Abusing C macros to render the Mandelbrot Set at compile-time - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/DavidBuchanan314/b9230fe7d335a1caf90483dbb00a5375 <comment><USER2> This is really neat. I changed the quality value to 6: clang took ~20 minutes to compile and it used around 32GB of RAM. The resulting executable is 13KB, and it generates a 4KB image as output.

Here's a link of the output image: [https://imgur.com/cUdForu](https://imgur.com/cUdForu)

<comment><USER3> Case in point: that 4KB output file refers to the size of the uncompressed PNM file, and as such is an inaccurate hint as to the image dimensions.

It's 64x64.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just as a FYI, this takes a while to compile:

      $ pbpaste | time clang -x c -
             99.35 real        82.72 user         9.94 sys

If you're using iTerm, you can pipe the output of the program to imgcat to see the result without leaving your terminal.

<comment><USER5> gcc mandel.c -o mandel 95.84s user 3.99s system 71% cpu 2:18.88 total

thought it was just my notebook :) think it is the longest my machine spent on just 41 lines of code to compile

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can we please have constexpr in C 2x to put an end to this madness?

<comment><USER7> As someone who doesn't do much C++, could `constexpr` actually do this all on its own? My (limited) understanding of `constexpr` would lead me to think that using it alone you couldn't generate the contents of the array like this. IE. You could define a `constexpr` function to calculate a single entry in the array, but you'd still need to call that function for every entry. In this case, it looks to me like the bulk of the macros here are just to condense declaring the large array by using nested macros to repeat the computations and expand to a large number of array entries.

That said I absolutely don't disagree with you at all. It's really a bit silly C _doesn 't_ have it at this point. `gcc` will happily do all of this math for you at compile time even if you do as much of the math as you can in `static` functions. But to make it compile you have to declare `pixels` in `main` because you can't call the functions in the initializer for file-scoped variables - even though the compiler can already optimize them out.

<comment><USER8> > As someone who doesn't do much C++, could `constexpr` actually do this all > on its own?

yes, some people have written entire constexpr raytracers for instance : [https://github.com/tcbrindle/raytracer.hpp](https://github.com/tcbrindle/raytracer.hpp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> $ cc -E cursed_mandelbrot.c | wc 546 8804289 76385728

The pre-processor outputs 76,385,728 chars on 546 lines

<comment><USER10> The madness is all in the line that defines the pixels[] array (try 'tail' instead).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Off topic but I think some of you fellow math geeks will get a kick out of the Mandelbrot Set song by Jonathan Coulton.

[https://youtu.be/ZDU40eUcTj0](https://youtu.be/ZDU40eUcTj0)

</comment><comment><USER12> I clicked on it and expected an IOCCC contest entry or something...

</comment><comment><USER13> Getting

"virtual memory exhausted: Cannot allocate memory"

when trying to compile :/

<comment><USER14> I suggest you buy more virtual memory.

<comment><USER15> It's virtual, so obviously you can just download more.

<comment><USER16> Makes me want to start a RAM-as-a-service company.

<comment><USER17> If you somehow manage to include bitcoins, industry 4.0 and machine learning into that then you'd also get a heap of VC money for the start!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> MSVC 2017 x64 (v19.15.26730) fails with Error C1060: compiler is out of heap space.</comment>


Augur REP Token Critical Vulnerability Disclosure - <AUTHOR> https://blog.zeppelin.solutions/augur-rep-token-critical-vulnerability-disclosure-3d8bdffd79d2 <comment><USER2> > Second, the Serpent language is untyped. It allows any operation to be > performed on any data. Every value is a 256-bit sequence which can be used > as an address, a contract, an integer, or an array.

I normally dislike people who criticize startups for not being perfect from day one and understand it takes iterations and a wide audience to get things right. But this isn't a normal startup and security was an obvious big piece of the puzzle from day one. Their reputation and developer adoption will depend on it.

Why doesn't the primary Ethereum language have types? This is basic stuff if you're trying to reduce bugs from the outset.

From my understanding they wanted the language to be as accessible as JS... but even JS developers are all converging on types via TypeScript, Flow, and Babel plugins like babel-typecheck. It's basically an accepted requirement of "5th-gen languages"... let alone for language-based interfaces to security focused systems.

Immutability seems like another obvious choice here for catching errors at compile time and forcing careful design considerations.

Also the language should have a (typed) Quickcheck implementation that hammers each function with random data to check for breakage... and it should be documented as standard practice. [https://begriffs.com/posts/2017-01-14-design-use- quickcheck....](https://begriffs.com/posts/2017-01-14-design-use- quickcheck.html)

The fact Tevos is built with OCaml and is focused on code safety/verification gives me hope there is some sanity in the cryptocurrency marketplace. But it still blows my mind that this stuff wasn't given proper foresight.

A security obsessed language designer should have been the first person hired to implement the VM and reference language on top of it. And competent security researchers, like the team in this blog post, should have been brought in to do QA at each major release. It's not like Ethereum has a shortage of funding for critical infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> This isn't the JS-inspired language, that's Solidity, with it's own hilarious comedy of errors. Serpent is a Python-like language.

What makes Python or JS suitable for any sort of inspiration for smart contract programming is up for debate. Probably the idea that making it popular trumps making it right.

<comment><USER2> Dynamic types make sense for newbie-friendly web languages like Ruby and stuff like bash/zsh or support languages like Lua is to game development... but I really don't see the downside to adding types for anything outside of that.

It's really not that much of a learning curve nor does it result in a significant amount of boilerplate.

People may believe static types are a drag from using Java or C++ but if you look at modern languages like Golang or typed Erlang/Elixir or Kotlin...it really isn't that bad at all. You don't even need to go hardcore with types the way Haskell does to get most of the safety gains.

It actually provides lots of useful abstractions to make your code more efficent, it makes it easier to read (especially for others using your code), and makes using standard libraries easier to use by just reading the type specs.

So I'm really curious what the motivations were here.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you! Yet, looking at Node, JS has sorta taken off. And so has Ethereum, despite the poorly designed languages. Maybe they should have done one proper language, then a toy language to make it easy onboarding?

In the end, the Ethereum folks have achieved wild financial success, even if not in the realm of making smart contracts usable. After seeing shitty coding make people independently wealthy many times over, I'm slow to be too harsh on poor technical decisions. Perhaps a more rigorous language would have deterred a few people that turned out to be key in making Eth take off?

OTOH, criticising poor technical skills of billionaires gives me one reason to feel superior to them, so I'll probably continue to do it.

<comment><USER4> Their wild financial success is based on scamming gullible people into investing in Ponzi schemes. not one ethereum based enterprise has actually produced a product that people are using.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think Ethereum has a lot of potential and really love the platform. With that, the language options that work on top of the EVM are quite awful. There needs to be considerable investment in either building better options or building EVM compilers for well designed languages.

Something functional would be great: OCaml, F#, Haskell with immutability and formally verified abstractions for dealing with the blockchain.

<comment><USER6> That's what Tezos is doing, using OCaml for their smart contracts.

<comment><USER7> Actually they use OCaml for the blockchain implementation and their own functional and provable language "Michelson" for smart contracts.

Fun fact: Michelson was the guy that disproved aether :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So Ethereum has _2_ poorly thought out and implemented languages?

</comment><comment><USER8> But why do Ethereum people maintain a custom programming language? This could easily add a huge amount of complexity (and security issues) with very few benefits.

Moreover, maintaining a large and critical project without automated tests seems impossible to me.

<comment><USER9> They needed a language to compile to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Stack exchange with more info. [https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/3112/what-is- th...](https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/3112/what-is-the-merit-of- creating-new-smart-contract-languages-like-solidity-instead)

<comment><USER10> The problem here is that you are handling a ton of money and it is irresponsible to manage a project in this way. More thinking that many people, including developers, in the community are millionaires, so it is not a resource problem. When you send a rocket to the space you also test it against ETs.

<comment><USER9> Valid points. The project is not production ready yet. One of the main devs has a good explaination of his tweet stating:

>"Ethereum isn't safe or scalable. It is immature experimental tech. Don't rely on it for mission critical apps unless absolutely necessary!"

[https://medium.com/@Vlad_Zamfir/about-my-tweet-from- yesterda...](https://medium.com/@Vlad_Zamfir/about-my-tweet-from-yesterday- dcc61915b572)

<comment><USER11> He's probably the only one, it's a surprise they haven't ostracised him already. (Btw your response is close to step #3 on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14838148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14838148) :P )

At least Vitalik & Gavin Woods in combination with Joe Lubin (Consensys & Ethereum Foundation) keep pushing it without any talks about reality, but just sell unproven future ideas while they train people and manufacture ICOs (less so after the SEC) and sell Ethereum to dumb enterprise that drunk the cool- aid.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chinese netizens say they support 9/11 in response to Adam Silver - <AUTHOR> http://shanghaiist.com/2019/10/08/adam-silver-says-he-supports-moreys-right-to-free-speech-chinese-netizens-say-then-they-support-9-11/ <comment><USER2> They support freedom from logic too, apparently. Probably because logic was outlawed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_in_China#The_repression_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_in_China#The_repression_of_the_study_of_logic)

<comment><AUTHOR> not the first time they are free from logic or basic human decency: [https://supchina.com/2019/09/11/china-daily-conflates- hong-k...](https://supchina.com/2019/09/11/china-daily-conflates-hong-kong- protests-with-9-11-terrorist-attack/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> these strange outrage-inducing style comments read like 'internet water army' type stuff -- and weibo has been a pretty traditional battleground for them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> modified the title because it is too long - but the meaning is the same.</comment>


Copyright chaos: Why isn't Anne Frank's diary free now? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/anne-frank-diary-copyright-public-domain/ <comment><AUTHOR> Anne Frank Died in 1945, and yet 70 years later her diary is copyright protected to enable profiting by publishers. (Copyright extends till 2051)

And then Studios/publishers/Record Labels/Academic Publishers complain when people resort to piracy</comment>


The Super-Rich Are Stockpiling Wealth in Black-Box Charities - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-03/the-super-rich-are-stockpiling-wealth-in-black-box-charities <comment><USER2> This article makes my head hurt, as do so many discussions of charitable giving. The only reason to give to charity is to benefit that charity.

Yes, donors get a deduction for charitable giving. But they are _ALWAYS_ better off (in terms of money received in their bank account) by _NOT GIVING TO CHARITY_. There is no way to give money to charity in such a way that you end up with more money than if you had not given to charity.

The article points out that there can be some hedging; the assets donated can be managed and management fees paid to a manager before liquidation. And the particulars of the valuations mean that they can sometimes get a larger deduction than if they sold the asset and then donated the proceeds to charity. And there are loopholes that allow them to claim a larger deduction than the maximum deduction allowed in the tax code.

But no matter what, if they just sold the damn asset and kept the money, they would have more money at the end of the day than they would having gone through this rigmarole.

<comment><USER3> This is not true for assets that change in value and illiquid/non-marketable assets.

Example:

Rich person buys asset for $10m. 3 years later gets it appraised for $75m, knowing full well that no one would actually buy it for that.

Rich person then donates the '$75m' asset to charity. Rich person made more money via charity rather than trying to sell the asset for $75m.

This is a very common strategy.

<comment><USER2> This is indeed a very common strategy. It is also very commonly caught and detected, and doing so is straightforward. At some point the asset get liquidated. If the appraisal was done in good faith, then the taxpayer has to pay the back taxes without penalties or prejudice. If the appraisal was deliberately manipulated, then there is a strong possibility of criminal charges and fines for evasion.

If the article genuinely depreciated in value, then the burden falls on the taxpayer to prove this, and in illiquid markets this is very difficult to establish.

<comment><USER4> The GOP already took care of that for them:

I.R.S. Tax Fraud Cases Plummet After Budget Cuts [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18115729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18115729)

<comment><USER5> Look at the charts in your own link, spanning 2007-17. Audit rates were increasing under GWB, then plummeted over the course of the _Obama administration_ into 2017.

<comment><USER4> The Republican congress got serious about attacking the IRS after the fake IRS Tea Party scandal.

<comment><USER6> Fake scandal? No, that's re-writing history. Obama suggested the IRS target his enemies, mostly conservative groups, and the IRS did exactly that. The only thing fake about it is the news reports calling the scandal "fake."

<comment><USER7> Do you have sources on Obama suggesting that?

Otherwise it's just a very baseless claim about an otherwise well documented problem about a few IRS bureaucrats. ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy) )

<comment><USER5> Obama _appointees_ , yes, thanks to discovery pursued by Judicial Watch:

[http://www.breitbart.com/irs/2017/03/13/fitton-obama-irs- sca...](http://www.breitbart.com/irs/2017/03/13/fitton-obama-irs-scandal- continues-judicial-watch-forces-irs-disclose-new-documents/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For a great book on how these 'charities' are corrupting American politics, and the specific tax loophole that enables them; check out the book 'Dark Money' by Jane Meyer

Reforming this law would cause outrage among the non-profit and charity sector, because it would instantly dry up alot of US philanthropy. It still seems like a necessary reform however.

<comment><USER9> > _It still seems like a necessary reform however..._

Why? (Serious question. As a matter of full disclosure, I've read 'Dark Money'. To my mind, DAF's don't seem any more evil than any of the other much larger pools of concentrated wealth out there. eg-corporate lobbying money. In fact, the rules seem to make DAF's a good deal _less_ evil.)

<comment><USER10> [https://qz.com/1092737/us-tax-reformers-should-get-rid-of- th...](https://qz.com/1092737/us-tax-reformers-should-get-rid-of-the- charitable-deduction-too-bad-they-wont/)

<comment><USER9> This link concerns the overall _idea_ of a charitable deduction, it's not really about the funds.

My question was, "Why do _DAF_ s need to be reformed?"

Even if you got rid of the charitable deduction, you would still have things like DAFs and Foundations.

Think of it this way, WRA came into being in 1917. But if you take, say, the Carnegie Foundation, that's been around since 1905 at minimum. So even without a charitable deduction, these foundations and DAFs would exist. So the question is, why do they need to be reformed? (Or, more precisely, why do _DAF_ s need to be reformed?)

You linked to an article explaining why you believe WRA to have been a bad idea. (Or maybe why you believe that WRA has _become_ a bad idea? But either way, it's about the reforms introduced by WRA, not specifically about DAFs.)

<comment><USER10> We should get rid of all charitable tax deductions, and then these funds would simply cease to exist, because they only exist to capture these tax deductions while preserving the donors' power.

I don't have any beef with the foundations, I have a beef with our tax policy.

<comment><USER9> > _because they only exist to capture these tax deductions while preserving > the donors ' power..._

That's just not the case. The reasons that a donor might choose a DAF are legion.

Again, I won't go into them all, but let's take an example that is more common than people realize. A donor who has passed on. _Sometimes_ in life, a couple's children need encouragement to be kindly and generous. Let's put it that way. DAFs are part of a somewhat complicated legal framework that can have the effect of actually _obliging_ heirs to share the family's resources.

And of course there are a million _other_ reasons that one might be motivated to use a DAF.

Point being, DAFs are not _solely_ used as a tax dodge. And the donors are not seeing the benefits from the tax dodge in any case, the vast majority of that benefit is going to the charities and the financial industry. (Heck, many of the donors have even passed on, so of course they don't care about any tax benefit. They made those arrangements for other reasons.)

<comment><USER10> I don't really believe that these other reasons are a major driver, but it also doesn't matter one way or the other, we can get rid of the tax benefits and let people keep the rest if they want.

I agree that the benefit is largely not accruing to the people claiming the tax deduction, but it is a subsidy coming out of the public purse that we should get rid of.

[EDIT]: Actually, I take that back, once you take into account the fact that the amount people donate is not significantly impacted by the tax situation, it seems clearer that the people getting the deduction are the ones getting the benefit/subsidy.

<comment><USER11> It's not coming out of the public purse. Those are not the public's funds to begin with. The law was democratically decided to allow charitable donations.

<comment><USER10> And we can democratically repeal the tax deductions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it odd to blame DAFs rather than the absurd tax laws that enable them.

There are several oddities in our tax laws:

\- extremely generous treatment of donating long term appreciated property. You deduct the FMV and also avoid paying capital gains tax. I have yet to understand why we think it is good policy to offer both advantages. Allowing only basis to be deducted (as is case for short term) seems much more reasonable.

\- our tax system has a standard deduction that itemizations must go over to see benefits

\- we have a progressive tax system that doesn't smooth over multiple years of unsteady income.

I've been a big user of one myself, contributing heavily in a year of an IPO (abnormally high income plus lots of highly appreciated stock). Using a Daf allowed me to have more time to vet target charities; if they didn't exist, I would have still donated heavily in the IPO year (because the tax benefits are leveraging my donations), just less efficiently (less vetting).

Point being, the way our tax system handles charitable donations is what is "unfairly" benefiting the rich; DAFs are just a symptom.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like a relatively simple fix for this is to set the same minimum distribution requirements that private foundations have. The article mentions 5%, which seems like a safe level.

<comment><USER14> I don't think 5% is a safe level. There are many charities that intend to operate in perpetuity, and this practice would eliminate this possibility.

<comment><USER15> Seems like a good thing in general. I don't want a 1850s charity whose purpose is to stop women from voting to still have money. (I doubt such a thing ever existed)

Maybe a charity with the sole purpose to preserve some specific artifact (a piano) or the like, but somehow I want it to not get more money than is required for that purpose.

<comment><USER14> Seems to me like you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Remember that the total amount of charitable giving is not a fixed pie. People are more likely to give, and give more, when the are free to organize their giving as they see fit.

<comment><USER16> We should also not be indulging the whims of dead people at the expense of the living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This isn't new. It's been going on since the end of gilded age with wealthy tycoons setting up family run charities and foundations. Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc all did this. Gates is the most famous one to do this in recent times.

It's a great way to shelter money from taxes and governments. It has been used to fund worthwhile enterprises. But it could also be used to give wealthy families political/institutional power for generations.

<comment><USER18> > This isn't new.

Well, something here is new since the sum total of DAF contributions tripled in 6 years. Are you referring to charities in general, or DAFs specifically? This article is less about charities as a whole and more about a specific style of donation where the funds accrue interest and are locked up and not usable by the charity until later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you can setup a non-profit like this they can theoretically give forever. That is what the philanthropists are going for. They want their gift to keep giving and be their legacy. Preventing that is not a good idea in my opinion.

<comment><USER20> Western society is historically opposed to your "good idea" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities)

In essence, the rule prevents a person from putting qualifications and criteria in a deed or a will that would continue to affect the ownership of property long after he or she has died, a concept often referred to as control by the "dead hand" or "mortmain".

<comment><USER19> This seems like a very narrow point directed at wills controlling real property.

Harvard has a very large endowment it uses provide free tuition and much more, but I would think the overall sentiment is positive about their actions. What about the Norway's sovereign fund? Why would it be different for an individual who wants to setup an organization to impact the world in some way in perpetuity?

<comment><USER21> Because times change.

Would you want the "Keep the blacks as slaves" foundation to still be ticking along these days?

A charity should have to get money from each generation to survive.

<comment><USER19> There are a lot of charities I don't want, but I don't think I should have the right to say what charities exist. Also, charities need people to run them, they aren't soulless automatons that execute on whatever evil plan was concocted by its benefactor. They are generally given broad direction and have the ability to change over time.

<comment><USER20> Yes but if you're a libertarian you dont believe in the enlightenment values anyway. This law is to reduce the power of the dead over the living and to allow them to chose their own path. This concept is similar to democracy where the monopoly of physical power rests in the hands of a majority of the populous.

<comment><USER19> While we abide by the rules of government established by a document that that is hundreds of years old?

<comment><USER20> Even in the USA the reality is much more nuanced.

The USA of 1776 is quite different from today. I think one of the big breaks was about states rights causing the civil war and effectively reconstituting the country. Even something like free speech (probably one of more unique things about USA) actually has its formulation in the 20th century. There are more obvious things like constitutional amendments or changes in interpretation.

Finally of course the USA is a creation of not abiding to the rules and traditions of the UK.

The laws of the past are not a tyrant over us and should not be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tax deductions for charities are anti democratic. Simply because it redirects collective money which would be directed through a democratic process and puts its control back into private hands. One can talk about potential corruption with an individual charity, but the real sin is the very idea of privately redirecting public funds.

<comment><USER22> The implicit social contract is that some charities (churches, Habitat for Humanity, various food banks) pick up the slack where the government blind spots are - food for the poor, housing, etc.

It also feeds into Americans' general belief of government's inability to deal with local issues swiftly - democratic process sounds fine and dandy, but it's pretty unrealistic to require extensive legislative processes to address one- off issues in every town - families losing income, escaping abusive significant others, needing help while transferring jobs, etc.

<comment><USER20> These situations are also handled by government in many northern European countries. (unemployment insurance, government housing, social work, free school, free medicare)

<comment><USER22> The cost-benefit analysis of providing such services through centralized government would look different for the US than European countries.

E.g., 20% of Swedes live in Stockholm, so a government-run hospital or food bank there would be accessible to a larger share of Swedes than a similar institution in NYC or LA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> IKEA is famous for having an incredibly obfuscated control and ownership structure with many foundations and charities.

<comment><USER24> The topic of IKEA has always fascinated me because of the bizarre contradiction between IKEA's public image of social responsibility and do- goodery that is in stark opposition to it's dark financial, corporate, and business practices. Between the nested dolls of corporate shell companies and offshore accounts to basically pay zero taxes anywhere while claiming a mantel of social responsibility is intriguing to me, not just for the way in which they are so easily able to deploy dark patterns to fool people.

IKEA has been exposed as having used that shell game of corporations and foundations to obscure illicit wood sourcing practices ... all the while people feel good about buying furniture amidst a whirlwind of diversity and social responsibility and environmentalist PR propaganda. It's utterly fascinating to me, it's like observing how a cult leader operates to snare and psychologically rope in their members and then brain wash them so thoroughly that they can't even operate without anchoring everything in the cult. If you were to strip away all the social justice, diversity, environmental responsibility, social do-goodery propaganda, you are left with a corporation that by all indications that are only available in a gleaning fashion, is quite devious and malevolent. It's very existence as a company that produces what is essentially throw away furniture alone, by itself, when you think about it, is in stark contrast to the very notion of environmentalism and ecological responsibility, even without examining their sourcing and manufacturing practices.

It's all just such a fascinating exposition of the gaslighting nature of the European corporate culture in general where the facade of social responsibility that is projected outward to the commoners is in direct and stark opposition to the nefarious activities and behaviors of the ruling elite that remain obfuscated behind their now legal and tax and accounting walls, where they would have remained hidden away behind castle walls in the past. It's very much at the core of the subject article; where these "charities" that serve to boost an image of benevolence, are actually far more self- serving tax avoidance malevolence. I am all for lowering and doing away with taxes whenever we can, but what is worse is dishonest and insincere taxation and charity that are far more fraud and theft than the benevolent do-goodery they are touted as being by the psychopathically dishonest.

Why should lower taxes only be something for the elite that saddle the middle and lower classes with the costs of their exploitation? ... well, because nothing has really changed from the aristocratic elite of the past, even though the methods have shifted and the labels for them have been revised and rebranded. All hail the king and our lords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is not really that new... as the 1954 Reece (Congressional) investigation into charities showed: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Committee_to_Investigate_Tax- Exempt_Foundations_and_Comparable_Organizations)

Also, Wright Patman's report on Family Foundations and Charitable Trusts: [https://openlibrary.org/works/OL11465104W/Tax- exempt_foundat...](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL11465104W/Tax- exempt_foundations_and_charitable_trusts_their_impact_on_our_economy)

</comment><comment><USER26> Looks like donating to charities to get a tax break, which seems fine. Is there a way that they are controlling how these monies are spent?

<comment><USER27> That's a fairly simplistic way of looking at it. Here's another way of looking at it: taxpayers are subsidizing tax breaks for the rich.

Guy puts $1M in stock or some other non-cash asset that can change in value into a DAF. Gets a tax receipt for $1M and uses it to reduce his taxable income (this is where the subsidy happens).

The $1M may sit in the DAF for years, not going to work in the charitable sector. It may depreciate in value. In this case when liquidated and moved from the DAF to some charity actually doing charitable work, it may be worth substantially less than $1M. Which means although taxpayers subsidized the $1M donation, it's actually a lot less money that's actually put to work in the charitable sector. Of course, it could also appreciate in value.

Source: I built an online DAF for 8 years that's taken in $410,000,000+ in donations.

<comment><USER2> > taxpayers are subsidizing tax breaks for the rich

I commented about this elsewhere in the thread. This is a ridiculous point of view because there is no net tax break for the individual.

If instead of donating $1M in stock, they sold the stock and kept the money, they would have more money than if they donated the stock and claimed the deduction. They get to deduct the $1M, but they don't get to keep it as well.

> Which means although taxpayers subsidized the $1M donation

This is true, but seems like a net benefit. They get to give a gift of $1M that only costs them $600k. But that's still $600k that they could have kept and spent on gilded washing machines and penguin-egg omelets (I'm assuming that this is what the rich spend their money on). Instead, that money, plus a "matching" donation from the government of $400k, goes to a charity that can't really directly benefit the donor.

<comment><USER27> >> taxpayers are subsidizing tax breaks for the rich

> I commented about this elsewhere in the thread. This is a ridiculous point > of view because there is no net tax break for the individual.

How is there no net tax break? In one scenario they keep the stock and pay more tax, in the other they donate the stock and deduct the charitable gift.

> If instead of donating $1M in stock, they sold the stock and kept the money, > they would have more money than if they donated the stock and claimed the > deduction.

Unless they don't sell the stock. Or can't (yet) sell the stock (private companies).

> They get to deduct the $1M, but they don't get to keep it as well.

Unless they control the recipient charity where the money ends up.

> This is true, but seems like a net benefit. They get to give a gift of $1M > that only costs them $600k. But that's still $600k that they could have kept > and spent on gilded washing machines and penguin-egg omelets (I'm assuming > that this is what the rich spend their money on). Instead, that money, plus > a "matching" donation from the government of $400k, goes to a charity that > can't really directly benefit the donor.

You're missing my point. Often the money doesn't go to a charity doing charitable work for years, if ever. Many DAFs only let you allocate the GAINS on the principal to charity (in this case, the gains on $1M). DAFs are another investment vehicle to minimize tax and maximize gains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The unasked question here is why we even have the idea of special treatment for nonprofits? Nonprofits pay the same as for-profits for their utilities, computers, payroll and the like. Yet their existence permeates and distorts the tax code.

</comment><comment><USER29> Just like the Clinton Foundation paying for Chelsea's wedding. Or paying for the personal expenses of the family.

<comment><USER30> I had not heard of this because I don't live in that particular bubble.

I looked it up, and it is rated as 'Unproven'; appears to be likely untrue, and based on who's pushing it, it's even less likely to be true.

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-foundation-paid- fo...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-foundation-paid-for-chelseas- wedding/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It is the same with most 'NGOS' in India

</comment><comment><USER32> Really I think the specific the problem here with DAF's is just misaligned incentives, the DAF values the donors donation but the government is the one that has to pony up the tax rebate. Obviously there is some auditing mechanism here where the valuation can't be too far from reality otherwise the government would come down on it but in practice it seems like that is one of their benefits. I think the more interesting and subtle problem though is that the rebate is awarded at donation time instead of when the money actually gets put to use which lets the DAF accrue fees on government money.

in a highly stylized example:

1\. A donor gives the DAF a $10m yacht

* DAF gives a donor $10m donation receipt

* Government gives donor <donor tax rate> * <donation receipt> rebate i.e. .30 * $10m = $3m

2\. DAF liquidates yacht into $9m cash and invests it

* the DAF charges .006 management fee on this for 5 years with a 5% return

3\. At the end of 5 years the DAF liquidates its investments and puts all of that money to work on a cause.

* ~$11.2m goes to work on a charitable cause

* DAF has collected ~340k in fees

This is more or less the description the DAF in the article but now but we've simplified to assume a conservative consistent return and that the whole donation gets put to work at once at the end of a set term whereas more likely it would be slowly liquidated over time. Now let's assume that instead of the government paying up the tax rebate when the donation is made that it is paid out when the money left the DAF and went to work on a cause.

1\. donor gives a DAF $10m yacht

* DAF values it at $9m and gives the donor <donor tax rate> * <donation receipt> rebate i.e. .30 * $9m = $2.7m

2\. DAF liquidates yacht into $9m cash, covers their $2.7m rebate outlay and invests $6.3m

* the DAF charges .006 management fee on this for 5 years with averages a 5% return

3\. At the end of 5 years the DAF liquidates its investment and puts all of that money to work on a cause.

* ~$7.8m from the DAF goes to work on a charitable cause + a $2.7m from the government to match that original rebate for a total of ~$10.5m

* DAF has collected ~238k in fees

What's the difference here?

1\. The government saves $300k on a rebate because the DAF has to liquidated the yacht to come up with the money to pay the rebate so the valuation is based on something the reflects the actual cash

2\. The government keeps <rebate amount> ($2.7m in this case) in its bank account for the 5 years while is in the DAF. This means the government can use it for it's own operations over that time period rather than it sitting in the "warehouses of wealth". It also means the DAF can't collect fees on this money because it is not managing it.

I'm not trying to make a statement on if the government should or should not subsidize donations to charity, just point out how that subsidy seems to be leveraged by the introduction of DAFs against its original intent.

sorry for the terrible formatting

</comment><comment><USER33> Silicon Valley Community Fund has an endowment of between Stanford's and Harvard's, around $14 billion USD. The reason is that backers can pledge funds and get tax advantages now, while deferring transfer of funds/assets until later. It's also under no obligation to help anyone, and donors can put strings attached to realize their own pet projects. IOW, the whole thing is a tax-dodge.

<comment><USER34> That's not correct, you can not take a tax benefit until you actually turn over control of the assets to the fund. "Pledges" do not generate tax deductions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Everyone is mentioning Gates but the same thing was done by the Clintons and McCains

<comment><USER36> This is a technology focused website, hence why Gates is mentioned more than political figures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interestingly this is apparently how some corrupt russian government officials like to hide/park their dirty cash/bribes etc. funnel money/bribes/transfer assets into "charities", then have charities buy/own the assets you are interested in owning... houses, yachts etc. Then they have interesting situations where on paper a charity owns a villa ... but in reality a high profile politician lives in it.

This is charity abuse taken to the extreme, but i have a feeling russians have copied the approach from their western counterparts.

[https://themoscowtimes.com/news/prime-minister-medvedevs- sup...](https://themoscowtimes.com/news/prime-minister-medvedevs-supposed- secret-empire-is-russias-biggest-charity-group-57820)</comment>


We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/788099178832420865 <comment><USER2> Does anyone know what the cryptic tweets[1][2][3], that this tweet was following up to, refer to? onion address?

1\. [https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787781519951720449](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787781519951720449) 2\. [https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787781046519693316](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787781046519693316) 3\. [https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787777344740163584](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787777344740163584)

<comment><USER3> SHA-256 hashes of future documents to be released.

It's insurance to make sure Ecuador doesn't turn Assange over.

<comment><USER4> In what way does this ensure that they don't turn Assange over?

<comment><USER5> It does prove he has some documents which other holders of the documents can ascertain he had and presumably shared with others in some sort of dead man's switch setup.

Definitely unclear if posting those hashes is a winning move though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To get philosophical, when are we really free?

We seem to be learning, at various levels, that the very people we elect to represent us --our employees-- have distorted the contract they have with us to the point where they think it is OK to deprive us freedoms as they see fit.

This isn't good. It has the makings of something very ugly going forward. It's the proverbial slippery slope.

</comment><comment><USER7> That... is very strange. Why did Ecuador cut off his internet? Hyperbole and conspiracy aside, that would seem like a very overt warning to Assange (if true) that if he continues to release, Ecuador will withdraw its protection. Very strange.

<comment><USER8> There's rumors it's related to a pending charge for grooming of a minor online, who knows though. I'm sure we will find out the real reason in the next few days so I'll wait for that rather than go into full tinfoil hat conspiracy theory territory.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems pretty strange that he can't just hop on 4G, they had that the last time I was in London.

It'd be pretty surprising if they were actually jamming wireless networks, but I guess that's what these tweets have to be implying.

<comment><USER9> We're you inside a foreign embassy at the time? There are very good reasons that modern embassies often have countermeasures against signals being transmitted into and out of them (including sometimes being constructed as faraday cages), except for those controlled by the government the embassy represents.

<comment><USER10> He has a window he can open, there's definitely reception inside his room. Unless it's actively being jammed.</comment></comment></comment>


Genius used watermarks to catch Google stealing its content - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ASankin/status/1202032481135996928 <comment><USER2> Discussed five months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20194952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20194952)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20201139)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20204625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20204625)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Twitter thread states that Google has blamed unspecified "data partners" for stealing the content. This is about the "knowledge-graph"-powered infoboxes that sometimes appear on a SERP page. But which "data partner" would be providing Google with lyrics data, and why didn't Google ban them from the platform after they were caught stealing 3rd-party content previously? (Wikidata is one example of a well-known source for Google's KG, but obviously they don't provide any copywritten lyrics. There was a fun instance though where Google would say someone who lived in Ancient Rome is still alive and thousands-of-years old, because Wikidata had no indication that they were dead. It was fixed there by putting in an "unknown value" death date.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I really wish I had more insight into how this actually works, how many people in google work on these info-boxes, where do they get their data from (plundering existing sites it seems). It's weird to me that google is so cheap. If they want the data so bad why don't they buy Genius or setup an equivalent, or train some AI to extract song lyrics from songs. The amount of brainpower working at google is huge but the output is often quite disappointing, I guess the scale at which they operate is impressive but the results not so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it a bit disingenuous to call song lyrics Genius' "content." If anything the content here belongs to the artists who actually wrote these songs, not some website that puts a text version of songs other people wrote on the internet.

Also likely indefensible from any kind of legal standpoint as Genius' can't possibly claim any kind of copyright on song lyrics unless they've licensed these lyrics from their original authors.

<comment><USER5> The following tweets do say Genius does have a licensing deal with the publishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unbelievable! I've always held Google in high regard but this is beyond slimy.

<comment><USER7> Can't tell if sarcasm or not.</comment></comment>


Is Linux Better Than OS X? GNU, Open Source and Apple in History - <AUTHOR> http://thevarguy.com/open-source-application-software-companies/051815/linux-better-os-x-gnu-open-source-and-apple- <comment><USER2> Every 6 months or so I get a wild hair and look to replace Mac OS X with a new Linux laptop. It always ends in disaster because of a few sticking points. My latest attempt was with an Ubuntu-certified Dell m3800.

The 4K screen was unmanageable in Linux. Many applications required their own configuration to deal with the high DPI display. Some (most notably Skype, which I need for business) were completely unusable when you increase the font size. If I stuck to lower resolutions, it wouldn't matter I guess...

Even with a K1100 3d accelerator, it was still limited in 2d mode, unable to play 4k videos in Windows w/ all the proprietary drivers, much less 60fps videos. Linux was completely useless in that department. It wouldn't play 1440p videos fullscreen without screen tearing.

Then we get to my personal problem. I remember the learning curve when I went from Linux to Mac OS X. The keyboard was insane. WTF? Why am I using my thumb? This is so weird... foreign... But.... nice....

The idea of using my pinky for copy and paste is insane now. Having to use shift+ctrl+c to paste in a terminal? UGH. gross.

Unfortunately, changing all of the configurations isn't possible in Linux. You have to go through every application and change them individually.

I love linux. I have VMs spun up right now for development, and all of our servers run linux. I have been using linux since the 90s. I just can't give up the productivity.

Also, if you have never had to experience a full system crash / losing a laptop, good. However I had this happen, and Mac's time capsule restore was amazing. I had my entire desktop back online in a couple hours. All of my files, and all of my configurations were there. It was magical.

<comment><USER3> I actually quite like Mac OS X. Things seem to "just work" most of the time, or at least, more of the time than they work for me on GNU/Linux. I can't give any examples off the top of my head, but it seems everything in OS X just "flows together" much nicer, and that's even including programs like Chromium which aren't from Apple.

The reason why I don't use it, however, is because it's tied to the hardware in such a way that if I want this "just works" feeling, I'd need to purchase hardware from Apple, which for me seems overpriced and it shouldn't be necessary. Further, OS X has its quirks that don't let you run it like Linux or BSD - for example, installing things like PostgreSQL.</comment></comment>


New startup-friendly space "SOMAcentral" in SoMa $1000/mo for office - <AUTHOR> http://go.DanielOdio.com/SOMAcentral Blog post includes 7 minute video showing neighborhood & space. <comment><AUTHOR> Pricing details also on blog; $1k/mo for windowless office or bullpen; $1.5k/mo for window office.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The blog has a 7 minute video showing the neighborhood & office.</comment>


Amazon EC2 outage: summary and lessons learned - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rightscale.com/2011/04/25/amazon-ec2-outage-summary-and-lessons-learned/

<comment><USER2> I got the directive this weekend to transfer stuff off of the cloud immediately. We lost a weekend of work for a lot of people, and nothing I can say as a tech will account for that. Upper management wants us the hell off.

I'd argue that the overall cost is much less than having all of these services in house, and in house services go down too.

But I think for the moment, they want someone to yell at, and Amazon gives the most unhelpful lack of communication, with no even remote eta, and that's unacceptable.

<comment><USER3> I think you'd be surprised at how much better/cheaper you could have done it in house.

Given proper motivation (say 20c bonus on every dollar saved) I think we'd see this argument vanish pretty quickly.

If you listen to the wrong people (sales-guys from "Enterprise Grade" vendors), or pinch too many pennies it can easily be a disaster. It's dangerous water to tread on your own for sure.

<comment><USER4> Beware of wrong incentives. This is exactly how people are tempted to improve the average case with a trade-off with the worst case. Dollars saved in the short term can cause catastrophic problems later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amazon has promoted RightScale in the past (and presumably the two continue to have a close relationship). So it seems understandable that RightScale would want to adopt a diplomatic tone.

However, imo an executive summary that starts with _"The Amazon cloud proved itself in that sufficient resources were available world-wide such that many well-prepared users could continue operating with relatively little downtime. But because Amazon's reliability has been incredible, many users were not well-prepared leading to widespread outages. Additionally, some users got caught by unforseen failure modes rendering their failure plans ineffective."_ seems a little too supportive of Amazon.

<comment><USER6> That's like saying, _The commuter rail service proved itself in that customers who also owned cars were able to drive to work when the train stopped running._

<comment><USER7> No, it isn't. It is like saying the highway system proved itself when the 101 was closed because people could take 280 instead. If for some reason, you only had planned to ever take 101 and wasn't ready to take an alternate route, yes you got screwed, but that was kind of your own lack of planning for this particular failure mode. (stretched metaphor.)

<comment><USER8> The metaphor works if you pretend 101 is on the east coast and the 280 on on the west coast. :D

<comment><USER9> The metaphors are still flawed, since it's both the route _and_ the destination that changes, which makes things a lot more complex than just taking a different route.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://ee.lbl.gov/papers/sync_94.pdf>

I posted this yesterday, with the conjecture that it may have been a sudden sync problem. It's a good read.

<comment><USER11> This is a great paper. If you haven't read it, it suggests a common scenario where endemic network delays tend to nudge all participants in a periodic broadcast protocol to send their broadcasts at the same time, so that some hours after you start all the participants, everyone has synchronized and on a timer saturates the network with updates.

The solution (I didn't reread so this is from memory) is to add random jitter to each participant's timer.

However, is there evidence to suggest that's what happened to Amazon? I can see this being a big issue in '93 with high-latency low-bandwidth links a commonplace. But we think that Amazon wasn't engineered well enough to deal with multiple orders of magnitude spikes in C&C traffic?

Thank you, though, for posting a (much needed) technical comment to this discussion.

<comment><USER10> I don't think it was a symptom of routing synchronization specifically, but I'd be curious to know if it was a case of unexpected and undesired synchronization. (E.G. An independent and random cluster of blocks suddenly updated; the network was saturated; it pulled in more updates; ...)

And yes, the paper talked about randomization. It also pointed out the magnitude of randomization required was larger than expected.

<comment><USER12> Has there been an official explanation?

<comment><USER10> As far as I'm aware, no. That's why RightAWS said they get an F for communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those of us waiting to learn what happened, the title is baity and misleading. A more accurate headline would be: "Rightscale outage: some speculation and customer service suggestions for Amazon".

 _At the time of writing Amazon has not yet posted a root cause analysis. I will update this section when they do. Until then, I have to make some educated guesses._

That pretty much sums it up. Well, that plus some contradictory lesson learned, such as _The biggest problem was that more than one availability zone was affected_ , followed by, _must have live replication across multiple availability zones_.

<comment><USER14> I agree. This is just another article of someone speculating what has gone wrong, possibly in order to get hits on his or her blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author's suggestion that service providers should make predictions is exactly what status updates _aren't_ supposed to do.

Amazon's communication during this was on point. There's a line between _tell me what's wrong_ and _fix what's wrong_ and all of the author's suggestions on how to fix the "communication problem" are on the wrong side of that line.

<comment><USER16> Mhh, this is weird. I didn't suggest that they tell me what to do but that they tell me about the derivative. From the status messages it appeared that things were getting better, albeit slowly, when in fact they kept getting worse and affected more machines 12 hours after the initial problem.</comment></comment>


Jet-powered flyboard soars over Paris for Bastille Day parade - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/14/jet-powered-flyboard-soars-over-paris-for-bastille-day-parade <comment><USER2> France, from whence fuselage, empennage, aileron, longeron. You may know of Louis Blériot, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot),

but also "Pilot Flies Through Arc de Triomphe" (1919) [https://www.military.com/video/operations-and- strategy/first...](https://www.military.com/video/operations-and- strategy/first-world-war/pilot-flies-through-arc-de-triomphe/1402665575001)

and "Airbus and Cricri battery-powered planes make historic journeys across English Channel" [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airbus-cricri-battery- powered-p...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airbus-cricri-battery-powered- plane-historic-journey-across-english-channel/) (see the Cristaline launched from a biplane: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdu8PV_ulQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdu8PV_ulQg))</comment>


Ask HN: Any startups available this weekend?  - <AUTHOR>

I am looking to join a startup after graduation and would love to tour a couple startups the next two days while I am in SF. I have seen a couple people do this in the past, so I figure I would give it a try as well. Just shoot me an email and I will be sure to reply! Thanks! <comment><USER2> More information, please. Who are you? What do you do? Do you have a blog? Code? Prior projects? Are you an axe murderer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I'm about to graduate medical school but have a passion for startups (my background is in electrical engineering but I've gotten into web engineering for the past couple years). My projects include Synchtube, Epicmafia, and a small mobile app for calculators physicians use in the hospital. I'm not an axe murderer! I'd love the chance to meet any startup founders over a cup of coffee or some beer this weekend.

<comment><USER3> There's still no way to contact you in your profile. The e-mail field is not visible to others, it's for password resets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Omg, sorry x_x. I didn't know that... I assumed everybody was busy. My email is email@example.com . I'm just here to visit a couple friends and to see if I like the weather and the area. Please email me! I would love to meet some people outside the medical field!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey. Don't see your email anywhere. I just arrived in SF as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> What's your contact info?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's email@example.com , or firstname.lastname@example.com is fine as well.

<comment><USER5> It was nice meeting you Phil!

<comment><AUTHOR> Likewise Andrew!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Facebook Fallacy - Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/web/40437/ <comment><USER3> Many people suggest we're in a bubble, and usually call it a social media bubble. I still find myself wondering if we aren't in an _advertising_ bubble instead, with social media a rider and not a driver per se of the trend. Advertising is and always shall be a very important part of the economy, but there's also this sharp bound on exactly how much money it can move around since it needs to result in net profit for the advertiser. Google definitely has demonstrated they have a superior platform. I'm not sure anybody else has. Not just Facebook, anybody else.

If there's any element of this bubble that reminds me of the previous it is that there are still an awful lot of startups out there who are trying to simply acquire as many users as possible with vague plans to figure out how to make money later... and they all seem to come up with the same, "Uh... shove ads at them, I guess?" plan in the end.

<comment><USER4> Advertising student. Advertising's not in a bubble; some very rich and formerly successful advertisers are just doing an awful job at adjusting to the change in society that's now been twenty years in the making. Dumbasses.

Here's how advertising works from its creator's point of view. There are a few principles abstract enough that you can apply to any piece of advertising. Good advertising positions itself within a market, develops a brand image, establishes its product as a good product (not even necessarily better-than: as long as you look trustworthy and people know your name, you'll sell). The bulk of ad research, meanwhile, goes into studying individual forms. TV ads. Product placement in films. Radio spots. Magazine spots. There's a series of long-tested techniques which advertisers rely on. Even these techniques usually fail, because plenty of advertisers are fucking idiots who don't get that ads are a creative medium, and if you're formulaic rather than creative, you'll sell jack shit.

The challenge of the Internet is that every web site has its own unique form. Most of these forms weren't even _designed_ for ads (Facebook at least knew how they wanted to sell ads; Twitter still has no clue). To sell on Twitter is different from selling on Facebook is different from selling on Reddit or Tumblr or Pinterest or Instagram. There's no formula. And some of these sites are so limited that advertisers simply have no clue how to push their shitty little message out to suckers, ahem, consumers.

The fix, of course, is that instead of selling a brand you start interesting conversations, create dialogues that engage people with the thing you're selling, even start communities of people who revolve around your product. But advertisers aren't bright enough or genuine enough or ambitious enough to do this the right way. Community-building especially: nobody wants to join a forum for a product that isn't a car. Yet some people persist in thinking that if they build it, fans will come.

One future of advertising looks like the Deck Network, where people so trust the advertisers that they'll click on the ads willingly. One's the model Facebook is still struggling with: connect super-small businesses with precisely the people who want to buy their product. These anti-Facebook ads stories recently only show that you have to be smarter advertising on Facebook than you'd have to be in a newspaper. The really good Facebook ads get friends talking about them, because they really are something that those people enjoy. But that runs counter to how advertisers think about their sheep, goddammit I mean targets, no wait that doesn't sound nice either.

The real bubble is: stop treating people like products, start treating them like people. That means fewer start-ups designed to sucker people into wanting some bullshit connection they never really needed (YC has some exactly like this), fewer advertisers looking down at the masses like they're ripe for the picking, fewer businesses geared toward herding people up and selling them wholesale. The more freedom you give people w/r/t how they consume media and how they express themselves, the harder it is to trap them in your crap. Ultimately it becomes more profitable to just treat them like human beings, and act like a human yourself. But plenty of products will die when this happens because plenty of products were never intended for human consumption in the first place.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to propose an alternative.

Personally I think the problem isn't people doing an awful job, it's attention. On the TV they frequently interrupt your program but you'll endure it as the content is longer than the ad. Same with Radio. In Magazines and Papers they constantly jiggle around all the content so you have to at least scan the page to see if it's an advert or an article which means they have at least a chance to grab your attention.

Web ads cannot grab your attention because the content they surround is bite- sized so any attempt to interrupt is so much more jarring. They tried a few different ways and generally they failed. The worst new one is the put an ad in the middle of the text, but that too is incredibly jarring and confusing. Another example is the attempt to monetize funny videos by putting a 15 sec ad clip in front of it. But quite often this is as long as the content! Do people even try and endure the ad? I'd love to see the numbers. If I click play on a random video and an ad starts I usually skip to the next article rather than watch the ad.

Also when you get into something like Facebook the adverts sit in the same place every time. Which you learn to skip automatically very quickly as you're usually not interested in them. You never have to play hunt the article apart from the very occasional site that has the full page popups which generally means you will start avoiding that site.

But worse for advertisers, if they make them too intrusive people _can just turn them off_. Brilliant!

The only ad I've recently seen that made me think, hmm, this could work are the occasional full page background adverts they run on IMDB.

Also Facebook didn't used to have ads, they just added them to the side of the page at one point. And I doubt the future of ads does look like the Deck Network, it's just another advertising network. They seem to be teaching some strange ideas at your college, I'd be interested to see the data that backs it up.

<comment><USER6> > Deck Network, it's just another advertising network

Doesn't seem so to me. I always run Adblock, but after looking around a bit at some DECK-served sites (there's a list on <http://decknetwork.net/>), I might whitelist their ads. They seem unobtrusive and mindfully-designed.

You seem to be saying that advertising networks could never work, but don't back that up with data (which, ironically, is what you're asking unalone for).

> the occasional full page background adverts they run on IMDB

I hate those. They ruin a consistent website experience, and then piss me off when I accidentally click the giant margins. The AV Club does this also - <USER2> used to, I don't know, I blocked 'em.

You started off by saying:

> I'd like to propose an alternative.

But never did so. What's the alternative?

<comment><USER5> I'm not saying they're a bad ad network or intrusive. I just mean their ads are functionally exactly the same as everyone elses. Their ethics doesn't make them more effective.

I actually meant alternative explanation to the parent's observation that all advertisers seemingly have suddenly all become idiots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everyone always seems to talk about Facebook for payments.

Am I the only one that finds this hard to believe? Why is Facebook in a good position to authorize payments? They have very few credit cards on file. Besides FarmVille, et al, who exactly is giving their credit card info to Facebook?

In what context am I supposed to use Facebook to pay for things? If we're talking about mobile, then we're talking about smartphones. What exactly makes you think Google/Apple are going to lay down and give the keys to the mobile payment castle to Facebook? Google and Apple already have our credit card info, we all already buy things through Apple and Google, and it is a logical step that I would use that same process for buying something with my smartphone in a store.

I don't think it is a logical step for me to pull out my smartphone, open my Facebook app and use it to pay for something, anymore than it makes sense to use my Twitter app to pay, or Instagram for that matter.

In fact, if we're going to use a third party app to pay for things, I have an app from my bank, why not use that?

I just don't see Facebook getting in to mobile payments...

<comment><USER8> I picture a payments system on Facebook being geared to person-to-person payments and web payments, not in store, mobile payments. Need to pay back a friend for dinner, split the rent, pitch in for a co-workers gift? FB is a natural place. These type of payments could make people very used to paying with FB as well, potentially opening the door for use in more traditional payment scenarios. Year after year I've been surprised that nothing like this has emerged on FB.

<comment><USER7> But what about _Facebook_ makes them positioned to do this? They're Contact list? That's openly available to devs.

If I'm paying a friend, why not use PayPal, or Bump, or just cash?

<comment><USER8> The contact list, consumer trust, and appropriate context. A third-party developer offering this has the significant challenge of making users trust them with a payment. People know Facebook and (most) trust them. PayPal or Bump are options, but are distanced from social interactions. I'd be interested to see the usage numbers from younger consumers, as I also imagine (with no data to back me up) that not many teenagers or college students use PayPal. As for cash, again it's an option, but it's pretty clear the world is going plastic. There's a reason Square is a big deal.

<comment><USER7> The contact list is part of Facebook's open API. They give it away for free.

As far as Facebook being trusting in terms of commerce, well... I don't buy it.

[http://threatmetrix.com/study-reveals-only-a-quarter-of- cons...](http://threatmetrix.com/study-reveals-only-a-quarter-of-consumers- trust-facebook-storefronts-to-prevent-fraud/)

Also - anyone remember Facebook Marketplace? Me neither. It's been stagnating for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (1) I don't think that digital ads are less effective than old TV and Newspaper advertising. In the bad old days, nobody could measure the impact of advertising and people assumed ads were worth more than they are.

Once it became possible to measure the effectiveness of transactional ads online, it became a lot harder to justify the cost of display ads.

The advertising apocalypse won't just affect the internet, it will affect traditional media. On the few cases where I watch cable or OTA TV I'm shocked that the ads are 5-10% relevant to me -- it seems like much of the industry is kept alive by ambulance-chasing lawyers, credit repair services and the medicare economy.

(2) Facebook has other ways to make money, and in a pinch, they'll develop them -- it's believable that they could increase revenue 2-3x in a year or two if they really had to... Largely because they haven't had intense pressure to increase revenue. Facebook Credits, for instance, could be a gold mine if you could buy more things with them.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article proposes that the ad-supported web will collapse along with FB after prices have dropped to beyond unsustainable ... what would the post-ad web look like? I'm looking forward to all the content farms, endless plagiarism, and constant attention-seeking going away; what else will happen?

<comment><USER11> I haven't a clue but both CL and, for some reason, the São Paulo gov't banning outdoor adverts come to mind (perhaps the world gov't one day will ban all ads everywhere). Also Star Trek where you'd do things because you are good at them and wish to contribute to society, no money needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> All of the theories on the death of Facebook are all based on the premise that Facebook won't pivot. That the only way out is to monetize mobile. If you asked me 10 years ago, I could've never predicted AWS or the Kindle, but look at Amazon today.

<comment><USER13> In a way Amazon is an absurd object lesson - their P/E ratio isn't far from _double_ Facebook's and Facebook was five times as profitable as Amazon last quarter. If anything, Amazon shows that as long as you're profitable and retain a controlling stake in the company, the media's and Wall Street's much- vaunted expectations aren't worth a damn.

<comment><USER14> P/E isn't everything since earnings can fluctuate for a lot of reasons. Amazon's market cap is only about twice their annual revenue, compared to 28x for facebook.

<comment><USER15> But I think you have to admit that there's an expectation built into Amazon's market cap that they will eventually find a way to improve their margins.

Compare HP, whose market cap is around 1/3 annual revenue at the moment.

<comment><USER14> Not necessarily. AWS and Kindle/eBooks are already proven businesses with high margins, if the current growth rate on those businesses is maintained then the overall profit margin across all Amazon will improve. And in both cases Amazon is the leader in those fields (PaaS and eBooks). Also, Amazon has been spending a lot of money lately on expansion and hiring, once that's stabilized their profit will go up as well. Overall I'd say the bet that AWS, Kindle, and Amazon's retailing business will sustain double digit growth rates over the next several years is a pretty safe bet.

Also you need to factor in that Amazon has about $25 billion in assets, so their net market cap is only about $75 billion. Anyone looking at Amazon's revenue growth and the diversified foundations of that company can't be too upset at the seemingly high P/E ratio of AMZN. Facebook is also growing revenue like crazy, but their market is much different and there are a lot of open questions on whether or not they can maintain that growth (or even retain their user base). That doesn't mean that facebook is a bad investment, it just means that there's a lot of risk there and the stock price doesn't seem to reflect any of that risk.

Consider: Yahoo has nearly as many users as Facebook (700 mil vs 900 mil), higher total revenue, just as many experienced developers, and a similar business model (ads). Almost all of facebook's valuation lies at the feet of their reputation, not at any sound business fundamentals, and that's a pretty big burden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Facebook Connects the world...almost everybody i meet is there and i can write messages from my phone to them for free. Add to that their giant app platform for games and entertainment stuff. Soon you will be able to Pay with Facebook Credits everywhere...i think they have plenty of ways to go apart from advertising.

<comment><USER17> By now, they've clearly shown us that their main game will be display ads. The history of other public web companies tells us that anything else added on will be small incremental improvements compared to the display ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here are some opportunities: Social graph is their biggest asset. 900million users. A number of companies have been built only because of this network. I can easily see them charging large sites in the future. Spotify, Pinterest, Tumblr are just a few companies using the social graph to build better products and all of them are billion dollar companies using Facebook for free. Google maps now charges large sites for API calls, Bing is now charging for API calls. Facebook will too.

Payments is an amazing opportunity for them. One click, Purchase With Facebook. The payment processing game is all about the network effect. Dwolla is innovative but they need an "eBay" for them to gain massive usage. Facebook doesn't need it.

Facebook can destroy eBay by creating a marketplace + their own payment processor. Facebook is the only company that can break eBay's monopoly of the online marketplace and payments. This field is ripe for disruption and in the game of network effect Facebook is unstoppable.

I can see them moving into enterprise too. Maybe teaming up with Micosoft's Office 365 to create an awesome enterprise social network with Office 365 built in.

Online gambling laws are starting to become loose. This can be huge for not only zynga but for many, many other massive companies who would love to use the social graph for the gambling. Example: BetFair and Bwin.

<comment><USER19> About your first part: I recently thought about a couple of app ideas that centered around integrating different web applications (facebook, dropbox, soundcloud, youtube).

One of the red flags was what you described. The external service providers can pull the plug whenever they want. They can steal your idea, they can charge you for using their API. Of course, if you are lucky they might buy you, but I don't foresee too many 1 billion dollar acquisitions from Facebook in the future.

<comment><USER18> I think charging for the API in inevitable. As for stealing the idea. I personally never worry about people stealing my ideas because if an idea is good enough it will be stolen and copied %100.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Even if Facebook collapses, it doesn't mean it will take the rest of the web down with it. It just means that perhaps a place where you are shooting the breeze with your beer-drinking buddies isn't the best place to sell some, perhaps even most, goods and services. If that's the case, and the price for putting an ad on FB decreases, it doesn't following that the price for running an ad on another website will also be lower.

The author making the fundamental mistake of assuming that all web sites are the same, and that's obviously false. Just because Facebook is (in his view) a ad-supported website doesn't mean that it is interchangeable with any other ad-supported website.

<comment><USER21> > Even if Facebook collapses, it doesn't mean it will take the rest of the web > down with it.

The WWW was here before Facebook. To even raise that possibility shows people completely lack a sense of proportion. Facebook and Google can disappear from the WWW and the WWW will stay there just like it was before these companies came along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It was a wrong move for Google to have gone into the social media business IMO. It took focus from their search, which has arguably lost quality, and injected search with too many diversions and "noise".

The level of interest in Google+ reflects "the fallacy of Facebook" as well, it is the same effect: why would people continue to expose themselves like that?

Social media with a purpose, like LinkedIn and similar, are good for business contacts. Facebook and Google+ simply aren't a business environment.

The purpose of Facebook and Google+ is to mine data and sell ads. IMO that is a broken business model, because at some point privacy will inevitably become a barrier.

</comment><comment><USER22> If I can send a message to anyone I know or have met (in real-time, asychronously, or by video), who will receive it on their phone or computer immediately, without having to remember a number or address, I'd call that earth-changing.

I don't know if Facebook will be a successful business, or if more convenient ways of communicating will appear in the future, but the ability to let me easily communicate with all my friends and family is as earth-changing as I'm going to need it.

<comment><USER23> In that aspect Skype is no different: sender and receiver need an account, you need to know whatever the FB name is of whoever you're messaging, you have to have an app (mobile app or browser) running on your device to be aware of the message. Main difference in messaging is Skype doesn't allow you to message offline users, I think.

<comment><USER24> It does. My group of friends use it as a pure text IM system; crazy as it seems, it works better than anything else we've tried (e.g. if you're signed into Jabber from two devices, messages for you will only go to one of them).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder why no one mentions surveillance? Facebook may not be a perfect platform for advertising, but it is an awesome Big Br0 2.0. It's a lot more efficient and effective than anything that the N5A, C1A, or any other major intelligence agency have ever concocted directly. Like it or not, Facebook is here to stay. Whether it generates revenue from advertisers or governments is another story.

I strongly feel that C1SPA will be a strong part of Facebook's financial future.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is why the Demand Media model (the massive production of content part) makes some sense.

Google wants publishers to make high quality content, but they don't understand that the ROI for that model is often piss poor, and very unfeasible for small, beginning publishers.

<comment><USER17> Thank you for saying this. As a small publisher myself, I am slowly being forced to go the Demand Media route, ever since I discovered that my articles earn about 1 dollar a piece. Got to get them done for less than that if I'm to stay in business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think Facebook needs to get into the business of selling my data to companies I personally trust to have it.

Imagine letting me auction off my corner of the Facebook graph to companies that bid for it and I trust to sell it to. I get paid, Facebook gets a cut, and everybody is happy because I retain control over my data and the company who gets it knows they have a valuable, trusting customer and not just some apathetic eyeballs.

I don't think this is realistic at all, but it would be a way to calm privacy fears and revolutionize web advertising. As it is, most people I know just use adblock, because internet advertising is absolutely terrible. But -- and this is saying something from somebody like me who despises ads -- it doesn't have to be.

</comment><comment><USER28> The earth-changing idea is that we are all connected electronically by a few degrees. A lot of companies have tried this but Facebook has come the furthest.

</comment><comment><USER29> » _At a forward profit-to-earnings ratio of 56_

56? Profit-to-earnings?

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd phrase it differently. It'll collapse because it blatantly disrespects users' privacy.

</comment><comment><USER31> How about just buying Zynga?

</comment><comment><USER32> Facebook has so many options: E.g. Imagine you could also sell goods and open a shop on facebook. No need to leave facebook anymore, or visit another website on the web.</comment>


The Telescope of the 2030s - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/science/space/the-telescope-of-the-2030s.html?action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> Great article. I really enjoyed the part where he became a little more aware of the world in which he lives. We really do spend chump change on science.

"I used to think $10 billion was a lot of money before TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $700 billion bailout that saved the banks in 2008 and apparently has brought happy days back to Wall Street. Compared with this, the science budget is chump change, "

<comment><USER3> TARP didn't just hand over $700 billion in cash. It was a financial instrument. According to Wikipedia, it actually made money -- $441 billion in revenue over $426 billion invested.

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

<comment><USER2> Yes, it was the example used in the article. There are other ways to show how little money goes into science. Apple, for example, has more cash in the bank than the cost of the Apollo Space Program:

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/28/by-the-numbers- app...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/28/by-the-numbers-apples- ludicrous-fourth-quarter)

The U.S. is one rich country. It would be beneficial if we could funnel more money into science. It usually pays dividends.

<comment><USER3> Private funding pays dividends, public funding leaks money.

The problem is the lack of incentives for private funding.

<comment><USER4> _public funding leaks money_

Public funding's issue is that its value, while very real and substantial, is difficult to quantify because it's not in the business of making money. It doesn't deliver a product in the classical sense, it doesn't have a calculated ROI. Improving the lives of humans isn't something an accountant can plot on a spreadsheet.

Public funding is in the business of making new discoveries - many hold little _immediate_ market value but a tonne of value when implemented by private industry years and even decades down the track. That's hard to put a solid number on.

Add to that, private industry leaks money as well. Any sufficiently large organization will require more resources to communicate a policy/directive/goal or pivot than a smaller one. Look at it like an organism - it eats more, wastes more but leaves big tracks in the sand and can attack the bigger problems that smaller organisms can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Right now is more or less the worst possible time to plan out a new space telescope. There's one simple practical reason, the JWST hasn't been launched yet. Once it has then that'll end it's budget dominance and if it succeeds then it'll hopefully start to pump some fresh air back into the space science community, after having sucked most of it up for the past decade with its cost-overruns and schedule slips.

But far more important than that are the drastic changes coming to space launch. Reusability is on the horizon, and innovative launch concepts are being tested. Almost assuredly launch capabilities and launch prices 10 years from now will be very different. And that is the primary driver of cost and program complexity when it comes to orbital space telescopes. High launch costs means that spacecraft need to eek out the utmost performance from within tight payload margins, that raises cost. It means there's no room for contingencies like backup missions, which raises the stakes. And because the cost and stakes are so high that means the vehicle has to be over-engineered so that it has a very high probability of completing its primary mission, which further increases cost. Even though launch doesn't end up being the majority of mission cost, it still has an enormous impact on it.

In a decade or so it may be possible to launch payloads at somewhere between half to 1/10th of current costs. Which opens up a whole new vista of opportunities and changes the local cost/benefit maxima sharply. It will likely be possible to build, launch, and operate a Hubble-class telescope for less than a billion dollars, perhaps only a few hundred million dollars. That makes it more feasible to test innovative designs, it makes it easier to launch a fleet of similar or identical telescopes to increase science throughput, and it makes it feasible to simply replace failed telescopes. That may very well change the way we design and build spacecraft, relying more on extra mass instead of bleeding-edge over-engineering to provide longevity and reliability. But it'll also provide new insights into orbital telescope design, instrumentation, as well as abundant new science data, all of which will inform next generation telescope design, likely leading in different directions from the designs and budgets we would choose today.

</comment><comment><USER6> So why can't the ISS be used to host the telescope, however large it may be? It seems to have all infrastructure in place already to be able to do something like that.. except maybe the starshade.

<comment><USER7> Probably something to do with ideal orbits for different purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _It could resolve objects only 300 light-years in diameter — the nucleus of a small galaxy or a gas cloud on the way to collapsing into a star and planets, say — anywhere in the observable universe._

The article opens talking about exoplanets rather than very distant galaxies. What does that kind of resolving power - which is deeply impressive - mean for looking at stuff in our immediate neighborhood?

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if basing such a large telescope, or group of telescopes, makes sense on the Moon for the ease of construction and maintenance. At either pole a large array of segmented reflectors could be constructed and added to.

I wonder if the thin atmosphere or moon-quakes make this non optimal.

<comment><USER10> Well, I think that the moon wouldn't be too feasible since it does rotate. If you land telescopes on the moon, you wouldn't be able to observe the sky for a long period of time, like the hubble did with the deep field (50 days of time).

It also doesn't make sense to geosync the telescope behind the "dark side" of the earth for the same reason. Long exposures wouldn't be easy since the earth does move around the sun, so the sky moves with it. Eventually you will have to face the sun to get the same shot of the sky.

So, the only way would to be to have the orbit around the sun so the telescope can always face away from the sun. that way you can at least create the long exposures they need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is the location refered to, a million miles from Earth and orbiting the sun, a Lagrangian point?

<comment><USER12> From the linked PDF report: "Nominal orbit: Halo orbit about the Sun-Earth L2 point."

The linked report also answers the "why there" question I immediately had.

> The HDST spacecraft and its operations will likely share many commonalities > with the JWST architecture and operations. For HDST, as for JWST, an L2 halo > orbit is preferable to a geosynchronous orbit (and most others, including > low-earth orbit), because it is thermally stable and has lower fuel > requirements for station-keeping

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/558adc44e4b002a448a04...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/558adc44e4b002a448a04c1a/t/55a411dee4b0543aa4ede4f2/1436815838795/hdst_report2_071315.pdf)

(if that link expires, it was from here: [http://www.hdstvision.org/report](http://www.hdstvision.org/report) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If it's going to be human serviceable, it could also be assembled as well. No need to send it up in one piece. That opens up a lot more launch opportunities and makes everything much more flexible.</comment>