Google says Nexus One too old for Android 4.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/10/26/once.touted.superphone.lacks.horsepower/

<comment><USER2> I've always wondered about this, especially in embedded devices. Amongst the many mistakes Microsoft made with Vista, first and foremost was allowing the bloat to get so bad that it wouldn't run at all on machines that ran XP quite happily. Later Windows 7 could actually run on those old XP machines with many, if not most, of the features that Vista bragged about.

So here we have Google, arguably a company which can hire all of the worlds best engineers, why are they succumbing to the code first and ask questions later philosophy that gave Microsoft such heartburn?

Andy, I know you read HN, tell the team that their bonus depends on Android 4.0 being runnable on a Nexus 1. It isn't about supporting the platform with the least market share of any Android phone, its about instilling in the team a philosphy that taking the time to run great on hardware of that capability pays huge dividends in the phone world.

Many engineers today were brought up in a world where the next PC will be 1.5 - 2x the 'size' of the current PC so bloat is fine, schedule is king. This is a bad philosophy in the embedded space. That 1.5 - 2x the 'size' phone means you can't cut your phone costs, you can't grow your market, you are stuck waiting only the latest / greatest chips which are always in short supply to ship volume. Help those engineers break the habit, I know they can they are smart folks. Challenge them, as Ben Horowitz would say use your lead bullets on this one.

<comment><USER3> _taking the time to run great on hardware of that capability pays huge dividends in the phone world._

It really won't though, that's the problem.

The Nexus One is nearly two years old. It's somewhat of an anomaly because it'll have a higher than average number of off-contract purchases, but in general once a person's contact has run for two years they get a new phone.

Two year old phones just aren't that important. Speaking as an N1 owner, I'd love for them to be. But they aren't.

<comment><USER4> _in general once a person's contact has run for two years they get a new phone_

That kind of market calculus made sense before the recession. Now the value proposition has changed, and while people may still buy newer hardware (such as tablets) they expect better value from their tech purchasing because increasing wealth is no longer a given. Also, people are more suspicious of corporations in general, especially ones that are sitting on a large cash pile. Public sentiment is fickle and can quickly bite a company in the ass - look at how far the stars of Groupon and Netflix have fallen in just two quarters.

The idea that everyone should replace their smartphone every two years says either that your firm is not interested in supplying the less well-off, or else that it doesn't much care whether its products end up in landfill or not. Sure, Apple locks down its hardware platform so tightly that maintaining backwards compatibility is far easier than it is for Google, but note how Apple products maintain a high resale value and that allows them to sell new ones at a premium price point without hurting demand. Apple may be hard to deal with for developers, but Apple consumers feel the firm treats them like Kings or Queens. Google overlooks this market positioning strategy at its peril; loyalty is a two-way street, and the firm should know this very well given its historical disruption of the Yahoo/Altavista/Lycos triumvirate that dominated search back in ~1998.

<comment><USER3> _That kind of market calculus made sense before the recession. Now the value proposition has changed, and while people may still buy newer hardware (such as tablets) they expect better value from their tech purchasing because increasing wealth is no longer a given._

I'm not so sure about that. You can (probably- I'll be honest, I haven't checked for sure) get a more powerful Android handset than a Nexus One for free if you sign a new two-year agreement right now. There's very little to lose there- except having to take on a two year plan. Except...

 _Also, people are more suspicious of corporations in general, especially ones that are sitting on a large cash pile. Public sentiment is fickle and can quickly bite a company in the ass - look at how far the stars of Groupon and Netflix have fallen in just two quarters._

I'm extremely skeptical of the former claim- people's anger is directed towards banks, not large corporations with hordes of cash (by and large). If they were, people would _hate_ Apple.

Groupon and Netflix are both things that you can quite conceivably do without. A cellphone these days is seen as an essential, so signing up for a new two year term isn't such a friction point. You're going to need cellphone service from _somewhere_ , after all.

<comment><USER5> A 2-year contract costs $20/month more than a comparable month-to-month plan. (T-mobile's Even More /Plus plans make this explicit.) That's where the phone subsidy comes from.

<comment><USER3> That may be the case for T-Mobile but it certainly is not universal. AT&T offers nothing like that, AFAIK.

<comment><USER6> That would explain why the US version of the Nexus One has T-mobiles 3G band and not AT&Ts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great. I guess I can stop hitting the "Update" thing every day in the hope that 4.0 will appear.

I can't help but note that the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch purchased the same month are already running iOS 5.0 and I haven't noticed any speed issues.

<comment><USER8> My 3GS is almost unusably slow on iOS5.

<comment><USER7> I've only upgraded one of the 3GS's to iOS 5, and my experiences pretty much match this:

<http://www.anandtech.com/show/4956/apple-ios-5-review/15>

Basically, as fast or faster than 4.3. But mine is a development-only device with no music or other content, so maybe that's the difference.

<comment><USER8> This is interesting. I don't know if it's something with my phone specifically, but the whole thing just lags by a couple of seconds whenever I try to type something. It's so bad that I'm usually done typing a couple of words by the time the first characters come up on the screen ..

<comment><USER9> If you can, take it in to an Apple Store. It really sounds like you have something going wrong in hardware. Like vondur said, it sounds like bad flash memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I imagine that this is not due to the n1 being "underpowered" per se, as the nexus s has roughly the same specs as the n1, but more internal storage. The problem is due to the fact that the n1 can't accommodate the ics image, which google is claiming is about twice as large in size. /speculation

<comment><USER4> I think you're right. running out of onboard space is an issue if I install too many apps on the N1.

<comment><USER11> I am constantly running out of internal space on my N1. It's the worst thing about it, and the main reason I would upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's feasible that Cyanogenmod will release a compatible version though, isn't it?

<comment><USER13> Do you think ICS can actually run on N1? I do not think so. Otherwise why wouldn't google provide an update?

Thus, what do you think cyanogen can do to make ICS properly run on the N1 hardware?

<comment><USER14> It might be able to run, but the performance is just so subpar that Google feels uncomfortable releasing it. I doubt it would go over well if they release ICS for the N1 and the phone is barely usable.

CM, on the other hand, will appear on any device that somebody is dedicated enough to bring it to. So if somebody really wants ICS on the N1, then they'll do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why are people complaining about the Nexus One not being as great as the iPhone 4. Look at the release dates and you'll see that the Nexus One has 6 months on the iPhone 4. If anything compare it to the 3GS and you'll see that it is in fact a much better phone. Google are pushing forward with Android and the Nexus One is unfortunately being left behind. It remains the best phone I've ever owned and I'll definitely be buying a Galaxy Nexus to continue riding the Android wave.

<comment><USER16> the iPhone 3GS is better than Nexus one because it (can) runs iOS 5. your Nexus One is stuck running an old OS.

<comment><USER15> Please take your trolling elsewhere. Last I checked HN was a place where intellectual discussion takes place. Act accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sad panda... I was really expecting Google to support at least two more version of Android post Gingerbread for the Nexus One. Guess I'll keep the N1 around as my device for testing apps on Gingerbread/old hardware.

Apple handled this a lot better with iOS 4 and the old iPhone 3G. They simply took out features that the 3G couldn't handle. My N1 handles Gingerbread perfectly without any hiccups. Incredibly, every version of Android seemed to make my N1 _faster_. You couldn't say the same for iOS 3/4 on the 3G, which got worse, and any reasonable person wouldn't expect Apple to support the 3G beyond iOS 4. The N1, on the other hand, seemed like it could support at least two more versions of Android.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is EXACTLY what I would expect from HTC. I had their products before and I got burned this way.

It is one of the reasons I switched to Apple.

<comment><USER18> How is this different than Apple's iOS5 compatibility list?

Well, besides how much easier it will be for third parties to add ICS to Nexus One.

<comment><USER16> iOS 5 runs smoothly on a 3GS, a phone older than the Nexus One.

<comment><USER19> But the last official update for the 3G turned it into a dog. I don't think any company is blameless, here, but I'm far more disappointed to see Google doing it. Linux still runs on a 386, last time I checked.

<comment><USER20> I'm not convinced that you could run a 3.0 kernel image on a 386 without running out of RAM pretty soon, even if you cut it down to something pretty minimal. I haven't found any sources where anyone's actually installed modern Linux on one - they all seem to have used ancient distros because support actually vanished some time back (see eg. here: [http://hackaday.com/2011/08/12/installing-linux- on-a-386-lap...](http://hackaday.com/2011/08/12/installing-linux- on-a-386-laptop/)).

<comment><USER19> I stand corrected, but you have my curiosity up. Nevertheless, the "decline" of hardware in the face of software advancement in phones strikes me as awfully rapid. Is the Nexus One really so underpowered that ICS couldn't be made to accommodate it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have the Nexus one and am not too pleased with this, the phone isn't that old, and I assumed we would get ICS on it.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's sad when a phone that's only 1.5 years old is "too old". I really enjoyed my N1 with Cyanogenmod, but switched back to iPhone when news of T-Mobile's acquisition by AT&T started coming out.

</comment><comment><USER23> For a site called hackernews, it surprises me that people actually care about this. There will be so many available roms for ICS with source code release, and any phone that is at least running CM7 should have no worries. Its almost impossible to brick a phone during the root process and for a 2 year old phone to not attempt to root at this point, would not be using your hardware to its full benefit.

</comment><comment><USER24> So by the end of the year Android developers will have 5 different versions (2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.0 and 4.0) of Android in the wild and over 40% of which are running a version that's almost 18 months old (2.2) with no upgrade path.

And they say fragmentation isn't an issue...

It's Nokia and Symbian all over again.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's no incentive for Google to provide backward compatibility for Android, hence they don't.

<comment><USER26> Then what's the incentive for Apple to do just that? IOS5 runs on the iPhone 3GS, which is older than the Nexus One.

<comment><USER25> People who purchase iOS devices are Apple's customers. People who purchase Android devices are not Google' s customers

<comment><USER5> Google sold thousands (millions?) of N1 phones at a significant price. Those buyers certainly are Google's customers. Well, they were, until Google blew them off 5 minutes after purchase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've got both the Nexus One and an iPhone 4 and I can never understand why anyone would choose the Nexus One over an iPhone, it's such an inferior product both hardware and software wise. The comparatively poor quality as put me off anything but iPhones.

<comment><USER28> I started with an N1 and later got an iPad 2. I found I had to turn off all push notifications and was surprised that apple would put out something that had such inferior usability when the notification dropdown thing that Android has is so clearly better. Maybe they didn't want to copy the people they despised? Or maybe they just couldn't find the engineering time until 5.0? I dunno. It was unbearable. I had to turn all of the push notifications off because I just couldn't handle being interrupted by a modal dialog all the time.

The other thing that really stinks on the iPad compared to the N1 is the non- multi-tasking of apps. Everytime I switch to a different app it starts all over again... Really? Really.

In general iOS was really pretty, and really usable. Maybe I was just aculturated to the android way of handling multi-tasking and notifications, but those two things alone made me think, "I can't believe people put up with this stuff..." :)

<comment><USER29> > I found I had to turn off all push notifications and was surprised that > apple would put out something that had such inferior usability when the > notification dropdown thing that Android has is so clearly better.

You may want to note that iOS was released more than a year before Android. The notifications have been essentially untouched between iPhoneOS 1 and iOS 5.

> The other thing that really stinks on the iPad compared to the N1 is the > non-multi-tasking of apps. Everytime I switch to a different app it starts > all over again... Really? Really.

Not really no, you might want to update your iPad _at least_ to the OS released 16 months ago.

<comment><USER28> The iPad had whatever came with the iPad2 by default, which I assumed was the latest, maybe it wasn't. Anyway, I haven't upgraded to 5 yet since it has seemed wrinkly for a lot of people.

Wrt notifications... I just don't understand _why_ they didn't touch it between iOS1 and iOS5. It was so bad :) I'm sure it's much better now.

<comment><USER29> > I just don't understand _why_ they didn't touch it between iOS1 and iOS5.

My guess is: limited engineering power and other things they considered more critical to user-experience (however misguided their consideration was).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nexus One was released in January 2010. Too soon to be "retired" after only 2 years.

Nexus One was seriously "flawed" for having only 512MB of internal storage. I had to uninstall tons of applications just to update the built in ones.

<comment><USER5> This is the killer. Google keeps piling more junkware apps onto internal storage, and not enabling the SD bit for their apps.

I am constantly making calls of which 1MB non-SD app to evict, while Browser and Maps and friends pile on 5-10MB each. And there isn't even any piracy(?)-related reason to make these apps internal-only, like there is for paid apps.

My N1 is a constant state of "Browser storage full" since the latest round of app updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> my gf's CDMA Hero (released October 11, 2009 w/Cupcake!) is running CyanogenMod 7.1 (Gingerbread), runs better than stock HTC sense trash.

"won't run on Nexus One", you say?

it'll run back-to-back Ironman triathlons

</comment><comment><USER4> Boo. Of course I do not expect all the advanced features or substitutes for things that are not supported by the older hardware, but Google promoted ICS strongly as a 'run everywhere' version designed to save developers from the hardware fragmentation issue. Between me, my wife, and my brothers-in-law, we have 7 or 8 Android devices in this household, and I was looking forward to a more unified operating environment.

</comment><comment><USER32> Damn. This bums me out.

</comment><comment><USER33> The sunset photo as the wallpaper on the phone in the article is appropriate. Still love my Nexus One.

</comment><comment><USER34> NOOOOOO!!!! HTC EVO 4G NO HAS 4.0 upgrade? Noes!!! NOOOOES!!!!!! I am very sad now.

As a side note, at these speeds, feels like windows xp has less hardware reqs than android :P

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, this is absolute bullshit.</comment>


It took 69 single steps to get past a BOOST_FOREACH() statement. Madness. - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/26792042883 As he often does, John Carmack gives a brief and powerful argument. While I still have a love for C++, just because library developers can do something with enough preprocessor and templates, doesn't mean they should. <comment><USER2> I can't imagine a situation where I would add Boost to a project.

Sure, it drags C++ by its angle bracket into a higher abstraction level, if you want that. But adding the core of Boost to any project is like a snake swallowing an elephant made of source files. Even worse, they're practically all template header files. This is not a virtue. I just can't see myself really wanting to make that tradeoff.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had always felt a little dirty using it, and resisted looking behind the curtain. This tweet has piqued my curiosity too much though.

Its definition, for those interested: <http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_44_0/boost/foreach.hpp>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An brief and interesting quote from John Carmack. While I still love C++, it seems the language moves is moving further and further away from practical usefulness, in terms of compile time, good error messages and debugability all the time.</comment>


AMD to combat 'Intel Inside' with 'Who cares?' - <AUTHOR> http://www.betanews.com/article/AMD-to-combat-Intel-Inside-with-Who-cares/1273694861

<comment><USER2> Apple figured this shit out over a decade ago. Macbook and macbook pro. iMac and Mac Pro. They sell benefits not features. You don't see them referring to the 13 inch macbook pro as the Apple MB986*/A like the PC oems, right?

<comment><USER3> It's more like they have only few variations of 5 notebooks.

Dell has dozens of models for each market segment, each of them with a dozen variations.

We got a bunch of E4300 Latitudes with the same SKU. Most of them have glossy LCDs. Mine is matte. Go figure...

<comment><USER4> This annoyed the hell out of me, when I had to get a HP for work. It had to be HP, so there were 20 different models.

What is the point of 20 different models?

Sure, I understand screen size, but everything else if configurable, from HDD size, to Ram. All the processors are fast enough for development work, as far as I am concerned.

This is one area where Apple got it right. 5 different types of laptop.

<comment><USER3> > What is the point of 20 different models?

It's much more interesting than that: out of the 20 models, 12 won't run X decently, 8 will take 2 minutes to boot, 4 random models will be very fast and everything will work out of the box. You won't be able to identify any pattern.

In the next revision of the lineup, the 4 that work well will be another random subset of the batch. Again, nobody will be able to see a clear pattern.

Rinse and repeat.

My previous Dell was absolutely Linux-proof. This one runs it perfectly well. It's however, slower than my netbook for everything but disk IO. This one has a Core 2 Duo. The netbook has an Atom z270.

I really want to to away with this overly complex PC compatibles. If hardware vendors insist on using x86 processors, fine, but we no longer need, or want, to boot MS-DOS 1.0 unless under a hardware emulator.

<comment><USER4> I was lucky then, my HP just would not suspend. Never had a problem on my IBM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What silly nonsense that chart is. I've done "advanced photo editing" and "edit/mix music" on CPUs so underpowered they wouldn't show up in the cheapest netbooks today. There isn't a processor being sold that couldn't convert CDs to MP3s as quickly as the CD drive can rip the music off, and at reasonably quality too. A good chunk of the "black" level is really the GPU's work, too.

How quickly we forget what a gigahertz can really do. (Or even 250MHz.)

</comment><comment><USER6> What a contrived piece of nonsense, just stick with what you're good at AMD.</comment>


Ask YC: Recording the Startup School talks? - <AUTHOR>

This is a request to the organizers of Startup School to arrange for soundboard recordings of the presentations at this year's event.
The audio recordings from 2006 and earlier have been gems in my car CD inventory on many long drives.  Unfortunately last year's audio recordings were really low in quality, to the point of being unintelligible.
It would be a shame for these amazing talks to not get preserved for posterity! <comment><USER2> Omnisio (<http://omnisio.com/>) is doing the honors.

<comment><USER3> They're also potentially planning to overlay the comments from the Chatterous real-time chatroom:

<http://www.chatterous.com/landing/ss08/ss08/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where are the 2006 recordings located?

<comment><USER5> Yes I would love to know that too.

<comment><USER6> Thirded..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We should put it on Justin.TV

<comment><USER8> I wonder how many other YC startup products we can use for startup school :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some great stuff in here. Very inspirational - especially when you're hitting a tough spot it can help to pick you up</comment>


Predictions on the future of databases - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/12/14/5-predictions-on-the-future-of-databases-from-a-guy-who-knows-databases/ <comment><USER2> The future is a fickle thing. 15 years ago I, along with many others, would have told you that this was "the future of databases":

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

The difficult problems since that time turned out to be scalability and parallelism, neither of which were addressed by The Third Manifesto. So instead of D, we got Map Reduce and NoSQL.

Who knows what the hard problems of the next 15 years will be.

<comment><USER3> The object-relational mismatch is still a huge problem. I'm quite interested by this supposed solution. But I spent 5 minutes chasing links and couldn't find an example of _what the syntax actually looks like_ , only a suggestion that I _buy_ some book to understand the language. This "D" thing sounds pretty cool, but it seriously needs some more user-friendly marketing (and a non-colliding, googleable name).

<comment><USER4> Most of theninterestin info is linked from the reference material section of www.thethirdmanifesto.com; what you Semmelweis to be looking for is:

[http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~hugh/TTM/Tutorial%20D-2013-05-...](http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~hugh/TTM/Tutorial%20D-2013-05-23.pdf)

Which provides a description of Tutorial D, an implementation of the prescriptions.

<comment><USER4> > ... Semmelweis ...

Or "seem" \-- I have really no idea how that happened and didn't notice it until too late to edit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a lot going on and that's the way it has been for quite a while now but as someone who's working with databases only marginally at the moment, I'm left wondering: What's wrong with RDBMS? Sure it's nice to have a simple Key- Value Store for applications that don't need much more than this but bottom line, the relational model is very powerful, albeit quite abstract, and most data we need to deal with can be made to fit into this model. We have a working, declarative query language that Just Works(TM), for which we have written very good optimizers. The various instances of such DMBS range from small-scale use (for example, SQLite) to really-huge (Postgres, Oracle, etc). So, to sum it up: Exactly _why_ should we abandon this?

<comment><USER6> Most boots on the ground DBAs don't know anything about rational DB design. Codd Normal form? Whats that? Can't I just make one giant table? Indexes? Why would I want indexes? I heard they take up disk space and CPU so I won't use any, to increase performance. So they (poorly) implement key value stores regardless what the problem actually requires (if the only tool you know how to use is a nail...). Nothing funnier that watching a noob do a select * on a large table transferring gigs of data and use his RoR app to implement the WHERE using nested ruby if statements and string comparisons (or better regexes without understanding regexes, LOL) and god help me a bubble sort instead of an ORDER BY clause and of course hit another table once for each row selected from the first table because he doesn't know JOINs even exist, or heard they're "slow".

A RDBMS is a very slow key value store, so anything that can't do transactions or can't do anything else, is always going to be faster at its extremely limited set of abilities.

From an engineering perspective if you need 10 HP to run your 5 KW generator, a RDBMS is like installing a 10000 HP marine diesel and then not having any idea how to start or maintain it or even where to get the fuel. Obviously every objective performance metric would be better for a 10 HP lawnmower engine in that app, if all you'll ever plan to use is 10 HP and you have no idea how to use anything more advanced anyway.

There are also very loudly trumpeted anecdotal situations or contrived thought experiments where certain unusual technologies fit a unusual situation very well. This is, oddly enough, unusual.

I've read and experimented with the "7 DBs in 7 weeks" book and it IS very interesting but I can't find any business cases to actually use any of it, which is somewhat frustrating. And my experience is how you end up with people writing CRUD apps to store cooking recipes that none the less use NEO4J because they really, really, want to add a line to their resume that they used NEO4J, not because the app needed it.

<comment><USER7> Condescend much?

<comment><USER6> When I'm right, yeah. Not using "engineer" as a title of authority but as a problem solving technique, maybe the TLDR is its an engineering problem where non-engineers mess up RDBMS incredibly often, and when its blame time, better off blaming the tool than the "designer" so...

"I don't know what I'm doing, but someone who knows what they're doing anecdotally solved a completely different problem using tool XYZ, so for lack of any better idea, lets copy them".

If you're familiar with cargo cult science there is an enormous miasma of cargo cult engineering fogging up the entire database arena not just nosql.

Another concept that needs to be in the discussion is the "no silver bullet" rule from programming applies to database design, like it or not. Can't just sprinkle magic nosql pixie dust on any old random problem and expect it to work, any more than applying any random programing fad to any random problem will work.

The (old and new) tools are actually pretty interesting, although often poorly engineered (by the end user) and implemented. Its the persistent anti-patterns and non-engineering design technique that I'm properly arrogant and condescending toward.

Hammers are a cool new invention and have some great unusual new applications, but they don't install deck screws any better than the legacy screwdriver. Laborers on the job randomly mixing screws nails screwdrivers and hammers on the job and then internet discussions about how hammers and/or screwdrivers suck is nearly physically painful to watch.

<comment><USER7> Regardless of whether you are right or not, your tone is very off-putting. This is not an academic concern – this sort of attitude is a huge part of why the tech community ends up being very exclusionary. Oh yes, watching someone make mistakes while learning how to build a web application or learn regular expressions is hilarious. Much better to laugh condescendingly while watching them struggle than try to help. Concocting "straw man" noobs everywhere who do things in obviously wrong ways doesn't make you more right. And it definitely doesn't make you smarter. It just makes you seem like a jerk and makes it a little harder for people to stomach getting into the tech field. Please stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most popular corporate world database system at this time is Excel. And its not a very good DBMS, and the world is full of spreadsheet guys who know nothing about database theory, designing horrific abominations.

On a large scale I think the future will be interesting, will "real databases" remain in IT land or will it move out in the world?

Don't laugh, I'm just barely old enough that when I started out, printing, file management, physical media management, static network address configuration (not just IP in the old days), and backups were done solely by IT professionals in the machine room, and now for better or worse every noob does it (or tries to do it) themselves. If in the future someone comes up with software to automate away DBAs...

Or it might go the other way and the corporate business database of the future will be super turbo hyper i-Excel.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone who cares about databases absolutely must check out Datomic. If you want to know the future of relational databases for the next 15 years, I think it is here. Practically infinite client side scaling, logic based querying, ACID, runs on several foundations, supports joins, all data is permanent so it stores the entire history of every fact. You can query "right now" or in the past at any known time. The database lives on your application stack the same way git checks out your code on a development machine, and you push and pull data to bring your application up to date with other stacks.

It doesn't meet every single need you might ever have, but it sure meets a whole lot more then any other database I've seen. [http://www.datomic.com](http://www.datomic.com)

<comment><USER9> I'm really skeptical about Datomic. I think it has some great features, but I have a hard time believing that ACID transactions is one of them.

I've asked about this on their Google Group: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/datomic/zkMV50VKw2s](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/datomic/zkMV50VKw2s)

As of right now, there are still questions left unanswered.

<comment><USER10> [http://docs.datomic.com/acid.html](http://docs.datomic.com/acid.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I still think its amazing that Facebook is running off MySQL. Such a tremendous amount of user data, placed in a system that many deem inferior.

I'm not saying they made a bad choice, I'm just impressed at how they've managed to make MySQL fit their needs.

<comment><USER12> I was under the impression they use it more as a sharded "key-values" store?

ie. no joins - the part of the database that makes it relational.

<comment><USER13> I concur. In our shop we also use MySQL without the joins. That's like an efficient key-value store, but there must be a better solution somewhere: all the joins are done in client code, and caching too. That's a great amount of error-prone code that probably shouldn't be necessary.

<comment><USER14> "all the joins are done in client code"

What's the point of joining in the application level? If you're going to join, why not do it in the database? That should be both faster and more convenient (unless your schemas aren't relational _at all_ , in which case I don't see why you'd use a relational database)

<comment><USER12> Data for User A is on server 9, and data for User B is on server 43. Joins across servers is not really supported in mysql.

Another issue is connections between DB servers. Generally you want your DB server to be as fast as possible, so having it handle the connections to other servers slows everything down. If you offload the DB server connections to your web server, you can easily scale by just adding more web servers and having each DB server handle only its own data.

The best solution would be some type of 'mysql proxy' that could run on every web server that would transparently handle the joins between all the different mysql data servers. I think I saw a project attempting to do this awhile back, but didn't really keep track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's just going to be different dbs in the backend working with what they do best in tandem.

Lucence base for search. RMDB for money/transactions. And other noSQL type for just data that isn't critical, don't care much about relation, and just need it to be fast.

Of course, perhaps PostgreSQL and other RMDB can have noSQL attributes then noSQL would have some good competition.

PostgreSQL if they can make it easier to clustered, like cassandra or elasticsearch. And get a better fuzzy string and other text search capability in there then now we're talking. But I guess it's just me dreaming.

<comment><USER16> postgresql XC is master-master, shardable, cross-shard transactions, data partitioning across nodes, distributed queries

<comment><USER17> Yes, but it's side project so it doesn't get such attention\confidence as postgresql. But I hope the project won't get abandoned and will evolve into something very powerful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Obamacare, for better or for worse, is being launched on a NoSQL database system" \- silver bullet did not help (along with HTML5 etc. whatever).

<comment><USER19> So are you implying that a regular DB would have fared better?

I think it was a failure because of the complex law background and interfacing with all kinds of legacy systems it has to draw data from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Could it be that facebook complete lack of innovation is due to them being stuck for years with the same issues on the db ?

<comment><USER21> Best I recollect, FB is quite innovative in the data center.

Also, it would be nice of you to step in and contribute to an open source database engine if your expertise is such that you can dismiss what FB did with them as lacking innovation. I'd wager they'll be all ears open for your explanation how to do multimaster replication and distributed joins efficiently while remaining ACID compliant.

<comment><USER20> I wasn't talking about facebook technical innovations, but rather end-user new features, sorry i wasn't clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> By the way, as long as we're speaking about DB future, did anyone try foundationdb? Does it live up to expectations?

</comment><comment><USER22> What about H2?

[http://www.h2database.com/html/main.html](http://www.h2database.com/html/main.html)

I can't think of a better reason NOT to use it. Can someone who knows a lot about db please comment on this.

<comment><USER16> [http://www.slideshare.net/PostgresOpen/postgres-is- different...](http://www.slideshare.net/PostgresOpen/postgres-is- differentfrombetterthanyourrdbms)</comment></comment>


Guy Sims Fitch, a Fake Writer Invented by the US Government - <AUTHOR> http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/meet-guy-sims-fitch-a-fake-writer-invented-by-the-us-g-1787060769 <comment><USER2> Or Jeff Gannon, the fake journalist at press briefings during the Bush Administation, the Psyops Units at PBS/CNN and the new buildings next to Google HQ, the relationship between State Department propaganda and SONY as leaked by the disclosures a few years ago, the "War of Ideas" program, the Overt Peacetime Psyops Program (OP3) out of the DoD, the NSA task to use global surveillance to measure in real time the effects of US propaganda programming, Judith Miller and others who worked with the state to sell the war, the weaponization of information in the press (the "echo chamber" Josh Earnest bragged about creating for the Obama Administration), war censorship and media imbedding laws that removes the possibility of investigative reporting on US war operations, the FBI hacking of the Associated Press, the censorship of public records in the State Department Press Briefiengs, the censorship of media coverage in Ferguson via the FAA, the engineered content in public school education textbooks and standards, the censorship of public records (such as over 80% of the Torture Program Reports), the partnership with media companies on narrative that led to both the censorship of surveillance reporting during the Bush Administration and the ouster of Snowden Document content from US media firms including social media sites like Facebook, the coercive leverage in the relationship with media companies (e.g. the bankruptcy of QWest in retaliation for refusing national security backdoors), operations like Earnest Voice to arm our military with astroturfing and persona management technology, the flood of military users and narrative into social media sites like reddit, the huge cashflows of taxpayer money into PR firms to manage public perception of the state and the police, operations like Zunzuneo focused on destabilizing countries overseas, etc.

<comment><USER3> * Jeff Gannon, the fake journalist at press briefings during the Bush Administation

* the Psyops Units at PBS/CNN and the new buildings next to Google HQ

* the relationship between State Department propaganda and SONY as leaked by the disclosures a few years ago,

* the "War of Ideas" program, the Overt Peacetime Psyops Program (OP3) out of the DoD,

* the NSA task to use global surveillance to measure in real time the effects of US propaganda programming,

* Judith Miller and others who worked with the state to sell the war,

* the weaponization of information in the press (the "echo chamber" Josh Earnest bragged about creating for the Obama Administration),

* war censorship and media embedding laws that removes the possibility of investigative reporting on US war operations,

* the FBI hacking of the Associated Press,

* the censorship of public records in the State Department Press Briefiengs,

* the censorship of media coverage in Ferguson via the FAA,

* the engineered content in public school education textbooks and standards,

* the censorship of public records (such as over 80% of the Torture Program Reports),

* the partnership with media companies on narrative that led to both the censorship of surveillance reporting during the Bush Administration and the ouster of Snowden Document content from US media firms including social media sites like Facebook,

* the coercive leverage in the relationship with media companies (e.g. the bankruptcy of QWest in retaliation for refusing national security backdoors),

* operations like Earnest Voice to arm our military with astroturfing and persona management technology,

* the flood of military users and narrative into social media sites like reddit,

* the huge cashflows of taxpayer money into PR firms to manage public perception of the state and the police,

* operations like Zunzuneo focused on destabilizing countries overseas, etc.

<comment><USER4> i fear that we have arrived at the endpoint described by a CIA director named william casey: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

it's a possibility now. the avenues for revolt are waning as their control over the public mind solidifies.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the quote! Barbara Honegger writes:

[https://www.quora.com/Did-William-Casey-CIA-Director- really-...](https://www.quora.com/Did-William-Casey-CIA-Director-really-say- Well-know-our-disinformation-program-is-complete-when-everything-the-American- public-believes-is-false)

"indeed said by CIA Director William Casey at an early February 1981 meeting of the newly elected President Reagan with his new cabinet secretaries to report to him on what they had learned about their agencies in the first couple of weeks of the administration."

To consider: Media Consolidation 1983-2011

[http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s-- 8OufMYrC...](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s-- 8OufMYrC--/rvbsrgrseidxhnmogbee.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An anecdote: A friend of my father bought a South American newspaper in the 60's. He did so being backed by a silent partner. What he found out later was the investor was not really the wealthy person he had met but the CIA who wanted a stake and influence in this newspaper. He sold out upon finding this out and I always found this interesting as I imagine this was not a one off event. So writing is one thing, owning media outlets seems even more amazing.

Also he also told me about 20 years ago to watch, Hillary Clinton will likely be president. I remember repeating his prediction at the time and people scoffed at the suggestion.

</comment><comment><USER7> The good old days: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's amusing that the letter author uses an apparently fabricated quote from their own pseudonym, then remarks "How true!"

Yes, funny how you agree with yourself, isn't it!

</comment><comment><USER9> a fictional story of gay syrian girl prosecuted by syrian government, a similar propaganda to demonize syrian government and promote US imperialist foreign policy

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

what's missing from article is the IP address of the account used by creator of this fictional girl is from Virginia, USA

<comment><USER10> That's incorrect. The IP address was in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the hoaxer Tom McMaster lived. Source: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-gay-girl- in...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-gay-girl-in-damascus- comes-clean/2011/06/12/AGkyH0RH_story.html)

Other sources mention Georgia (the nation) and Istanbul, Turkey, where he was apparently vacationing: [http://www.afterellen.com/movies/444337-gay-girl- damascus-am...](http://www.afterellen.com/movies/444337-gay-girl-damascus- amina-profile-story-two-straight-men-pretending-lesbians-online) He apparently liked to visit the Middle East, having taken photos of Syria (that he passed off as "Amina's") on a previous trip.

McMaster is a miserable lying asshole who did enormous harm, but promoting gay rights (however incompetently) is not "US imperialist foreign policy." Dozens of nations embraced gay rights laws long before the US did, and dozens still have better ones than we do. It is not--unfortunately--our doing that the world is slowly crawling out of the gutter of homophobia.

<comment><USER11> >promoting gay rights (however incompetently) is not "US imperialist foreign policy."

Pray tell why Pussy Riot got a spot on 60 Minutes, then?

<comment><USER10> Because it's news.

I don't understand why you guys bother going through these contortions to vilify anyone pro-gay while pretending that you're not actually anti-gay. Suppressing gay rights and gay issues is never about homophobia, it's always about free speech or imperialism or journalistic bias some other buzzword. Do you think you're fooling anyone?

<comment><USER11> Why do I have to be pro- or anti- anything? I'm ambivalent about homosexuals. And that's on days when I even think about homosexuals.

Why can't I observe that it's convenient for a propaganda machine to highlight an enemy's mistreatment of a marginalized class?

Your comment typifies the mental short-circuiting that identity politics encourages. I suggest you not take everything so personally, and stop defaulting to the supposition that anything you don't agree with must be bigoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this the inspiration for "Sidd Finch?"

</comment><comment><USER13> When we're on the topic of US propaganda, it's a good time to remind everyone about the Smith–Mundt Act, which regulates US government propaganda. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith–Mundt_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith–Mundt_Act)

<comment><USER14> And we can't forget its recent weakening! [0]

While my wiki link is barely two clicks away from yours, it's still important to highlight what's going on in re "public diplomacy information" now being deployable domestically; the language on the Smith-Mundt Act wiki page makes it sound like it's merely now being archived or something:

>The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (section 1078 (a)) amended the US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, allowing for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within U.S. borders for the Archivist of the United States.[1][2]

Another fun fact: this particular year's National Defence Authorization Act also contained the "Feinstein-Lee Amendment", which is the one that lets them detain US citizens indefinitely without charge for suspicion of ties to terrorism.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2013#Smith- Mundt_Modernization_Act_of_2012)

<comment><USER15> The whole point of the Feinstein-Lee Amendment was to _prevent_ the government from detaining citizens indefinitely.

[http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press- relea...](http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press- releases?ID=b5294991-c86f-4b13-8708-83db770d7740)

<comment><USER2> This is correct.

But what's pointed out is that it _only_ protects citizens. It clarifies, as there was a deadlock in the Senate over the issue before it, that non-citizens (other persons) or those no longer recognized as citizens (i.e. lost due to joining a foreign army or suspected of national security violations such as terrorism) _do not have these protections_.

The Constitution of course evaluates _people_ as having these rights. It's a bit of a silly game to try to pretend that The Constitution is relevant today as it was written hundreds of years ago - but these differences are crucial. The placement of the boundary of habeus corpus - for all of the recent experimentation the United States has been doing with it - has been clarified by Lee-Feinstein as short of a protection for people and only a protection that extends to certain people under certain circumstances.

<comment><USER16> So, a person who is a citizen, could have their citizenship revoked for being a terrorist (by some definition) and then be detained indefinitely? Am I reading your, and the parent, comment correctly?

<comment><USER2> Yes.

The amendment clarifies the boundaries of habeas corpus.

These boundaries apply only to particular people - namely those people with recognized US citizenship.

First, most of the human rights abused by the United States governments are non-Americans to begin with (let's put aside the penal system and some very sordid history with suppression of domestic civil rights groups for a second).

The amendment clarifies that foreign targets have no right to habeas corpus, a trial, to know even what they are being held for, etc. A very large contingency of innocent people suffer through this, but this isn't the comment to expound on it.

Second, the US can revoke citizenship of those it deems dangerous to national security (people like Snowden among them).

Take for instance the first result from searching "revoke citizenship join ISIS": [http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/01/14/paris-lessons- us-m...](http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/01/14/paris-lessons-us-must- revoke-citizenship-americans-who-join-isis-al-qaeda.html)

The criticism of the amendment is that the boundaries drawn do not respect the rights of "people" \- only the rights of those for which it is convenient to respect (less than 4% of the people on Earth, and no serious dissidents, whistleblowers, etc).

<comment><USER17> >"Article the seventh... No person shall [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; [...]." //

I guess that was revoked at some point? Notice it says person and not citizen.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Democrats More Positive About Socialism Than Capitalism (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx <comment><USER2> I kind of doubt most Americans, especially young Americans can even distinguish between the two...

This coming from a young American, who tries to understand my cohorts logic/reasoning. Most have very little understanding of history or even current events. They just want "free" things provides by government and lower taxes.

<comment><USER3> What makes you think most young people just want "free" things by the government and lower taxes? Granted, I don't talk much with regular young americans, but the vast majority of opinions I hear on the topic seem to talk more about systemic injustices and the huge issues with seeking exponential growth above all else. I can't recall seeing anyone ever arguing for both lower taxes and free healthcare/education/whatever at the same time.

<comment><USER4> We already have very low taxes compared to countries that offer free healthcare, education, etc. Young Democrats are under the misperception that we can pay for all those things without raising taxes on _them_ , just on corporations and people making over $10 million per year. They don't realize what those other countries do to pay for those services.

Our former au pair is a young German lady who previously worked an entry level office job in Germany. When she tore her ACL, she was able to pay the hospital and EMT bills out of her own income. Her taxes and mandatory social insurance payments were also 40% of her paycheck. And although college in Germany is almost free, she wasn't eligible to enroll based on her scores on the abitur exam. She definitely would've gone to college in the US, but only about 30% of German high school graduates enroll in college, versus almost 70% here.

I personally like the German system a lot. I think college is overrated and that it's great that in Germany you can graduate high school at 16, do an apprenticeship, and get a real job with room for growth. But young liberals in the US seem to be under the view that you can have your cake and eat it too. They don't realize that Germany, etc., doesn't match their vision for the US, where the government pays for people with average grades to get social science degrees and put off getting a real job until 25, while taxing entry level workers next to nothing.

<comment><USER5> How is paying 8k more for taxes but 10k less on insurance or education not a win? Yeah you have higher taxes cry me a river your out of pocket spending is less.

In Roosevelt's day anyone earning 1 million + was taxed at 95%. Basically meaning all their money went back to the state. It encouraged them to spend it on business and grow their business holdings.

The big wins come in having a single-payer for health who can say : No we will not pay $35 to hospitals for a single ibuprofen, stop gouging prices. Or we will not pay more than $x for insulin - don't like it? We'll end your patent term for non-generics early so prices CAN go down.

It's that collective bargaining combined WITH the end of insurance salaries. More money is free'd up for hospitals, and if we can make the system tech- streamlined, we could save even more. The more we automate the entire stack the better for the entire billing/management of funds to drs/hospitals.

<comment><USER4> > How is paying 8k more for taxes but 10k less on insurance or education not a > win? Yeah you have higher taxes cry me a river your out of pocket spending > is less.

It may well be a win! I think it is. But that's not the pitch liberal Democrats are making. They're saying "you can have European style benefits, but you won't pay European style taxes. The top 1% and corporations will pay for all of it." That's not realistic.

> In Roosevelt's day anyone earning 1 million + was taxed at 95%. Basically > meaning all their money went back to the state. It encouraged them to spend > it on business and grow their business holdings.

Roosevelt's economic ideas were bad and the US and Europe have spent decades unwinding similar policies. That's the lesson liberal Democrats refuse to take away from Europe. The Reagan Revolution happened in Europe as well as the US. Industries were deregulated, businesses were privatized, and taxes were lowered. Europe continues to move further to the right.

And Germany, France, and Sweden don't "soak the rich" as the US tries to do: [https://images.app.goo.gl/xbVh5c9cXHqfMESx6](https://images.app.goo.gl/xbVh5c9cXHqfMESx6). They have high but relatively flat taxes on individuals, and moderate taxes on corporations and capital gains. An in-depth comparison of Germany and US taxation is here: [https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed- letter/2...](https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed- letter/2017/382). Overall US taxes are about 10% of GDP lower than Germany ($2 trillion). A small part of that difference comes from lower taxes on capital (23% versus 27% overall). The real difference is significantly lower taxes on labor, and massively lower taxes on consumption.

If we moved to a German tax system, it wouldn't "soak the rich." Capitalists would see their taxes go up a little. Labor and consumers would see their taxes go up massively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does one ask this question? "Do you support that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole?"

<comment><USER7> Not when the cost is competition. Competition is a primary motivator. The lack of competition is what causes stagnation and other issues with consumer abuse in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some observations:

As other commenters have pointed out, the terms socialism and capitalism are very broad. However, the fact that small business and entrepreneurs are viewed positively and big business is viewed negatively (at least by Democrats), suggests that people are primarily upset about corporate capitalism and want a form of socialism that addresses it.

The fact that both big business and the federal government are both viewed negatively suggests that American socialists are concerned about the power and negative impact of corporations but, contrary to what conservatives tend to assert, don't want a centralized system run by the federal government. I wonder if policies could be developed that are tailored to this specific approach to socialism?

<comment><USER9> Richard Wolof speaks of this and suggests the answer lies in democracy in the workplace via worker owned co-ops.

[https://www.rdwolff.com/socialism_and_workers_coops](https://www.rdwolff.com/socialism_and_workers_coops)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a really biased line of asking question.

It compares the existing system with an hypothetical system. Means, people will project their current suffering onto the former while projecting their hopes and dreams on the latter. This screws the results _in a major way_. If this proves anything it is the profoundness of the "grass is greener on the other site" effect.

Also, I don't think casting a plethora of political, social and ecological phenomena onto some kind of hypothetical binary switch is gonna provide any valuable insight. Also also, especially in the US "socialism" is used to describe things that an European would see as some kind of base condition, like affordable dentists, while it's also serving as the description of the politics of thoroughly fucked up countries. This gives the word very little substance.

I'm a bit disappointed that this kind of "here are some numbers: 36, 1, 0.64" kind of article gains this much traction on HN...

Edit: grammar

<comment><USER8> Isn't it also possible that the opposite would happen? That is, people would oppose the new system because they fear change?

Perhaps both are true. I don't know if these stereotypes are actually supported by data, but it seems like we tend to expect young people to be both more idealistic/naive (depending on your perspective) and open to change. Similarly, the very terms 'progressive' and 'conservative' refer to the degree to which they advocate change.

<comment><USER10> I mean, maybe. My point isn't really that one system is prone to "win" here but rather that the whole thing is very much armchair science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given socialism = European social-democracy, in which the economic system is capitalist. It doesn't make sense, except for the guy who's very above the water(or very ideologically inclined), to be against worker rights, vacations, maternal leave, public health system, not having tonnes of people living in misery and in general trying to prevent economic power to takeover democratic power... So, anyway... If you strip the charged ideological rhetoric & all the fear and uncertainty and get back looking at reality as it is. It's painfully obvious the American system could use some reform. I don't think much is gonna happen though, not without insane levels of friction, economic and real power just have a lot of weight and a lot of cards to play(a problem that could be mitigated with more actual democracy, but TBH I think it's a lost cause & pure idealism to talk in this terms).

<comment><USER5> Actually before Bernie even lost in 2016, I had an inkling he'd lose, so would Clinton, Trump would be a lame duck with enough power to upset a lot of people including a lot of Republicans, but the biggest power he has is stirring up the rest of the country to give a shit. I also predicted a progressive would be president in 2020 - verdict is still out on that but it's never been more likely in my 39 years.

Trump is like a natural Reichstagg fire to kick us in the ass and start looking inward and making changes. I'm optimistic that in the next 10 years many of these programs will be implemented (especially as automation picks up and jobs start disappearing by millions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you by "socialism" mean "European model" and not the 100% pure Wikipedia- definition of socialism (just like I expect "capitalism" has a reasonable interpretation too)...

What do you expect? They've grown up seeing the increasing failure and corruptedness of American corporatism and global capitalism.

Of course they will be drawn to something different!

What would be interesting is to see what young Europeans who has grown up with "socialism" answers when asked the same.

Will their experiences with the failures of socialism cause them to come up with the opposite answer?

</comment><comment><USER13> Democratic voters seem to be focused on not voting. If they could increase turnout by even 5% we wouldn't be having a lot of these discussions.

</comment><comment><USER14> > The question wording does not define "socialism" or "capitalism" but simply > asks respondents whether their opinion of each is positive or negative.

I wonder how defining the terms would change the outcome. I've found that most laypersons simply equate Socialism with Welfare.

That aside, this is an interesting split happening in America. I know it's mostly impossible, but I would love to understand the origin of this shift. I, personally, have to believe a lot of it has to do with our complete inability to fix healthcare in this country. I'm firmly in the pro-capitalism side, but even I have to admit at this point I'd take single payer over our current Kafkaesque nightmare.

<comment><USER4> Re: welfare, the attitude is also borne out of misconceptions on the left about what "socialist" European countries actually are like. The American left, especially the younger generation, is strongly anti-corporate. Places like Sweden are not anti-corporate. The Nordic countries all do well in the Heritage Foundation's economic freedom index: [https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking](https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking). The top capital gains tax rate in Sweden is 30%, lower than California. The corporate tax rate in Sweden and Denmark is 22%, about the same as under Trump's tax law. The countries are also highly deregulated. Denmark recently got rid of its version of the FCC. The Nordic countries never had the equivalent of Glass-Steagall, and on several key dimensions their financial systems are less regulated than in the US: [http://webhome.auburn.edu/~barthjr/papers/The%20Repeal%20of%...](http://webhome.auburn.edu/~barthjr/papers/The%20Repeal%20of%20Glass- Steagall.pdf) (see p. 19; note that the article is written in 1997 in contemplation of the repeal of Glass-Stegal, which had not yet occurred). Most passenger rail in Sweden is run by private operators over publicly owned track: [https://www.cerre.eu/sites/cerre/files/161206_CERRE_PassRail...](https://www.cerre.eu/sites/cerre/files/161206_CERRE_PassRailComp_CaseStudy_Sweden.pdf). (While DC is complaining that WMATA isn't being run as a "public service" because it won't run massively money-losing late-night trains, and the Union is fighting the plan to have part of the silver line operated by a private company, Stockholm's metro is completely operated by MTR, a Hong Kong corporation.)

Nowhere in Western Europe can properly be described as "socialist," not even "socialist life" after the 1980s and 1990s when states went on a massive privatization binge. They're capitalist democracies where heavy taxes on individuals (especially the middle class) are used to fund a broad welfare state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> These things often come and go in waves.

Socialism is a very strong but diverse set of policys. For Europeans like me, free healthcare is not part of socialism, while in America it is often seen so.

That said, socialism sounds great on paper, but put in practice, we have seen that taking over the means of production by force and distributing them somehow (that's real socialism) does not work as intended, so force has to be used to keep the system running. Most young people lack the historical context to understand that good intentions can have bad consequences. As of today, no socialist system worked. It's safe to say that all of them had good intentions. To me, this seems to be a good argument against socialism (but not against things like free healthcare!).

</comment><comment><USER16> The sentiment is understandable, if you're a young person just starting your adult life. Capitalism rewards early adopters, and we're basically in the end- game globally, with most of the capital already concentrated in the upper echelons of power. It would be easy to see that as a fundamental disadvantage if you're buried under student debt, with no hope of entering the over- inflated housing market, for example.

The advice of the older generations that have prospered under the current economic regime no longer seems to hold true for most young people, so can you blame them for their doubt?

</comment><comment><USER17> As an outsider, the framing of this question as a (false) dichotomy really looks like the strongest selling point of (US flavoured) capitalism.

It seems like y'all over there have been taught for multiple generations now that it's either the status quo or [GDR|USSR], and until very recently, nobody seemed capable of (openly) speaking of anythibg going _beyond_ this limited range of settings.

<comment><USER18> ...why are you using "y'all" if you're not American, let alone from the south?

<comment><USER17> Seriously? I play "you have all been taught to reflexively not talk about that" and you reflexively counter with "you used a funny word there"?

Thanks for making my poibt I guess... FYI I'm not only not American, I'm also not a native English speaker. Why not ask me outright how I dare appropriating your precious language by using your words at all?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of course, without a definition, and with "socialism" covering a wide range from "social democracy" to "full on communism" this finding doesn't tell us much more than "More Research Needed".

Good to see that more Americans are realising that unchecked capitalism isn't doing them any good though.

<comment><USER20> Unchecked capitalism has brought us some really great products that make life easier and more enjoyable, while becoming cheaper in price over time as companies race to the bottom. I'd say that's pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> And both camps stopped evolving around 1960. Exceptions are fringe.

What is called 'capitalism' changed every few decades until it froze after Milton Friedman. Friedman's negative income tax proposal (effectively very similar to UBI) was already too radical.

The 'socialism' froze around the same time to the baby boomer era Social Democracy that worked actually quite well in industrial society. It has no answers to post-industrial problems. Except in cases where capitalism is overshooting.

Eventually there will be change, but it can't be framed socialism vs capitalism. See for example: [http://radicalmarkets.com/](http://radicalmarkets.com/) and Common Ownership Self-Assessed Tax (COST).

Intro to radical markets: [https://paulrberg.com/post/2018/12/24/radical- markets/](https://paulrberg.com/post/2018/12/24/radical-markets/)

<comment><USER22> > [http://radicalmarkets.com/chapters/uniting-the-worlds- > worker...](http://radicalmarkets.com/chapters/uniting-the-worlds-workers/)

> We propose a Visas between Individuals Program (VIP) that would tie together > the interests of the working classes of rich and poor countries through > sponsorship of visas and sharing of the gains from migration. Because every > citizen would benefit from migration, rather than just the wealthy or those > in cosmopolitan cities, migration would move from being one of the most > divisive issues in wealthy countries to a widely popular source of growing > middle-class income

So a person giving some immigrant a visa will have the option to cancel it? This type of relations between individuals will surely result in abuse.

<comment><USER21> As said in the book. The US already has similar program, J-1 visa program allows Au pair, EduCare, Interns, trainees to work in the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People who were at most 1 when the Soviet Union collapsed prefer socialism. You don't say.

</comment><comment><USER23> I suspect that this preference is purely theoretical...

<comment><USER24> Judging by the massive growing homeless encampments everywhere I don't think it's really theory anymore. Where I live they have started drilling into trees to set anchor points for clotheslines down by the river, and even have setting up semi-permanent shanty structures out of scrap 2x4s and plywood. TB is a common problem. Everyone bathes in the river.

The USA is looking more and more like Brazil or Saudi Arabia every day. Great times for a select few, shantytowns (or concentration camps) for the rest. At some point that breaks down, regardless of how much you spend on police.

<comment><USER23> The US is in many ways a third world country, but I don't think many young people actually know or would prefer actual socialism, as experienced by hundreds of millions of Chinese and Eastern Europeans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My observations are that kids think it's cool to be socialist. Possibly from how they see capitalism not working for them.

</comment><comment><USER26> they've seen what capitalism does to a country. the greed, the shareholders vs workers struggle, the banksters, they're all good reasons to not like capitalism.

what they didn't see is what a centrally planned socialist economy does to a country. i'd like to invite them to a trip around eastern europe and post- soviet republics and 'republics'.

</comment><comment><USER17> This thread just reads like one collective allergic reaction. Y'all have been well trained. Two thumbs up for capitalism!

<comment><USER14> Yes, those who disagree with you are trained and you have the one truth. How very convenient.

<comment><USER17> It's great, actually :) But seriously, I think these stats are mostly surprising/interesting because education and public discourse have pretty systematically prohibited any opinions of the sort to be publicly voiced, often with very express force of the state. So yeah, I'd call that (bad) training.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Could somebody explain why the title of the post changed? How does that work?

EDIT: the title of the article is indeed "Democrats More Positive About Socialism Than Capitalism". But what I found most interesting is the second table which shows "Views About Capitalism and Socialism: by Age" (overall)

<comment><USER27> A moderator reverted the title from "Young Americans (age 18-29) prefer socialism to capitalism (2018)" to that of the article (as the guidelines call for). It's up to readers to decide what they find most interesting.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez socialist? I got a bridge to sell you...

</comment><comment><USER29> The question is:

Which of these problems:

\- Corruption in the government

\- Lack of affordable healthcare

\- Expensive universities

\- No social safety net

\- Problematic privatized prison system

\- Pollution

could have been avoided with more socialism? If the obvious answer is: "most of them", then i can't blame them.

<comment><USER30> I would say "probably yes" to all of them except the corruption. I have seen little evidence that socialism reduces corruption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Young people are more idealistic about how the world should be but less realistic on how the world really is. Over time life experience and responsibilities like work, family and a mortgage will creep up on you and slowly swing you to the safe world of moderate capitalism and conservatism.

Yesterday on the news it was said that the Green parties in Europe have the future because half of the young voters (18-25) voted for progressive parties, but they forgot that in 5 years they will all be at the age of starting a family and will vote much more conservative.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is not evidence of any trends or tailwinds behind socialism in the long term. The exact same cohort will change their minds over the next 40-60 years.

Historically, young people always prefer socialism, because they tend not to have a firm idea of what capitalism is, or how they benefit from it. They are still learning how the world works and what their place is in it. They are more prone to utopianism and idealism. This generation, in particular, has no historical knowledge of the great human cost of socialism to the billions of people who, in the last century, suffered under socialist regimes.

Hence the well-known quote that no one can definitively attribute[1]: "A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head."

[1] [https://katecarruthers.com/2005/02/11/alleged-quote-by- churc...](https://katecarruthers.com/2005/02/11/alleged-quote-by-churchill-on- being-a-socialist-or-conservative/)

<comment><USER33> I think your point is good. But I think young americans are flirting with socialist ideas mainly because US average income has flattened for decades, and a lot of inflation has happened in between.

With all the uber/temporary employment and lack of unionisation. People start to look at socialism, not as a counterpoint to capitalism, but the marginalisation of many in society.

I, for instance, understand and believe in Capitalism, so as I do in Socialism. I'm in a very privileged position in society, with everything I need in terms of compensation, career etc. But I can't close my eyes to how everybody around me is suffering even to find a real job.

For many Americans, they would be better off by using a travel machine and being on the workforce in the 70's. Which tells me that they feel left behind, and of course, they will want a solution, which socialism "seems" to offer. At least in the short term. They get things for free. And forget that one must have worked for that thing to be created.

If society doesn't work in a way that people are able to produce and create things, as it currently is for many americans, they will defend whatever systems that tells those people that *ism will fix their problems.

In the very deep end, I think Americans haven't changed much. They want to be able to conquer their own future, the American Dream is still alive, but how society is organised in America very much suck for most young Americans.

What all Americans don't want to admit is that the US isn't as important anymore. Other countries are catching up and that will make US even poorer in relation to them.

Lately the only real product that the US has been selling is the dollar, and this won't last. The country must adapt to a new reality, which the eyes of many doesn't want to see.

<comment><USER32> That's fair -- there does seem to be a term conflation here. Socialism in the modern usage in the USA, amongst young people at least, tends to refer to 'democratic' socialism which is more like highly regulated capitalism on the Western European model. People who tend to support socialism are really saying they want more unions, single payer healthcare, more regulation, etc.

And that's very different than historical socialism which looks more like Venezuela than Denmark.

<comment><USER34> Which is why, to first approximation, anyone outside of the US views your mainstream progressive as hard right and your right-of-center as fascist.

<comment><USER32> If by "anyone outside of the US" you mean "anyone living in Western Europe" then yes...I think you underestimate the deep conservatism of many, many high- population countries from Russia to Brazil to the Philippines to Nigeria.

<comment><USER34> I'm Canadian and I've lived in South America and South East Asia. I've travelled elsewhere rather extensively.

In my experience, no need to point out that it's not universal, the US is the only place that worships the profit motive whilst aspiring to fascism. Lots of places have those things by de facto argument but nowhere else does conservative thought mean desiring a state where these things come as a secondary consequence if not a primary motivation.

Let alone while being championed as freedom(tm). The US is a very strange place; perhaps the one metric it is most exceptional. I've met, lived & worked with and admired many American people. I can appreciate the American experiment and ideals. It's just too bad what those Americans do in the name of those American ideals that seems so very.... unamerican.

<comment><USER32> > the US is the only place that worships the profit motive whilst aspiring to > fascism

This is such a red herring and quite impossible to argue with.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What plane crashes have in common with Product Development - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/1-minute-startup-advice/what-plane-crashes-have-in-common-with-product-development-a02e36404297#.4rwan69xu <comment><USER2> This brought to mind the book "The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'" by Sidney Dekker [0]. It touches on how there is usually a more nuanced and complex explanation behind incidents (such as plane crashes) than simply one person's mistake.

[0] [http://sidneydekker.com/books/](http://sidneydekker.com/books/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Surely it is possible to have a too-egalitarian aircrew, even if this never occurs in practice. But this is the problem I feel like I encounter most often in Product Development teams, at least within the software realm.</comment>


BlackBerry 10 Launch Event to be Held on January 30th 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://press.rim.com/newsroom/press/2012/blackberry-10-launch-event-to-be-held-on-january-30th-2013.html

<comment><USER2> Here's the question that's critical for both Windows 8 and BB10 - is having a good product enough anymore?

By most accounts WP8 is pretty good and we can give RIM the benefit of the doubt and assume BB10 will be pretty good as well. But are consumers going to care? Is that enough to move a significant number of units? Other than being different, what exactly are these platforms offering? I've read through the new and exciting features - preditive keyboards, email at a glance, good multititasking - and all I think is "neat, but I've been doing that on my phone for years"

It seems that while WP8 and BB10 are still trying to nail down the "modern OS on decent hardware" problem, iOS and Android have moved on to the next level of competition - ecosystems (iTunes, Google Play) and smart services (Siri and Google Now).

<comment><USER3> About a hundred years ago you could've asked the same questions of the car industry.

I'm not a fan of RIM, but the iPhone might just be today's Ford Model T.

<comment><USER4> Your perspective is refreshing, however it's worth noting that the automotive market doesn't have the same network effects as mobile computing. All cars take the same gasoline and oil for the most part.

<comment><USER5> All mobile devices use TCP/IP and have browsers. But they also all have specific add-ons: cases, plugs, add-on mics, tie-ins with devices - medical, etc. Just like all cars have a lot of after-market parts (spoilers, rims, etc) that all only fit specific car/models.

<comment><USER6> Kinda important to mention _apps_ when talking about smartphones.

Sure, you can buy Angry Birds (or whatever) again for $0.99 if you switch platforms, but will you buy _all_ of your apps again? And what if you really like an app that's only on one platform?

<comment><USER7> I am of the belief, that the latter is what we will prevent migration to a new platform but not the former.

Perhaps power users would rather not repurchase dozens of paids of apps; but for the average user, the amount of money invested into apps would probably be on par with the amount of money invested into a case for said phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For RIM to have any chance at being the market leader once again they must do what the iPhone did to the mobile industry back when it was first introduced. Anything under that just means a slower death.

What could it be? I believe making a phone itself is useless at this point. Why not look in to Pranav Mistry's SixthSense? Something of this caliber is what is needed to make the 'next big thing'. Competing in Apple/Google playing field is futile, a new field is needed.

Although I had high hopes for RIM (ex bb user), I highly doubt their execs are even in this mindset^^^.

<comment><USER9> For years RIM has mistreated their customers. They real "customers" are the businesses who buy phones for their employees and not the employee themselves. That is what has hurt them the most.

BB10 is their last hope of survival. So far I have not see anything ground breaking with this phone and being the first model it is likely to be far from perfect. If their latest BB10 phone does not match Samsung Galaxy S3 in specs I would say it is pretty useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The BlackBerry® 10 platform has recently achieved FIPS 140-2 certification"-- not sure how meaningful this is if you can become certified months before the final hardware/software is available...

<comment><USER11> Well, I'd imagine it's critically important for customers who can't even consider devices without the certification (i.e. some parts of the federal government). I don't believe any iPhones or Androids currently meet the standard, so it's actually kind of a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They need to do more than just attempt to play catch up to iOS and Android. I think this is where WP8 really fails; it doesn't revolutionize.

The time is long past when it's enough to just say "Me too!", you have to do what the iPhone did in 2007; change the game. If BB10 doesn't do that, it's not going to save RIM.

<comment><USER13> I agree but they might not be able to afford to make something revolutionary.

I mean if they even want to ship any units at all right now they either need to pick Android or WP8. Now from rumour Microsoft are literally paying manufacturers (as opposed to Google who just give it away).

I think RIM are just trying to stay alive right now, they can consider their competitive edge later.

<comment><USER12> They're not going to stay alive if they don't introduce something revolutionary now.

Doing something revolutionary doesn't require tons of money, companies with far fewer resources than RIM introduce revolutionary products all the time. In fact I'd say most innovation comes from startups working on a shoestring budget.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> buy or sell?</comment>


Hackers are defacing Reddit with pro-Trump messages - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-are-defacing-reddit-with-pro-trump-messages/ <comment><USER2> > but the large scale of the incident suggests that the intruder(s) might have > gained access to a high-privileged moderator or admin account.

The fact that only certain, less-than-top-20 subreddits are affected seems to suggest that it's just certain subreddit moderators who have been hacked, not actual Reddit admins.

I feel that distinction is important. Aren't subreddit moderators just regular users anyway who happen to moderate a subreddit?

<comment><USER3> in particular because apparently very few moderators mod a ton of subreddits. I remember seeing some drama a while ago about some sort of excessively concentrated mod power.

<comment><USER4> 4 users are the moderators of 96 of the top communities.

Of course the same mods took down the post that pointed this out, saying it was harassment.

These 'power mods' have full access to the sub reddit they are moderators of. They can push a post up or down the feed's algorithm , give it as many reddit awards as they wish and perma ban any user.

<comment><USER5> > They can push a post up or down the feed's algorithm

This is not, and has never been, the case. Moderators can remove posts and ban users, but they cannot affect the scoring or placement of posts (short of pinning up to two posts to the top of the page, which visually distinguishes them from other posts).

<comment><USER4> The usual mods can't, but the power mods can.

I know it sounds like a conspiracy, but these are trusted users with lots of karma. A normal mod has no power except remove posts and ban users

<comment><USER5> I have never heard of or seen evidence of this before, and I've been using Reddit for the last ten years.

"Power mods" is a colloquial term used for users who are moderators of a large number of subreddits (especially large ones). It isn't a separate, special status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its strange that some of these messages are written in Chinese. [https://video- images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1596820874448-s...](https://video- images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1596820874448-screen- shot-2020-08-07-at-10932-pm.png?resize=800:*)

Also some messages instead of saying Donald Trump they used 唐纳德·特朗普 which are the Chinese characters for Donald Trump according to google translate.

Was this done to try to frame China or something? Or would Chinese hackers really use Chinese characters?

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks like a coordinated usage of previously hacked/compromised mod accounts (as in, not like the Twitter hack).

Here is at least 1 mod saying that is what happened: [https://reddit.com/r/space/comments/i5fhd3/_/g0oumkc/?contex...](https://reddit.com/r/space/comments/i5fhd3/_/g0oumkc/?context=1)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious what the goal was here, since the posts they made almost read as satire.

<comment><USER9> > I'm curious what the goal was here, since the posts they made almost read as > satire.

Well, that could have been the goal then?

<comment><USER6> If the goal was to increase support for Trump I don't think it will accomplish that goal.

<comment><USER10> Maybe the opposite?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why they would do that.

</comment><comment> m-p-3 Maybe the impact would have been lower if there was a limit to how many subreddits you can be a moderator of? At some point, you might be moderating more than humanly possible.

</comment><comment><USER12> More like subreddit moderators selling their accounts to the Russians

</comment><comment><USER13> Are politics like that allowed on here? Doesn't sound like a good idea. 'Old Biden was a good man anyway, but be has one confirmed brain aneurism and may have a second, plus we are in a depression that everyone calls a recession (to avoid panic) so doesn't the final choice have to be Trump Good, Starvation Bad? By the way, there is no way to deface Reddit and Russia are gone-be our BFFs in a Trump second term —Russia plus USA will remind everyone what China rhymes with.</comment>


Antennagate Addendum - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/antennagate_addendum

<comment><USER2> So much ink wasted on this, now please stop. Tell me what Apple going to do next.

<comment><USER3> Sell more iPhones.</comment></comment>