Apple Is the New Pimco - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-05/tim-cook-is-giving-pimco-a-run-for-its-money-in-the-bond-market <comment><AUTHOR> > Getting allocations of corporate bond deals is one of the easiest ways for > managers to outperform benchmark bond indexes because they're typically sold > at a discount to market rates, according to Jason Shoup, the head of U.S. > high-grade credit strategy at Citigroup Inc. The bonds aren't added to the > indexes investors are measured against until the end of each month. That can > generate as much as 0.2 percentage point of additional gains for investors > who get in early, Shoup said.

If you ever wanted to know about the bond market there are two pieces of gold in the above lines.

1) Getting in on new issues is free money. Stocks are the same. Steve Cohen at SAC was famous for overpaying on commissions just to get the first call for new issues. When bond funds return 1.1% and beat the market having an additional 0.2% really puts you ahead of the competition to the tune of 18% in gains for free.

2) The fact that the gain is 0.2%, not 2% or 20%, 0.2%. Bonds are a volume game. You find an angle to make 0.2% and lever the hell out of it. Having said that, this is the playbook directly from LTCM.

<comment><USER2> "Steve Cohen at SAC was famous for overpaying on commissions "

After a real estate deal last year I bought the broker a gift and delivered it. He said "wow shouldn't I be buying you the gift?". No problem because the next time I was the person he called first when he got a fresh listing on a commercial investment property which I was able to buy at a much lower price per sf than if he had actually taken the effort to shop it around or keep the listing active. People respond amazing predictably even if they think of themselves as highly ethical. They tend to remember the people who treat them well and appreciate their efforts.

In this context a small gift (what I am describing) also isn't necessarily a bribe. It is an "advertisement" that makes the person that you are giving the gift to remember you and to call you when they have "a good deal".

It all depends on the relationship. It is often the case in business that instead of thinking solely about the costs (or commissions) that it definitely pays to be someone's good customer and allow them to make money from you.

<comment><USER3> Not to be critical of your business practice, but the broker's behavior seems to be on thin ethical ice here, since he had a fiduciary obligation to the client - his intentions may have been ethical but but he comes off as a little lazy/irresponsible for not getting the best price for his client.

As you're obviously investing in real estate yourself, how do you balance the benefits of liquidity from a quick sale vs. those of maximizing the sale price by shopping around? Put another way, if you were the seller in that transaction, is the opportunity cost of waiting a bigger worry than getting the best price? Is it just the seller's responsibility to instruct the broker 'this is my liquidity goal, anything on the top is gravy' or 'take your time selling, I want to get the full value of this asset', depending on the seller's need?

I'm not a business person/investor so I would like to understand your thought process better. Thank you. PS feel free to email.

<comment><USER4> No real estate broker gets the absolute best possible deal for a client. They get a small percentage of any deal. A slightly better deal might be worth thousands of dollars to the client but only a few hundred to the broker. It's not worth the broker's time to spend a full week looking for the absolute highest buyer. It's in the broker's interest to process more deals more quickly than to squeeze that last little bit out of every property.

That's just the way it is.

<comment><USER2> Generally you are right.

However I am paid to negotiate and buy things for people (not real estate). I have even had people tell me that they will pay me more if I can get them a better deal. I tell them that they don't have to do that. That I charge a fixed fee. [1] (And the fixed fee varies btw.) The truth is I get them a good deal because (as I mentioned in my other comment) this is a game for me that is fun and that is the reason that I do this. The money that I make is secondary (one reason is it's not my primary source of income).

In one case I already had a buyer and a seller agree to a deal. The buyer (my client) agreed to the price that I had negotiated and was very very happy. However when talking to the seller I sensed weakness. So I exploited that and got them a better deal than they had already agreed to. Just for the fun of it and because I could. Just to hear the pleasure in my client's voice. Was worth a great deal to me. Didn't make 1 penny more.

So my point is although I think in general (and a book that I can't remember the name of talked about this concept with regards to realtors) you are right there are almost certainly realtors who act the same way that I do in other words they do act in the client's best interest because it is a game for them like it is for me. I guess the key is finding that type of realtor.

[1] Some people who do what I do charge a fee based on "how much they save someone over their budget". So the game there is that they try to get you to increase your budget while knowing that they will be able to buy for much less so they are playing you knowing you don't know what they know about the market.

<comment><USER5> That's great, for each of you there are 10 people who look like you but who rip off their clients. So what's a client to do?

<comment><USER2> A tough question. So I would ask indirect questions that all revolved around "what do you like about your job?". And listen carefully to the answers.

If the answer sounds like some standard BS such as "well I really like helping people get into the home of their dreams at the lowest price!!!!" or something canned or manufactured "we win when you win!!! I like win win deals" and so on then perhaps that is just someone who is going through the motions and isn't really in to what they are doing.

Just like with computers. There is the guy who is in it strictly to make a buck, but would never tinker or experiment after hours, and the guy who really enjoys programming for the fun of it and was doing it as soon as they could or as soon as they were exposed to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Apple, Oracle, Google Inc. and seven of their biggest peers now have in > excess of $500 billion of cash and marketable securities, up more than > three-fold since 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The problem > is much of it is stuck overseas.

Stuck overseas in the sense that these corporations aren't willing to pay American taxes [1], insisting on using complex tax loopholes that essentially leave the bill on the doorsteps of normal, hard working American citizens.

[1] [http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/to-cut-corporate- taxe...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/to-cut-corporate-taxes-a- merger-abroad-and-a-new-home/?_r=0)

<comment><USER7> _Stuck overseas in the sense that corporations aren 't willing to pay American taxes..._

Why should Apple pay American taxes on the profits from a product manufactured in China and sold in Germany? (Albeit "Designed in California"!)

<comment><USER8> Errr because they're headquartered in the US and rely on the shield of the US government when it comes to rule of law, educating their workforce, providing the infrastructure etc for them to be in the position where they are today? In this day and age it makes _less_ sense to try and tax based on where componentry or network services or consumers start or finish.

<comment><USER9> Only an American could have written this answer. All other countries in the world use a non global taxation system.

Two basic scenarios:

1\. US entity owns a company in the UK. UK company earns $100, pays 20% tax on that, and is left with $80. Declares a dividend to the US parent, and the US then taxes the difference (35% US tax rate - 20% UK tax rate = another 15% to pay). We're left with $65

2\. UK entity owns a company in Sweden. Swedish company earns $100, pays 22% tax on that, and is left with $78. Declares a dividend to the UK parent, which is then left untaxed.

Why does 2 make more sense than 1? Because the money was generated in Sweden, and the fact that some parent/holding entity is UK based does not matter (like, at all).

Scenario 1 pushes US companies to expand abroad (i.e. through foreign M&A), and not repatriate any profits back to the US. It also makes it easier for non US entities to acquire US companies, because they can achieve larger tax synergies than a domestic US acquirer would.

A US company trying to achieve something like that would have to do an inversion, which sometimes can be hard to do.

The current state of the US tax code is a great example why Microsoft paid a whopping $2bn for something like Minecraft (Sweden based), or an even larger amount for Luxembourg based Skype. What can they do with that cash otherwise? It's not like they're going to repatriate (ever) without a tax holiday.

<comment><USER10> It looks like the real issue is the high corporate tax rate in the US then. Are there not double-taxation treaties to avoid overtaxing otherwise?

On the other hand, the scenario of a UK company owning a company in a tax-free zone in dubai and thus paying 0% taxes anywhere doesn't sound fair either.

<comment><USER9> Well, the second part of this equation is that they are able to funnel a ton of cash to low tax companies (via loans/royalties/other loopholes). So maybe they've only paid 1-5% on the entire amount.

Repatriation of those funds would essentially mean paying close to 35% tax (+ state taxes). DTTs don't fix that, they just make sure you don't pay the same amount twice. I.e. the 20% in the UK AND 35% in the US.

Add to that fact that Apple can pretty much borrow unlimited funds in the market (debt != income, you don't pay tax when you borrow) to fund share buybacks and dividends. Why repatriate? Financially it just does not make sense, since you'd lose so much of your equity. It's better to invest it abroad.

Re Dubai: If an entity is a conduit company, then maybe not. But if you're operating a business or selling stuff there, then I think it is. No income tax is more of an anomaly these days, and a way for countries to attract new business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It boggles my mind that Apple isn't using all these money for something better. What prevents them from, say, hiring up or luring away all the great CS/hardware PhDs, build a giant lab for robotics, build new space exploration company, new sustainable for-profit tech company, start massive search engine efforts, start giant initiative for for-profit cancer research and so on and on and on.

There are endless challenges to work on and we have tons of great people who would wholeheartedly work on these if they were paid well. The only barrier is capital and leadership ambitions. Apple can _really_ put the world 50 years ahead in tech if they chose to _invest_ the money in these areas.

<comment><USER12> > _It boggles my mind that Apple isn 't using all these money for something > better. What prevents them from, say, hiring up or luring away all the great > CS/hardware PhDs, build a giant lab for robotics, build new space > exploration company, new sustainable for-profit tech company, start massive > search engine efforts, start giant initiative for for-profit cancer research > and so on and on and on._

That they know that money isn't everything when it comes to engineering, and just "getting the best" and "throwing tons of money" at a problem doesn't necessarily result in a good outcome? Especially if it's something outside their core expertise.

Apple, for example, consistently failed with their social attemps (Ping?), and their online apps (mail, docs, etc) which are also-run. Microsoft poured a lot of money into Bing, and it's still something nobody would use willingly (except a couple outliers who would respond to this comment as if nobody means "no one at all" in casual conversation).

And then there's the canonical example, Chandler:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_(software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_\(software\)) [http://www.dreamingincode.com/](http://www.dreamingincode.com/)

Or let's take another company who is "all over the place". For all of Google's efforts in PR-driven research, what has it given us that was a success? The Glass was a huge failure, their attempt at social (Google+) too, GAE is an also-run, Dart got top talent but never got anywhere, and same with several other attempts that linger on or have closed down. Judging from their revenue report, it's all about ads still. (Sure, there's the self-driving car, that might be marketable someday, but for that Apple is said to have a team working on it too)

They also know that the company made all these money by having _focus_.

Finding a new area to explore is OK. Being all over the place is a recipe for failure. And Apple they ain't gonna do it just because it's a geek's dream e.g. ("space exploration company").

<comment><USER13> Google did well being all over the place as well... Youtube, maps, gmail, android, chrome. If they'd just stuck to search, where would they be now? And for that matter, where would we be now?

<comment><USER12> Youtube and Maps were acquired, not Google projects. So they got something that worked already, instead of just throwing money to come up with something (which seldom worked for them outside of Search and Mail).

Android was Google's (though that was acquired too IIRC, albeit in a much different form), but while a market favorite, it's not a profit source for Google and it's also losing control of it (with Samsung, Amazon etc spinning their own versions). Even for mobile ads, most of Google's revenue comes from iOS devices.

> _If they 'd just stuck to search, where would they be now?_

Mostly where they are, revenue wise.

<comment><USER14> Depends on how you define a profit source. The main purpose of Android was to get people to look at Google ads on their cellphones.

They were very clear about this when they announced Android as free and open source.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but even in this case, as I wrote: "Even for mobile ads, most of Google's revenue comes from iOS devices.".

To have to write a whole OS, buy Moto for multi-billion dollars, get the most market share of the market even, and then lose money on it and still get your ad money most of your competitor's mobile OS you don't control, is a little failure-ish...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On the other side of things, Apple has issued about $39 billion of its own bonds over the last couple years. A lot of it is longer term (30 years), but for the comparable bonds with 1-3 year maturities, they're only paying about 1.0% or a little under. It's not a huge difference vs the 1.06% + 0.2% quoted in the article, but they are making some money just by the fact that they have great credit and can borrow at a slightly better rate than they can receive on these comparable bonds.

<comment><USER16> They are paying 3.85% on their 30 year debt and 2.4% on the ten year, so it is costing them on the longer maturities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where do these companies keep the rest of their cash?

<comment><USER17> I know Apple keeps a lot of its cash in iMattresses.

<comment><USER18> This really made me chuckle and I was having an usually bad day today. Thanks :)

<comment><USER17> Glad to hear it. Hope your day gets better from here!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >cash managers are also based in the city known for its casinos, where hotel rooms costing as little as $69 a night provide cheaper lodgings than banker stops in New York, Boston and Newport Beach, California,

LOL. As if a cheaper hotel room is relevant when discussing transactions in dozen of milions !!!

</comment><comment><USER20> I honestly don't understand how this is news. Companies have been doing this for ages; MSFT's operations are bests in class, returning over 2% on their cash equivalents while being under tight restrictions for risk tolerances.</comment>


Bring Back Handwriting: It's Good for Your Brain - <AUTHOR> https://elemental.medium.com/bring-back-handwriting-its-good-for-your-brain-fe22fe6c81d2?source=grid_home<comment>---0</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>18----- </comment><comment><USER2> I've always taken handwritten notes in class. It forces you to condense the information being presented quite a bit.

I've found that I use arrows, side boxes, lists, and all sorts of visual tricks along with writing to try to grasp the concept.

It's only my personal experience but it's always seemed to be more effective than trying to fuss with a laptop.

<comment><USER3> Handwritten notes allow you to use different modalities to interpret information, which promotes deeper understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if it is because how I was raised or a limitation of my brain but past a certain difficulty of problem I am completely unable to solve it without pen and paper

<comment><USER5> Pen and paper don't need to be fought with to extend our brain's visual and mapping abilities. There are almost no friction to put thoughts down. It's much slower than imagining things but it doesn't rely on short term memory so we can build and think about more complex abstract thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Type slowly and thoughtfully instead. Draw diagrams using an appropriate tool. Handwriting is tedious; pointless; painful to learn and bad for your hands.

<comment><USER7> > Handwriting is tedious; pointless; painful to learn and bad for your hands.

Can you cite any evidence for this claim?

I journaled daily for over a decade without any stress injuries whatsoever. In contrast, heavy laptop usage for a few years lead to severe RSI damage I'm only now recovering from.

<comment><USER8> For both keyboarding and handwriting, the stress can be high or low depending on your technique. Many people write with cramped hands, which is hard on them if they do much more than sign credit card receipts. But if you write with light pressure and a gently curved wrist, you can write all day without pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is typing bad for my brain?

<comment><USER10> The only bad part of typing is it seems to allow a quicker conveyance of thought to word, which starts to make it sound like speech rather than concise text.

When I'm writing a note by hand, I tend to use BLUF or TLDR mode with bullets for supporting points. When typing, I can just about hit stream-of- consciousness rates of symbol transfer, which means I need to edit 2-3 times to get a concise email or document.</comment></comment>


Adsense will stop allowing publishers to see their data older then 3 years - <AUTHOR> Google currently displays this info in the Adsense backend:
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
Last 3 years of reporting data
We've limited reporting data for all AdSense products (Adsense for content, AdSense for search, etc.) to the last 3 years. This means that you can only run reports for data that's less than 3 years old.
You can download data that's older than 3 years from either the old Reports page (until the end of September) or the new Reports page (until the end of 2020).
</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
I wonder why they do this. They don't say they will delete the data. Just that they will stop giving publishers access to it. </comment><comment><USER2> It will be harder to see larger trends and repot on them. Avoids bad publicity when something is up 100% or more over 10 years</comment>


New Horizons Reaches Ultima Thule - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/31/science/new-horizons-ultima-thule-flyby.html <comment><USER3> I found this thread by Alex Parker very informative and fascinating.

[https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1077986070128668674](https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/1077986070128668674)

<comment><USER4> I second on the fascinating and informative

And that was only the beginning of that mission

<comment><USER5> Wow this was an amazingly clear and accessible explanation of their process!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Thule" was named by the Greek navigator Pytheas from Massalia around 330 BC. Historians think it refers maybe to the Faeroe islands, Greenland, or more probably Iceland. From this point the name stuck to refer as the farthest place in the North, some cold unknown. In medieval times, "Thule" being Iceland, "Ultima Thule" referred to Greenland.

<comment><USER7> Actually...

[https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-named-its-next-new-horizons- ta...](https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-named-its-next-new-horizons-target- ultima-thule-mythical-land-nazi-844318?amp=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been working a side project to build a more mobile friendly and scroll friendly version of NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day at [http://lookupat.space](http://lookupat.space)

The most recent update hopefully makes it a lot more useable with including both attribution of the work and an explanation of what the picture is about. As always, there is a link to the original page, and I plan on adding sorting features soon.

I hope this helps more people get exposed to the beauty of outer space and the very awe inspiring things humans have done!

<comment><USER9> Awesome page! Any chance it could have a "click here for the next page" version? Autoload of new content messes with my mouse/browser/head in ways I don't like. But, otherwise great site!

<comment><USER8> I was going for an instagram, infinite-scroll vibe, so a change to paginated would stray from the original intention a bit. Any particular reason you don't like the autoload? I may just have a poor implementation of it. :) Thanks for checking out the site though, I appreciate it!

<comment><USER10> Could you make it work without Javascript? Build pagination by default, then with JS, progressively enhance to infinite scroll. I had to enable JS for your domain and a few others before anything meaningful appeared. Your content turned out to be photos, which is something that you do not need JS for!

<comment><USER8> You don't need javascript to display photos, but for the functionality of simulating an "infinity-scroll" where images are fetched based on the position of the viewport relative to the bottom, I'm not sure how this is accomplishable without javascript (Javascript considered harmful? :P).

I'm certainly open to the idea of pagination if the agent has javascript disabled by default, but that would then require paginating 6800+ images and seems like it would impact performance moreso than the current method of fetching as the user scrolls (although, there is something to be said about my hacky implementation of infinity scroll).

I appreciate the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reading that page in reverse chronological order was kind of humbling; to see where we came from on a specific subject.

It also reminded me of the astronomy course I took in university that taught me how much astronomy is about logical deduction. Deducing what must be there based on orbits and how it obscures light from stars, shadows, etc. And then going out there and validing all of it. That's beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not sure why it wasn't more prominent, but for anyone else like that was wondering, "reaches" "zips by" and the other adjectives are indicating a distance of 2,200 miles.

As a computer vision/imaging person, that's a pretty far look for a 75mm (~3 inch) mirror. It's like trying to take a picture of the Empire State building in NYC from Las Vegas with a tripod telescope.

<comment><USER13> LORRI has a 8" primary mirror, not 3. Ralph has a 75mm mirror, but that's the secondary telescope; it does multispectral photography (6 bands) and infrared spectrometry.

Even with such a small primary mirror, New Horizons has a number of advantages. First, Ultima Thule is larger than Manhattan. Not exactly large, but certainly bigger than the Empire State Building.

Second, the mount is incredibly stable. There are basically no vibrations to speak of. As an amateur astronomer, I can tell you that the mount is one of the most important pieces of equipment in astrophotography. A mediocre telescope on a good mount will give good images. A good telescope on a mediocre mount will give mediocre images.

Third, the mirror itself is much better designed and manufactured than the average amateur astronomer's scope. Certainly better than any of mine.

Fourth, the sensor is cooled to very low temperatures, so it is way less noisy than the average consumer sensor.

Fifth, there is no atmosphere in the way. This is a huge advantage.

When all is said and done, LORRI will have a resolution on Ultima Thule's surface of about 60 feet. Certainly no Google Earth, but plenty good enough for the science objects of the flyby.

<comment><USER12> Ah, didn't know the LORRI was the primary and not the Ralph, thanks. So when do you think we'll see the LORRI images of Ultima Thule?

My point remains though, and it was just a general metaphor about how astounding the stuff they are trying to do is from an imaging perspective.

<comment><USER14> The images are LORRI images; however, because of bandwidth constraints (about 1000bps), these are lower-resolution versions of the LORRI images for press and initial science work. e.g. a one-tenth-resolution image takes about 3 hours to download. See here for a description of the sequence of transmissions:

[https://youtu.be/ymJRlUQfPfQ?t=586](https://youtu.be/ymJRlUQfPfQ?t=586)

EDIT: The full download of the gigabytes of data from the flyby will take _20 months_ to download.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's an interesting article on this flyby by Phil Plait: [https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/get-ready-for-humanitys- most-d...](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/get-ready-for-humanitys-most-distant- encounter-tonights-the-night-for-2014-mu69)

</comment><comment><USER16> NASA press release at [0], with a better (pre-flyby) image of Ultima Thule.

[0] [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News- Article.php?page=20...](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News- Article.php?page=20190101)

<comment><USER17> That's the same image, rotated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The timing is sensational: humanity begins 2019 with an astronomical milestone event.

<comment><USER19> Another one would be the Chinese landing their craft on the far side of the moon. No confirmed date, but within the next couple of days. [https://www.npr.org/2019/01/01/680542096/chinas-lunar- lander...](https://www.npr.org/2019/01/01/680542096/chinas-lunar-lander-to- explore-moons-far-side)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow. Scrolling backwards through the entries, how had I not seen this before? There's a 3D movie exploring Pluto, I'm on my phone and it took me a minute to realize as I moved my phone around I could look all over at the scenery. Really great stuff!

<comment><USER21> It's unbelievably cool to have a device in your hand that opens up the gates to the rest of the universe. Something for us all to remember the next time we're tempted to bash the evils of technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Motivational videos by Erik Wernquist: New Horizons (for National Space Society): [https://vimeo.com/132183032](https://vimeo.com/132183032)

Wanderers: [https://vimeo.com/108650530](https://vimeo.com/108650530)

Casino's Grand Finale ( for JPL) : [https://vimeo.com/210782375](https://vimeo.com/210782375)

</comment><comment><USER23> Has there been any talk of further fly-by targets? I seem to recall there were a number of possible candidates after the Pluto fly-by, but I suppose the Thule visit might have ruled some or all of those others out.

<comment><USER16> I haven't found a definitive 'no' but with a bit of quick googling - <USER2> current mission extension runs until (at least) 2021 and there is very little onboard fuel for significant course updates. Some of the other potential targets were in fact ruled out by the selection of Ultima Thule. The extended mission for New Horizons calls for the spacecraft to conduct observations of, and look for ring systems around, between 25 and 35 different KBOs.

<comment><USER24> I'm curious what is the reason to think there would be ring systems around these objects? Aren't rings usually associated with planets much larger than earth, whereas these objects are much smaller?

<comment><USER23> Long-lasting rings would be - fundamentally all you need for a ring to form is some debris and a gravity well.

To be clear, something that "doesn't last long" on an astronomical timescale could still quite happily exist stably for several dozen human lifetimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article says it will take ~20 months to transmit the image data; by September 2020.

[https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-spacecraft-captures- ima...](https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-spacecraft-captures-images-of- ultima-thule-in-farthest-flyby-of-space-object-in-our-solar-system)

<comment><USER26> That's for all of it. I'd imagine we start getting pieces faster than that. Latency is 6 hours, speed is roughly a kilobit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Images to be posted here as they come in: [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/UltimaThule- Encounter/](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/UltimaThule-Encounter/)

Not much yet.

</comment><comment><USER28> Live press conference

[https://youtu.be/CyVVcImYg9E](https://youtu.be/CyVVcImYg9E)

</comment><comment><USER29> So cool.

</comment><comment><USER30> new horizons is exiting the solar system without a golden record or a golden plaque.

seems like a waste of a very unique opportunity.

<comment><USER31> For the next 20-30k years, the Sun will be the closest star to this spacecraft. Any alien civilization capable of interstellar travel would probably be intelligent enough to reckon that the probe, if chanced upon within that timeframe, would originate from Sun and might pop over for a look. Beyond that timeframe, I'm not so sure a record would be in playable condition. Furthermore, if interstellar travel were actually possible, one would rather hope that humanity would have developed it by that point.

All-in-all, it seems unlikely that a golden record would be all that useful.

<comment><USER30> i'd think there would be very little erosion in interstellar space, even over billions of years.

"Perhaps the records will never be intercepted. Perhaps no one in five billion years will ever come upon them.

Five billion years is a long time. In five billion years, all human beings will have become extinct or evolved into other beings, none of our artifacts will have survived on Earth, the continents will have become unrecognizably altered or destroyed, and the evolution of the Sun will have burned the Earth to a crisp or reduced it to a whirl of atoms.

Far from home, untouched by these remote events, the Voyagers, bearing the memories of a world that is no more, will fly on."

\- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> All systems green!

<comment><USER32> That's good! It could been obliterated, and probably should have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe this is the first visit to the future home of humanity, the Kuiper Belt. Vast lebensraum and resources for colonization. Not so much solar power, but we could fuse our own. When energy is cheap the next bottlenecks are surface area and mass. It seems like success would drive our descendants to mostly live in the belt. How disappointing if those images come back tomorrow and show that it's already occupied.

<comment><USER34> Finding out that it's already occupied would be the most astounding scientific discovery in history, so I'm going to have to disagree with you on that.

<comment><USER33> The most astounding scientific discovery in history ... of competitors for resources.</comment></comment></comment>


Illumos (Solaris) tools for observing processes   - <AUTHOR> http://dtrace.org/blogs/dap/2012/08/04/illumos-tools-for-observing-processes/

<comment><USER2> I miss Solaris for these. Linux has some of them (pstack, pmap, gcore) and some work-a-likes (strace, lsof) but they don't have the cohesive feel.

Lastly, you can implement pargs pretty cheaply:

        xargs -0 -n 1 echo < /proc/$1/cmdline

or part of pargs -e (which I call penv)

        xargs -0 -n 1 echo < /proc/$1/environ</comment>


The female price of male pleasure - <AUTHOR> https://theweek.com/articles/749978/female-price-male-pleasure <comment><USER2> >Women are enculturated to be uncomfortable most of the time. And to ignore their discomfort.

>The real problem isn't that we — as a culture — don't sufficiently consider men's biological reality. The problem is rather that theirs is literally the only biological reality we ever bother to consider.

>It boggles the mind that Sullivan thinks we don't sufficiently consider men's biological reality when our entire society has agreed to organize itself around the pursuit of the straight male orgasm

The article addresses a couple real concerns. But the quoted bits make me think that the author has constructed a viewpoint about society that is intentionally unrealistic and hystrionic. When you do that, you get to beat your war drums, but you lose credit to folks that aren't on the same rhythm.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. I think the part you quoted provides a vital perspective that is still too often neglected.

Society is still primarily organised around the male perspective and male desires. We're working on correcting that, and have made some good progress, but we're not remotely done. There are still many men who feel entitled to sex and female attention regardless of whether the woman is interested in them or in sex at that moment.

We need to find a better way, a better balance, and we're not there yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This website is downright unreadable on mobile it goes completely white every five seconds or so probably trying to load some JS.

</comment><comment><USER5> I fear this is just a "reaction bait" piece.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tl;dr: Many women have painful sex; many more aren't taught how to clearly set, assess and enforce boundaries when it comes to having sex, which means they're left vulnerable to bad experiences of a lesser sort. Sometimes these aversive experiences involve badly-behaving and opportunistic actors, but quite often they do not. Somehow, this proves that those who are concerned that the whole #metoo thing might be getting out of hand are totally wrong and missing the point. This was published in a _for pay_ magazine btw, that asks for a subscription ($$$) to read 'more content like this'.</comment>


LO-FI player - Interact with objects and create your own music - <AUTHOR> https://magenta.github.io/lofi-player/ <comment><USER2> I tried this for a while at work, but it gets old really quickly in my opinion. I'll try to sum up the reasons I find this unusable for longer than about fifteen minutes.

My main complaints are that the sound effects are really not great, mynoise.net is the gold standard in this space in my opinion, the rain doesn't even come remotely close to what mynoise has to offer.

An other issue I have with it are the not-really-adjustable drums. Their volume cannot be adjusted which is reather annoying since I have to decrease the main volume to about 1% and it's still too harsh. They also can't really be changed in a meaningful way. The default is okay for a short while, but I'd appreciate the drums to change ever so often. A nn guided drum machine would probably for the whole premise and be a lot less boring.

Now the main complaint: The melody. I set the settings to change, but the melody really doesn't. The blending is impressive, but there's just not enough material to blend together it seems. Music has such a wide variety of ways to make simple things enjoyable, interesting and generally nice to listen to, none of which are applied here.

Lesser things include the bright pink background the developers chose for some reason and made non-adjustable and the lack of tooltips, as well as the way too fast triggering of the movement of objects when I really wanted to change a setting. Minor annoyances more or less.

When I'm in the mood for lowfi, I open one of those youtube streams in vlc without video, then unmute the storm day noise generator from mynoise, really can't recommend the website enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, the drums really should be adjustable. They get quite annoying soon. Only way is to turn them off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Previous: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24349167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24349167)

</comment><comment><USER4> I am stuck on the loading screen, first at 32/100% and now at 62/100%. Refreshed several times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it takes a while to load. Do not refresh. Let it complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Click on the window until you get to the ocean. Love the sound effect of the waves!

<comment><AUTHOR> The best thing for me was to see when the guy raises his hand the music stops and resumes when he lowers his hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really great</comment>


6 Steps I Took From Idea To Launch - <AUTHOR> http://metacircus.com/hacking/2011/09/14/6-steps-i-took-from-idea-to-launch.html

<comment><AUTHOR> off topic. I am the author. I am wondering if this submission had been flagged. Fogscreek's post about Trello <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3001173> has 7 votes, but it's on the front page ranked 19.

This was submitted at roughly the same time, and has 13 votes. But it's ranked ~50 on the second page.

I just want to know if I unknowingly violated some rules. I'd want to avoid that next time.

Anybody knows?

<comment><USER2> I've wondered about that too. I wonder if an upvote from a user who has high karma has higher weight than an upvote from a person who has low karma?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: My Congressman invited me to meet re: SOPA, what would you tell him?  - <AUTHOR>

After calling my Congressman (who is supporting SOPA) and asking for an explanation on Twitter, his office has called and invited me to a meeting next week to discuss SOPA/PIPA. I think there will be other local tech entrepreneurs there as well and feel this is a good opportunity to try and sway a vote.<p>If you were at this meeting, what would you say? Are there anecdotes that you would use to talk about the potential negative impact of this legislation? How would SOPA/PIPA affect your business? <comment><USER2> First I would do some research.

Does he support SOPA? if so why? how strong?

What is his technical background? Would it be useful to have simple explanations of different parts of internet technology?

What technologies does he use? How would those be affected?

Second I would be prepared to explain in as much detail as possible how hurts my business and future business plans. In your case bizen.com in particular and potential entrepreneurial opportunities in the future.

Good luck and I look forward to a follow up post about how it goes.

<comment><USER3> __What technologies does he use? How would those be affected? __

This. If they understand that the tools they utilize everyday would not exist had SOPA been enacted in 1991... and it continues to move with support, we know the rafts are safer than this boat...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It might help to mention the increasingly unreasonable takedowns coming out of the entertainment industry as indications of why this is unbalanced. (Like, for instance, Universal's recent takedown of a MegaUpload promotional video in which they admitted knowing they had no intellectual property interest whatever.)

Also, it might help to mention costs of compliance for small startups that feature user-created content, as a fraction of total expenditures, if you (or anyone else at the meeting) has credible figures and is in a position to disclose them. (The Reddit "SOPA will shut us down" post is a nice start, but I'm not sure they've posted the numbers to back it up, and you might need those to be really convincing.)

Lastly, there's the DNSSEC argument, which is open-and-shut if the guy is technical enough to understand it. But if not, well... look at some video of the abortive Judiciary markup to see what you're up against.

<comment><AUTHOR> The challenge is that we are in Nashville, TN - a city owned by the recording industry.

The good news is that he is a pretty smart guy and has a solid understanding of financial issues. I think talking about the impact to the tech industry in terms of jobs and growth will be the best bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To borrow from my favorite author:

Already established legal remedies for rights-holders like the DMCA vs. SOPA: "It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken."

</comment><comment><USER6> Consider not just talking about SOPA (he probably has canned counterarguments to most points), paint the bigger picture for him.

1\. NDAA recently over-rided both _habeas corpus_ and _posse comitatus_.

2\. Anti-Net Neutrality forces are attempting to hand over the Internet to the telecom cartel.

3\. Police are increasingly militarized and violent, DHS is collaborating.

4\. ...

Out of time to write more, but you get the idea. Everything coming out of DC these days appears aimed at curtailing our Constitutional Rights and civil liberties, and everyone is feeling under seige. SOPA is one more straw on the camel's back.

<comment><USER7> Don't on any account do that.

First, he is quite likely to label you a nutjob and automatically ignore everything you say. This may be true even if he agrees with you.

Second, even if he is sympathetic to SkyMartial's points, from the congressman's point of view this stuff is quite simply irrelevant to the problem at hand. He needs to know whether or not SOPA is a bad law. He does not need your input on whether or not Congress habitually passes bad laws (whatever his opinions, he probably knows way more than you about it).</comment></comment>


Art technicians: The industry's dirty secret, or all part of the process? - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-artist-technicians-assistants-edingburgh-art-festival-turner-prize-andy-scott-lucy-skaer-a8452456.html <comment><USER2> One of the longstanding examples of this that immediately sprung to mind is Dale Chihuly ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly)), the renown glass sculptor.

Except Chihuly has not physically produced ANY of the glass sculptures attributed to him since 1979: "...he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hired others to do the work."

It's an interesting thought experiment about what art actually IS: is art the idea behind the piece? Is it the skill that the individual has in physically bringing the piece to life? If the person with the vision doesn't physically produce the outcome, is it still their art?

It's pretty easy to sit back and say "No, of course not, if you only have the vision and don't do any of the work, then you don't get all of the credit!" And yet, think about how this translates over to the technology world. Whose name is associated with the iPhone? Steve Jobs. Did he, alone, design all aspects of the device? Perhaps. Did he code every chip, bevel every edge, sketch every wireframe? No. Did it come to fruition in a vacuum? Of course not, and yet very few of us can name any of the other individuals who collaborated with Jobs. Does Steve Jobs deserve credit for the invention? Of course, and he signed off on every design decision and charted the course for the device to come into existence. However, he was not an independent actor, but a spearheading collaborator with a very large team coming together to work on one project. And yet, Steve Jobs is the name we know.

So in that vein, is Dale Chihuly an artist? If he only designs the pieces (and from what I've seen, "designing" consists of vaguely sketching out colored shapes on large pieces of paper and then overseeing all of the glassblowers who make the various parts of his sculptures) but he never physically produces ANY of the sculptures attributed to his name, does he deserve all of the credit? If he oversees the whole process, start to finish, and has final say on every single aspect of the sculpture, should he be lauded for his vision even though it was not his effort that brought that vision to life?

<comment><USER3> >> It's an interesting thought experiment about what art actually IS: is art the idea behind the piece? Is it the skill that the individual has in physically bringing the piece to life? If the person with the vision doesn't physically produce the outcome, is it still their art?

I sincerely enjoy the fact that people regularly visiting Hacker News think that is an "interesting thought experiment", in the context of art.

Isn't that an interesting thought experiment to question what does a CEO do, for example? But it isn't, since people on HN are mostly familiar in detail with what a CEO does. On the other hand art is somehow assumed to be a special case in our world.

These are two absolutely equivalent questions.

<comment><USER4> Except we attribute the product to the company, not the CEO. Wouldn't the equivalent be "This is a MyArtStudio piece of art", rather than "this is a piece of art by pdpi"?

<comment><USER5> We identify and categorize products through branding, which often has very little to do with their corporate origin. The artist's name (and their story) is a brand.

<comment><USER6> But, I wonder, once the "artist" dies, can the brand continue to produce with the same or better renown?

<comment><USER7> I haven't read a Tom Clancy book in ages, but it was just very recently I learned that he had died, and that the books with Tom Clancy written all over them in the airports in fact were not written by him.

<comment><USER8> If you see "Tom Clancy" on the cover he probably wrote it but if you see "Tom Clancy's" that's a sign that somebody licensed his name. The same for Sid Meier's Civilization and such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Prominent artists having an array of assistants and understudies who do most of the detailing, while they themselves focus on more important matters like choice of subject, medium, technique and composition seems to have been the practice in the times of the Florentine and Roman masters, as I read from "Agony and Ecstacy".

Even architects do something similar, did Zada Hadid design every cornice and every pillar? I guess its the same with law firms also.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As an artist, this article makes me so upset.

The people doing the actual work should be getting credit.

Of course the people coming up with the ideas should be getting credit too.

When one person comes up with the idea and another with product, it's a collaborative work and credit should be shared.

Artists who try to pass off a work they merely collaborated on as exclusively their own are despicable.

<comment><USER10> In software development I tend to believe that the idea is not particularly valuable. The real value is being able to implement an idea effectively. That is what makes a great product work.

It is striking how differently the art technicians in this article think. They see the idea as having all the intrinsic value. More cynically I wonder if it is really the marketing value of a big name rather than the quality of ideas that count. A great idea by an art student is far less valuable than a great idea from a famous painter or sculptor.

<comment><USER11> "Very little is actually about execution, because the execution's primary purpose is to represent the idea. It's the actual idea that contains the values." This quote from the article is a strange reflection of what the world of software development teaches.

<comment><USER12> My take on it is that it is the artist that brings the idea and make it come to light, they do this by letting other people do the work but they are still the visionaries and in charge of the execution of art.

Good examples of ideas and execution is plentyfull in both software and art, just because you get both of them right doesn't mean you will succeed.

<comment><USER13> This just doesn't represent reality of contemporary art. It's a bullshitters game. These artists almost never even have a vision that is important to them. They behave as such, but the project motivations are consistently reflexive. They are just a response to what they thing will help their recognition. This is just not about expression.

Historically, this is extremely wrong. Renaissance artists were the technicians of course. That's what they were known for.

This is the rot of an industry built on extracting funds from overly wealthy patrons with no limit to the amount of dishonesty.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Renaissance artists were the technicians of course. That's what they were known for."_

That's only partially true.

While Renaissance masters usually had the skill to execute a fully finished work, and probably did so during their own apprenticeship, by the time they became masters they often had workshops of dozens or even hundreds of assistants who did almost all of the work for them. After the work was almost complete, the master might come in and put on some finishing touches.

There's lots of art out there these days that's misattributed to the master when it was actually done by one of his assistants in the workshop, whose training was usually centered around creating art that looked just like the master's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A few friends have worked as technicians for a very well known British artist.

As far as I can see he pretty much hires every art graduate within a reasonable radius of his art factory. They do the majority of the production work, to his specifications. Eventually they get bored and leave to do their own stuff.

Another guy I know is a sort of 'special projects' consultant for artists, figuring out particular logistical or engineering challenges. It sounds really fun.

<comment> jf- Hirst?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds a lot like academia really and the open secret in many fields that the graduate "coauthors" were really the ones who did the work and the "main author" was the do nothing but compensated and credited more professor who hypocritically starts off every course stating plagiarism will not be tolerated.

The lack of transparency is what makes both of them bad. It would be one thing if an established member vouched for someone new as a supervisor to be clear they followed existing standards of experimentation and research or explicitly admitted they went from a 1/20th scale model to a granite and steel statue with modifications because the original was structurally unsound with different materials.

<comment><USER16> I actually think it's almost the opposite in my experience as a physicist. Often graduate students are given the first author position, the position which indicates the most credit, even though in many ways the graduate student is closer to a highly skilled technician following the path laid down by their more experienced professor.

<comment><USER17> The OP is right to raise questions about this in academics.

The problem is that all sorts of things happens in academics:

The grad student is first author and the professor is last author, and people see the credit that way.

The grad student is first author and the professor is last, but people see the prof as the "real" first author. Look at citation formats and explain why the last author is kept on lengthy author lists in many. It's because last author doesn't mean least work anymore. I know a colleague who quietly started jockeying to be last author on papers because he knew it was almost as/more prestigious than first.

The grad student is first and the professor is anywhere else but people assume that it's the profs work because "grad students are just learning" or some such thing.

The grad student deserves the credit but is second or third or something else because of power differentials involving all the other authors.

The grad student should be sole author because they're the one with the idea and the one who did the work but profs expect credit because they read a draft and offered some minor feedback.

A coauthor formulating and doing the analyses, without whom the paper could not exist because they were the ones translating the theories into quantifiable testable models, are left off the paper because "analyses don't deserve credit" or something.

Really, anything and everything goes in academics. It's broken. I realize that there are people/groups who practice with integrity but this is not something you can assume everywhere. Even when people are trying to have integrity, weird scenarios develop that have no good solutions.

I think this issue with art technicians vs artists is really a model of many problems with income inequality in society. The implementation matters. The people who bring it to fruition matter. They deserve credit and compensation. Ideas without execution are just ideas. I honestly can't believe we even entertain the idea that execution is valueless, or that we have discussions where people fetishize Steve Jobs so much that he's treated as the sole creator behind the iphone, as if he caused it to materialize out of thin air, and the previous phones by LG, and the engineers, and designers, and everyone else are just stupid uncreative hacks who were just following Job's orders down to the microcircuitry on the chips.

Its fraud and it's rampant in society today. For some reason we're uncomfortable with the messy reality that almost every innovation or product is the result of some distributed, collaborative effort, and often really involves many people making small contributions.

[https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/the-great-man- parado...](https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/the-great-man-paradox/)

<comment><USER18> > The grad student should be sole author because they're the one with the idea > and the one who did the work but profs expect credit because they read a > draft and offered some minor feedback.

> For some reason we're uncomfortable with the messy reality that almost every > innovation or product is the result of some distributed, collaborative > effort, and often really involves many people making small contributions.

These two points seem at odds to each other, why should the professor be given no credit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pretty what should have been expected after we alienated skill from art.

<comment><USER14> Skill and art are not necessarily linked. It's possible to be a craftsman without being an artist, and vice versa.

Think of a fabricator as an OEM. iPhones are manufactured by Foxconn, and I'm sure their technicians contribute greatly to the manufacturing and design, but it's still the Apple logo that gets stuck on the back.

<comment><USER20> I wouldn't call an iPhone a piece of art though.

<comment><USER14> The Design Museum in London has pretty much everything Jony Ive ever designed in their permanent collection.

They certainly are art in this context.*

And I'd argue that Apple are one of the few tech companies that genuinely view their products as art objects, as well as being boxes of mass-produced consumer technology.

* There's a wider question about whether the mere act of displaying something in a gallery _makes_ it art, but its one that many fine art postgrads haven't been able to get to the bottom of yet :)

<comment><USER21> I would argue that the fact it's in a design museum rather than an art museum makes it design in that context.

Speaking very broadly: Designers manifest other people's ideas for money. Art is more when you bring your own ideas into the world because you want to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems like one of those severts revealed to stories where it is only a "secret" to people who don't think about the topic, aren't paying attention, and for whom it doesn't matter...

I'm by no means an art expert, but I'm surprised that people would be surprised.

The local TV show that covers artists always shows their assistants and such working with them and outright producing the art.

When I've gone on visits to artists studios often the assistants are there, they are all upfront about what they do, and / or the artist talks about who else they work with (send the concept to others to produce) to make larger size and quantity pieces depending on the project.

I have never felt there was any attempt to hide any of it...

</comment><comment><USER23> >'I can't believe they're not making that stuff, you're making it, so you're the artist, not them'. I think that's what the general population thinks."

Yes, that's sure as hell what I thought. I mean, the whole point of being an artist is you create the work.

It's a lot less talent to tell someone what to do.

This article left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER24> Art apprenticeship has existed since Caravaggio's time and beyond. But one relatively modern phenom is that you don't see artists assistants emerging after their period of indenture as stars themselves. People tend to get plucked for glory right out of school. Or they themselves hustle and blow up via Instagram. But you'll meet plenty of technicians in NYC at least who have been working in that role for 10+ years. Without emerging with a name or career of their own.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reposting an old comment. The art world obeys supply and demand - where demand has no relation to the real world. Damien Hirst is a marketing genius. He needs a factory to build his art, much like Porsche.

If you are more curious about the contemporary art world market and why $29M is not that expensive[1], I recommend "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art". In general, brand (in this case Christie's and Sotheby's) ranks supreme above all else. Once you are branded, you can pretty much sell anything as expensive art. Also, an interesting factoid - when we hear of Far East/Middle East buyers bidding tens of millions (or more) for a painting, we naturally tend to think - who buys that without seeing it - but as the book points out - the painting has most likely gone to see the buyer already (e.g. Dubai/Hong Kong pre-auction private tour).

Excerpts from the book:

"Money itself has little meaning in the upper echelons of the art world -- everyone has it. What impresses is ownership of a rare and treasured work such as Jasper Johns' 1958 White Flag. The person who owns it (currently Michael Ovitz in Los Angeles) is above the art crowd, untouchable. What the rich seem to want to acquire is what economists call positional good; things that prove to the rest of the world that they really are rich."

Jasper Johns' White Flag

[http://michaelovitz.blogspot.com/2011/04/weve-featured- this-...](http://michaelovitz.blogspot.com/2011/04/weve-featured-this-l.html)

[http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of- art/1998.329](http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1998.329)

Estimates on the artist economy: "40k artists resident in London (about same number in NYC)

For London and NYC each: 75 superstar artists (>$1M/yr income)

300 mature, successful artists (>$100k/yr income)

5,000 part time artists (need to supplement their income)"

[https://www.amazon.com/The-Million-Stuffed-Shark- Contemporar...](https://www.amazon.com/The-Million-Stuffed-Shark- Contemporary/dp/0230620590)

[1] "If a great apartment costs $30 million, than a Rothko [big deal famous contemporary artist] that hangs in the featured spot in the living room can also be worth $30 million - as much as the value of the apartment. But no one could envision a $72.8 million apartment to use for comparison..."

</comment><comment><USER26> Several years ago, the NY Times had an article by a fellow hired to work for Jeff Koons, who apparently designs but does not produce "his" work, something well known to those who care. The gig ended in failure, when the piece he was working on toppled. Koons apparently held no grudge.

Anyway, you could look it up: [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/magazine/i-was-jeff- koons...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/magazine/i-was-jeff-koonss- studio-serf.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> What seems missing here and in the article is the way in which an Artist's physical interaction with media affect their ideas - it's a feedback loop.

I think an Artist with huge experience of certain materials and processes can readily outsource work but I think an artist working solely in the idea sphere misses an opportunity for development.

I often think of David Lynch trying and failing to do the Elephant Man makeup himself and then yielding to a specialist - he must have learned and thought a lot about what he wanted doing that.

</comment><comment><USER28> The really interesting in this is not the question of authorship (whoever is paying gets the credit; whomever is getting paid can maybe get gracious acknowledgement), itś the concept/process duality. I.e.

1) Whether things are fully defined by concepts (and therefore symbolic representation) or whether there's something to objects that's fundamentally process-oriented; (this comes closer do Hubert Dreyfus' critique of AI)

2) Whether concepts themselves can be conceived as products of pure ideation, or whether there is the "concept-making process" of which concept-makers are technicians (this comes perhaps as a critique of pure conceptual art; for one, every pure mathematician knows you learn the stuff by doing and acquiring instincts), and, conversely

3) Whether meaningful things can be produced as pure process, fabrication, algorithm; or whether there's a necessary conceptual aspect to processes; whether an artisan carpenter or decades-experienced plumber have a concept built into their muscle memory and analytic instincts. (This comes close to programming: why, after so much process-development, is programming still so much a creators thing?)

</comment><comment><USER29> This is awful, of course, but nothing new. Plenty of painters sold their students' work under their own names. Rembrandt is an example: [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/arts/design/06rembrandt.h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/arts/design/06rembrandt.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> In my opinion, what matters is intent when it comes to wether something can be considered art or design, not skill. Art is self centered, to please your own aesthetic sense, design is centered around preferences of other people. If you e.g. paint to impress others, you're not making art, but design your own reputation as an "artist".

</comment><comment><USER31> There used to be cartoons called "The Artist", with a little guy in an artists's smock. One was titled "Each print was produced under the personal direction and control of the artist." The artist is shown, hands on hips, watching an enormous printing press stamping out prints. That's art.

(I once visited a place in Silicon Valley which did just that. I was having boxes made for boxed software, and went to the printing plant. They had a huge multicolor press, about a hundred feet long. This could print not just four colors, but about ten. It could be loaded with inks of different specularity, so you could get shiny gold ink effects and such. The press was busily printing collectible art prints, good ones that looked like paintings. About two per second. The plant mostly did software boxes, but on slow days, they cranked out art.)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm a musician, and a lot of these ideas are familiar. But I wonder if the music scene is a little bit more mature or realistic (searching for a word here) about it. A work can go through a lot of different hands before it reaches an audience. People are fully aware of this. Yes, a few people get screwed, but others make an honest living as "technicians." It's been a reasonable side income for me. And except at the superstar level, the technicians might actually be doing better than the artists, especially if they can diversify their income sources a bit.

Even the instrument that I play... it bears the name of a master, but there's no secret about the fact that it was produced in a workshop, as the fiddles "made" by Stradivarius probably were.

<comment><USER21> More mature or more commercial?

You're talking about making money, but no mention of making music.

A better argument is that art is getting more technical. or even just that's it's getting physically bigger.

Also, when music is commercial it's still called music.

Art stops being art when it's made for money. It becomes illustration, design, decoration or some such thing.

Historically a lot of EU or American artists are pretty much trust fund kids. because if you need to think about money all the time... you can't make art. Art requires some modicum of genuine freedom and most people need money to find it.

I'm not sure how that works for music.

<comment><USER33> > Historically a lot of EU or American artists are pretty much trust fund > kids. because if you need to think about money all the time... you can't > make art. Art requires some modicum of genuine freedom and most people need > money to find it.

And this is why "Art For Art's Sake" was invented when the middle class began to encroach on the upper class's ownership of art and the ability to make it. After all, if your social inferiors can do something, is it really special? No. So either abandon it, or define it to be something those people can't do after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> to quote Modest Mouse

"All them eager actors / gladly taking credit / For the lines created / by the people tucked away from sight"

It applies to companies as well.

<comment><USER33> > "All them eager actors / gladly taking credit / For the lines created / by > the people tucked away from sight"

These days, in the sway of the auteur theory, it's more the director taking credit for the whole show, at least in the minds of critics.

Apparently, movies need authors, and the director was chosen as being authorial. Movies with one author ( _The Room_ ) are seen as being better than movies which were collaborations ( _Citizen Kane_ ) as the former are more tractable to the modern critical theories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I believe that art comes from ideas, and sometimes you do need a helping hand to help them come out. Credit should still be given accordingly.

Example: Grab an album by Steve Vai (you should check him out if you don't know his music, btw)... somewhere in the album booklet you're gonna see a mention of the band members that helped him perform the music that he wrote.

What we are seeing here imho is the mixed case between hip hop (where every collab and participation is featured, to oblivion) and ghost writing in songwriting and fiction (where no one ever appears or gets credit). It's a good thing some 'ghost artists' are coming out and revealing this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER36> This has been going on for a long time. If I'm not mistaken when Michelangelo did the Sistine Chapel he would outline the major forms but he had a lot of assistants to fill in the details. So he conceived the design, drew that design on the ceiling (and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff) but the entire work did not "come from the hand of the artist"

To my mind it's about the idea and conception of the work. And when the technician improves the design or idea then that's when it moves into being a collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is basically the plot (in my opinion, anyway) of Exit Through the Gift Shop

</comment><comment><USER38> This is interesting but nothing new. As an artist I find the process and the intimacy with it as the most valuable part, that's where I learn and grow most. And the physical connection gives me most pleasure. I wouldn't get much value out of barking out orders and specifications to other artist technicians. On the other hand artist technicians need to eat too and it's okay that they get some work. It's embarrassing that they get no credit though but we know that is a facet of the human nature, it happens in almost every field

</comment><comment><USER39> Much of the discussion here revolves around whether or not the artist deserves credit for creating a work if it was fabricated by other people, which I think somewhat misses the point.

The issue, I think, lies in the lack of shared credit that's granted in the art world to people whose labor and skills are utilized to realize the work.

Across most of the arts, the work of many artisans, craftspeople, technicians and workers is poured into the realization of an artwork, and across most of the arts those people receive some sort of credit. The film industry is maybe the best example here. In "cinema" the director gets top billing, but ample credit also goes to the screenwriter, cinematographer, sound designer & so on.

"Fine art" is an exception to the rule and I think this has to do with a mythology built around the artist that began in the modern era, coinciding with the movement in European painting from frescoes embedded in architectural setting to oil on canvas and the advent of the art object as a commodity. During the modern era and up through modernism, it became much more common for artists (and painters in particular) to work alone in their studios etc. etc.

Today, the role and scale of art has shifted again, and more craftspeople are often involved in the production of a single artwork than they were in the 1700s through the 1950s, but the mythology and institutional frames available remain stuck on the model of the single creator. I think this is just one of the many contradictions between material realities of contemporary art and the narratives and markets built around them. Maybe (hopefully) we're beginning to call some of that into question.

As an artist who has worked for other artists in the role of fabricator, there is a funny feeling when an artist hasn't touched (much less, seen, in one case!) the artwork that you've built for them until it's displayed under their name. In these cases I've never felt personally slighted, but it's weird knowing that only a subset of people working in the art world - artists, fabricators, gallerists, etc. - understand how many peoples' work often goes into making a big ambitious show. I think film-style credits would be an appropriate acknowledgement and some artists are actually beginning to do this.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is essentially a branding process. Arguably it's just as bad in the tech industry: did Elon Musk really make that rocket himself? Was Steve Jobs wholly responsible for the iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER41> Modern art is simply the craft of creating financial instruments, the only reason it's imbued with all of the imagery of sophistication and insight is because the people who buy expensive financial instruments like to think of themselves as sophisticated and insightful.

There's no difference between collecting fine art and collecting stamps. A stamp may be pretty, but its purpose is to be scarce, difficult to copy, and to have a clear provenance from a known issuer.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have done 2 of these projects for contemporary artists. I have never experienced so many broken promises in one short period before in my life. Disgusting people.

</comment><comment><USER42> I remember learning some unexpected facts at a Rodin exhibit several years ago. For sculptures that will be cast in metal or similar materials there is a set number of castings, I think it was 5, that can be made from a single mold and all be considered original. These castings can be made at any time, even after the artists death. This means you can have a sculptor die and still have original works being produced for several years.

</comment><comment><USER43> Simon is a friend and he's one of the chillest and professional guys I know. He makes furniture and whole shop/office/room set ups that are fantastic. A true master craftsman. If you're into interior design porn his instagram is worth a look [https://www.instagram.com/simon_harlow/?hl=en](https://www.instagram.com/simon_harlow/?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER44> The value of art today (and since the rise of avant-gardism) is highly contingent on context, the positioning of an object/gesture/operation within x context.

This article is essentially addressing the classic 'art vs. craft' question. From the perspective of art history, the technician, here, is not understood as the artist. She is understood as a skilled laborer who will be properly remunerated upon completion of her work (regardless if the work sells).

The other individual is understood to be the artist because it is she who 1) had the initial will/reason to make the work, 2) conceived of the idea and the object-form that this idea would take, 3) will assume risk for the work even if it 'fails,' and it is through _her_ history of production (and not that of the technician's) that the work will be valued and possibly historicized.

The canonical reference for the 'art vs. craft' question is Duchamp, who in 1914 presented his "Bottle Rack" as his art (an industrially produced rack for drying bottles) and later his famed "Fountain" (an upside down porcelain urinal) deeming them "ready-mades."

A more recent example can be found in the work of Jeff Koons. See this conference from 2008 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mbnWJNUtEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mbnWJNUtEc) "The Koons Effect: Fabrication: Between Technology and Craft"

</comment><comment><USER45> This has a parallel to startups. You want to make a startup as a technical co- founder, but you are not the "idea man". Does the "idea man" get all the credit? Someone else conceptualizes the art and someone else, or many others, do all the work. Who gets the credit?

</comment><comment><USER46> Artist here. An anecdotal example of what the article discusses: an acquaintance of mine works for arguably the most commercially successful sculptor/Contemporary Artist in the world. Get him drunk at a dinner party and he'll talk about his job, which consists of working to create new "forms", by which he means 3-dimensional shapes, entirely on his own. Once in a while his employer pops into the studio and says the equivalent of "that one", and then it gets enlarged, painted, and sold as the exclusive creation of his boss for millions of pounds. He'll gripe privately about what HN'ers would call "IP", but he's also got a stable job, definitely at the upper end of what technicians get paid, and at this point in his life it would be a huge risk to his family's welfare try to make it on his own as an 'Artist'.

The analogies to a CEO, coach, architect etc will fall down because in none of those jobs does she, at the end, singularly own the entire physical and intellectual property of the object created when collaboration is involved...and of course in many cases there isn't a physical 'object' but rather a performance, a set of instructions, etc. While that is the point of the article, I think it's worth highlighting because it changes how an artist behaves and works with their 'team', hidden or not. It's also representative of how unusual a field art is. Another example is simply what happens in the buying and selling of Contemporary Art...investment funds secretly colluding with galleries to prop up auction prices which they then use as new (inflated) baselines to sell work to their own clients, members of museum acquisition boards arranging for their institution to buy works of artists that they personally own, tax evasion on a massive scale, etc. Conflicts of interest that might put people in prison in other fields can sometimes be part of my normal business day.

I like reading HN discussions about art because there are always attempts to think through an issue from first principles, where those first principles are some commenter's personal definition of what art 'is'. Artists don't do that. Trying to argue about what art 'is', amongst artists, generally stops after your first year in art school because the most popular definitions of art are self-reflexive (Dickie's "Institutional Definition" is the classic one). This self-reflexivity of Art implies that the definition of an Artist is also circular...which I'd suggest makes any sort of 'standard model' of the accepted behaviour of Artists difficult to pin down. To put it another way: in my experience, Art tends to be anything on the spectrum between "What Happens" and "What Someone Will Pay For". How to codify that as a field is nebulous enough. Now imagine creating, much less enforcing, a set of ethical labour practices specific to this field. And again, instead of these circularities being immediately thrown out as they would be in many other disciplines, they are seen as a part of Art's unique character as a field itself.

</comment><comment><USER47> I see a lot of "this is the same as my experience with x" where x is CEOs, Academic paper authors, musicians.

Is it time that we own up to the fact that nobody exists in a vacuum? Can we skip straight to the socialism part?

</comment><comment><USER48> For as long as there have been artists, there have been apprentices. Sometimes those apprentices went on to become renowned masters, sometimes they languished in obscurity.

<comment><USER49> Except that's not even remotely the issue being discussed here.

This is about artists going to people who are already experts in their field and having them construct the art, but taking (or being given) all of the credit for it.

<comment><USER48> It's exactly what's being discussed here. Historically, this kind of operation is the norm rather than the exception. If you walk around the Louvre or the Met, a large proportion of what you see will have been painted largely or wholly by an apprentice or assistant. Many Renaissance and Baroque masters ran something akin to a factory, with each painting being the product of several artists specialising in a particular task. The idea of art as the personal product of a singular genius is largely a work of romantic mythology, continued into the present day as marketing puffery for the art industry.

Are you morally outraged that Marc Jacobs does not personally cut and sew every garment bearing his name? Are you shocked to learn that many pop stars are entirely unable to write, produce or play music?

<comment><USER49> > It's exactly what's being discussed here.

No, it's not. There is no training being given. These are not apprentices learning how to create art, they are skilled professionals carrying out work that the artist themselves is often incapable of. An apprentice learns their skills from their master and could be seen as a creation of the master, art technicians are simply there to do the work.

> Are you morally outraged that Marc Jacobs does not personally cut and sew > every garment bearing his name? Are you shocked to learn that many pop stars > are entirely unable to write, produce or play music?

No, and I never said I was outraged at the art technicians not getting credit, since they themselves are certainly don't seem to be. However there the public perception is that the artist who gets the credit is the one who did the majority of the work when this if often not the case.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: State of PLC Programming - <AUTHOR> Hello. Experienced PLC programmers, how do you feel like working with current PLC programming (ST,CodeSys) languages when there's a whole world of great programming languages like C#, Kotlin, Lisp. I feel like I'm trapped in the old way of programming when doing PLC and there's no way to escape. How do you feel about it? Are there some tools or ways which would make my work easier? <comment><USER2> ST is a somewhat crude language and it turns out ugly most of the time. However it's simple and gets the job done. That being said the implementation varies between vendors.

Beckhoff allows non standard stuff to hide the worst offenders like the 10-ANDs in an IF condition with something that looks like a function call.

If you can use FBD (and your vendor implementation is good) you can make overviews useful for debugging while implementing the details in ST.

In the end changing what language I write code would not save much time between getting the specification to the customer pushing the start button in my case.</comment>


Intel guts 10nm to get it out the door - <AUTHOR> https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/08/02/intel-guts-10nm-to-get-it-out-the-door/ <comment><USER2> Man, looking at the past articles on SemiAccurate paints a pretty dark picture for Intel. Or at least, the teasers for the $1000 subscribers-only content do.

<comment><USER3> Charlie has been Anti-Intel for nearly two decades, if anyone has been reading Tech news long enough.

He said the $20B Giant ( Nokia ) would bankrupt. Well it did not. And Nokia are working extremely hard to get those contract from Carriers.

I wish we could stop submitting his post on HN though, it simply isn't HN worthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did a clock speed reduction from Broadwell to Skylake GPUs actually have a negative performance impact?

<comment><USER5> Yea I don't understand that line of reasoning. Raw clocks speed stopped being a meaningful measuring stick of performance many years ago.. In other news, they must still be really perplexed by the drop in clock speed from the netburst pentium 4 to the 'core' and later architectures..</comment></comment>


Too Many Government Secrets Make the U.S. Unsafe - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-19/too-many-government-secrets-make-the-u-s-unsafe <comment><USER2> Puff piece to excuse Hillary. The editorial board at Bloomberg likely has no experience in what they're talking about.

Regardless of the level of secrecy, in any business you are an agent of the company you represent and there are rules in how you handle proprietary information. Hillary's problem was that she didn't follow the rules. It's the equivalent of sending company proprietary information over your personal gmail account.</comment>


Instacart is cutting worker pay again - <AUTHOR> https://news.fastcompany.com/instacart-is-cutting-worker-pay-again-4028411 <comment><USER2> I wonder why the lack of growth? Funds? Other problems? Uber and Lyft made it to my area much sooner.

I signed up for a notification a long time ago. In the meantime, the local grocery chains basically did the same thing--you can now order with your phone and have it delivered or schedule a pickup.

</comment><comment><USER3> You meant this one. [http://www.recode.net/2017/1/10/14220872/instacart-pay- cuts-...](http://www.recode.net/2017/1/10/14220872/instacart-pay- cuts-2017-wage-reductions)</comment>


San Francisco needs connectivity. Can this man deliver it? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/san-francisco-of-all-places-has-lousy-connectivity-this-man-wants-to-change-that-439ac981196f

<comment><USER2> The the glacial pace at which San Francisco bureaucracy operates, this isn't going to go anywhere. Soviet-era style "5-year plans" are a good indication of that. It took David Chiu a long time to get the "dig once and lay dark fiber" thing going; but it's still not implemented yet.

Someone reached out to Ed Lee about fiber in the city. His response was "we're getting wifi!".

Fiber in a dense city like SF is a no-brainer. Heck, it's the "capital" of Silicon Valley! But unfortunately the city bureaucracy is incredibly uninformed on tech issues.

Efforts like MonkeyBrains, Sonic, etc. are not the answer, I'm sorry to say. You're just replacing one monopoly with another. Who controls the Sonic fiber? Sonic does. So now I've replaced Comcast with Sonic; it's still the same situation.

The solution, I feel, is to provide fiber as an infrastructure; and let outfits like MonkeyBrains, Sonic, ATT, Comcast, etc. provide the connectivity to the Internet and offer added services. So the City lays the fiber and maintains it for a small fee; but to actually get on the Internet you need to buy service from a provider.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sonic.net is already doing it. Currently under construction, Sonic gigabit service in the Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. Next, Bernal Heights and the Castro.

SF Beautiful is fighting the above-ground boxes required.[1]

[1] [http://sfbeautiful.org/portfolio/protest- boxes/](http://sfbeautiful.org/portfolio/protest-boxes/)

<comment><USER4> San Francisco is seriously the NIMBY-est damned place I've ever been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >$35-$50 for wired high-speed Internet access in San Francisco buys speeds that are about a tenth of those available in Seoul and Tokyo for the same price.

This.

I'm optimistic that SF leaders can put pressure on Comcast to improve speeds. Or perhaps they need to give incentives to Google Fiber and others to come to SF.

<comment><USER3> Google/Earthlink crashed and burned in SF in 2009.[1]

[1] [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Google-a-victim-of- Ea...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Google-a-victim-of-EarthLink- woes-with-2506944.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> San Francisco needs to keep its personality.</comment>


X10: a new object-oriented, type-safe programming language - <AUTHOR> http://x10-lang.org/

<comment><USER2> 1 //Tutorial file HelloWorld.x10

2 class HelloWorld {

3 public static def main(argv:Rail[String]) {

4 x10.io.Console.OUT.println("Hello, World");

5 }

6 }

...ayfkm?

You've already failed.

<comment><USER3> Our first attempt won't work.

...

public static def main(argv:Rail[String]) {

This line is just the same as in the Hello, World example. (In fact, the Hello, World example had a latent version of the same bug. It compiled because we never tried to do anything with argv, and thus never tried to do anything that violated the place rules with it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The pages for the tutorial at <http://x10-lang.org/> are in HTML, but they still force a file download.

</comment><comment><USER5> They named a language after a home security protocol? Perhaps this wasn't particularly wise.

</comment><comment><USER6> Evokes thoughts of the Internet's very first foray into annoying marketing campaigns.</comment>


NASA: New "impossible" engine works, could change space travel forever - <AUTHOR> http://sploid.gizmodo.com/nasa-reveals-new-impossible-engine-can-change-space-t-1614549987/?

<comment><USER2> Who cares about space travel -- I want to put in my order for a Starwars hover-craft.</comment>


Avoiding Spam with Email Aliasing - <AUTHOR> http://www.macdrifter.com/2013/12/avoiding-spam-with-email-aliasing.html <comment><USER2> For many years I've used my own domain for emails with a wild card forward to whatever my current email address is. So whenever I'm asked for an email address I use email@example.com. So I don't have to worry about support for the + and no part of my actual email address is ever revealed. It also makes it easy for me to switch email providers.

<comment><USER3> I use the same approach. The only unfortunately side effect of doing so is that I have to deal with spams targeting at randomly generated addresses at my domain. Luckily Gmail's spam filter finishes most of them after some training.

<comment><USER4> Tip: use a subdomain as your catchall (e.g. email@example.com). I've been doing this for five years and haven't gotten a single spam to a random address. While there are various ways to learn about a domain's existence, subdomains fly under the radar.

<comment><USER5> That is an awesome tip. I stopped using a catch all when folks were doing reflected spam (trying to get my mail server to 'bounce' the email back to the spam target).

<comment><USER6> I'm curious: did you lose any emails when you turned off catch-all? I would like to turn off catch-all, but I receive a lot of (mostly automated) email to various addresses, and I don't want to set up a long list of email aliases.

<comment><USER5> My catch all dumps the from line and the subject line and date into a log. I've got a perl script that scans it once a week for anyone in my contacts list. I did create a set of ecommerce/web site aliases which are all structured similarly (firstname.lastname@example.com) which are processed separately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I built a system years ago for automatically expiring email addresses: [https://grepular.com/Automatically_Expiring_Email_Addresses](https://grepular.com/Automatically_Expiring_Email_Addresses)

You can email any address of the format "YY-MM-DD"@tmp.grepular.com and it will work, but only if the YY-MM-DD date is in the future. Ie, firstname.lastname@example.com will work from now until Christmas and will bounce after that date.

It's really useful for signing up to services that I don't intend to use after that day, or for entering competitions etc. Competition draw is in a month? I'll pick an email address which expires in about 2 months and enter with that one.

</comment><comment><USER7> Personally, I have used both the Gmail alias and the email@example.com strategies. I have since given up both as I found it too hard to remember what address I used where.

The main reason I quit doing this is because Gmail's spam filtering kept spam out of my inbox and I never cared if one of those aliases were "compromised" and it wasn't worth the effort. I guess it was a solution to a problem I never had.

I still use a firstname.lastname@example.com for those sites that I may need to provide an email address and I don't want to give them my real address, such as forums that make you sign in to see an answer.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you run your own mail server, this whole process is much easier. Just set up an alias name specific to whoever you're giving the address to; then forward it to your real email. If spam starts, you just delete the alias.

<comment><USER9> It's also fun to use aliases specific to which source it is being provided. You eventually get some surprises about the integrity of some sites when you start receiving a spam on an alias only used for that site, revealing that your information was sold or stolen.

<comment><USER10> This is especially true of recruitment agents who appear, at least in the UK, to sell your address to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use the firstname.lastname@example.com alias when I can but MANY websites don't support that as a valid email address. Even tech companies that should know better.

<comment><USER6> They _do_ know better (i.e. they know you use it for filtering) and that's why they don't accept it.

I don't like it either, but it's a reasonable choice for them to make.

<comment><USER12> I completely disagree! This is not a reasonable choice. Email forms must confirm to the RFC standards or else there is no standard. The biggest offender I've run into is Yahoo. Yahoo's email address filtering won't allow me to use my email address because they reject my TLD. Even lousier, their technical support form also rejects my email address, so I can't even send them email to have them correct the problem.

<comment><USER6> I presume you mean the SMTP RFC standards. If so, then it would be unreasonable to respond with 501 (Syntax error in parameters or arguments), just because they don't like your email address format or TLD.

However, if I'm offering a service and collecting email addresses as part of that service, my mail form could do additional validation (e.g. I might not want to collect email addresses from the UK ( _.co.uk) or from_.edu or from people with 'john' in their email address.

I'm not violating an RFC with my email form, which may provide some benefit (e.g. stop fake email addresses, reject customers I don't care about) at the expense of losing/angering some other customers. That's a business question, not a standards issue.

(BTW - I've never restricted email addresses on a form in this way, but can empathise with those who do)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use this approach in conjunction with server-side sieve, that sorts messages into individual folders.

if envelope :detail :matches "to" "*" { set :lower :upperfirst "name" "${1}"; fileinto :create "INBOX.${name}"; stop; }

</comment><comment><USER14> I have my domains hooked up with google apps (there was a time when it was free, still is if you got in early), and they allow you to have a catch-all for email addresses that you can redirect to one of your user accounts. So each time I need an email for a site, I just put <site_name>@some_domain.com.

This way there's no need for the +alias in the user part, and some site tend to block this because they know it's used for aliases.

Doing this, I know exactly where this email was used. Been doing this for years, and works great.

<comment><USER15> Have you actually encountered a site blocking + in email addresses? Because that's just categorically wrong behaviour.

My mail server (running qmail) uses - for this. Have been doing this trick for at least a decade now with it. I've never had a site complain about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's stopping spammers from ignoring what comes after the plus?

<comment><USER13> Too much effort. They mostly go for fire-and-forget strategy. Any additional processing time means less sent emails = less profit.

<comment><USER17> What? It's minimal effort. 'Found' a gmail address? Drop everything after the + sign.

Spammers spend a lot of processing time on their emails (e.g. testing them against spam filters to tweak them to get through), so this extra step is so small as to be insignificant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obligatory link to xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/1279/](http://xkcd.com/1279/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I use a free service called Gishpuppy, which operates kind of similarly to the fastmail aliases, except it just forwards the email to your Gmail, so you don't have to stop using Gmail. When you get spam, you simply cancel the alias and it becomes a blackhole instead of forwarding email to your real address.

</comment><comment><USER20> With gmail spam filtering and the new tabs I find all this junk a waste of time. And who wants to use all these different addresses for logging in?</comment>


Leading a dev team with data and not being a tyrant - <AUTHOR> https://linearb.io/blog/data-driven-dev-team/ <comment><USER2> "A software development team is less like a sales team and more like a band." There's an Oasis joke to be made here, I just can't put my finger on it

<comment><AUTHOR> Maaaaybe

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I assumed the title referred to a dev team that deals with data, not a dev team led by using data. Why not use the title from the article, "How to run a data-driven dev team without being a performance tyrant"?</comment>


Google Deserves To Be Celebrated, Not Persecuted By Trustbusters - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?secid=1502&status=article&id=329002707691108&secure=1&show=1&rss=1

<comment><USER2> It's unclear to me how a company that auctions off its only real product (eyeballs to advertisers) can be an anti-competitive monopoly.

I will say that I firmly believe competition is a good thing and would love to see competition for Google so they only get better. However, government intervention here is not the way to do it. In fact, that has the opposite effect by giving others the chance to succeed without earning it and dragging down the market leader. Talk about lose-lose.

I certainly hope this article is really just jumping to conclusions and living on hyperbole, but I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quote: "Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights."

You can guess the rest from that and the title.

</comment><comment><USER4> The same could have been said about MSFT. Without standardization on the desktop, we would have had a tower of Babel effect (like cell phones today) with specialized apps and hardware vendor lock in.

It's a double edged sword. However, where desktops OSes and Uitlities provide a natural monopoly, does the same apply to search engines?

Search engines are easy to switch. I can go use Bing right now if I want to. So I find it hard to believe that Google is a monopoly in the way MSFT is/was or like my local gas company.

It's way too easy to switch search engines.</comment>


Why forcing an entrepreneur into a big company is a mistake - <AUTHOR> http://alwaysnewmistakes.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/why-forcing-an-entrepreneur-into-a-big-company-is-a-mistake/

<comment><USER2> The point about work experience not helping that much is so true... I would have been better off building stuff right off the bat.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why, b/c they big companies don't innovate ...they litigate. Makes me cringe.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because entrepreneurs thrive amid a flexible, non-bureaucratic environment.</comment>