Obama to eliminate all cap gains taxes for VCs and entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> I was just watching Obama live in Ohio and he said he was going to put forward a bill to eliminate all capital gains taxes for anyone investing in startups. This essentially means that entrepreneurs and venture capitalists will pay no taxes at all. This is craziness, what's going on here. <comment><USER2> As an entrepreneur and investor, I think Obama's proposal solves a "problem" that doesn't really exist.

First, long term cap gains tax rates are already quite low (relative to regular income), and I can't think of a single entrepreneurial or investor scenario where I've seen: "gee, if tax rates were lower I'd {invest,start this company}"

Second, it will be tough to implement in a loop-hole proof way. Every private equity and hedge fund will be organizing "startup" projects, so they can make take profits tax free. My guess is it will be capped, making it even less of any sort of meaningful incentive.

My take: there are other tax areas that need work first, like code simplification and AMT.

<comment><USER3> Another suggestion: raise the tax, and use it to fund universal health insurance -- something that will encourage entrepreneurs by making their lives _easier_.

<comment><USER4> It will certainly give them less incentive to look for a job that provide health-care, but it won't give people any more incentive to engage in startups in particular. You are giving people less incentive to get rich (one big reason to begin a startup) and you are making it more difficult, by taxing them directly. So I don't think universal health coverage will do much for startups. It will mostly help low income and freelance laborers at the expense of the rich and the steadily employed. This might be a good thing, but it won't really help startups all that much.

<comment><USER3> That's utter nonsense.

People don't avoid starting companies because they're afraid of the capital gains tax on their anticipated profits (At least, people with a healthy dose of _perspective_ don't do this).

If you're going to pick from the list of reasons that people avoid starting companies, at the top of the list has to be the fact that most are afraid that they'll be unable to _take care of themselves and their family_ during the lean times. Universal health coverage is an obvious step toward alleviating this fear. The abstract, vague notion of someday paying a (rather low) tax on the eventual, theoretical profits from the venture doesn't even come close.

<comment><USER4> I can't speak on behalf of 'people,' but I can speak on behalf of myself. Universal health coverage would be very expensive, and if a large portion of it were paid with capital gain's taxes, you can bet that it would effect my decision making process of whether it was worth going through the effort to begin a startup. It would certainly effect my strategy and golas in starting one.

<comment><USER3> _"Universal health coverage would be very expensive"_

You're focusing on the trees. Who do you think pays the private health care premiums for your hypothetical startup? The insurance fairy?

That money comes out of your pocket, today -- not out of (speculative) future capital gains dollars. And since it's nearly always more expensive (per head) to insure smaller groups, you're very likely going to pay _more_ by insuring your own small company, versus participating in a national program.

That said, I don't necessarily think that capital gains are the best place to find money for health care. But if it came down to a choice between raising capital gains taxes (which are quite low in this country) to fund universal coverage, and eliminating our already meager capital gains taxes to "promote" small business, I'd take the health care in a minute. And I'd still start a company, because my expected upside will _massively exceed_ any loss due to taxes -- again, it's all about perspective.

At the end of the day, the "taxes discourage business" canard only works for the ultra-rich, who _already_ have significant capital gains to protect. For the rest of us, it's a _much_ better deal to get guaranteed health coverage.

<comment><USER5> Given the overwhelming evidence that nationalized health care is more efficient and humane (by definition, covering everyone), I really don't think you will get far arguing with the holdouts that have their fingers in their ears.

<comment><USER6> more efficient? what planet are you from?

Canada: 8 weeks for heart surgery

America: Next Week.

Nova Scotia: 25 weeks for a specialty consult

Iowa: 1 week for a specialty consult

[http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/10/15/waittimes- fraser.h...](http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/10/15/waittimes-fraser.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We should be careful how we structure this.

Consider...Tens of Thousands of out of work financial types along with their lawyers. They start opening law offices and "financial services firms" because entrepreneurs can now operate tax free. Only now we are going back down this road of 'faux wealth creation' that got us here.

Now consider Tens of Thousands of out of work real estate agents who start creating 'startups' that hawk foreclosed homes.

Or Tens of Thousands of out of work mortgage brokers who start their own businesses slinging mortgages for those foreclosed homes.

Are you starting to see the concern I have?

Will these firms be considered 'startups', or part of that section of the economy that creates wealth?

How should we treat the service economy in general? Are services 'wealth'? What are they backed by?

These are very important questions. We should think through this stuff thoroughly prior to enacting policy. Questionable policy is what got us here in the first place.

BTW - I love this idea if it can be somehow restricted to people who start a company producing things that other people will pay money for. As opposed to services. This is the definition of wealth creation.

EDIT : I see payne92 has hit on a similar concern.

<comment><USER8> Apart from the other concerns over this plan, would that kind of restructuring of the labor force into independent operators be so bad? I think labor markets are the least efficient markets around, and I think we'd probably all be better off if they were more flexible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just for some background, I'm a libertarian (though not a party member)

I'm really skeptical of the tax plans both parties are putting forward. Additionally I'm extra super skeptical of having one party completely in charge of the country, which is where it looks like we are heading.

If I understand Obama correctly, investing in startups would be tax-free but as soon as you make 250K per year we're going to zap you with extra taxes? Seems like that would reward investors, which is good, but then stick it to the sole proprietors who make it on their own (bootstrap).

So -- good news for one type of startup and bad news for another? Beats me. The tax code is a complete mess, and for one, I'm tired of politicians continuing to tinker with it to engineer society one way or another. It's dumb.

</comment><comment><USER10> This has been part of his tax plan since at least last year. It is pretty vague however (see section II on page 3 of his tax plan [http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/taxes/Factsheet_Tax_Plan_FINA...](http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/taxes/Factsheet_Tax_Plan_FINAL.pdf)), for example he doesn't define what a "startup" is (e.g. does Bill Gates have to pay tax on his Microsoft stock?). In any case, it's not a new, off-the- cuff, erratic policy proposal.

<comment><USER11> That's a shame, because defining a "startup" is the most crucial part of the proposal, and I'm not convinced it can be done sensibly.

I'm not sure I approve of the whole idea, but I have to admit it would have good consequences if it were implemented correctly. However, if I could be so bold as to propose Hugh's First Law of Politics, it would be this:

 _The unintended consequences of any policy change are almost always more significant than the intended consequences._

And this is almost always doubly so if you're either (a) deploying the military or (b) creating a huge new tax loophole.

I foresee two problems. The first is under-defining startups. As others have pointed out by now, it's not that difficult for some rich guy to start a "startup company" in order to handle all his capital-gains producing affairs. Wanna buy an investment property? Better start a company to hold it, so that you can sell it without capital gains tax. Pretty soon you'd have a huge collection of "fake" startups which would probably swamp the real ones.

The second possibility is over-defining startups. In order to overcome the problem of fake startups, you define that a "real" startup must have properties X, Y and Z. But some day somebody might start a real startup that's so innovative in its business model that it has X and Z but not Y. Pretty soon you're actually holding back the startup scene by restricting the kinds of startups which people can produce. And at the very least, it's going to create a new administrative burden for startups, who are going to have to spend some time proving to the government that they're real startups and aren't engaging in any unstartuplike activities.

Those are the two problems I can think of, off the top of my head. There might be others which I can't think of (but which no doubt will seem obvious in hindsight).

<comment><USER12> Re: over-defining startups,

For both problems you cite, the worst case scenario comes down to the situation _without_ that law, right? A startup that has X and Z but not Y, will be no worse with the new law than without it. And if the "new administrative burden" wasn't worth it, startups could ignore it and pay their taxes.

You may argue that startups that fail to get the tax discount would incur a competitive penalty. I don't think this handicap would be really insurmountable for enough startups that the loss from their failure would outweight the overall gains elsewhere.

<comment><USER13> The worst case scenario for startups, sure. For society as a whole, the first scenario results in the loss of considerable amounts of tax revenue from people whom the law wasn't meant to affect, and that's worse than the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is that crazy? Entrepreneurs are the ones that drive America forward. By encouraging investment it will make the country better and may very well rejuvenate the economy.

<comment><USER15> You know what else would rejuvenate the economy? Cutting taxes on all businesses, and not playing favorites. America has the highest corporate tax rate in the OECD.

I'm all for startups, I'm all for cutting taxes, but I'm a skeptic of politicians attempts to engineer society through the tax code. At best, it smacks of the old dream of a totalitarian state where an enlightened central director plans society for the good of all. At worst, it provides an incentive for corruption (ok, pig farmers get a tax break but not cow farmers, public school teachers get a tax deduction but not homeschoolers, etc. etc.).

<comment><USER16> I think our tax rate is more about keeping acountants employed than collecting revenue. There are an insane number of loopholes out there so it becomes a race to see who has the most daring accounting team.

I say pick whatever todays average effective tax rate is round it up to the next whole % and destroy all loopholes. That way we can eliminate the economic drag that our stupid tax code produces without reducing revenue. (Ok, this will never happen but I can hope.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like Obama and I'm most likely voting for him, but he was on the team (w/ the Clintons) that's partly to blame for this big mess.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64>

NINJA loans made me cry. No income, no job or assets = APPROVED!

<comment><USER18> Why would you still vote for the guy assuming you understand he had a hand in this current mess? That doesn't make any sense to me.

<comment><USER19> Because the other option _also_ had a hand in this mess? Damned if you do, Palined if you don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In Japan, there are two options for paying tax on capital gains. The first, Withholding Tax all proceeds (regardless of profit or loss) at 1.05%. The second method, declaring proceeds as "taxable income" requires individuals to declare 26% of proceeds on their income tax statement.

Many traders in Japan use both systems, declaring profits on the Withholding Tax system and losses as taxable income, minimizing the amount of income tax paid.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax#Japan>

</comment><comment><USER21> Just so I understand: So say a fictional company, let's call it "TicketStumbler", were to issue dividends instead of paying salaries (or pays minimal salaries), the investors and founders of this hypothetical company would not have to pay taxes?

Or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER22> Mr. Obama's official tax plan states the following:

Eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses, cut corporate taxes for firms that invest and create jobs in the United States, and provide tax credits to reduce the cost of healthcare and to reward investments in innovation. __* What you have stated he said is very different, and perhaps he has changed his position.

Regardless, I would love to hear Obama explain what he means by eliminating capital gains for startups and small businesses?

There is a big diff between eliminating all capital gains taxes on start-ups and small businesses and eliminating all capital gains taxes for individuals that found/invest in start-ups and small businesses.

Small businesses and startups have very little capital gains liabilities.

Entrepreneurs that start successful companies and those that invest in them have potentially huge capital gains liabilities and the latter by definition reside in the wealth class that Obama wants to tax more.

You really think he is proposing that folks like PG, Cuban, Larry, Sergey, and Bill Gates for that matter pay no taxes on their capital gains. I think not.

The concept would encourage investment so I like it. But I want the details which have not been forthcoming.

<comment><USER23> > You really think he is proposing that folks like PG, Cuban, Larry, Sergey, > and Bill Gates for that matter pay no taxes on their capital gains.

He doesn't have to propose that because it's already law.

I don't know about PG, but the estates of the others, which will get the vast majority of what they earned, won't pay taxes when they die. At most they're going to pay capital gains on what they spend while they're alive, and even then there are some tricks.

Inheritance tax is optional if your assets are liquid enough and large enough. In short, when Gates and Buffet said that estate taxes should be higher, they were talking about taxing other people.

And you thought that they set up those foundations to do good....

<comment><USER22> I beg to differ.

Estates are currently taxed. I believe to the tune of 45% of the amount over $2 million.

As far as capital gains goes, they are due when you sell your capital. In the case of PG this most likely occurred when he sold ViaWeb. Everytime Larry and Sergey sell their GOOG stock they incur captial gains.

Obama is generally proposing raising the capital gains tax from 15% to 20% for anyone that earns over $250,000. Any startup founder that has a successful exit should make a heck of a lot more then $250k. By def an angel investor must earn $200k per year or have a net work of more than $1 million.

And that is why I want to see the details.

<comment><USER23> > Estates are currently taxed.

The key word there is "estates"; "legal estates" would be more accurate.

Gates et al move their accumulated wealth out of their legal estates into tax- free foundations and the like. So, while their legal estates may be taxed, there is almost nothing there to tax.

No, they didn't sell their stock to fund these foundations - they donated stock, which is either tax free or provides a tax benefit. Yes, those foundations serve many of the purposes of "estates". (The Gates kids and their kids and so on will always have an income.)

There are other things that they can do to shift money to their kids and grand-kids without significant tax consequences. (Yes, there's a $10k limit on some transactions, but ....)

There are things that these folk can do while they're alive to generate tax benefits that they can then use to make other sales tax free, giving them something to live on. (I don't know the legal status of the Google planes, but the planes that are available to NASA could easily generate tax benefits.)

<comment><USER22> You think that Bill got that money to build that big ol house of his tax free?

<comment><USER23> I don't know how much tax planning Gates does. He may think that avoiding cap gains on $40M (which is what I heard that his house cost) isn't worth the trouble.

I previously mentioned using donations to shelter income. His house offers some additional opportunities.

I think that a huge fraction of the cost went to cool custom gadgets. If Gates set up a company to research/develop those gadgets, he can deduct the "losses" when said company doesn't manage to sell them. Yes, he should pay for the gadgets themselves, but they're cheap compared to the NRE.

There are some ways to do tax-free roll-over to fund companies, so the deductions would shelter other income.

Even if Gates had to pay cap gains to fund the company that developed the gadgets, he's way ahead if the deductions are at ordinary income rates. If he both pays and deducts at cap gains rates, he's just out cap gains on the gadgets themselves.

However, like I said, I don't know how much tax planning Gates does. He has over $60B, so avoiding cap gains on $40M is like someone with $2M avoiding cap gains on a cheap used car. Then again, he may have set up a system 20 years ago to pull out money tax-free every year. Putting $40M through it may be just SOP.

<comment><USER22> Fair enough, though I think that we have strayed from the topic of taxes on capital gains on startups or investments in startups or whatever it is that Obama is proposing.

My point was, however poorly made with the Gates example, that I doubt that the thought, other loopholes aside, is to eliminate capital gains tax for people that are deemed to be "rich".

Regardless, I am all for any tax incentive that provides incentives for anyone to start or invest in a startup.

<comment><USER23> > My point was, however poorly made with the Gates example, that I doubt that > the thought, other loopholes aside, is to eliminate capital gains tax for > people that are deemed to be "rich".

I think that it's silly to consider "the thought". We should look at where we actually are and what is likely to actually happen if we make proposed changes.

Part of "where we actually are" is that the very rich don't pay estate taxes and can work around cap gains taxes, so evaluating cap gains proposals based on their effects on the very rich is silly.

Instead, we should look at people who are actually paying cap gains (and estate taxes for that matter).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seems fair enough to me. Entrepreneurs and VCs are major wealth creators. It doesn't make too much sense to stifle nascent wealth with blanket taxation rules.

<comment><USER11> Except that _all_ taxpayers are wealth creators, and this would just mean screwing the rest of 'em to benefit a small bunch.

<comment><USER25> _Except that all taxpayers are wealth creators_

Not as much as entrepreneurs who deal directly with customers - customers are less forgiving than bosses or PhD advisors. A boss may let you get away with not being productive if you're a nice enough person and trying hard to do your job, but customers want a product for their money.

<comment><USER26> Right, because a corporation that builds a new shipping terminal or rail line does nothing for society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > I was just watching Obama live in Ohio and he said he was going to put > forward a bill to eliminate all capital gains taxes for anyone investing in > startups.

Remember that the "qualified investor" rules keep most of us out of a lot of startup investments.

</comment><comment><USER15> Politicians say things all the time. You must be new at this.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's just a favor for the rich (the cynical part of me asks how many VCs give money to Democrats?). Most small startups, computers, software or otherwise, are not suffering from high capital gains taxes. A general corporate tax cut (we have the 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world), perhaps targeted at small companies, would be a lot more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER28> i am not an expert, but i would guess that it would be temporary to stimulate the new business area of the economy.

</comment><comment><USER29> _"More likely, you'll just get a lot of people doing things that can be made to look on paper like startups."_

<http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html>

</comment><comment><USER30> Not crazy, and not exactly his idea (but might be a good one)

Just like 'McCain's idea' of buying up bad mortgages and re-negotiating new values/payments ... Hillary proposed it months ago.

Oh and davidw is right, politics as usual.

<comment><USER31> This has been a part of Obama's tax plan from the start, FWIW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wrong. He said he's going to eliminate capital gains taxes _on startups_ not on _startup investors_. So if your startup buys stock in other companies and makes a capital gain, it doesn't pay taxes on it. Hear recently of any startup doing such a thing? No, I didn't think so.

<comment><AUTHOR> "That's why I've proposed eliminating all capital gains taxes on investments in small businesses and start-ups. And today, I'm proposing an additional temporary business tax incentive through next year to encourage new investments."

<comment><USER32> Hmm. That and the PDF version of Obama's position statement suggest your interpretation. Obama's convention speech and the HTML version suggest mine. I wonder if he's even clear on the difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How big a sacrifice is this? In order for capital gains to get taxed there have to be capital gains in the first place. That look like a long shot in the short to medium term.

</comment><comment><USER34> How are capital gains relevant to software entrepreneurs? It seems like they are assets that most early-stage companies wouldn't own and thus couldn't profit from.

<comment><USER35> Capital gains are very relevant to software entrepreneurs.

If you're a founder, or an investor, or a fortunate early-employee of a startup, capital gains is the tax you'll be paying on the money you make in the event that your company gets acquired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> My assumption is that this has a cap of $250k per year.

I say this because he has repeatedly stated "You will not see an increase in taxes if you make less than $250k per year."

<comment><USER37> The 250k a year discussion is related to income tax, not capital gains.

<comment><USER36> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Health care's a bigger deterrent to startups than capital gains taxes are.

<comment><USER39> He also has a healthcare plan that's pretty friendly to small businesses and individuals.

<http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why can't I just create a hedge fund and call it a startup? Bam no taxes.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's also "politics"...

</comment><comment><USER42> this can be really great if you are starting a company and it is in pre ipo growth mode, somethimes you have to pay tax on shares that are not sellable.

</comment><comment><USER43> Fabulous. Kick ass.

</comment><comment><USER44> Senator Obama has it on the money here I think. Going back to the depression, what was it that really got things moving and finally led to the prosperity of the 1950's? Well, WWII, which stimulated production. The best, perhaps the only, "way out" of a depression is new enterprise. We don't need a war for that of course. We just need new products, new idea, new technologies, which create new jobs and importantly "moves money" again. The problem is money is "frozen", being "hoarded" by scared banks and investors. So giving a tax incentive to entrepreneurs can stimulate the economy by getting start-ups a hand-up, which gets investment money moving, which creates jobs, etc. Socializing banks will not lead to prosperity in the long-run. Free-enterprise will.</comment>


Drone Flies Over NSA Complex in Germany, Dropping Leaflets - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/drone-flies-over-nsa-complex-in-germany-dropping-pamphlets/ <comment><USER2> While it's a nifty gesture it's also one of the easiest ways of getting drones banned (especially considering that according to openAIP that airspace is restricted).

A protest would be more effective but i guess it's a bit harder to fit in a 1min YouTube video.</comment>


Linux Kernel Memory Leakage Issue - <AUTHOR> http://litaos.com/litaos_wordpress/?p=165

<comment><USER2> I'm going to have to say "pics or it didn't happen".

Post the simplest code that causes the problem, so we can all try it, verify it, and maybe propose a fix. Because right now, this sounds a lot like some program that actually does _not_ free all the memory it allocates, i.e. the program leaks.</comment>


Ask HN: Ask them to pay/schedule or handle it myself? - <AUTHOR> Long story short, I have an inquiry from a medium sized company to come out to the Bay Area for an interview. However, they want me to pay for the flick, hotel, etc and will reimburse me. I'm sure they will, but I wanted to understand what your general policy is on such things. Suck it up and pay for a flight in two days and an airbnb. Or would you ask them to cover it? <comment><USER2> I've pre-paid probably $100k of travel expenses over the years and gotten reimbursed for it. (Occupational hazard of consulting and speaking at conferences internationally.)

That said, it doesn't really matter what anyone else does, right? This is between you and the company. Some companies are we'll-reimburse-you shops, some will want to book your ticket, largely because they have internal processes built up to do one or the other. (A note on market norms for young HNers: you should expect to get plane tickets and a hotel room for any job interview in a city which requires flying, courtesy of the company. A company not offering that is a company to avoid. I personally feel like companies owe candidates a per diem -- modest payment to defray the cost of meals and incidentals -- but you'll find that relatively few companies spontaneously offer this.)

 _Most_ companies should be fairly reasonable with regards to making alternate arrangements if you're not in a position to do them yourself. You do not have to elaborate on why. "Hey $RECRUITER, Thanks for the email. It would be more convenient for me if you could book the tickets/hotel room. What information from me do you need to make this happen?" will probably work. You will almost certainly not be the only prospective employee to have ever made that request in history.

If one does not have a pressing reason why one would do this, I would suggest one just let companies run their standard processes. It makes things modestly easier for you. Also, if you have e.g. space available on credit cards, "I pay and then invoice you actual costs" is strictly superior to "You arrange travel" \-- you get reward points (whee) and, more importantly, reasonable discretion with regards to choice of flight and accommodations.</comment>


Travel like a human (Airbnb, YC W09) - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/07/24/ST2009072402126.html

<comment><USER2> Airbnb is a good example of how the best startup ideas tend to seem crazy at first. When we first met the Airbnbs, we loved the founders, but we had a hard time believing this would be popular. In fact it is massively popular. Few startups we've funded have grown so fast.

<comment><USER3> Paul,

Were they accepted the first time they applied?

<comment><USER2> Yes. IIRC they got a really good recommendation from the Justin.TV founders. Then once we met them we were sold too.

<comment><USER4> Paul, have any other teams been accepted to YC with the AirBNB team composition of 2 non-tech/1 tech founders? It makes sense in their case in that it is more of a social engineering than tech challenge, but it is an interesting case.

<comment><USER2> Yes. As long as there are people who can do each thing that needs to be done, we don't care what the ratio is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would consider being a host, but I'm always concerned possessions may get stolen having stranger in my apt. I'm surprised this doesn't turn away a lot of potential hosts.

Still a fantastic idea, and would definitely look to be a guest when traveling on a budget.

<comment><USER6> I bet a lot more people are scared of being killed, than they are of having a few trinkets stolen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I saw or hallucinated an "Airbnb for office space" recently, but can't find it for love nor money (which is what makes me think it's a hallucination). I recently spent a bit of time looking for a desk sublet and it took way longer than it should have. Though I guess there's something of a thorny area with commercial lettings and the like, it'd still be nice to book a place at some startup in London/Paris/SF to rest my laptop when I'm next down there for a few days.

<comment><USER8> Desk-PC-Coffee-n-Conferenceroom.com

<comment><USER9> Address not found! ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whats really missing from this article, and is alluded to quite frequently, is couchsurfing.com I skimmed the article, seems like a great pitch, but I didn't get why I would want to use airbnb.com over couchsurfing. couchsurfing.com is pretty mature though not w2.0. It's got the verification system so you can have some peace of mind, and its free.

<comment><USER11> couchsurfing = free; airbnb = some money. some people wont want to host someone in their house without compensation.

<comment><USER10> I get that. But from the perspective of a traveler, for any given well traveled city you are going to find an equivalent host with equivalent accommodations at both sites. I wonder if it would have been wiser to start Airbnb.com as the web 2.0 version of couchsurfing, and then go freemium. Something couchsurfing wouldn't do.

<comment><USER12> It's a different target demographic. In a trip to DC recently, we got a private room on AirBnB and saved roughly $25 pr. night ($75 vs. $100) over the hotel we'd otherwise have used, and we got a better experience for it.

We didn't feel any obligation to hang out with the host, bring gifts or stay in touch, or to accommodate our host or anyone else at our home -- which made things a lot easier.

I think it's more correct to think of AirBnB as cheap hotel, not premium couchsurfing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes, great Washington Post coverage.

Every time I hear about airbnb though, I wonder - don't you need a permit to offer paid accommodation? For example in my part of the U.S. you need a "special use" permit to run a B&B. How is advertising your spare room on airbnb different?

I looked in their FAQ but couldn't find an answer.

<comment><USER14> I think this falls within the wide category of unenforced laws.

<comment><USER15> and very difficult to enforce.

<comment><USER13> Is it? Around here (Hawaii) there are ordinances in many areas restricting the number of B&Bs that operate, and neighbours have been known to complain to the authorities when they see excess traffic to/from a property.

<comment><USER14> Sounds like the timeless combination of businesses colluding with government to keep competition out, enforced by tourist-hating among the locals.

<comment><USER16> It isn't necessarily business-government collusion. Those tourist-hating locals could just as easily have been the ones to 'lobby' local government to limit these things (probably more like 'abolish,' but 'limit' was the compromise). There are lots of localities where people try to get 'community standards' enacted like keeping your lawn trimmed to a standard height or other such nonsense.

<comment><USER14> Yes, but restricting the number of foo businesses in town is a boon to the existing local foo industry, since it protects all current foo businesses from competition. It's easy for established players to say, "oh yes, regulate us, make us get scarce operating permits to which we are already grandfathered into!" to eliminate future competition.

I don't think the collusion is necessarily overt, but most businesses welcome this kind of barrier to entry.

<comment><USER13> Well, I don't necessarily want to defend it, but I think there is a rationale to do with infrastructure. In the extreme case where everyone in a Hawaiian town offered a room to airbnb, the infrastructure would buckle under the increased population - not enough parking, some places are on cesspools that have limited capacity, water usage is a problem in some areas etc etc.

Granted there are also financial interests at stake, for example the state collecting a hefty room tax when people end up in hotels. But then that money goes to infrastructure among other things, so there is some method in the madness.

<comment><USER14> Scaling issues, in other words. All good reasons, but perhaps my cynical reasons are just as true :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was so skeptical when I first say them launch. I was like, "who is going to use this?". But after reading the article and viewing the site again, I think my wife and I are going to give it a try. There are so many places listed in our area with reviews. And it is a lot cheaper then going to a hotel for a night or weekend.

</comment><comment><USER17> nice article on a yc company. the part i like best: airbnb is a startup that helps other entrepreneurs starting up by letting them monetize their space, albeit indirectly. nice!

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow awesome idea - I think I'll probably be using this soon! The question of security etc. could be an issue but I imagine reviews (which I can't see yet) would help that.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like backpacking. Great fun, if you're in that frame of mind or want to be.</comment>


Amazon left police 'dumbfounded' by asking them to intervene in warehouse strike - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-asked-police-in-spain-to-intervene-warehouse-strike-2018-11 <comment><USER2> "We put our associates first". Obviously, the employees are misinformed.</comment>


NASA's peer-reviewed EM Drive paper published – and the drive appears to work - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-nasa-s-peer-reviewed-em-drive-paper-has-finally-been-published <comment><USER2> Ok, these click bait posts should really stop (at least here in HN).

According to the paper itself, there are still sources of error unaccounted for: _" Although thermal shift was addressed to a degree with this test campaign, future testing efforts should seek to develop testing approaches that are immune to CG shifts from thermal expansion."_.

And you must understand that this effect simply violates the laws of physics. So, the far best explanation so far is that what you are seeing is simply measurement error and actually wait for a real confirmation or refutal of the effect.

These click bait articles that keep resurfacing about the theme are a disservice to science.

Article at: [http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/1.B36120](http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/1.B36120)

<comment><USER3> This experiment has gotten a lot of attention and has been discussed by many with great interest. Drafts have been also discussed here.

It is a significant event that now a vetted paper is published. This is experimental data from a highly regarded institution that went through a thorough review process. Yes, it leaves questions open. It does not explain what has been observed at all and sticks to the experimental results.

It is not click-bait. It feels like it is coming again and again but it is officially out NOW! This is legitimate news. But it is also a dupe here on HN.

THIS HERE IS A DUPE.

Main discussion is directly linking to the paper: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12992536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12992536)</comment></comment>


Announcing React Native 0.60 - <AUTHOR> https://facebook.github.io/react-native/blog/2019/07/03/version-60 <comment><USER2> Expo released their support web (still in beta) at the start of the month, bringing react native + API extensions to iOS/Android + web.

[https://blog.expo.io/expo-sdk-v33-0-0-is-now- available-52d1c...](https://blog.expo.io/expo-sdk-v33-0-0-is-now- available-52d1c99dfe4c)

Ignoring the user interface, having a single JS codebase for APIs, business logic and unit tests is pretty darn exciting IMO, especially with typescript support.

<comment><USER3> What added value does react native has over Ionic and the likes?

<comment><USER4> Uses the real native UI components so you get the look, feel and performance of native UI instead of HTML recreations

<comment><USER5> Performance is not true, if measured in terms of cpu! See e.g.: [http://www.insticc.org/node/TechnicalProgram/icsoft/presenta...](http://www.insticc.org/node/TechnicalProgram/icsoft/presentationDetails/78380)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great work, however I think RN will always remain a tool for experiments and toys. I now had to migrate two RN projects to native because of the many issues we encountered. The promise of "write JS, deploy anywhere easily" will never be true given how complex both iOS and Android deployment is.

Plus, javascript.

</comment><comment><USER7> It isn't possible to write React once, and test it on all platforms, right? (iOS + Android + web)

Why doesn't the React team do an official release of [https://github.com/necolas/react-native- web](https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web) instead of leaving it on the community to support?

<comment><USER8> That isn't really how the React team operates. They are more about providing a small well-functioning core and letting things like react-native-web and redux be independent libraries. The things that go into React itself and are supported by the core team are generally the things that wouldn't work anywhere else.</comment></comment>


A Reddit-like forum helped Taiwan prepare early for Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3080309/how-reddit-forum-helped-taiwan-prepare-early-covid-19 <comment><USER2> Slight OT: PTT is an oldschool BBS. It's terminal-based (although there are ways to browse it via HTTP, [1] not just Telnet). I find it baffling someone could describe it as "Reddit-like."

1\. [https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/index.html](https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/index.html)</comment>


Ask HN:  Looking for lightweight web documentation system, any recommendations? - <AUTHOR>

I currently use DokuWiki but it's too heavy for my small low watt linux server.  Can anybody recommend anything lighter? <comment><USER2> Wiki on a stick? <http://stickwiki.sourceforge.net/> Or a custom Lua web server? <http://lua4everything.dyndns.org/>

</comment><comment><USER2> There's also Sputnik, also coded in Lua <http://sputnik.freewisdom.org/></comment>


Where on the Internet to chat with geeks? - <AUTHOR>

I have a startup that is just me right now.  Sometimes when I'm coding I'd enjoy being in a chat room with other developers just to ask questions and shoot the breeze.  Where's a good place to do this?  IRC, Meebo, somewhere else?  I prefer real-time chat over forums for this casual situation. <comment><USER2> irc://irc.freenode.net is pretty full of interesting people, #startups ##javascript #defocus

Tons more depending on your interests :)

With the risk of being downmodded for flagrant self promotion, [http://www.mibbit.com/?url=irc%3A%2F%2Firc.freenode.net%2Fst...](http://www.mibbit.com/?url=irc%3A%2F%2Firc.freenode.net%2Fstartups)

</comment><comment><USER3> irc.freenode.net of course. A few HN users are in #startups

</comment><comment><USER4> Seconding the freenode suggestions. It's got a very low troll/geek ratio.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hang out on irc usually. I think only nerds and leechers hang out on irc :) "normal" people are on twitter, msn or some forum. Oh... and if someone says to be a girl, don't trust him :)

<comment><USER6> I've never had the problem with people pretending on freenode, not like you do on, say, yahoo chat.

Seriously, do we need to promote the stereotype of "don't believe someone if they say they are a girl". Better advice, say "cool" when someone says they are a girl, and otherwise ignore it.

In a sort of case/point, the most famous female on freenode, imho, is Christel <http://blog.simplychristel.net/> the person that took over for lilo (when he passed away) on freenode, not including the other FOSS projects she's involved with.

I don't think I would insult her (and myself) by suggesting she isn't female, nor would I insult her (and myself) by 'throwing' myself at her.

She (and any other woman) should be respected, by the same standards you would respect a male.

<comment><USER5> "She (and any other woman) should be respected, by the same standards you would respect a male." Where did I write not to respect female? Anyway, how many girls do you know that hang out on irc? Sure, there are some, but maybe 2%. Especially on freenode. It's a matter of fact that there are not many IT tech girls. And by no means I was trying to insult gils on irc.

<comment><USER6> not that many. But at the same time I don't know of any males claiming to be females (on freenode).

You have disrespected them (and potentially males) by claiming that all who claim to be female on IRC are in fact male, and that we should be aware that they are lying. I have no such knowledge that they are... and it simply doesn't matter to me if they are. But I prefer to believe people are honest, and if someone claiming to be a female on IRC is actually a male, it probably won't matter much to me, because I'm not on IRC to date in the first place.

note: the actual male to female ratio is irrelevant.

<comment><USER5> I hope you just overlooked the :) I was joking about the very low girl presence on irc. Maybe it was not that funny, but you took it way to serious. You need to relax man.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Android Hates You (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://acko.net/blog/why-android-hates-you/

<comment><USER2> And this is before the tinfoil hat brigade had to make Android 5 use full disk encryption (slowing it to a crawl), the "Material Design" propaganda campaign, and the fact that, unlike Microsoft, Google has come nowhere near keeping customers up to date with the OS or getting people to get a recent version of Android when they buy ghw.</comment>


The guru of the bottom of the pyramid - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15949503

<comment><USER2> The author of "The Core Competence of the Corporation" (1990 and very important) and:

""The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits" _(2004) was a counterblast against two types of intellectual laziness: that of corporate titans who were ignoring the bulk of humanity and that of humanitarians who regarded profit as a dirty word. He argued that the world's poor represented trillions of dollars' worth of pent-up spending power._ "</comment>


LulzSec hacks into Bethesda Softworks accessing 200k Brink user accounts - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/i5M0LB58

<comment><USER2> Right at the bottom they have this link: <http://lulzsecurity.com/releases/senate.gov.txt>

I wonder how long before they get their .com taken from them and have to flee for another tld.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      we grabbed all their source code

I'm not going to pull down that torrent, but if someone does, can you tell me exactly what they mean by this? Did they just pirate and release the source for a bunch of major video games? Did they grab any of the art?

<comment><USER4> It's listed on TPB as being 15MB in size so it couldn't possibly be the source code itself. Maybe there's a separate unlisted torrent for this?

<comment><USER5> Source code of the website, presumably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So I just noticed this:

"Contact us: 614-LULZSEC"

A phone number? A cursory google search didn't come up with anything informative, except that someone commented that it was a number pirated by LulzSec with call forwarding (<http://mrnumber.com/1-614-585-9732>). I'm certainly not going to call it myself, but I'm just curious as to what this is, how they're using it, and what do you find on the other end. Thoughts?

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Area_code_614>

<comment><USER7> Right now they're running a "contest". <http://twitter.com/#!/lulzsec> Call in and say the magic word, win $1,000! I wouldn't bet on it being legit, but it looks like fun :-)

<comment><USER8> People should check they are not charging $5/minute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a little confused. "We actually like this company..." So why did they do this? I'd think the thing to do after finding an exploit would be to notify who has it and give them a reasonable amount of time to correct the problem. I think I'm confused about what LulzSec is all about.

<comment><USER10> They are a bunch of script kiddies with no professional ethic whatsoever. They also try to get credit for things they haven't even done (e.g., bitcoin temporary crash). In short, ignoring them is the right way to go. HN sucks up to them instead and gives them exposure. Just sad, really.

<comment><USER11> Either they're incompetent script-kiddies and the fault lies with the admins with unpatched servers, or they are competent and have access to, or have written undisclosed exploits. There is no middle ground, and unless you have some information that we do not, there's no reason to conclude that they are script kiddies. Being mischievous and being intelligent are not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. The existence of most computer viruses are proof enough of this statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They've also attacked the US Senate website: <http://goo.gl/Wn0eC>

You can bet that this will be used to push through draconian legislation in the interest of "security". I wouldn't be surprised if hacking/cracking/piracy became the new equivalent of possession in these coming decades.

<comment><USER14> The US hasn't looked kindly towards hackers since the early 1990s. This won't change anything.

The people saying that this type of thing is going to cause an "internet crackdown" of sorts have had their head in the sand for the last 15 years. Doubly so for the last 5-10.

Media companies have been screaming and crying about multi-billion dollar losses, and using all of their lobbying ability to get an "internet crackdown" to happen.

It already has. You could argue that most of the crackers of today are a result of it.

<comment><USER13> It's the sustained media attention that these hacks are drawing that's going to be the catalyst for legislation.

The government's attitude has largely been static on the issue, but they need a general population outcry to push through/rubber stamp legislation that's no doubt already written somewhere.

<comment><USER14> And what would this legislation be? You've already got kids going to jail for simple stuff. Look at what happened after the LOIC/Visa/Mastercard thing a few months ago.

Even if you need to insert your drivers license to the computer in order to access it, and every packet you send is signed with a user-specific hash, the only people it's going to matter to are the people who aren't doing anything wrong right now.

Cracking down is just going to create more crackers, and most of us in the middle probably won't really notice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Far more interesting: they hacked the US Senate:

<http://lulzsecurity.com/releases/senate.gov.txt>

<comment><USER16> Their site has been open to a lot of exploits. I tried writing my senator and telling him... guess what, nothing.

Dear Senator Lamar:

We have exchanged ideas in the past; see the below message. I am now writing to report a different issue. Website vulnerabilities in the Senate.Gov and House.Gov website. I am not sure if these have been reported to the proper person as of yet; I did email Senator Corker.

Below is a list of vulnerable urls for senate.gov

URL Redirect needs to be sanitized here: ><http://www.senate.gov/cgi- bin/exitmsg?url=www.hackersite.com>

Here JAVA is not sanitizing input properly. There may be a chance that this can be used to launch a larger exploit on the servers hosting the website: >[http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/common/collection_li...](http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/common/collection_list/Chamber.jsp?Counter=JAVAEXPLOIT)

This is called an XSS (Cross Site Scripting) exploit. Here a person might add malicious code to the page to do what ever the language will allow. >[http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_c...](http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=party&Sort=%27;!--%22/%20%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert%28%22A%20malicious%20Javascript%20payload%20could%20be%20launched%20here%22%29%3C/script%3E)

Below is a list of vulnerable urls for house.gov

This link suffers the same problem as the first one posted for senate.gov; URL redirect needs to be sanitized: >[http://clerk.house.gov/redirect.html?title=Library+of+Congre...](http://clerk.house.gov/redirect.html?title=Library+of+Congress:+Continental+Congress&url=http://hackersite.com)

I wanted to bring this to you attention in hopes that it will be fixed. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Christopher Woodall

On 03/01/2010 04:04 PM, email@example.com wrote: > > > > March 1, 2010 > > > Mr. Christopher Woodall > > Dear Christopher, > > Thanks for getting in touch with me and letting me know what's on your > mind regarding identifying medical neccessities of government employees. > > Although no legislation has been introduced in the 111th Congress > regarding this issue, I'm always pleased to consider new ideas that will > benefit the people of Tennessee. These are serious times, and the > willingness of good people to get involved is very important. > Suggestions from my constituents play an important role in determining > what initiatives I will pursue in the Senate, and I'll be sure to > consider the issues you've raised. > > Sincerely, > > Lamar

Looks like a few of the issues have been cleared up. I have more for USAJobs.com and a myriad of government sites. No one listens to regular joes.

<comment><USER17> There is a webmaster, you can contact them. Senators have no direct control over websites like this, and are unlikely to have the faintest clue what to do about this.

I'm not sure if they would even know what "website vulnerabilities" are.

<comment><USER16> You are correct. It is better to email their customer support or webmaster if available. Still, many websites have horrible reporting features and even worse response rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was laughing with them when they were making fun of Sony, but now I'm not so amused. :(

</comment><comment><USER19> Once they get caught they are going away for a loooong time. Going after Sony following some political fighting I get, but this is just mean. Atleast reveal it privately to Bethesda to let them secure things up.

<comment><USER20> I guess that depends on the country. As long as they do not "destroy" or "maliciously manipulate" some data, charges in many countries are pretty low (and sometimes non-existant). In addition, there are many countries that won't extradite their own citizens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In the long run their actions are likely to be beneficial for both corporations and their customers. More attention will be paid to security now (at least for a while), instead of purely seeing it as a nuisance to spend the minimum time/money on. And programmers/sysadmins may be made more aware of how embarrassing it is to get owned by a local file inclusion hole. Or what that even is, as many "Web Developers" do not.

As customer (of Bethesda, both Sony divisions and Codemasters) I'm also being even more careful now. I only put information into sign-up forms on a need to know basis. If they don't need to ship me something, they don't need my address (although sometimes this interferes with credit card validation). If they don't need my real name (so other users can identify me, usually), they get a fake one. And there's rarely a good reason to hand out a phone number or birth date anymore.

In addition to this, for many years now I've been using one email address per service, which has served me well in both identifying sites that leak/sell my personal information (very popular after a company goes under) and easily filtering the resulting targeted phishing/spam.

</comment><comment><USER22> Unfortunately for LulzSec, they lost any respect I could have had for them when they went after 2600

(As far as I can gather, someone they were [potentially rightfully] in a dispute with used the 2600 irc servers. Go figure...)

</comment><comment><USER23> What games did they make that require user accounts? Or is it only accounts from support forums?

<comment><USER24> None really. While you can link the console version of Brink to your Bethesda Account—to see your stats online—that game doesn't require you to create an account or provide an email or password to play it.

If they did manage to get 200k Brink accounts, I doubt most of them have any personally-identifiable information tied to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did they leak any private end-user information? As much as I can tolerate mischievous crackers violating corporate security and releasing intellectual property, I am loathe to give any praise to groups that victimize consumers/users by violating their right to privacy. It seems thoughtless and uncaring.

<comment><USER25> They specifically said they are not leaking all of the juicy user data they found.

It's nice that they did that, but it's kind of like breaking into your house and stealing everything except your Rolodex because, well, that would be a dick thing to do.

<comment><USER12> Not really a great analogy: unless you are employees or shareholders, it's not really your "house". If you are a dedicated customer, you may be more invested in the welfare of the company than most customers, who mostly just care about their personal interests (products or services they've paid for and any personal information that company keeps on record).

I tried to cook-up a comic store analogy where the loyal customer is most concerned about their orders and personal contact info being stolen than the merchandise of their favourite shop, but that analogy ignored the fact that what LulzSec did to Bethesda is essentially the following: making copies of the shop's inventory manifest, latest promotional program, and names of customers in a Rolodex, and then publishing all that info online (or in a local comic hobbist newsletter). Other than the loss of potential business and the trust of their customers, are the owners and employees likely to suffer as a result of this break-in? I tend to think that lost business will be minor, especially if customer privacy and interests are not noticeably compromised by the break-in.

Not trying to start a morality debate (unless that's welcome here?). I just wanted to point out why I tend to see "black hat security audits" as generally to the victims' benefit, when individuals aren't likely to suffer as a direct result. In the reality of my above analogy, the comic shop is likely going to invest in better security after this kind of break in, which is a positive outcome for the business and the customers. Only the very paranoid or "security minded" customers will choose to take their business elsewhere after the break-in, which likely amounts to very little lost business to the shop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I hope all of these attacks are the push that people need to finally start taking public-key cryptography seriously.

<comment><USER27> What has this got to do with public-key cryptography?

<comment><USER26> Properly implemented pub-key crypto would make it so much of the loot from these attacks was unreadable. Of course, if people store unencrypted secret keys on vulnerable servers, or just use one key to encrypt for everyone in the company, or something like that, it's not that useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> the pirates of this decade...

</comment><comment><USER29> Can we pay these guys to go after China's hackers?

The fireworks would be epic :)

<comment><USER30> I don't think a bunch of hotshot crackers are prepared to play at the nation- state level.

It's all fun and games until someone decides it's just easier to kill you.

<comment><USER29> but than the state actors in the act of that attempt uncloak themselves..which is what the CIA, MIA, etc want..

<comment><USER31> are you sure about that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> These guys are on a rampage.

</comment><comment><USER33> Without getting into politics, the letter itself is very humorous...lulzboat... lol.

I can't help but think what a much better world this would be if every objectionable act was handled in such a way.</comment>


Pg_tsdtm – Distributed transaction management tools for PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_tsdtm <comment><USER2> What's the intended audience and use case for this? Native extensions to deal with 2PC?

<comment><USER3> This might be a naive answer to a sophisticated question, but maybe it is related to to this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_transactions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_transactions)

Real insight welcome...</comment></comment>


John Sculley On Steve Jobs, Apple and Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://blog.archit.in/2011/03/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-apple-and-microsoft/

<comment><USER2> My god this is poorly written: "he beats to a different drummer." I didn't know it was possible to mangle a cliche so thoroughly. Also, regurgitating jobs' best quotes and attributing them to "legend" is not informative in the least. Next time anybody thinks of voting a story like this up ask thyself "what would jon Gruber do?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Well just for your info, these texts were written by Sculley himself and published on Bloomberg Businessweek as attributed in the post. I guess everybody would agree that every word in it went through a good editorial. And besides, he is using beautiful combinations of simple English words to describe Jobs. I don't find any problem anywhere.

As for the "legend" quote, I ask you to kindly read the line again. It says "What Steve Jobs said to make Pepsi executive John Sculley defect to Apple, according to legend." and it is truly written as that is what Steve Jobs said but but it has never been verified by either Steve, or Sculley himself.

So now who is being just a hater?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Loved the "If I asked someone who had only used a personal calculator what a Macintosh should be like, they couldn't have told me. There was no way to do consumer research on it, so I had to go and create it, and then show it to people, and say now what do you think?" quote.

Now I have something to go along with Henry Ford's one.

<comment><USER4> Create it? Didn't Xerox PARC "create it"?

<comment><AUTHOR> PARC just created the user interface which later greatly influenced future developments not only at Apple, but at Microsoft and Sun Microsystems too.

More here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface#Xerox_PARC)</comment></comment></comment>


Oglivy's smart dress shows how often women are groped at clubs - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/quartzy/1477709/oglivys-smart-dress-shows-how-often-women-are-groped-at-clubs/ <comment><USER2> "[W]e see a heat-map version of it steadily light up in the areas where the women are being grabbed: mostly the lower back, backside, and arms."

This isn't exactly what the word "groped" conjures up in my mind. (I don't frequent the club scene, though, and I don't know anything about Brazilian culture.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice demonstration. I'd like to see something similar done with men (not trying to undercut the point, just seriously wondering).</comment>


Things computer science tells us about bureaucrats - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2011/04/21/ten-things-computer-science-tells-us-about-bureaucrats/

<comment><USER2> Amusing but unilluminating. These analogies seem divided between banalities that were already well understood before computer science even existed (e.g. "pipelining", which wouldn't have been a big surprise to Henry Ford) and fairly tortured parallels where the computer science concepts don't really predict anything useful.

Hate to be a reflexive critic but many of us in CS who were around for the 90s got a bit weary of those in our profession who decided that anyone with a bit of tech knowledge was now a big authority on practically every damn thing - economics, social science, politics, sex, you name it.

<comment><USER3> To paraphrase Freud, "Sometimes a humorous article is just a humorous article."

<comment><USER2> Oops, you are correct. This clearly pressed a button of mine; something that apparently switched off irony while switching on ire. Similar articles were deployed with total seriousness during the Web 1.0 boom, sad to say.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Windows 98 in browser - <AUTHOR> http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98 <comment><USER2> This is such a great demonstration of both how fast JS engines have become in the browser, and how much less efficient native software has become overall. Running on top of an x86 emulator _in JavaScript_ , it's still faster to pop open a file browser and click around than it is on some modern smartphones.

<comment><USER3> Most modern smartphones run Android, which means they have a bastardized Java VM between your "native code" and actual metal... not unlike having a JS VM.

It's not that "native software" has become less efficient, but rather that it is slowly disappearing.

<comment><USER4> As of Android 5.0, the Android Runtime (ART) compiles Dex bytecode ahead of time to native code. That probably still isn't as efficient as C++ or the like, because there's still a garbage collector, and Java methods are virtual by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is actually really useful to me. I've been working on-and-off re- implementing Comic Chat using HTML5. It's nice having a working copy again to reference. The paper is great but it omits some details.

<comment><USER6> Comic Chat, like the program used to make jerkcity comics? Would be amazing to have a web version, best of luck!

</comment></comment><comment> zero-g Where does one start with such thing? I mean, where do I read how to emulate CPU (or at least how CPU works, so I would be able to come up with how to emulate it by myself), how does PS/2 work, how to boot an image from BIOS?

<comment><USER3> University courses? I'm pretty sure CPUs were a huge part of my first year of CS.

<comment><USER7> Learning about CPU internals was a huge part of your _first year_ in CS? Where did you go to school?

At my school and every other school I'm remotely familiar with, the knowledge needed to emulate a CPU would be covered in upper division computer engineering courses, and not covered by CS undergrads at all, certainly not in their first year.

<comment><USER8> Back in 2007, my first semester in a technical CS school had plenty of assembly, binary, MMU emulation, OSI / TCP/IP, boolean math and so on.

I know this is mostly gone at this point, but it should not. The fundamentals are essentials. I often meet people who are totally clueless how a computer work and have CS degrees.

"How can you do C, it is so old? By now, we must have invented faster languages. Computers changed so much recently". Sure... Binary is now expressed with emoji.

<comment><USER9> Wow. My first semester of computer science had me studying fuckin' Gofer.

<comment><USER10> As in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29), right, the precursor to HTTP?

<comment><USER9> Nope, as in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gofer_%28programming_language%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gofer_%28programming_language%29), the neutered Haskell clone.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly think that functional programming has its place in the world, but as a first year uni student all fired up about finally learning "real" programming after years of teaching myself (back before the internet laid everything out on a platter), I was _not_ impressed.

<comment><USER3> Eh, same with me and Scheme.

I don't think functional paradigms can really be appreciated by 1st/2nd year undergrads. At that age you are fundamentally impatient to make your mark in a practical sense, your approach will be instinctively imperative. You have to hit the wall (scaling / parallelism / thread management / complexity etc) before you start to really appreciate the upsides of functional paradigms.

Unfortunately, a lot of professors are actually terrible educators (after all, they did not get there by teaching but by researching) and think the learning process is as linear as house-building: "place bricks here and there so that your next row will be this way and that way". They also think people should enjoy programming for programming's sake, whereas a lot of people are motivated by a creative process driven by outcomes.

<comment><USER11> > your approach will be instinctively imperative

Not necessarily (based on being an assistant in lab sessions for first year students learning Haskell).

But what it did do was put everyone on the same level, including the arrogant students who "already knew how to code" and hadn't listened (or attended) the lectures.

I think they chose a functional language to start with good habits for thinking about _what_ to implement, not how to implement it. If you don't know what the problem is, you should work on that, rather than bashing out some Java...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very nice. Although opening IE and trying to go to [http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98](http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98) gave an error. Go figure...

<comment><USER13> It doesn't have internet.

You might be able to compile the js down to a single copy paste into a file then load that in ie.

I'm going to guess it won't work in IE from 1998 though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's amazing - do you have any info on the underlying implementation?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a fully emulated PC: CPU, memory, hard drive, … The CPU especially took me very long to get right with all the details to run Windows 98.

The code is here: [https://github.com/copy/v86](https://github.com/copy/v86)

<comment><USER15> NSA backdoor!

[https://github.com/copy/v86/commit/159f565de4dd99bff9b46c45a...](https://github.com/copy/v86/commit/159f565de4dd99bff9b46c45aa7998ef35aa7168)

Nope, Windows 98 undefined instruction.

<comment><USER16> Yep!

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20041215-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20041215-00/?p=37003)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How would v86 compare to jslinux speedwise? [http://bellard.org/jslinux/](http://bellard.org/jslinux/)

ELKS in javascript would be nice as well, you would get the ultimate speedy portable unix ecosystem in the browser. [https://github.com/jbruchon/elks](https://github.com/jbruchon/elks)

<comment><USER18> Poorly, see [https://github.com/s-macke/jor1k/wiki/Benchmark-with- other-e...](https://github.com/s-macke/jor1k/wiki/Benchmark-with-other- emulators)

Primarily due to the use of asm.js. I intend to implement a JIT similar to QEMU's tcg as soon as Web Assembly supports it: [https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FutureFeat...](https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FutureFeatures.md#platform- independent-just-in-time-jit-compilation)

<comment> s-macke Great work on your emulator. I am also looking forward to use webassembly for my emulator when available. However, I don't expect much speed improvement. I guess you can speed up your emulator significantly by putting in some '|0' noops to prevent deoptimizations into double precision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's stuff like this that makes me wish I had unlimited side project time. I think this could be fun to work on but my assembly/C level programming skills would need some serious ramp-up. Great work though!

</comment><comment><USER20> Minesweeper! Ah, the nostalgia.

A note: the mouse position and acceleration seems to not be mapped correctly. It is often separated away from my local desktop mouse position. Maybe because the screen resolution is different?

<comment><USER21> I'm having the same issue. It makes it difficult to do anything, because I would need to move my actual mouse pointer past the edge of my monitor to get to any of the icons or start menu with the virtual mouse.

<comment><USER22> You gotta lock the mouse. Most likely, something's emulating a physical mouse input, which is inexact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are there license issues around this project? I doubt Microsoft would care to put the resources into enforcement of windows 98 licenses but I am just curious about the legality.

<comment><USER24> Essentially you are being given a copy of a VM that has a copy of Windows pre- installed. It's unlikely (but possible) that Microsoft has granted a license for this. I imagine this is technically not legal, but as you say, unlikely to matter much.

<comment><USER25> Microsoft does not seem to bother with older software. It is because they don't support and upgeade it anymore.

Microsoft only goes against piracy of software they still support and upgrade.

They don't bother with the old software because it isn't worth it to sue or send a c&d letter because they don't earn an income with it anymore. So they don't lose income if someone pirates software they no longer sell.

In fact they gave away the source code to an early MS-DOS and MS-Word as part of their own open source license.

It is good PR for them if someone emulates their old software in the web browser and gives them free publicity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> That is brilliant. Little things like being able to change the screen resolution and waste time on Solitaire - what more could one want!!! Works amazingly.

Also it is quite a historical artefact, things like Active Desktop were truly cool back in the day. Plus the simplicity of the Win98 UI is a joy to return to.

Congratulations!

<comment><USER27> The start menu is pretty nice, compared to the awful "launch pad" style full- screen app menus that are now in OS X, GNOME, and Windows...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is awe-inspiring. I don't know what to say -- except that, if it was faster, I'd try to run Windows 98 in the browser of Windows 98 in the browser.

</comment><comment><USER29> The network interface doesn't seem to be configured – when I try to open the browser it wants me to install a modem. Is the VM just not configured for that, or do I need to do something? Would love to see what today's web looks like on '98 IE :)

<comment><USER18> It's possible, Windows 98 has drivers for the NE2000 network card we're emulating ([https://github.com/copy/v86/blob/master/src/ne2k.js](https://github.com/copy/v86/blob/master/src/ne2k.js)). However, currently the emulation isn't accurate enough, Windows 98 refuses to use it.

<comment><USER30> The bigger problem would be what to connect it to, and how. You can't make arbitrary outbound connections from Javascript.

<comment> iso-8859-1 I have a barely working HTTP proxy in client-side-JavaScript here: [https://github.com/ysangkok/browser-http- proxy](https://github.com/ysangkok/browser-http-proxy)

This allows you to connect to CORS enabled sites without using the WebSocket proxy. It talks HTTP on the serial port.

I want to add SNI support to tlstunnel so that I can tunnel to google.com by navigating to [https://google.com.mydomain/](https://google.com.mydomain/) and having the snitunnel tunnel to [http://google.com](http://google.com) by reading the bottom-level domain names using SNI.

Using this with browser-http-proxy, it would be possible to tunnel to HTTP sites on a request-based level (making it easier to scale) and without relying on tun/tap on the server. Also it could serve as a fallback for non-CORS enabled hosts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It breaks horribly if you click start->run, type "command" and press enter

<comment><USER18> Yep, unfortunately it seems to be a driver issue, because I'm having the same problem in QEMU. These are the drivers: [http://www.navozhdeniye.narod.ru/vbe9x.htm](http://www.navozhdeniye.narod.ru/vbe9x.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The inclusion of eSheep is an absolute stroke of genius.

</comment><comment><USER33> Running con\con works, too. Just like I remember it :)

<comment><USER34> Haha! That was the first thing I tried, had a good laugh again :-)

I still remember you could crash remote computers by going into a public forum and post an image that linked to c:\con\con

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> sheep.exe, hello old friend

<comment><USER36> I _totally_ remember it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What a coincidence, I was just thinking about how nice it would be if I could start a minimal javascript linux with toybox and start spacemacs with it (< 64M) and a small mounted filesystem somewhere.

Win 3.11 in the browser would be nice too, there is a whole ecosystem of apps. Windows95b would be slower, but still faster and smaller then Windows98.

I wonder how fast civ1 would run on freedos here.

<comment><USER37> 95 in the browser has already been done (by me): [https://win95.ajf.me/](https://win95.ajf.me/)

That uses Em-DOSBox, which is more limited than v86 (which the OP uses) in some respects. I think v86 is loading hard disk sectors on-demand, which is pretty amazing compared to Em-DOSBox which has to download a massive disk image. On the other hand, Em-DOSBox has sound support!

The Internet Archive has 3.11 in the browser: [https://archive.org/details/win3_stock](https://archive.org/details/win3_stock) (there's also various 3.x games as well)

This also uses Em-DOSBox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Dude, I'm just trying to align text in CSS, and you're all like "here's an OS in js."

</comment><comment><USER39> Is this legal?

I'm surprised MS hasn't open-sourced NT 3.x already.

</comment><comment><USER40> Windows before 30 years of updates that were created with a need to maintain backwards compatibility feels so cohesive. I mean, that control panel is just _so clean_.

Also, would be interested in seeing the orginal Win 95 (before OSR2). It was way way faster than win 98.

<comment><USER37> The control panel in newer versions could still be that clean if Microsoft hadn't tried to reinvent it three times (XP, Vista, 8).

Of course, the 9x control panel is, in a way, a reinvention of the 3.x control panel. It's just a very clean one, because the 3.x control panel was a window full of icons, and the 9x control panel is an _Explorer_ window full of icons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "My Briefcase" could have been Dropbox, 10 years earlier, if only 1) it could work decently, which it never did, and 2) had an option to sync to MS servers. Bandwidth was an issue at home, back then, but for offices it would have been fine.

<comment><USER41> In the age of 4.3 GB drives that cost $750, unlikely.

<comment><USER3> It was also the age of the average file being 20kb though. You could have provided 50mb per user and the world would have gone "woah".

<comment><USER42> I remember how amazing it was when the email accounts went from 20mb max size to something like 500mb, it blew my mind and gave rise to many services that capitalized on this huge amount of space (mostly peer-to-mail and an application that turned gmail accounts into a dropbox kind of thing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is really impressive, and also brings back waves of nostalgia as I used to use Windows 98 (and 95 and 3.11 before that) as my daily driver.

I like how the cloud icons at the side of Explorer when not in classic mode still are drawn with a white background even if you change the colour scheme.

On a real machine, when I look at this old system I realise how little we have moved on in UI terms or the basic needs and requirements of a computer. You could do 99% of what you need to do on an old computer, other than duff website rendering and horrible security and power usage.

</comment><comment><USER44> Best part, it comes with scmpoo.

</comment><comment><USER45> How bad is it that Windows 98, running in a ^%%^@#!ing emulator, in my browser no less, runs better than the latest versions of Android OR iOS?

<comment><USER46> I'm on a beefy 12-core 'nix box with 64 GB of RAM, and this emulator is _extremely_ sluggish for me.

Perhaps because it doesn't run well for everyone?

<comment><USER45> Oh, I wouldn't call this emu fast... but its still faster than a lot of smartphones I encounter

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Doesn't seem to work too well on Windows 10. It might be missing some DLLs. /s

Super cool! (I really can't get it to click on anything though)

<comment><USER48> You can use the Lock mouse button. You will be able to click on what you want.

<comment><USER49> The Lock mouse button helped with my first problem which was that the emulated cursor seemed to be scaling its position based on the side of my browser window instead of the size of the emulated window. Locking the mouse fixed the position issue but I'm still unable to click on anything though.

<comment><USER50> Once you go into fullscreen mode it seems it work fine, but it took me a while to figure this out...

<comment><USER47> Ah right, thanks! _Ctrl+R, regedit_

Now only if we had a version that could connect to the internet. Right now it tells me that it can't find a modem and that I should call MSN Technical Support! Cute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Respect! This and Fabrice Bellard's emulator have me in awe. [http://www.bellard.org/jslinux/](http://www.bellard.org/jslinux/) It's even more painful when I know that technically I should be able to do the same, but have not yet done it ...

</comment><comment><USER52> But is the A20 gate being properly emulated? :) I know a verification engineer who left AMD because he was tired of dealing with the ancient testbench which checked the ancient hardware.

The browser should run in the hypervisor and provide a real hardware virtual machine. Provide both ARM and x86, one is emulated and one is real.

<comment><USER18> It's not. I haven't come across any software that relied on it.

<comment><USER53> Somewhat infamously, GRUB failed on Intel Macs (in 2006?) because it tried to use the A20 gate, and Apple refused to emulate it. It's fixed now, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Anyone tried to make a plan9 in browser?

</comment><comment><USER55> oh the irony, Win98 was the MS "internet as desktop" release. Least favorite OS ever

Awesome project though!

<comment><USER56> Windows ME was my most disliked OS (too buggy, even after service packs). I think the level of complexity finally hit the wall given the 9x series lack of good memory/file protections.

My favorite 9x OS is 98 SE (which was a stand-alone release, not a service pack). But 98 "first edition" did add substantial features to 95: IE 4, multi- monitor support, sfc was added (which was useful because 9x got corrupted a LOT), ACPI support, better plug and play, and better hardware support overall.

98 SE just added USB support out of the box (which was a big deal for those of us trying to use USB mice), IE 5, WebDAV, Windows Explorer improvements, ICS, improved WMP, and all of 98 "first editions" hotfixes and updates. You could make 98 "first edition" into 98 SE more or less, but 98 SE was a nice thing to "just install" and have everything work.

My 1990s/early 2000s OSs looked like this: 3.1, 95, 98, 98 SE, ME, back to 98 SE, and then 2000, XP SP1, and beyond. Skipped XP pre-SP1 as it was a pretty shoddy release compared to 2000 at the time, and ran away from ME screaming.

<comment><USER57> I ran all of those windows versions as well, but my favorite remains NT4. I stuck with that for a long time, until the lack of drivers forced an upgrade. It was incredibly fast (smooth on a 66 mhz 486), rock-solid (uptimes of weeks with daily use), light-weight (32 MB RAM was doable, 128 MB was multi-tasking heaven). It's nice that MS is trimming down windows lately, but I keep thinking that it's a bit like seeing someone who has let themselves go get back on a diet. If they hadn't put on the weight in the first place, they would have never needed to lose it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> So pulled this up from my Chromebook - rather interesting to have Chrome running Windows rather than the other way around. Of course the big leap will come when it gets Win XP up and running and then folks will have an answer for their legacy systems...

</comment><comment><USER59> Let's see, now I can browse :

IE in Win98 in Chrome in Ubuntu in VMWare in Win7

</comment><comment><USER37> How does this compare to Em-DOSBox (e.g. [https://win95.ajf.me/](https://win95.ajf.me/)) in terms of speed?

</comment><comment><USER60> How does it compare to Windows RG?

[http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/](http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/)

</comment><comment><USER61> Doesn't work on my Android phone, in Chrome.

But I didn't expect it to :)

Edit: for what it's worth, FreeDOS boots there. No way to put in keyboard input though.

<comment><USER62> Install Hacker Keyboard from fdroid (or the Play Store...). There's an option for a persistent notification that you can click, which will enable the keyboard wherever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Someone needs to port SLiRP to JavaScript+CORS.

</comment><comment><USER64> And here's me fighting with running Android ARM code on x86 ... I wish I had more time.

</comment><comment><USER65> Awesome, it works also on my Windows phone browser ( that is Internet Explorer :)

</comment><comment><USER66> Any suggestions on how to upload software?

Could I use kermit, xmodem, ymodem, zmodem through com 1?

</comment><comment><USER67> Any tips on how I can reliably trigger a BSOD? For old time's sake.

<comment><USER68> Open the Run panel and try to go to "C:\con\con". Instant BSOD. (This was an old trick I used to do as a bratty kid when people left their computers unlocked. Nice to see that it still works!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I am really impressed by this.

I am sure you put a lot of labor into this project.

You also seeded lots of ideas...

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER69> It would be fun to see the BSOD in my browser just for nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER70> This blows my mind.

</comment><comment><USER71> This reminded me of www.windows93.net

</comment><comment><USER72> start->command->fail

(command as in command.com)

</comment><comment><USER73> Amazing work.

</comment><comment><USER45> The mouse cursor doesnt work.... my system's real cursor is still onscreen and the emulator is doing a very poor job of tracking my movements, and its not intercepting clicks or anything like that either.

None of the toy 'show HN' emulators that have popped up have a properly working mouse cursor....

<comment><USER74> It worked after clicking on lock mouse. Using the latest firefox.

<comment><USER45> That works. Chromium 47 here</comment></comment></comment>


The New Razor Keyboard with a touchscreen to run widget apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.razerzone.com/deathstalker <comment><USER2> Every time I hear this keyboard's name, I'll think of the MST3K episode: <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6829772551040700364#></comment>


Lesson From Norway: More Years in School = Higher IQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/02/lesson-from-norway-more-years-in-school-means-a-higher-iq/252623/

<comment><USER2> I would be interested in knowing what the value of Higher IQ would be?? I quite curious as to what the HN community believes?

<comment><USER2> I guess I should add that I am certain that a really low IQ would be disadvantagous, I'm just not sure that a very high IQ is of more confirmable value than an above average IQ....thoughts?</comment></comment>


Compose Enterprise is here - <AUTHOR> https://www.compose.io/articles/compose-enterprise-the-mission-begins/ <comment><USER2> As a member of the Compose product team, it feels good to launch this product. It has been a product that we've been working toward since Compose started.

Like any product launch, this is the beginning, not a finish.

Cheers to the team!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty exciting stuff and I'm glad to see it come to life.</comment></comment>


Caesarean births 'affecting human evolution' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38210837 <comment><USER2> Going to potentially be controversial, but we need (might be a strong word here) genetic manipulation with strong ethical and humanist values attached to it (and a lot more knowledge).

If we are to deny natural selection its role, then we might want to still prevent people from passing on genes which effectively handicap them when they don't have access to certain facilities and technology. Prevention in this case is not eugenics, but gene manipulation/therapy.

Having said this, what we most certainly don't want is genetic standardisation (good path for extinction) and even the manipulation of genes, that seem to cause "problems" (today's problems might be tomorrow's cure), needs a deep understanding of implications, which at the moment we probably don't have.

P.S.: Hold the similar view regarding GMO in food.

<comment><USER3> I'm no evolutionary scientist, but haven't we as a species already denied natural selection long ago?

For evolution you need physical separation. With our level of globalisation that's not going to work.

<comment><USER4> > For evolution you need physical separation. With our level of globalisation > that's not going to work.

Global empires are nature's way to shuffle some genes around and reduce inbreeding. Then individual nations start to exploit the empire for their selfish benefit, everything falls apart and nature runs an iteration of competitive evolution for a change. Rinse, repeat.

Disclaimer: talking out of my ass :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The other medical intervention that is affecting evolution is ICSI ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracytoplasmic_sperm_injecti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracytoplasmic_sperm_injection)) iVF treatment where the man has low quality sperm.

I've heard that the doctors who perform this joke that they are breeding future clients for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER6> Couldn't this be said about medicine in general?

<comment><USER7> Yes. The better medicine gets, the feebler we all become. This is a pity, but the alternative is worse[1].

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Are-we-eliminating-natural- selection-b...](https://www.quora.com/Are-we-eliminating-natural-selection-by- helping-the-poor-the-ill-and-the-weak)

<comment><USER8> It's not a pity at all. Everyone who is around that wouldn't be without modern medicine imparts something to those around them. To give an extreme example, Stephen Hawking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do we really need caveman-capabilities? To be ready for the day we lose our tech and have to start over?

In a different context it has been discussed how we have used up our easily accessible energy and may not be able to restart civilization on this planet. So why keep lowtech genes around? Make way for large brains and large heads!

<comment><USER10> I think maybe in the back of everyone's mind is the post-apocalyptic scenario. Which is strange, because at at that point we'd have far greater worries, such as lack of food, clean water and antibiotics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The way we live is very unnatural. That's why it is only logical that also our evolution is unnatural. Since we no longer have any natural enemies, we ourselves set up the rules, that decide over life and death. And these rules are wrong in many ways. You could write a whole book about it.

One chapter could be devoted to the resulting overpopulation that causes a variety of problems. Instead of letting politics, medicine and capitalism dictate our evolution, we should give nature more freedom. And if we further succeed in reducing the world population to 3 or 4 billions, a certain equilibrium could be reestablished in this world. I am ready to help.

</comment><comment><USER12> Humans have been evolving more in the last 50,000 years that in the previous million (by bone records). This is nothing new. Social organizations (tribe/village/town/city) have put new pressures on us to adapt to.

Never mind caesarean; why do so many people need glasses? Why do so many get depressed in winter? It may all be ad-hoc sledgehammer adaptations to get (most of) us to settle down in villages and specialize. And use less calories per capita so the village thrives, even at the expense of the comfort of individuals.

</comment><comment><USER13> Evolution is a ultimate rat race.

FYI offtopic: Kid can be mingled in umbilical cord and natural birth is not possibile then. Only way is caesarean. Dont pull the baby by the head.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is blindingly obvious from an evolutionary standpoint that this is happening. I have thought about it a fair bit, as it has directly impacted my own family, and I've no doubt it will continue to do so in subsequent generations.

I don't think it's something to worry much about, as the much broader benefits of modern medicine (namely, antibiotics) have had so much impact on our survival rate that this would pale into insignificance.

Which may be borne out (pun intended) by the numbers: 3% to 3.3% or 3.6% in 50-60 years - is that statistically significant? The error there is in the same order as the overall increase, so it's hard to believe it's even measurable at this stage.

Because it is so obviously going to happen, I suspect there may be some curve- fitting going on here?

<comment><USER14>
      > 3% to 3.3% or 3.6% in 50-60 years - is that statistically significant?

Since all births are recorded, the sample size is very large. So without having the numbers and doing any calculations, just based on that I'm pretty sure even a much smaller increase would still be statistically significant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Researchers estimate cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal have increased from 30 in 1,000 in the 1960s to 36 in 1,000 births today.

This could easily be explained by doctors being more willing to perform Caesareans than they were previously. No evidence is cited that the average width of women's pelvises has actually changed, so this is all wild speculation as far as I can see.

Of course, it is no surprise to see the HN crowd latching on to the idea that we should let more women die in childbirth.

</comment><comment><USER16> Modern anything affects human evolution - food production, social programs, culture, etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> Call me a sceptic.. since the invention of farming women have had little evolutionary pressure to run fast to catch food nor outrun predators. Why then haven't evolution widen the canal to reduce fatalities during childbirth? And this has been going on for much longer than caesarean procedures.

</comment><comment><USER18> I personally blame advertisment photography, with their models with ridiculously close-to-one waist/hip ratios.

</comment><comment><USER19> Flagged for political content (eugenics, reproductive ethics).

<comment><USER20> Do you still call chemistry "Alchemy"? Because this isn't Eugenics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _Historically, these genes would not have been passed from mother to child > as both would have died in labour._

How do we know that? As the name implied, Caesar was born this way, a little over 2000 years ago. It's likely the procedure is much much older, too. So what timeframe are we talking about?

What we didn't know how to do 100 years ago was how to save mother and child _once birth had begun_ and the baby's head had started to go into the canal and got stuck. But humanity have known how to do caesarean birth for a very long time (there are even cases of women doing it to themselves).

Also, from an evolutionary perspective it doesn't matter if the mother survives birth; it only matters whether the baby lives. So it's at best incorrect to phrase the problem this way:

> _Women with a very narrow pelvis would not have survived birth 100 years > ago. They do now and pass on their genes encoding for a narrow pelvis to > their daughters._

<comment><USER22> It is probably just a myth that Caesar was born this way.

At the time, the mother most likely couldn't survive a section, because the resulting infections would kill anyone who had such surgery performed. And Caesar's mother lived to old age.

<comment><USER23> People have performed all sorts of surgeries for thousands of years, and while yes, the percentage of them getting infected and resulting in death was probably very high, it doesn't mean that every single surgery ended that way - in the end, people have been amputating limbs or getting wounded on the battlefield and surviving without any sterilization. So while it's rather unlikely, it's possible that Caesar's mother survived the operation.

<comment><USER22> True, but deep wounds in the abdomen are much, much more difficult regarding infections than e.g. limb amputation. Surviving that was very extremely unlikely. Roman law said that the child must be cut out of a dead mother's womb, to bury it separately, but by that time the woman was dead or dying.

As far as I could find, the earliest written source claiming Caesar was born with C-section is from about 1000 years later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Main stream journalists can not get science right.

In the normal course of evolution women with narrower pelvis die a painful death while delivering a baby (or the baby dies). Thus the genes that give women a narrower pelvis do not get passed on.

We can not let these women die this horrible death. This is a good outcome.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, aside from the preschool formatting of the article (one sentence per paragraph, a concerning recent BBC trend), the journalist didn't actually say anything incorrect.

But she did not answer the main question that was asked: why the human pelvis has not grown wider over the years? She said that there were two opposing forces, one for larger babies (they have more chance of survival), and the other was natural selection preventing them getting too large (by killing them both in childbirth).

Maybe I'm missing something, but neither of those answer the question of why the pelvis has not got larger.

All I can assume is that it is (a) an evolutionary trend of men to be attracted to younger and potentially, on average, slimmer and more healthy or fertile women, and (b) cultural, since there is evidence that in historic times and possibly also in less technologically advanced societies, larger hips are considered desirable (which makes total sense in a society with no access to modern medicine).

I'm sure some anthropologists will beat me up for these terrible generalisations, but in general, on average, it seems these forces may have an impact on pelvis size over generations?

<comment><USER25> > one sentence per paragraph, a concerning recent BBC trend

3 of your 5 paragraphs are a single sentence.

<comment><USER10> Yes, deliberately, and not all of them. And my post contains far fewer sentences than the article.

<comment><USER25> Funnily, those 3 paragraphs - because they were long sentences - were the easier to read on mobile. So there's one datapoint for ya.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I destroyed my first startup - <AUTHOR> http://aaron.posthaven.com/how-i-destroyed-my-first-startup

<comment><USER2> Deliberately dropping the database and asked everyone to create a new account just because he couldn't debug an authentication problem?

There are times tat I'm truly amazed at how little _clue_ some people seem to have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Like I said in the first sentence of the post - I had practically zero experience.

<comment><USER2> I can understand that. I've made my share of real blunders, too. Still do, but I'm better at hiding 'em :)</comment></comment></comment>


Yes, it is worse than the flu: busting the coronavirus myths - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/01/yes-it-is-worse-than-the-flu-busting-the-coronavirus-myths <comment><USER2> Discussed yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22453541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22453541)</comment>