative evidence, if such a thing can exist. Do you have any leads?

<comment> mc-lovin I don't want to get too bogged down in the details of this thread, so I'll just tell you straight up why I don't support the idea of a basic income guarantee. Hopefully doing so will indirectly address the issue of evidence that we were discussing.

The main problem is that the BIG is an unnecessary and unhelpful concept. I believe the sociology is that people like to believe in causes, rather than fine grained facts or principals, and so BIG is attractive as a cause in spite of not being a useful concept.

First, BIG confuses the issues around redistribution. Assuming welfare is only conditional on income, the sum total of taxation, welfare, BIG and others, can be thought of as a negative taxation system. BIG obscures this because it implies there is something special about redistribution through a "guaranteed" income. E.g. economists are very concerned about the incentive effects of welfare, because every dollar you earn results in less welfare. BIG obscures this by focusing on the flat portion (the guaranteed income) and drawing attention away from the more progressive income taxes that would be needed to pay for it.

Second, BIG is different from many current welfare systems because it is unconditional on being part of a special group (e.g. a parent, farmer, elderly) or certain actions (e.g. education, training, looking for work in good faith). I consider this to be a bad thing, in that it is too extreme in the direction of being unconditional, at least for the developed world. Both in terms of ethical fairness, political feasibility, and economic incentives, giving away money for nothing has strong limits on it. Adding a few conditions, like ensuring people are really looking for work, strikes a much better balance. So again, BIG takes a sliding scale decision (how much should welfare be conditional on certain actions, and should it be conditional on things other than income) and makes it seem like a binary decision by only providing one extreme as an alternative to the status quo.

btw, below I give a well argued article which claims BIG _is_ a useful concept.

www.usbig.net/pdf/manyfacesofubi.pdf

<comment><USER4> I don't understand your problem with a basic income guarantee. You say that it is unhelpful, but it is a very clear description of the mechanics of redistribution. It is much easier to explain a "basic income" to my mother than a "negative income tax" -- and yes she understands that anything provided by the government must be paid for by taxation.

The unconditional aspect of a basic income allows individuals to accumulate capital. Many welfare systems require recipients to sell their cars, property, and maintain bank accounts at a near zero balance. They also clawback employment earnings at punitive tax rates of 50-100% (often higher than the top-marginal rate). Since welfare is often very low, those supplementing their income are often driven to working under-the-table for cash. This creates a welfare trap that keeps poor people poor.

Means checking requires an expensive bureaucracy, is paternalistic, and I think unnecessary.

If you read the research results for the Canadian and US experiments you will find that people want to work, even with a basic income. The slight negative incentives that were discovered can be attributable to two basic factors: 1\. some women chose to stay home to care for children or elderly family members -- this has an obvious societal benefit, and 2\. if the experiment is conducted in a non-saturation site (i.e. one fraction of the population gets a basic income while the other does not) then there will be an economic distortion affecting low income workers. Employers are driven to employ those without a basic income, who are more desperate for work. The same would happen if you tried to enforce a minimum wage on half the population. Employers would hire those without a minimum wage.

If you are looking for the real problems with the basic income, it is easy to find. The cost to raise everyone above the poverty line is _very_ high. One would have to consider the size of the family unit receiving funds and adjust for economies of scale. Nevertheless, it could be done. By contrast, a basic income at the rate of many existing welfare systems would be very affordable and would result in many collateral savings such as reduced health care and administration costs.

Also, despite the cost of a basic income, it has the support of many Nobel- prize winning economists because it increases utility. I have not yet seen a model for optimal income taxation that does not point to a negative tax / basic income. See, for example, textbooks on public economics or the classic paper by Mirrlees,

[http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirkb/teach/pdf/mirrlees/1971%20op...](http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirkb/teach/pdf/mirrlees/1971%20optimal%20taxation.pdf)

<comment> mc-lovin While you make some interesting arguments for a basic income guarantee, I think your post would be better as a top level comment.

You don't seem to have addressed anything I wrote past the first two paragraphs (which were a kind of introduction). E.g. I explained precisely what I meant by the concept being "unhelpful".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm very predisposed to believe this. In fact, I'll go further and say I'm not sure I can think of a friend of mine who wouldn't do something really cool if you gave them a year's income in cash.

My friends, generally speaking, spent a lot of money on a very good education that's not valued by the labor market. To put that another way: My friends are wildly overqualified for what they do, and many of them are poorer than broke.

Those without a lot of ambition are pretty much the millenial layabouts you imagine. They're working median-wage retail jobs to pay the rent, smoking a lot of weed, and just generally hanging out. They don't want to work more, and they couldn't really work any less, but they seem pretty happy.

Those _with_ ambition aren't living much different. They're working median- wage retail jobs to pay the rent, working second jobs to try to pay down their debt faster, smoking a lot less weed, and using the rest of their time trying hard to find a job in their field of expertise that wouldn't pay much more even if it did exist. These people could _easily_ work a lot less if they wanted to, but they don't. They want to work more, and work harder, but they cannot find work to do. They seem like they're struggling.

So say we gave them all an unconditional grant which erases their debt and provides some capital. (A year's income wouldn't do this for most, but set that aside.) Most of the first group, maybe it wouldn't affect that much. They might quit their jobs or cut down on hours, but actually they don't mind their jobs that much. They might smoke more weed, but that's probably not possible. More likely they'll spring for a car or a house or a home theater and just keep on keepin' on.

For those in the second group, though, this changes everything. They've instantly jumped a decade into their own future. They'll quit their jobs the same day, immediately start planning a move to where they _really_ want to live. They'll immediately open small businesses. They'll collaborate on epic works of art. Some of them will buy boats; some of them will buy farms. They'll travel, volunteer, teach, research, write, direct, design, produce, and _make_ things. And you know what? They'll probably smoke even _less_ weed.

It's just a wishful thought experiment, but it does seem plausible the overall economic effect would be _massively_ positive. The argument against basic income seems to be basically that it would move people from the second category into the first category. Maybe that's the case for people in general, I don't know, but for the poor young people _I_ know it seems far more likely to do the opposite.

<comment><USER5> There is a fucking huge problem with this idea (excuse my french). The majority of jobs in this country, nobody wants to do- _but they need to be done_. If we just freely hand out a living wage to everybody, nobody will be working the crappy jobs and our world will _fall apart_.

<comment><USER3> Capitalism, hey? The garbage will pile up until somebody is willing to take away the garbage for what you are willing to pay. Then you will know what the _real_ value of garbage removal is to you, when you can no longer use the inhumanities of poverty as a bargaining chip.

<comment><USER5> Thing is, the system is already stable. I take that as meaning it is a reasonable approximation of where most services belong.

Don't forget that the _real_ value of garbage removal to me is not what defines the fair market price. It is the combination of what it is worth to me, and what someone will do it for. In the case of garbage removal, it is likely the latter is lower than the former, and thus where the market settled.

<comment><USER6> nope, it's the combination of what it is worth to you, and what someone will do it for, when the alternative to doing it is to starve. if you remove that large influencing factor, you would get a lot closer to a _fair_ market price, where the unpleasantness of a job factors more strongly into the value of doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some professors at Yale had a similar idea and set up a charity that allows you to directly transfer cash to very low income families in Kenya. They're doing a bunch of randomized control trials (RTCs) which are the NGO equivalent of A/B testing for outcomes. Highly recommend them if you're looking to support something like this directly (no pun intended).

<http://www.givedirectly.org/>

<comment><USER8> REALLY?

This is about the best news I've heard all week. Thank you VERY much for pointing us to this.

The costs of Basic Income test programs in the third world are SO damn low that I've been thinking for a while that it's possible to run some fairly credible privately-funded trials. Really pleased to find someone else doing it so I don't have to try to learn the NGO side of things :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As much as I would like to say this is a good idea, it probably isn't.

Most "grants" that the world bank gives are usually as a supplement to some loan that they are giving to a country.

Think of it as Ford/World Bank funds a loan for a new road so they can sell cars. The world bank gives a loan for the road, Ford sells the cars. And on the side the world bank sets up a little side thing to show statistics by training existing motor mechanics how to fix Fords by giving them money for parts/tools and minimal support. The money is given out piece meal to ensure they spend it on the right things, like Ford parts.

World bank builds the road, Ford sells the cars, some small figure is given to keep the mechanics happy and help fudge figures. The road builders are from a foreign country and get a tax break as does Ford.

Some years down the track, after the professors go home, the road falls into disrepair. The government/people owe money for the loan for the road, and the Ford/Car owners are in debt to the banks for their vehicles. Poverty cycle starts again.

The only part of the road that is kept in good shape is the road from some mine to the port/market, if at all.

The figures presented in the article look at a small part of the larger picture. The countries that "fund" the world bank benefit as they use it prop up their own industries to the detriment of the developing country.

The long term figures on most of these "aid" programs are mostly awful. Most countries would be better off accepting no aid and building what they need.

I have spent too many years working with shit like this. The world bank and the IMF are much the same.

Note: Ford is an example, please replace it with any car company.

Edit/update: The author of the article is Chris Blattman; He is most likely going to say great things about any project that he writes about. If you write bad things you don't get invited back to write again/get paid more money.

<comment><USER10> Upvoted you because it's a very good analogy. The Washington Consensus and neoliberal trade theory have wrecked developing economies by at least 10-20 years. It's no surprise that the developing economies doing well right now accepted little to no aid. Reading up on structural adjustment policies give a good insight into what the consequences are of seemingly benevolent loans. It's basically like a mafiosi loan shark giving you a desperately needed loan, then threatening to break your legs because you don't have the means to pay it back, forcing you to do whatever they ask of you.

<comment> mc-lovin >It's basically like a mafiosi loan shark giving you a desperately needed loan, then threatening not to make any loans to you in the future because you don't have the means to pay it back, forcing you to do whatever they ask of you.

Fixed that for you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There was just a very good Planet Money that came to many of the same conclusions:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/21/185801589/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/21/185801589/episode-460-its- hard-to-do-good)

<comment><USER12> I caught this episode a few days ago and I totally didn't expect this conclusion. Planet Money does a superb job of coming up with relevant topics and episodes way way beyond their original mission of explaining the 2007 meltdown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting how nearly a hundred and fifty years after Marx wrote "Das Kapital", it comes down to access to and ownership of the means of production in poor countries.

<comment><USER14> Sort of. Owning the means of production is the answer when other productive means of earning a living are not. That is to say, if you can't earn a living working for someone else's production, it makes sense to own your own.

Ergo, you don't necessarily need to own the means of production, you just need access to meaningful, productive and well-compensated positions. Owning your own production is one way to achieve this.

<comment><USER15> It also helps ensure that it stays achieved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Though its not exactly what the article is talking about, I accept the idea of a basic income in some form as almost inevitable... but it'll have to wait until after the baby boomers loose power.

<comment><USER17> I doubt it will ever be accepted and I hope it isn't. Basic income is a waste of money -- a stack of clothing, a toothbrush and deodorant, 3 meals a day and a bed to sleep in could be provided to any citizen who asked for it for a lot cheaper and it would prevent anybody from dying in the streets (the scenario welfare proponents argue necessitates the governments involment), yet would also provide maximum incentives to get of welfare and to find a job.

(since I don't think this should be means-tested, I guess you could argue it is a form of basic income, although usually basic-income is paid in some form of cash).

<comment><USER18> Read the article. This is exactly what NGOs attempt to do right now, figure out exactly which things people need and provide the bare minimum. It doesn't work. The point of the article and paper is that people with choice actually do make good decisions and turn that money into economic growth.

While you may think that handing out a bunch of stuff to people (even if that stuff is the bare minimum) would provide incentive to move off of such assistance it doesn't. It strips people of any interest in agency and has them believe they don't control their own well-being. This is exactly what the development sector has gotten wrong for several decades and until things change, not much good will come out of it.

<comment><USER14> Yes that's exactly the point. I originally agreed that providing the basic units of subsistence would be the most equitable form of welfare, and perhaps in a country like the United States it is, but in a society without access to means of production or meaningful employment, the basic units of subsistence cannot provide economic growth.

If you want growth, you need enterprise, not subsistence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Those of you who are opposed to Basic Income Guarantees or cash transfers on the basis that you believe they don't work:

Can you define the assumptions / beliefs that make you think they don't work, in a testable fashion? (Ideally in a fashion which would be testable on as small and cheap a scale as possible.)

I'm not asking this because I'm planning to rubbish those assumptions or beliefs. I'm asking because this is an area of enough interest to me that I may look into organising fundraising for trials in the future, and it'd be useful to know what the most compelling hyphotheses to test would be.

<comment><USER19> The problem is the erosion of morals, and that is obviously difficult to test. It's not about what happens if someone gets a grant for a couple of years to do whatever, it's waking up in the morning, every morning, and knowing that even if you never lift a finger to do a single thing for someone else, you're guaranteed a minimum quality of life.

The promises of the vast european welfare systems were similar to those of the basic income guarantee proposals: That people's morals are fundamentally wired to be ashamed of idleness and eagerness to contribute to society, so if you just remove the negative spirals of poverty, everything will fix itself.

The lessons from the european welfare systems, however, shows something quite different: Plenty of people are happy never to lift a finger, either for themselves or anyone else, and a culture of entitlement has blossomed.

<comment><USER20> "Plenty of people are happy never to lift a finger, either for themselves or anyone else, and a culture of entitlement has blossomed."

Nothing we can do about that. They will continue to do so no matter what the system is. So, we can either keep going as we are, or we can have a basic income.

Keep going as we are; these people who won't lift a finger continue to do so. All the people who would use a basic income to better themselves and thus improve society are also still screwed. Society does not benefit.

Have basic income; these people who won't lift a finger continue to do so. All the people who would use a basic income to better themselves and thus improve society do so. Society benefits.

Is it fair? No. Given the choice between more fair, or less fair and a better society (by which I mean an actual opportunity for people to build themselves better lives, because no matter what propaganda we hear about "American dream" the evidence clearly indicates it's just that - a dream), which should we pick? That's a personal choice, but I know which I'd go for.

<comment><USER19> You're missing two dimensions in your analysis:

1: The possibility that some people that are currently contributing (by having a job, even if it's not a great job, and takes care of themselves) choose a life of no positive activity. I don't know what the calculus is, but they're not balanced out by just _any_ >0 number of people choosing to improve society.

2: That when at least _some_ of those people on long term passive income receive a good, solid kick in the butt (in terms of expiring benefits), they are, in fact, able to turn their lives around and become contributing members of society.

<comment><USER20> Guess all we can do is look at the evidence where this has been tried.

It's my understanding that it looks good. Seems that more people are caught in the benefits trap than choose to actually be there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We are so hung up on the idea that "you can teach a man to fish and that will feed him for a lifetime" in reality if you give a man a boat and fishing gear he will figure out how to fish on his own. The US doesn't have the same credit issues as uganda but we instead have the wellfare trap which could be easily solved by raising the minimum wage to above poverty level, heck raising the minimum wage to $30/hr would solve a lot of our economic problems.

<comment><USER22> Raising minimum wage to $30/hr would soon be followed by the price of basic essentials quadrupling. Money is just a medium of exchange, a convenient way of saying 20 minutes of floor sweeping is about equal in value to one gallon of gasoline; raise the pay for the former and the cost of the latter will rise in kind.

<comment><USER21> That sounds very reasonable but it actually isn't true see this MIT study: <http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/157-07.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Uhhhh. No kidding. It's cash that created the prosperity in the 1st world. It wasn't really wages but labor unions that could force wages to rise and conditions to ease up so that people had more free time that really did it. It rebalanced the workday so that the high wages could be spent on acquiring capital, and thus be redeployed into other activities that, among other things, started new businesses and broke up market monopolies.

</comment><comment><USER24> Want to transform your economy? Instead of bailing out banks, bail out student loans. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Living in a 3rd-world socialist country has taught me one thing: "you do not multiply wealth by dividing it." Capatalism breeds in an ethos of elitism, the ratio of motivated:lazy seems to be driven by the possibility of dire failure.

Put another way, my government spends ridiculous amounts of money (as much as 20% of the salaries of the earners) on "people," and all they get in return is an unmotivated nation. The only people that are truely motivated are the demographic that are excluded from the government assistance (and I think that they would stand to be unmotivated in the event that they government gave them money instead).

The only way to transform the economy would be to give money to people that are _deeply motivated_ ; people who do what they do because they believe it is what is needed (religeous for want of a better word). The problem is that those people need to be identified.

Instead of discussing "give everyone money," I think it's better to instead discuss "identify who deserves gratis money." Universities play a pretty big role in our current grant system; unfortunately they are broken beyond all hope - they are doing a terrible job at it.

</comment><comment><USER26> There was a very similar article here a few weeks (months?) ago about a startup Give Directly (or something like that) ... Perhaps they referenced this research.

it may seem like a tautology to say this but this only works where the root cause of poverty is lack of capital.

In cases where the root cause of poverty is deeply entrenched social disadvantage, mental illness, substance abuse or corruption then handing out cash will do little to solve poverty.

<comment><USER21> Agreed, in those places you need to have a min wage that's higher than the poverty level and higher than any wellfare traps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> In Brazil there is a government initiative named Bolsa Família that gives US$ 45,00 per child on school. It's removing proplr from poverty and increasing the local market in some cities.

The main benefit is that the people doesnt want to earn this money from govern, so they stsrt to look at job opportunities.

<comment><USER27> More information about the program: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsa_Fam%C3%ADlia>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I tried this with two homeless girls and it literally mostly went up in smoke. Giving them anything but (groceries, parts for their projects, etc) worked a lot better,

</comment><comment><USER29> This reminds me of myself because I've been trying to get $100 to make a website, but not one person has given me a single dollar...

</comment><comment><USER30> We have structural unemployment that is only going to get worse so something will have to change but idle hands being the devil's workshop I think some minimum of productive output will have to be required if only for their own sake. Volunteer charity work or art, anything but total sloth.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure what to say to this, honestly, and I technically mean that, given my background in philosophy. I see the Sorite's Paradox pop up everywhere, and I'm frankly surprised to see it uniquely apply here.

How Much do I give? I frequently hand out $5s, $20s, on the principle that at that given time, given what is in my pocket and on my (spontaneously emerging) schedule, this cash would better service this chap, bloke, schizo, street- ranter, street-cryer, snot driveling, moaning, wailing, decaying, wasting -- stop me when you get my point.

Whence cometh Jesus?

On every occasion I give large sums, thinking "not too large" because well -- [insert tangent:] Today I stopped for a BIT too long to hand a bloke on the street a cigarette. I'm wearing my usual dapper attire. A second person accosts me. Then a third. Before I knew it, I had half a pack of cigarettes. I was handing out the first as a romantic gesture, latent in capitalism: "Here's yr last cig, mate." We all do it. Are you ready to buy a pack, walk out, hand them all out, and sleep without absurdity?

Are you calling for decentralized, anarchism liquidation? If you are, fucking say so. Because I've been fucking waiting for this day. If you tell me to fucking burn down a bank, don't leave it to my imagination to make out that you're trying to say that. This is becoming infuriating the way we programmers are writing.

I dropped a street violinist a $20. He MOANED at me, and STOPPED playing. I had to REMIND him that I listened to him from a hotel room from which I was staying for 45 minutes. He kept me sane, as a programmer isolated and stranded in a remote city. I could not communicate this to him.

Do you think green bills with "God" printed on them are the solution? This is NOT mature thinking. I just don't care.

Are you telling me I need a GTD strategy to liquidating my hard-earned, mentally crippling, psychologically and socially handicapping means for a living through this computer such that everyone on my street gets the average? Should I become a servant to the masses, when I'm already working for them in my own form of labor that I know?

Not to mention the opportunities for factionism and favoritism. Perhaps it's time for this. Perhaps this is what you are saying. But do I still have to accept that anarchism only works on paper? If I hand someone a bill and say, "Thank Anarchism, not God. Thank the realization of postscarcity."

I'll get slapped by mothers and gang members alike. It's just going to get spun as a hand out.</comment>


Y Combinator: An assembly line for tech start-ups - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_5657753 <comment><USER2> Question: is saving a few bucks each day by eating pizzas worth the decrease in health (and presumably concentration) that it brings?

I used to bet that good food, good sleep and good exercise would work better for my exams than studying some more.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the exact same article as "Y Combinator a new twist on finding hot companies," just with a different title. Weird.

See <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12524></comment>


Ask HN: Why do programmers suck at estimating hours? - <AUTHOR> Is it even possible to do a good estimate?
All IT departments I've worked with are behind schedule.
All projects, medium to large, that I've worked on were delivered late.
Seems like making detailed specs and being more structured in managing the project using some methodology helps, but still, always late.
Is it just the nature of software development? <comment><USER2> Some reasons why my own estimates are off:

1\. Requirements change frequently while the code is being developed. (If we had detailed specs, we'd be constantly re-writing them.)

2\. People ask for estimates before I've had enough time to completely understand the complexity of the problem.

3\. Higher-priority projects intervene, and when I go back to the original project (sometimes months later), additional time is needed to figure out what I was doing when I was interrupted.

Fortunately, my management understands that estimates are always going to slip in this kind of chaotic development environment. If we absolutely need to hit a release deadline, we usually start pushing less-critical features/fixes off to the next release. (I work on enterprise software that's sold to large companies, which has release cycles measured in months.)

<comment><USER3> >1\. Requirements change frequently while the code is being developed. (If we had detailed specs, we'd be constantly re-writing them.)

This, so much. People wouldn't change blueprint of a house being built 3 times in two months, but for software they act like it's not even a minor setback.

<comment><USER4> You've never watched Grand Designs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some reading material that most programmers haven't read:

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/648/how-to- re...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/648/how-to-respond-when- you-are-asked-for-an-estimate)

[http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-good-an-estimator-are- you/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-good-an-estimator-are-you/)

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html)

[https://www.quora.com/Why-are-software-development-task- esti...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-software-development-task-estimations- regularly-off-by-a-factor-of-2-3/answer/Michael-Wolfe?srid=24b&share=1)

</comment><comment><USER6> In my experience developers are usually pretty consistent in estimating as long as they're in an environment that they have some experience. I don't mean they're usually right, I just mean that they're usually consistently optimistic or consistently pessimistic and by a relatively constant factor.

Also, and again as long as it's an environment your familiar with, the Donalds (the known unknowns) are usually relatively predictable i.e. you know the sort of things that will bite you and the sort of impact they have.

So I can usually estimate a project of 9-12 months duration to +/\- a week or 2 as long as I've done at least a couple beforehand.

BTW that's not to say I always deliver on time. Depends entirely on who guessed the deadline and resourcing. But I can usually be able to be both annoying and smug by letting senior management know upfront how late they'll be and by how much.

Also worth pointing out that it's not because I work in a relatively static industry. Far from it. But if you have systematic errors then it makes sense to account for them. I do find it amusing that, in technical matters, most devs do this without thinking but seem to have a blind spot when it comes to planning or general project management.

</comment><comment><USER4> One way to get super accurate estimates is to ensure that what you do is repeatable. For example get a developer to create the same web page time and time again with minor variations. And this will be very easy to estimate.

Therefore don't automate things and don't make things more efficient. That will help with estimation.

</comment><comment><USER7> My biggest enemy against estimates is debugging, it is really easy to forget how simple bugs in a program can be the biggest time sinks.

\--edit--

I guess this is something good programmers excel at doing, plus every-time get stuck with a time wasting bug, reminds me I have so much more to learn.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems to just be the nature of it. Every single project I have ever worked on was delivered late.

</comment><comment> UK-AL How long will it take you to complete this maze?

You really can't tell until you've done it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I saw someone else comment another time, double your estimate of time and change the magnitude

2 weeks becomes 4 months.</comment>


Software Heritage Archive - <AUTHOR> https://archive.softwareheritage.org/ <comment><USER2> The article describing the archive suggests it be used for research in computer science, as well existing to preserve software culture. Commercial uses envisioned:

> Software Heritage makes two key contributions to the IT industry that can be > leveraged in software processes. First, Software Heritage intrinsic > identifiers can precisely pinpoint specific software versions, independently > of the original vendor or intermediate distributor. This de facto provides > the equivalent of "part numbers" for FOSS components that can be referenced > in quality processes and verified for correctness independently from > Software Heritage (they are intrinsic, remember?).

> Second, Software Heritage will provide an open provenance knowledge base, > keeping track of which software component—at various granularities: from > project releases down to individual source files—has been found where on the > Internet and when. Such a base can be referenced and augmented with other > software-related facts, such as license information, and used by software > build tools and processes to cope with current development challenges

[0] [https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-01590958/file/ipres-201...](https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-01590958/file/ipres-2017-software-heritage.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> The page says that this archive has 4,782,131,719 source files and 4,188,748,858 directories. Isn't that weird? These numbers suggest that every 4 directories have less than 5 files on average. I would expect the first number to be much higher than the second one.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps there are long nested paths, e.g. `/usr/local/share/foo/{many files}` with nothing in the directories before `/foo` besides the child directory?

<comment><USER5> The effects of com.java.some.class.there.and.here maybe :)</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Might Finally Solve Photo Storage Hell - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/22/apple-might-finally-solve-photo-storage-hell/ <comment><USER2> Hasn't Google+ done this for quite some time now? I think at 2048 x 2048 you can store unlimited photos. Odd that it wasn't one of the comparisons in the article anyway.

<comment><USER3> Lots of people saying Google or Microsoft has 'done this'.. Well yes and no in my personal opinion. The devil is definitely in the details and if you are like me you find the existing services frustrating in their own way. (I'm none too optimistic about Apples solution either given I'm only partly 'iDevice' compatible).

I don't want to _sync_ my collection (have a backup in the cloud) I want to have the actual backup elsewhere and keep only a small cache of photos locally. My laptop SSD and phone are filled up with photos. At the same time I want to be 100% confident that I have the photos somewhere, forever.

Google+ has its own special madness of it seemingly choosing which of my photos it deems worthy and not actually just syncing _all_ of them.. only the ones it likes get 'highlighted' but even clicking into 'more' it seems (I swear I'm not crazy) it only actually syncs are subset of the rest. God knows why. Does not give me confidence in the solution.

Also I want to merge the photostream from multiple photo devices according to time. And I do _not_ want to have to 'share' a post with an album on Google+ just to make some photos public. Grr.

In short none of the existing solutions actually offers that kind of experience, though the thing outlined in the OP is pretty much what I want.

<comment><USER4> > Google+ has its own special madness of it seemingly choosing which of my > photos it deems worthy and not actually just syncing all of them.. only the > ones it likes get 'highlighted' but even clicking into 'more' it seems (I > swear I'm not crazy) it only actually syncs are subset of the rest. God > knows why. Does not give me confidence in the solution.

I don't understand this, are you saying that not all the pictures are synced to the cloud or that you can't see all the pictures synced?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What photo storage hell? flickr offers 1TB of online storage. Free. The only downside is they are limited to .jpg uploads, but I doubt Apple would do RAW anyway. Seriously, $50 a year for 200GB is pretty sad. Almost as sad as being restricted to 5GB of iCloud backup space no matter how many iDevices you buy.

<comment><USER6> Is there some place to get it cheaper? Just for rule of thumb checking AWS (with their new pricing) it would cost ~$72/year for the 200GB storage alone, without factoring in any cost for transferring data, requests, etc.

I'm curious if there is a way to get storage cheaper than their existing $50 for 200GB/year. And yes, I know Flickr is free, but I mean from some place where the pricing isn't in exchange for some "to be determined later" monetization angle.

<comment><USER5> Dreamhost offers unlimited storage, and if you buy two years up front it's $3.95 a month (I think this might be a promo, I'm paying closer to 9 a month but it's worth it). I've been with them for about ten years and they're swell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is literally no inclination to how or what Apple have done to solve this problem. This is paid advertising.

</comment><comment><USER8> ... As long as you only use Apple products.

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily a problem. I was in a hotel recently that doesn't secure their network. Easily 80% of the devices in there were Apple devices. The next most common device was Samsung.

<comment><USER10> Your hotel isn't the world.

<comment><USER9> Never said it was. But hotels are good snapshots of particular demographics whom the hotel chains target.

The people spending $250/night at the particular urban center hotel made the choice that I observed on that one occasion. If that's a trend vs. a datapoint, it could be very meaningful for somebody trying to sell products.

Personally, the next time I find myself in a cheap roadside place, I'm going to make a similar comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This latest round of updates for Apple certainly is interesting, but when's the last time they got photos right? For me it was the first iPhoto version, and since then every "exciting" development has been a bust. Main reason we're super positive at Picturelife.

</comment><comment><USER12> its amazing how techcrunch is still respected when they keep posting badly researched articles like this one.

if its a paid article believe they should clearly state it.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's techcrunch. They live in an Apple bubble.</comment>


Cloud music lockers: who fricking cares? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/30/amazzzzzzon_cloud_drive/

<comment><USER2> I think the piece misses a couple key points: 1\. "Physical" ownership of the file - The song file can be downloaded to any computer, including your Android phone. This gives a sense of ownership of the digital file (hopefully Amazon won't change it's policy later). iTunes is much more restrictive, and I'm sure Apple's cloud music service would be just as restrictive.

2\. Android integration - IMHO, there isn't a nice music player for the Android OS yet that can sync playlists and such across your devices, but this may be it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do and here is why:

Napster.

What we need here is an app that will let you register your collection of music on AWS as an available catalogue.

Then a client app can play music randomly from each registered catalogue through an intermediary routing server.

Sure, there is a ton of work to create a catalogue template so you can get meta-data about the songs available so that you can have some semblance of organization -- but a MVP with just the ability to play randomly from anonymous available stores would be interesting!

<Picard>

Make it so.

</Picard></comment>


The Internal Situation at Yahoo Is Spiraling Out of Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/05/07/the-internal-situation-at-yahoo-is-spiraling-out-of-control/ <comment><USER2> Many of the best technologists value -- prize -- honesty and forthrightness. [1] In that sense, the current situation really is a deal breaker. (To the extent Yahoo still employs and depends upon such.)

\--

[1] In addition to any moral perspective, it's necessary in order to do your job well and efficiently.

Sure, there are things that are of necessity confidential. But the likes of this certainly doesn't fall anywhere near such categorization.</comment>


Get Your Bleeding Psychedelic A-Life Evolver - <AUTHOR> http://ansistego.sf.net/telepathic-critterdrug-svn.tgz

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://arbornet.org/~flamoot/telepathic-critterdrug.html> web site [http://www.archive.org/download/biota_podcasts/biota_110610....](http://www.archive.org/download/biota_podcasts/biota_110610.mp3) interview and discussion <http://freshsim.org> a-life forum

pz flamoot

<comment><USER2> If this submission is going to get anywhere, you're going to need to submit that first link instead. Direct links to a .tar.gz aren't going to go anywhere.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to validate a startup idea? - <AUTHOR> I have a startup idea for a better way to interview and hire tech talent - one that is optimized for developers instead of recruiters. How can I go about validating this idea?<p>I have a landing page and an email capture good to go - but i would need to build it to submit it to HN - but I thought we built landing pages so we didn't have to do that? <comment><USER2> I'd advise against this space. There've been hundreds of startups trying to do exactly that. Not many successes as far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER3> who's paying?

how much are they paying?

That will tell you a lot about how to go about it.</comment>


Room 77 Hacker-in-Residence (HIR) - Free space + food for hackers in Downtown MV - <AUTHOR>

http://www.room77.com/jobs/hacker.html
HN, we just moved into a brand new office 1 block from Castro St. and the Caltrain station and realize that we have A LOT of extra desks so we're launching our first ever Hacker-in-Residence program.
Basically, we want to find some talented devs/hackers to come in and work on their own projects while spending a few hours a week working on some open source projects that we can sponsor (or suggest your own!)
We also have some kick ass advisors and backers that you may find yourself bumping into including Rasmus Lerdorf (giving us sage advice) or the founders of Expedia and other travel industry startups.
We'll be reviewing applications and accepting those who we think are a great match on a rolling basis.  Apply by sending your resume/project to hacker[at]room77.com.
What is Room 77?  We're working on building better hotel search.  The first iteration of our site focused on showcasing floor plans and virtual views generated from over half a million hotel rooms so that folks won't get a bad room again (noisy, looks at the parking lot, etc.) which netted us the "Best Startup" prize at the LAUNCH conference in February. <comment><AUTHOR> More details: We're on the corner of Bryant/Villa St. 1 block away from Red Rock Coffee. We have the entire 3rd floor and we've subleased some space to another promising young startup (Ditto). Tasty Labs is also in the same building.</comment>


Picplz Adds Photo Collections And Borders - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/10/picplz-collections-borders/

<comment><AUTHOR> Also covered on Mashable: <http://mashable.com/2011/03/10/picplz-collections/>

And, TheNextWeb: [http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/03/10/picplz-now-with- photo-...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/03/10/picplz-now-with-photo- borders-and-image-collections/)</comment>


Only 55 VC Funds Raised Money In The Third Quarter (Down 29 Percent). - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/13/only-55-vc-funds-raised-money-in-the-third-quarter-down-29-percent/

<comment><USER2> EVERYBODY PANIC

A lot of startups no longer need VC money. With services similar to Amazon's in numerous other aspects of business (accounting, outsourcing, admin work, HR, research) and ridiculously cheap server costs & hardware, most startups don't need near the amount of capital that they used to.

</comment><comment><USER3> This can mean that many startups now are avoiding vc money. Maybe they are bootstrapping more since it is less costly?

<comment><USER4> You think it's a matter of choice? As CTO of a venture-seeking startup, I can assure you, it's not. Everyone would love to bootstrap, but you have to be practical and pragmatic. No one's choosing to avoid VC money right now, but the barrier to entry to the VC world has certainly gone up for the time being. Stricter qualifying criteria & whatnot.</comment></comment>