Guild Wars studio fires two employees after clash with streamer - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/6/17541318/guild-wars-arenanet-jessica-price-peter-fries-fired-reddit <comment><USER2> Really caught by surprise by some of the answers here, I don't mean to offend anyone, just trying to explain why I came to the conclusion I came to.

I think the article is fairly well balanced, giving the fired devs ample space to tell their side of the story, expanding on the dangerous implications of allowing reddit/social media influence the company's hiring and firing decisions and a short formal statement from the co-founder.

There seems to have been a mixture of bad HR guidelines and naïveté.

I'm frankly appalled that a politely explained, disagreeing opinion, was met with such a toxic response.

As I read the responses I understood the dev to be:

Calling a customer sexist and an "asshat" then explaining that she is free to demonstrate dislike for her customers while speaking about the company and its products and services because she is not doing it during work hours and is using a personal social media account.

I can only imagine what kind of anonymous adolescent vitriol she must have to endure but as a representative of the company she must remain above it.

Should they have been fired?

Not if it's the 1st occurrence but seriously reprimanded and explained the social media code of conduct carefully.

On the other hand the company has a duty of care for its employees.

Can it not facilitate automatic reporting of abusive messages back to Twitter/Reddit? Hold workshops on how to deal with online harassment?

It seems like it's a huge issue in the game industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> Totally deserved IMO.

The employee in question posted some tweets about "narrative design" and some streamer (seemingly politely) replied that he disagreed before reiterating the same points the employee made.

The employee then goes on a mildly offensive rant about how that person was "mansplaining" and how hard it is to be a female game dev.

How about you simply accept that some people on the internet are stupid, will make stupid remarks and may think they're better than you at your job, and it doesn't have anything to do with your gender?

<comment><USER4> I'm not quite sure how a single "mildy offensive rant" justifies someone being fired, instead of a simple "please don't do that again"?

<comment><USER3> That employee sparked potential controversy by bringing in gender & sexism into a thread that didn't need it; and such a sensitive topic could lead to a huge fallout for the company. This entire argument should've ended with a "you are wrong" reply or simply ignoring (and potentially blocking).

<comment><USER5> But gender was relevant. You're failing to understand the relentless toxic entitlement shown by many young adult male gamers. That's toxic to everyone, but it's more severe and frequent for women.

<comment><USER6> You're failing to understand the relentless toxic entitlement shown by many female game devs.

See how I can turn that around and it's just as "true" as your statement, yet doesn't do anything whatsoever for the conversation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to say that despite the perspective taken by the author, I'm finding it hard to sympathise with the ex-enployees in question. What an absolute overreaction, and display of dangerous levels of insecurity.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is The Verge considered to practice good journalism? Reading the article it doesn't seem objective but rather inflammatory.

But maybe it is intentional? In order to "fish" for more reader interaction and sharing.

<comment><USER9> IMO, Verge was a shit show from day one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just my opinion, but employees really should start organizing and demand free speech laws to cover work. It's insane that skilled people are fired over some minor disagreement on Twitter.

<comment><USER11> Minor disagreement? This was a series of tweets related to an AMA. The other person made some perfectly civil remarks pertinent to the discussion that could have been engaged with, or could have been ignored. Instead the employee went on an ad hominem rampage, calling the commenter a "rando asshat" who was purporting to tell her how to do her job. Then she brags about her 10 years of work experience in game dev, which apparently makes her infallible. Then she made it about gender. From my third-party disinterested point of view, she was the one harassing him at this point. It makes sense to me that the company broke off their association with her after this.

<comment><USER10> Whatever she said, it has nothing to do with her company and her company shouldn't get involved in the punishment (should there be any at all).

Let's say I am employee of a company, which makes computers, and I have a disagreement with my neighbor. He is a customer of that company, because he bought a computer from them. Does that mean I can be fired? How is that different from a police state?

No, society needs to wake up and determine where are the boundaries of this. The truth is, social media put everything, even companies, under wider scrutiny than ever before.

It's like when a printing press was invented, it put governments under wider scrutiny. They fought back, and it took 500 years before it became generally accepted that we should have free speech.

<comment><USER6> Well, if you posted about your company's work on a public forum, and the disagreement was with regard to that, I believe it's fair if the company feels your behavior, good or bad, reflects on them. Employment is more of a relationship than a right. It's just bad form to blow up at customers like that.

<comment><USER10> You could also say:

"If you posted about your nation's situation on a public forum, and the disagreement was with regard to that, I believe it's fair if the government feels your behavior, good or bad, reflects on them. Citizenship is more of a relationship than a right."

Yet, in the West at least, we disagree with this view, that people should be punished if they talk badly about their nation (and the government). It didn't come naturally to this point; it was a huge effort of many activists over centuries to get to that point. And I think the same should be true about employees, and that it's time we have a debate about that.

<comment><USER6> This is absurd. Employee/employer relationship is nowhere near the same as citizen/government relationship.

<comment><USER10> It's not the same, of course. In the past, citizen/government relationship was the only social hierarchy in town and not offending people in the hierarchy was a matter of life and death.

Eventually, we replaced it with many little social hierarchies, like employee/employer, but social hierarchies nonetheless. Now it's only a minor inconvenience in life to make any of those little emperors angry.

However, that said, the arguments for free speech are the same. People should have freedom to speak truth to power and this freedom is beneficial. This includes freedom to speak truth to the outsiders of the social group in which the hierarchy happens to be. And it also establishes the boundary where that social hierarchy can extends its power.

<comment><USER6> You're overthinking it. ArenaNet is a business. She was their employee. This relationship is voluntary on both sides.

If she behaves in a manner which undermines their interests, they have every right to terminate the relationship.

The person she blew up on is a streamer with significant exposure to their target market. If she wasn't mixing "work talk" into her personal account and the disagreement was not related to work, I think it would be a different story, but that isn't what happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In what world does that rate a firing? Looks like it should rate at most "don't be grouchy on twitter" from a manager. Firing someone with 12 year seniority for defending them? Now that rates a firing - of the manager.

A quick skim of the linked forum shows it to be the usual whiny entitled place that is most game forums and the statement calling it "attacks on the community" is comical. Is such obsequiousness what we now expect?

<comment><USER6> Maybe it isn't the first time her short fuse got her into trouble at the company. Triggering a social media backlash might've been the last straw.

<comment><USER13> According to the Price in the article, this was her first such offence.

>Price says that prior to being fired, the company had never discussed her social media presence with her or issued a warning for anything she had posted. "If it was covered in orientation, I wouldn't know. I got pulled out of orientation to jump into rebreaking the story arc for this season of Living World."

<comment><USER6> Her first offence with respect to social media, yes. That's all you can say.

<comment><USER13> True; but we have no evidence either way for whether any other offences have occured.

<comment><USER6> My only point was: Maybe the situation is more nuanced than how it is presented in the article (which is usually the case).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I suspect this wouldn't be the first time the employee in question would've been disciplined by their employer. Based solely on the relative speed to which gender was introduced into the debate.

</comment><comment><USER15> Might as well title it "Woman game-dev and meant-well co-worker lose their jobs over immature 'mansplaining' Twitter fight turned political."

The chain of events:

1\. A woman game dev posts something work-related. Innocuous enough so far.

2\. Some guy on Twitter annoyingly tells her how to do her job better.

3\. The game dev overreacts, humiliates the guy and turns it political. This was unprofessional and stupid.

4\. Said guy on Twitter overreacts as well. Oh boy. Stupid, but he has nothing to lose but his time and dignity.

5\. As things get uglier, a co-worker of hers decides it's a good idea to risk his career and join in the now politically charged discussion. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't go well for him.

6\. In a perfect storm of stupidity and immaturity from all sides, it snowballs on Twitter. Woman game devs get people on Twitter SO MAD.

7\. The game company fires her and her co-worker as damage control. They were justified to do this, since they acted unprofessionally, but this turned out to be a PR disaster for them. No way to win. That's what they get for associating with fools.

8\. The media smells blood in the water like the sharks they are. It's a national political issue now. And yet, it's such a stupid, pointless fight that made 2 people lose their jobs over something so frivolous as "mansplaining".

I have no comment. Why get depressed when you can just point and laugh?

</comment><comment><USER16> Takeaway: Game development is toxic, don't work there.

<comment><USER3> The gaming community is toxic in general but frankly this is not the issue here. The employee simply overreacted, responded offensively and got fired.

<comment><USER16> Game developers get torrents of abuse - the comments on the Reddit thread, and the stuff that has been sent to them since, is appalling.

Sure, the employee shouldn't have reacted that way, but I think I'd have snapped long before then. Besides that, it was their personal twitter feed.

A quick "Hey, please don't feed these trolls, it makes us look bad" email to the employee probably would have sufficed, but firing them was terrible management - look how it has emboldened the strident, entitled little shits who don't realize there are actual human beings making the games.

The best thing that will come of all this is that these two will find better jobs elsewhere, preferably somewhere the management has backbone.

<comment><USER17> If your Twitter bio includes your affiliation with the company and you're talking about your job it's no longer purely personal IMHO.

Of course opinions posted are your own and such, but you're still somewhat representing the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Jessica price has a history of saying pretty offensive stuff (e.g., and in particular, a mean spirited comment about a youtubers death [0]), but she wasn't ever fired for those. I think she was fired this time because she was on social media talking _specifically_ about work, then going on to insult Guild Wars fans and beyond that, multiple 'partners'[1]. Derior in particular has a named NPC in-game [2].

To give some more context in general, this takes place right after an AMA on the guildwars2 subreddit [3] -- which she starts her twitter thread by referencing -- where she was acting in an official capacity as a GW2 developer. She later goes on to say she doesn't have to pretend to like people in the context of twitter [4], which I took to mean as in contrast to the AMA.

And in case there is any question about if the streamer was coming from a negative place and that she was at least right about his intentions, he was praising her in particular on a stream just before the exchange [5]. It's almost tragic. He probably only engaged with her because he thought so much of her.

All this said, I think it more sad than anything. Jessica actually gave some pretty great answers in the AMA, and I was impressed just like Deroir. I was very surprised to see this rash behavior right after her measure responses. And to also lose Peter Fries, who has been with the franchise since either the beginning or very near it, is disheartening.

Also, I think the article is avoiding posting Derior's entire original comment since he ends it very politely. You might want to check all 4 tweets yourself [6], or even the entire thread. Keep in mind that Jessica Price goes on to make other tweets outside the thread though. I guess it's also worth mentioning that the reddit comment referenced in the article had negative karma and was deleted [7].

[0] [https://twitter.com/delafina777/status/1000045432007938048](https://twitter.com/delafina777/status/1000045432007938048)

[1] [https://welcome.guildwars2.com/en/partner- program](https://welcome.guildwars2.com/en/partner-program)

[2] [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deroir](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deroir)

[3] [https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8vm8jv/living_w...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8vm8jv/living_world_season_4_long_live_the_lich_devs/)

[4] [https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/101458143393798144](https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/101458143393798144)

[5] [https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat](https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat)

[6] [https://twitter.com/DeroirGaming/status/1014280605599748096](https://twitter.com/DeroirGaming/status/1014280605599748096)

[7] [https://archive.fo/lt0wU](https://archive.fo/lt0wU)

</comment><comment><USER19> Something I think is missing here (and in the article) is a transcript of the conversation in question. So here's one I grabbed from the SSC subreddit culture war thread [0] permalink[1]:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Jessica Price:

>Since I spent all kinds of time saying it on a Reddit AMA, and I haven't talked about actual game dev on Twitter in a while, here's a thread about writing for the PC character in an MMO.

>The dirty secret is I'm not sure if it's possible to make an MMORPG (or CRPG) character compelling, because people have different expectations about what that character will be, as opposed to a pre-designed character in a single- player game.

>People booting up Bioshock know they're playing Jack. People starting Dishonored know they're playing Corvo. People beginning Tomb Raider know they're playing Lara Croft. So in those games, you have more wiggle room to make the protagonist an actual character.

>Whereas in an RPG, where the player chooses all kinds of character options and names their character and designs their face and so on, they feel more ownership over that character. They're not playing a character YOU designed-- they're playing a character THEY designed.

>So if Jack or Lara or Corvo says or does something the player doesn't feel that THEY would say or do, the player's more forgiving, because they have the expectation that they're piloting a character someone else created.

>N.B. that I'm not talking about overall plot objectives/quests. Players know going in that the game is going to be telling them what to do, and their character is going to do it, and that holds true even when they've "created" the character.

>But the * interpersonal* stuff, the PC's REACTIONS, players respond strongly to. Some people don't like it if they think their character's responding in ways that make them too much of an asshole. Some don't like it if their character's responses seem weak.

>So, basically, most things that you'd do writing-wise to give a character, well, CHARACTER, are going to upset a large contingent, maybe even a majority, of your players.

>So--I know I've said this before on Twitter, but it's still going to weird people out, but please bear with me--you have to construct your MMO/RPG's PC character's dialogue as if they were Bella Swan from Twilight.

>To be clear, I don't think Twilight is good writing. I don't think Bella Swan's a well-constructed book character. And I think people who criticize Twilight for the latter are correct but also missing the reason for Twilight's popularity.

>Because Twilight isn't the love story of Bella and Edward. It's the * experience of being loved by Edward.* Which is why Bella's constructed the way she is.

>Bella Swan is a carefully constructed blank space, with JUST enough personality to function. All of her personality traits are chosen to avoid preventing the reader from inserting themselves into the space she holds in the story.

>She's a bit of a klutz, but JUST enough to make her endearing, not enough to prevent her from actually doing anything the story needs her to do. She's a little bit awkward. JUST enough to be relatable but not enough to actually hinder her. And so on.

>And essentially, we have to write the player character in an MMO/RPG the same way.

>Specifically in GW2, in the Living World, we can write the Commander with a bit of wry exasperation, a hint of impatience, a touch of "okay, I'm done fooling around with this crap and I'm going to take charge," but most of their lines have to be pretty devoid of personality.

>Because if we give them too much personality, it might clash with how the player is imagining Their Commander.

>So, how do we tell a TV-like season of story with a protagonist who can't really have a personality?

>The answer to that, and I dunno, maybe this is too much of how the sausage gets made but whaddaya want from me, any sense of shame I had burned out a long time ago: SLEIGHT OF HAND.

>We SUGGEST that the Commander has a personality in how the other characters interact with and react to them. Even there, we have to be super-careful. We can't even have THEM directly characterize the Commander.

>You'll rarely hear a character say anything about what the Commander always does or doesn't do, except when it's PURELY factual because it's something the game design FORCED the PC to do.

>E.g. "the Commander always finds a way!" because literally if you don't we'll resurrect you until you do.

>We have NPCs react to you with affection, or irritation, or leeriness, or whatever, to suggest that your character has regular habits and ways of interacting that build these relationships. But for the most part, they don't.

>The PC is who you imagine them to be, and the NPCs react in ways that have to FEEL personal, and build a story, while not conflicting with whatever you're imagining your character's personality to be. We WANT you to project.

>Which makes writing the NPCs' relationships with the PC basically like writing horoscopes. It has to feel specific and personal while actually being universal.

>So:

>A) VERY delicate sketches of non-objectionable personality traits (like a hint of wryness or world-weariness)

>B) NPCs that behave as if your character has a distinct personality while not doing so in ways that actually identify what it is

>C) one-sided relationship-building

>Voila. An MMO/RPG character.

>Needless to say, a lot of the color comes from NPCs' relationships with EACH OTHER, even though we try to keep it centered on the PC as much as possible.

>It is a constant, very fragile calibration. We don't always get it right.

>Incidentally, if you've played Ep 3 of this season of GW2's Living World, you've seen this sort of writing taken to an extreme in Joko's final monologue.

>Almost everything he says is about actions the game has forced you to take, not your own character traits, and he's clearly projecting when he talks about what you were thinking, but it's--hopefully!--constructed in a way that feels personal, like he's twisting the knife.

Deroir:

>Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree * slightly* . I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design; (1 of 3)

>When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. (2 of 3)

>But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express * their* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options), (3 of 4 cause I count seemingly...)

>then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread! (End)

Jessica Price:

>thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude 9_9

Deroir:

>You getting mad at my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion with you, instead of just replying that I am wrong or otherwise correct me in my false assumptions, is really just disheartening for me. You do you though. I'm sorry if it offended. I'll leave you to it.

Jessica Price:

>Today in being a female game dev:

>"Allow me--a person who does not work with you--explain to you how you do your job."

Deroir:

>So much for an open discussion I guess. I meant no disrespect AT ALL. Never did. Never will. Neither did I imply I knew better. Nor has this ANYTHING to do with gender. Never did. Never will. I will retract my comment, cause obviously I'm in the wrong forum for this kind of talk.

___________

More Jessica Price, in relation to the above chain but not posted as replies to them

>like, the next rando asshat who attempts to explain the concept of branching dialogue to me--as if, you know, having worked in game narrative for a fucking DECADE, I have never heard of it--is getting instablocked. PSA.

>Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I'm not on the clock here. I'm not your emotional courtesan just because I'm a dev. Don't expect me to pretend to like you here.

>The attempts of fans to exert ownership over our personal lives and times are something I am hardcore about stopping. You don't own me, and I don't owe you.

links to some of the tweets:

[https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014555719352213504](https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014555719352213504)

[https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014581433937981445](https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014581433937981445)

[https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014554296107483136](https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014554296107483136)

[https://twitter.com/DeroirGaming/status/1014280605599748096](https://twitter.com/DeroirGaming/status/1014280605599748096)

_________

[https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat](https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat)

here is like a 1 minute of the guy that talked to her about this, talking about her like 2 days before this all went. the dude idolized her. He's also an "arenanet partner" and popular streamer of the game; he has an NPC named after him in it.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Some formatting was changed (escaping of * characters)

0: [https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8vhj05/cult...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8vhj05/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_02_2018/)

1: [https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8vhj05/cult...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8vhj05/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_02_2018/e1yw2h7/)</comment>


Founder of BitTorrent is on a quest to develop an eco-friendly cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://story.californiasunday.com/bitcoins-inconvenient-truth <comment><USER2> Siacoin, filecoin or something like that? The article had very little substance.

<comment><USER3> Chia - [https://chia.network](https://chia.network)</comment></comment>


Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/einstein-in-athens <comment><USER2> We sweep the ancients aside at our peril.

I've been reading the works of Plato during part of my commute for the past few months. And for the past six months or so I've been one of several peer reviewers for a certain philosophy-of-science paper which we only recently finally all agreed to accept (after many rounds of revisions). Oh, if only we had waited--just this week, I was reading one of Plato's dialogues and, bang! The big problem which our reviewee was working on was addressed right there on the pages, from the lips of Socrates, over 2000 years ago.

<comment><USER3> What dialogue?

<comment><USER2> I'd rather not say just on the slim chance of compromising confidentiality. So instead here are my favorite dialogues so far (of the ones I've read): Theaetetus, Philebus. I found Phaedrus and Symposium a little overrated. Haven't gotten to Republic yet. :)

<comment><USER3> I apologize, as I would not have asked if I knew there was such an issue. Thank you for your answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another good book on Aristotle's metaphysics and the modern world is Edward Feser's _Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science_ :

> _Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient > causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian > philosophy of nature. Aristotle's Revenge argues that these concepts are not > only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by > modern science. Among the many topics covered are the metaphysical > presuppositions of scientific method; the status of scientific realism; the > metaphysics of space and time; the metaphysics of quantum mechanics; > reductionism in chemistry and biology; the metaphysics of evolution; and > neuroscientific reductionism. The book interacts heavily with the literature > on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of > science, so as to bring contemporary philosophy and science into dialogue > with the Aristotelian tradition._

* [https://www.editiones-scholasticae.de/index.php?page=shop.pr...](https://www.editiones-scholasticae.de/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=31&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=444&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=19)

* [https://www.amazon.com/Aristotles-Revenge-Metaphysical-Found...](https://www.amazon.com/Aristotles-Revenge-Metaphysical-Foundations-Biological/dp/3868382003)

He regularly posts on his weblog, including rebuttals to any critiques on his work where he thinks there is errors:

* [https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com](https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com)

<comment><USER5> It's also worth noting that Feser defends Aquinas' cosmological argument on the same Aristotelian principles in which it is grounded - someone going to his blog for just plain old Aristotle rather than Catholic apologia is going to be disappointed. He has used his blog to argue, contra Pope Francis, why the death penalty is actually a good thing. Like all things, worth a read but also worth a huge grain of salt.

<comment><USER4> > _He has used his blog to argue, contra Pope Francis, why the death penalty > is actually a good thing. Like all things, worth a read but also worth a > huge grain of salt._

IMHO the word "good" may be a bit too strong, but at least justified or justifiable in theory, even if not implemented. He's co-written a book defending the position:

* [https://www.amazon.com/Man-Shall-His-Blood-Shed/dp/162164126...](https://www.amazon.com/Man-Shall-His-Blood-Shed/dp/1621641260)

I haven't read the book, but one reasonable argument for it would be societal self-defense. We currently can lock dangerous people away safety so that they no longer can do any harm, but this is/was not always the case. If the prison infrastructure is not there to ensure dangerous people do no harm, it may 'necessary' to execute them to reduce the risk to the rest of society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Possibly interesting - "An Aristotelian Approach to Quantum Mechanics"[0]

[0] [https://www.academia.edu/35229710/An_Aristotelian_Approach_t...](https://www.academia.edu/35229710/An_Aristotelian_Approach_to_Quantum_Mechanics)

</comment><comment><USER6> An alternative take here: [https://www.michalpaszkiewicz.co.uk/blog/reviewnapocs/index....](https://www.michalpaszkiewicz.co.uk/blog/reviewnapocs/index.html)

<comment><USER7> >This book presents an ontology that states that both matter and structure are important for the scientific explanation of any system (Hylomorphism).

Wow I never knew Haskell was so metaphysically important.</comment></comment>


Wazer: The Waterjet For Your Garage - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2016/09/12/wazer-is-the-waterjet-aiming-to-land-in-a-garage-near-you/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I really hope they can deliver. This really completes the low-cost rapid- prototyping lab (joining affordable laser cutters, 3d printers both FDM and goo, ShopBot, etc.)</comment>


Productive Procrastination - <AUTHOR> https://schier.co/blog/productive-procrastination <comment><USER2> Excellent! I have also found that if I'm not going to be working on that project anyway, I might as well embrace it, learn something new, learn how to focus again. That's better long-term than pretending I'm working on it.</comment>


Den Goes Offline for Good - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/makeyoubillions/status/1202957792149037057 <comment><AUTHOR> How do we reconcile a startups need for a walled garden with a customers need for guaranteed functionality even after the vendor shuts down? IMO, as part of the liquidation, vendors should be required to release flashing capabilities on to an open source project like espurna or tasmota. At least this way we can limit e-waste.

[https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna/wiki/Hardware](https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna/wiki/Hardware)

[https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota](https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota)</comment>


Setting the record straight (Seth Levine's response) - <AUTHOR> http://sethlevine.typepad.com/vc_adventure/2007/07/setting-the-rec.html In response to the statement in USA Today, "...6% is a huge amount of equity to give up for such little money..." Seth Levine says that he was misquoted in the USA Today article, and will never do a phone interview again.
For the article: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2007-07-... <comment><USER2> Since he says he was misrepresented in the USA Today article, I took out the paragraph that linked to it. That has the side effect of making this post mysterious, so in case anyone is confused, the deleted paragraph read:

"Usually people who say we're a bad deal, like Seth Levine in this article, simply don't understand what we do. If all we did was write checks, YC would be a bad deal. But in fact the money is the least of what we do. No VC who has seen Demo Day first hand has ever said YC took too much equity."

</comment><comment><USER3> Especially upon re-reading the article, it looks to me as though the reporter (no doubt trying to present 'both sides of the story') began a paragraph with "But the limits of Y Combinator's model remain unclear" and then shoehorned in Seth Levine's comments without much regard to what he was really saying.

<comment><USER2> One of the weird things about doing something mostly benevolent is that you end up breaking the standard journalism algorithm. We've hit this on several occasions. They feel like they have to find something at least slightly bad to say about us, and they end up choosing something random. It seems like the same thing happens to Google.

I'm not sure if this happens because it's an axiom of journalism that every story has two sides, or because conflict makes stories interesting. Maybe both. But one sees it often on TV news. A city bans people from setting one another on fire, and the reporter diligently tracks down the president of the local chapter of Pyromaniacs of America to offer the other side of the story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being a huge sports fan, I am used to people apologizing after the fact and blaming the media for "misrepresentation" and taking their comments "out of context." However, I do applaud Seth Levine for at least addressing the issue. While the context of the comment in the USAToday article was addressed at YC, it did seem strange that Seth would blast the same model for which he contributes via TechStars.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, since to me it does seem reasonable that his comments were taken out of context.

</comment><comment><USER5> Email interviews are boring, and worthless. Sorry folks, but if you don't want to be misrepresented, do a better job interviewing. What you THINK you said, and what you said are very different.

<comment><USER6> > Email interviews are boring, and worthless.

How so? Because the feedback time (i.e. follow-up questions) is too long? In that case, IM/chat should solve the problem.

<comment><USER5> No ad-lib, too much opportunity for PR rewrites, spin, etc. People are much more interesting in a conversation.

Yes, IM is much better.

<comment><USER7> Huh, that depends on what you're looking for, I guess. In a live interview, you can be asked a question you weren't prepared for, and if you lose composure even a little it doesn't matter what the truth is nor what your answer is, what people will remember is that you got flustered. With email, you can relax and take your time.

I'm not saying email is superior, but one should recognize the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Live interviews (and to a lesser extent, IM) are a place where the glib win. [http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/0...](http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/when_only_the_g.html)

<comment><USER5> I was referring to the experience as a reader - emailed interviews and the stories that result from them are usually boring and formulaic, and don't differ much from a stock press release.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Desperate Quest for Genomic Compression Algorithms - yaseen-rob https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-desperate-quest-for-genomic-compression-algorithms <comment><AUTHOR> There seems to be confusion in this thread on what exactly is stored.

The human genome is about 3.25 billion bases, or about 6.5 billion bases if you determine both copies of each chromosome. This corresponds to 13 billion bits or about 1.5 Gigabytes, and storing this would be no problem at all, even if there would be a lot of genomes sequenced.

However, the way human genomes are sequenced is different: The genome is fragmented in random pieces of around 500 basepairs long. Illumina sequencing machines typically read 300 basepairs of these fragments with a ~1% error rate.

To be able to determine the entire genome, these reads are mapped to a reference genome, and differences with the reference genome are marked as mutations. However, to distinguish real mutations from random read errors, and to make sure that mutations can be confidently called for regions that where fewer reads mapped a lower coverage through random variation, a ~30x coverage of the genome is needed.

If you want to store the raw sequencing data and not just the called results, a single genome does not require 1.5 GB of storage, but now requires 45 GB storage. It gets even worse when you consider samples from tumours, where biologically relevant mutations are often found in only a subset of cells. To discover these mutations, a coverage of 100x is often recommend, leading to 150 GB of storage for a single genome.

<comment><USER2> > It gets even worse when you consider samples from tumours, where > biologically relevant mutations are often found in only a subset of cells. > To discover these mutations, a coverage of 100x is often recommend

This point brings up another, implicit, scale multiplier that the average person might assume doesn't exist: that a single individual could need multiple sequences stored.

One can't just estimate required total (uncompressed) storage by multiplying population (mod monozygotic multiple births and chimerism) by the size of one instance of raw sequencing data.

<comment><USER3> > a single individual could need multiple sequences stored.

And multiple sequences could be hundreds, thousands, or more. Example: single- cell RNAseq pipelines that generate sequences for 10k cells at once.

Perhaps in the future--as tech improves--the devices themselves might be equipped to run more real-time in memory QC and emit less--but more accurate-- data? I believe this is somewhat how CERN does it, where they only record a filtered subset of the data that comes in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reads like a puff piece for MPEG-G, which will presumbaly be as patent- encumbered as every other MPEG standard. The double power law for mutation distance is interesting, but the application is feeding an entropy coder more accurate probabilities of match distances. Any decent entropy coder would implicitly discover the distribution after a short period.

There are already _good_ compressors for genetic data. The article briefly mentions them, but oddly doesn't name them explicitly. Here's a 2013 paper summarizing the research (like compressing 6.3GB to 1.1GB or 750MB with a reference): [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0059190)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's necessary to distinguish between the raw output of the sequencing instrument and the actual genomic variables of interest here.

Adequate compression of the latter, with appropriate confidence estimates attached, is a solved problem for the most common applications, even when hundreds of thousands of samples are involved: the UK Biobank has released a dataset describing whole-genome variation for almost 500000 British people, and many research groups around the world are successfully analyzing this data today with freely available software running on commodity hardware.

It's the raw measurements that aren't compressing as well as we'd want today. But there are multiple other solutions to this problem besides better compression: we can become good enough at inferring the relevant genomic variables from the measurements that, once we've done so, we can discard the raw data (we don't do this today because the inference process is still very much a work in progress, so the option of running tomorrow's algorithms on today's measurements is too valuable); or measurement becomes cheap enough and biological sample storage stable enough that the measurement process can simply be repeated when necessary; or entirely different measurement process(es) are developed that yield adequate information without simultaneously generating so much nuisance data to preserve.

</comment><comment><USER6> The A, G, C, T system is apparently insufficient to completely describe the genome; See[0]. I would not be surprised if, in 20-30 years, there will be a Y2K-style "4 bases" effort to fix all software and databases to account for the missing bases; It's obvious that the extra ones play (at most) a small part, but at some point that small part might be what is stalling progress.

[0] [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110721142408.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110721142408.htm)

<comment><USER7> This seems like a misleading press release. This article basically talks about (newish[2011], additional) epigenetic mechanisms.

Epigenetic sequencing would indeed require even more storage.

</comment></comment><comment> T-A Or we could just store it all in DNA:

[https://www.wired.com/story/the-rise-of-dna-data- storage/](https://www.wired.com/story/the-rise-of-dna-data-storage/)

<comment><USER8> I'll have you know that I sequenced _and_ compressed both my parents' DNA at a very young age, although the process was about 50% lossy.

<comment><USER9> hasn't everyone?

<comment><USER10> That's the joke XD

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am completely unaware of all prior art in this specific field.

However the most obvious starting idea to me is that most humans will have mostly the same DNA, with some small 'configuration' changes and maybe variations in some smaller sections.

Thus, the pre-filter would find a good fit against the reference copy, compute a diff that's sparse, and compress that.

Someone more versed in the field could probably provide a better estimate of how to address that. Taking the 3.25Billion bases (addresses) mentioned in another post, 32 bits of storage is sufficient for an unsigned index. The reference variation should also be stored, but I don't know how many variations each section might have.

Probably after a sufficiently large collection is amassed the collections could be better sorted such that the most common have a prefix which is more compressible assigned to them (and they should also be tested first by the compressor).

<comment><USER12> I don't understand this field but wouldn't creating a reference model be an ethical and cultural nightmare? I would assume that researchers will be forced to make a very diluted version of this reference model which cannot be tied to any race, which at the end of the day may not be much useful.

<comment><USER13> On average there is only a 0.6% difference between human genomes [1]. And the reference genome already exists and is constantly being updated [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_genome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_genome)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> bra-ket you can either compress the data for general use, or optimize for particular application , i.e. search index, in the latter case the compression ratio can be orders of magnitude better than general-purpose

I think improving general compression is of marginal importance given the abundance of existing compression algorithms, it is mostly a solved problem with many decades of productive research behind it

the biggest 'bang for the buck' is in optimizing for particular applications such as search, gene detection, snp calling, alignment etc

</comment><comment> TD-Linux This article totally failed to justify why compression algorithms are so important for this application. How big is the human genome, how much can we compress it by, and why does this matter?

I took a look and zipped FASTA files are about 800MB. Large, sure, but people are streaming Netflix movies far bigger than this every night.

It's really hard for me to see the MPEG-G effort as anything but a money grab for compression patents and licensing.

<comment><USER14> 1 Human = 100 GB

500,000 Humans is a small sample of the UK population one company is looking to create.

All this is in the article.

<comment><USER15> It seems to be more like 1.5GB rather than 100 GB, and someone else commented that compressed is around 800 MB.

[https://bitesizebio.com/8378/how-much-information-is- stored-...](https://bitesizebio.com/8378/how-much-information-is-stored-in- the-human-genome/)

Even at 1.5 GB, this doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem at the current cost of storage.

750,000 GB = 750 TB, and you can buy an 8 TB hard drive for $150. So for $15,000 you can store 500,000 human genomes.

If $15,000 is too expensive for a company, that company is doing something very wrong, when any salary will be many multiples of that.

<comment><USER2> > 750,000 GB = 750 TB, and you can buy an 8 TB hard drive for $150. So for > $15,000 you can store 500,000 human genomes.

As others have mentioned [1], the raw sequencing data (still) has to be stored, so 1.5GB is off by about 30x. Even at 6:1 compression, that's still 5x.

More importantly, though, the cost of storage, especially at scale, is significantly higher than just the price of bare drives. Backblaze famously complained about this [2] in 2009.

Even their particularly cheap, particularly low-performance solution claimed to add almost 45% on top of the cost of the bare drives. A higher-performancd storage system (using, say, standard SAS expander backplanes instead of their non-standard SATA multipliers) has, in my experience, added 70% on top of the bare drives (and that's being frugal, which seems remarkably rare, even among startups).

Your $15k is now $128k, minimum. That's just purchase cost, and, while operating cost isn't huge for that little storage, it's not zero. The cost gets much, much worse, if the orgnization can't/won't hire someone like me or won't allow that someone to implement such a frugal DIY assembly (which is the vast majority of organizations today).

That leaves "enterprise" storage or cloud, which are both approximately as expensive. I recently heard an estimate of half a million dollars per petabyte for NetApp, which would translate to $1,875,000 here.

[1] Well detailed by [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17821523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17821523)

[2] famous on HN, anyway. [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/petabytes-on-a- budget-how-to-...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/petabytes-on-a-budget-how- to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/)

<comment><USER16> Cloud: just did a quick calculation for AWS. 75 PB (= 150GB * 500,000) of storage costs $300,000 on AWS Glacier, and $1.57mil on S3 Standard. And that's before accounting for any read/write costs.

Wow.

<comment><USER2> I was using 3.75PB (assuming 45GB compressed 6:1 so 7.5GB per person). I'm not _certain_ , but my intuition is that, even paying AWS for the CPU time for compression, that would be cheaper than paying for the uncompressed transfer charges.

But, yes, even for my lower storage numbers, for "EU (London)", even for just 3 years (a conservative enough lifespan for an HDD), S3-Standard would be almost $2.97M, S3-Standard-IA would be $1.77M, S3-OneZone-IA $1.4M, and Glacier would be _merely_ $608k. Of course, that excludes transfer charges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I thought one idea was to store only the differences from a reference genome.

<comment><USER18> That is mentioned and IMHO seem like the best possible way given the 1/1000 mutation/variation rate. But they also have a quality score indicating confidence that the data is correct, and they want to compress the quality data as well.

<comment><USER19> Here is one approach for that [https://github.com/jkbonfield/crumble](https://github.com/jkbonfield/crumble) [https://blog.dnanexus.com/2018-07-23-breaking-down- crumble/](https://blog.dnanexus.com/2018-07-23-breaking-down-crumble/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >> And it turns out that a histogram plot of the distance between adjacent genetic variations, measured in DNA base pairs, looks like a double power law, with the crossover point between the two power laws happening at around 1,000 DNA base pairs [see graph, "Double Power Law"]. It's an open question as to what evolutionary process created this distribution, but its existence could potentially enable improved compression.

My first thought was it's due to some issue/error/phenomena with the sequencing process and not inherent in the underlying data. Hopefully it's known not to be that, but it would be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Typically, a DNA sequencing machine that's processing the entire genome of a > human will generate tens to hundreds of gigabytes of data. When stored, the > cumulative data of millions of genomes will occupy dozens of exabytes.

100GB * 1M = 100 petabytes, not exabytes.

It's also worth quantifying the cost of storing this data. Storing 100GB on Amazon Glacier costs ~$5/year, which is still a small fraction of the total cost of whole genome sequencing.

<comment><USER21> But researchers don't need to simply backup the data - that is to say write the data once and have it sitting there as a recovery option. That's what Glacier is good for.

We need to be able to interact and compute with the data, search it, compare it, etc. We need to be able to practically store several hundred individuals' genomes for even a modest (n=100) GWAS study. And as the article explains, it's not simply a question of storage, but also of compressing in a way that we can still quickly do computations on the data without having to resort to just completely uncompressing everything.

I'm going to actually run the numbers to show why Glacier would be an exceptionally poor option, but I'll disclaim up front: the poor fit will stem from the fact that Glacier is optimal for store-forever read-never workflows, which is not even close to what our workflow will be.

Let's actually do the math on that modest n=100 study. At 150 GB per individual (see evandijk70's comment), you seem to be thinking 'ok, 15 TB[1], $5/GB/year = $750, no problem'. Now let's actually add the cost of not just the size of the data stored, but the retrievals and data transfers. Let's even assume we're willing to wait the 6 hours (an entire workday!) for a standard Glacier retrieval. If we're extremely conservative about how we use the data, we can possibly get by with only 10 retrievals of each genome: 10 x 15 TB = 150000 gigabytes retrieved, at $0.01 = $1500. Plus the data transfer charge, $0.09 for the first 10000 GB, $0.085 for the next 40000 GB, $0.07 for the remainder: $11300 [2].

So for a small study, we're talking about not $750, but $13,550 using your proposal of Amazon Glacier. And then the real kicker - if we actually tried to do this, moving 165 TB (1 write, 10 reads) of data around would take _more than 5 straight months_ of 24/7 uploading or downloading at 100 Mbps. And at $13,550, that's literally more than half a biology grad student's salary here at the University of Illinois. For two of these studies, you could just instead hire a third scientist and pay them to do nothing but drive harddrives around.

Obviously that's ridiculous and in no way a realistic solution to anything. Admittedly, today, small GWAS studies are probably closer to n=25, with 30x coverage rather than 100x. But lopping a zero off the costs and transfer times doesn't change anything - it would still be an absurd use of Glacier. But the example should hopefully be eye-opening to the importance of being able to effectively manage this volume of data. The example is the output of a single scientist working for perhaps a month on the actual sequencing, and a couple more months in preparation to get a really good/narrow selection of subjects, etc. So for a 10 person lab working at high efficiency, you can imagine how quickly the data could stack up.

All our data operations -- search, compute on, transfer, and store -- would be improved dramatically if we had compression schemes that approached the efficiency of, say, HEVC or AV1.

As an comparison - uncompressed video, 1920x816 pixels (standard cinema 2.35:1 widescreen), at 23.976 fps, for 1 hr 45 minutes, in 24 bit color = 1920x816 x 23.976 x (60x60+60x45) x 24/8 = 700 GB of data. HEVC at reasonable settings will chop that to about... 2 GB. That sort of 350-fold compression is what this article is talking about hoping to achieve, which is a far cry from the 20-fold you can get from gzipping a genome.

[1] An individual archive on Glacier, by the way, is limited to 40 terabytes, so we're already pushing against that boundary.

[2] The limit on data transfers per month is 500 TB, so with our single study at 150 we're already pushing against that boundary as well.

<comment><USER20> The article mentioned storing data for a decades, which implies a backup use- case with infrequent access (of course, data only would be deposited in Glacier after the initial analysis is performed). If you expect to retrieve the data frequently, that's clearly not the right storage tier to use. S3 Infrequent Access tier is ~3x the cost, which still supports my point about the relative cost compared to total cost of sequencing.

To address some of your other points: the 40TB limit per archive is not a limit on the amount of data your can store in Glacier. And assuming 100MBps throughput is implying you'd use a single node to analyze the data, which does not make sense at this scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is fairly reassuring that the sum total of that which results in human development and complexity is not easily fit on a USB stick.

<comment><USER23> are you talking about all our DNA together, with all the genetic diversity of the global human population? or for one specific individual?

I will assume you are talking about one specific individual. Would you consider the genome of a freshly (before any cell division) fertilized egg cell to contain this "sum total of that which results in human development and complexity" ?

Unless you don't I will assume so. The article states ~3.25 billion base pairs, thats ~6.5 billion bits worst case (either without compression, or for a white noise genome). Thats less than a gigabyte... fits easily on a USB stick!

Of course as the article mentions this does not apply to diversity in whole populations [of humans, or of "body parts" that keep evolving within the human body (such as white blood cells), or of cells from cancerous or virally infected or irradiated tissues]

The reason a single genome (i.e. the freshly fertilized egg cell) does not yet fit in 1GB is because we can not yet simultaneously reliably and cheaply sequence DNA (so we need "error bars")

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> >The files are also very redundant, which stems from the fact that any two human genomes are nearly identical. On average, they differ in about one nucleotide per 1,000, and it's typically these genetic differences that are of interest.

git diff</comment>


A New Golden Age Part III: The Basic Income Guarantee - <AUTHOR> https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/a-new-golden-age-part-iii-the-basic-income-guarantee <comment><USER3> This article is internally contradictory. First, the article claims consumption will go up:

 _No longer will poor Americans have to choose between heating oil and food, between medicine and shoes for their children._

Then it claims investment will go up:

 _Also, demand increases — giving firms reason to expand production and hire new workers._

Firms may have _reason_ to expand production, but the resources needed to expand production are instead being consumed. Rather than building a factory, workers are making shoes for poor children.

(At least the ones who didn't tell their boss to "take this job and shove it" \- a direct quote from the article. That's just a deadweight loss the article ignores for no apparent reason.)

I really wish someone would write an article about BI that was more than just clueless pop Keynesianism - "Demand Good, Investment Bad, Free Lunch for All."

<comment><USER4> You're assuming the economy is running at full capacity.

<comment><USER5> It would be interesting if basic income were tied to some combination of the Gini index and inflation rate. It would serve as a nice automatic offset to deflation, then fade away as the economy took off and wages increased.

<comment><USER6> What I'd like to see - and never see suggested in these discussions - <USER2> starting with a revenue-neutral carbon tax to fund a BIG. Since the tax would internalize the externalities of pollution and climate change, the government could cut subsidies and tax breaks for energy production and efficiency, and throw those savings into BIG as well. Anyone willing to be a below-average greenhouse gas emitter comes out on top, while anyone who owns a private jet is doing well enough not to care.

<comment><USER7> a revenue-neutral carbon tax to fund a welfare state..

Love the idea, but we had one of these for a couple of years, and at $23/t there was at least an order of magnitude less money in it than needed for a GBI. And per capita, we are among the highest carbon emitters on earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The last time the economy was in this bad of shape, it took a world war to restore prosperity."

Pros and cons of basic income aside, this is likely what we are seeing already. I don't know how else to describe a proxy conflict in Syria with U.S., Russian, Chinese, and Cuban actors.

On the main topic of the piece, the danger of inflation is just waved off and the function of creditors ignored. How would say the Chinese government feel about significant inflation that makes our Treasury debt more easily repaid with devalued dollars? These kinds of considerations loop back to the first point.

<comment><USER9> I've heard this many times before and I've even been taught this in history class. What is the reason for this?

The explanation is often that it stimulates the economy, but really, is war effective at fixing the economy because it just acts as a giant reset button? If there's too many workers and not enough job, the easiest way to fix that problem is to kill X% of the population, and what better easier and cleaner way to sell this to the American people than your country is under attack and it needs your sacrifice?

<comment><USER10> I don't think the deaths are the most important thing; rather, it's the absences:

• Presume that a job market contains people with job-skills, and people without (i.e. "lemons").

• Presume that businesses function better when they can select from a talent pool with fewer lemons; and that lemons in a job market create "noise" in the hiring process that cause openings to go unfilled for longer.

• Now, presume either a draft (which doesn't care about job-skills, but does care about age, tending to select for younger people with fewer job-skills), or simply a military with lower job-skill requirements for entry than most occupations.

Thus, a military on a war footing will selectively withdraw more lemons than non-lemons from the job market, leaving it full of higher-quality candidates, making the businesses in that market more efficient.

For this hypothesis to be accurate, the same thing would have to happen if we just gave all the people being sent to war public-sector jobs (or Basic Income) instead. Though that would perhaps work _better_ than a war for stimulating the economy: people remaining in the country would be spreading their demand across the market, rather than consuming goods exclusively from the military's line-of-supply contractors.

<comment><USER11> The military doesn't have lower skill requirements than the average job. It _does_ have very large and expensive training programs to make up for that.

<comment><USER12> Which looks the same at the input end of the process - they'll suck up anyone with four limbs and both eyes, regardless of the skills they have prior to enrollment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Like most basic income proponents, this article conveniently forgets the actual problem with basic income: it hurts immigration. Granted, with the amount of people against immigration maybe it would actually help these arguments, but the truth is that such a plan can be potentially devastating to the long term health of the economy (if you know, these dreams of the end of scarcity don't pan out).

The basic problem here is that these plans mis-consider the US as an isolated economy. If you have basic income, what is the policy on immigrants? The options appear to be:

1\. Open immigration and same benefits to everyone. Maybe you can argue that we can afford basic income for current US citizens, I think it would be a stretch for anyone to argue that we could afford it for anyone that comes into our borders, and thus...

2\. Get even more hard line against immigration. America is already pretty anti-immigration, just wait how opinions turn when anyone inside gets a guaranteed income. As usual, anti-immigration laws will hurt the next round of brilliant foreigners from coming to the US and bringing their great ideas and prosperity here. Its already the case that we're increasingly lending foreigners our education system and then not letting them stay and thus exporting that knowledge and prosperity.

3\. Make basic income only available to US citizens. Congratulations, we have now fully devolved into a classist society, where an 18 year old that wants to "figure things out" will be granted a monthly salary, but an immigrant who has 3 kids won't. To make matters worse, they probably WILL pay taxes on their income that will go for said basic income. Arguably we have this partially now, but since its services its not as unfair as giving a check to someone by birthright while the other person has to labor. For all the talk of automation the reality on the streets _today_ is that immigrants largely do our back braking labor, and if you now "buy out" all Americans from menial jobs, you are cementing that these tasks are for outsiders.

Milton Friedman put it best: you can't have open immigration and a welfare state. We already see the effects of our current system hurting immigration. These proposals always have the ring of "post history" to them: we've _figured out supply_ , now its time to just find out how to split up the goods. I think they greatly underestimate that the world economy is still not figured out and we could soon find the US behind other states.

<comment><USER11> _" Make basic income only available to US citizens. Congratulations, we have now fully devolved into a classist society"_

Do you honestly think that this is a fair description of the consequences of that course of action? There are plenty of things only available to US citizens. Voting. Running for office. Any kind of federal assistance. Military enrollment. Diplomatic protections.

I really don't see how this option is anything different from what we already have. It would be federal assistance, after all, and non-citizens already don't get that.

<comment><USER13> As I stated in my own comment, we already have a form of this today, so clearly I do think it is similar to our current system. However, I think that a defining differentiator is that a basic income can assist in luxury assistance beyond pure help. That is to say, if we offer purely assistive programs that are arguably _necessary_ to a subset of the population (such as healthcare), it is clearly fundamentally unfair, but arguably morally net positive. If however, you offer a check that the person can use at their discretion (and thus _choose_ to for example use it for vacation or gambling or any purpose they choose), then it is unfair and morally questionable. I think this is obvious.

Separately, I do not think it is unfair description at all, but rather an objective measure of the service proposed, as opposed to a subjective one from thethe population that stands to gain vs the population that stands to lose. I have listed scenarios that I think are fundamentally unfair: young able-bodied members of society with no dependents receiving aid whereas older members of society that have dependents would not. It doesn't matter to me that "we already" do unfair things, this point has not been at all addressed. Existing wrongs are not arguments for new wrongs.

Additionally, regardless of whether you agree with the fundamental morality of these situations, I think you can't argue with proposed consequences. I think that this system will absolutely make immigration harder in the US (through increased "protective" insular policies to keep "freeloaders" out), and thus hurt the economy as a whole.

<comment><USER11> I still don't see how that's an argument. How is it unfair to offer US citizens the resources collected by the US government? That is the express reason the concept of a "US citizen" exists.

US citizens pay taxes. They choose to distribute that money among themselves. That is the purpose of the US government: to protect and serve the interests of US citizens.

If you feel that this is morally wrong, then I don't see how you can't argue that _every single aspect_ of _any_ government is morally wrong. The fact that I live in the US and not Syria is _unfair_ , but it's not morally wrong.

 _" If however, you offer a check that the person can use at their discretion (and thus choose to for example use it for vacation or gambling or any purpose they choose), then it is unfair and morally questionable. I think this is obvious."_

Do you have a job? Are there stipulations on how you can spend your money? Because you are arguing that paying people without such stipulation is morally questionable.

And furthermore, Immigration is already controlled. You don't get US Citizenship without the approval of the federal government. How does this change that? They let fewer people get citizenship? If these immigrants are benefiting the economy, then surely they are worth the basic income we'd be paying them for that benefit.

Which gets me to my point: You're not handing out free money for nothing. You're paying people to be economic participants. There's no reason to require stipulations on that, and no reason for you to think it's considerably more unfair to anybody than the regular variation in life's circumstances.

<comment><USER13> _> US citizens pay taxes. They choose to distribute that money among themselves. That is the purpose of the US government: to protect and serve the interests of US citizens._

Non-citizens pay taxes too. Residents/green-card holders/visa-holders pay full income taxes without getting full benefits. Everyone pays state sales tax if there is one.

 _> If you feel that this is morally wrong, then I don't see how you can't argue that every single aspect of any government is morally wrong. The fact that I live in the US and not Syria is unfair, but it's not morally wrong._

Your argument is "the US government: to protect and serve the interests of US citizens.", so I don't see how you can think there exists ANYTHING that the US government does for its citizens at the expense of its non-citizens that _isn 't_ morally wrong. Since the reason corporations exist is to benefit shareholders does that automatically make all their actions ethical as long as they increase share value? Obviously not. Thus, I think we can conclude that its possible for the US government to do things that help its citizens which are morally wrong.

 _> Do you have a job? Are there stipulations on how you can spend your money? Because you are arguing that paying people without such stipulation is morally questionable._

Uhm, the difference is my employer and myself mutually agreed to the transaction. That is obviously why he can't stipulate what I can do with my money, whereas with taxes, which are taken from me, and which I by your own argument a few sentences above explained have some control of through our votes as US citizens, we do have a say in. Let me use your own logic here: "plenty of US services have stipulations on them, such as voting which you can't be a felon for, for example. THUS we should be able to have stipulations on these new services".

 _> If these immigrants are benefiting the economy, then surely they are worth the basic income we'd be paying them for that benefit._

Sure, but that doesn't mean they'll actually make it in. We already turn away lots of people that would be incredibly beneficial to our economy. I am arguing that a policy such as this would _further_ these bad policies. However, if you believe that the government always makes the right choices, rather than our immigration policies being a mess of special interests and constituencies, then I suppose we are at a fundamental impasse.

<comment><USER11> _" Your argument is "the US government: to protect and serve the interests of US citizens.",_

No, it isn't. My argument is that it is not morally wrong for the government to give money to its citizens without stipulating its use. At least it's not any less wrong than having everyone pay taxes that fund schools, roads, and hospitals they don't use. (Things which, if you objected to them, you could negate most of the other things we have a government for.) Basic income is not some petty luxury bonus, it's a form of social welfare.

And how is BIG not a mutually agreed to transaction? If you don't want the money, I'm sure you can find a way to send it back. Stipulate it yourself if you think it should be stipulated.

 _" THUS we should be able to have stipulations on these new services"_

We _can_ have stipulations. There's nothing preventing that. We just don't want them, as that's the whole point of basic income. You're trying to claim we can't _not_ have them, which is absurd.

And stop overusing the word 'obvious.'

<comment><USER13> _> And how is BIG not a mutually agreed to transaction?_

... the other end of the transaction. You know, the part where the money is collected from tax payers.

 _> And stop overusing the word 'obvious.'_

I used it 3 times in 3 comments. I think even someone that supports the _stipulation_ of what can and can't go in a comment would agree that's not overuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some libertarians support the Basic Income Guarantee _only_ if our _only_ choice is between our current system and abolishing it for the Basic Income Guarantee.

I can't speak for all libertarianism, but generally speaking libertarians do not support federal government welfare systems, for the following reasons:

\- They usurp the role of private welfare, or even local community run welfare, where you know who the money is going to and whether or not they're abusing it

\- "Top down" social programs only last as long as you have more producing than non-producing (or in our case, as long as you can borrow money to pay for it). They lead to financial ruin and in the long run will cause disaster for the generation holding the bag.

\- They increase the amount of force and coercion; suddenly using welfare as a weapon, the left can increase the size of government, the right can increase the size of the military (I do not differentiate between Veterans welfare from the VA or civilian welfare).

\- They take money from those that produce and give it to those that do not

And I haven't even gotten into the economic issues with a basic income guarantee.

You notice that whenever the government gets involved in an industry, those costs immediately go up? The government literally gives away money every year (and even guarantees loans without even asking what your loan is for), and the cost of college keeps rising and rising. This is classic inflation.

What do you think will happen to the cost of goods if we are suddenly printing money simply to give to every last human being on this continent? If you don't expect prices to rise, you haven't been paying attention to either healthcare or education.

<comment><USER15> Libertarianism massively overstates private welfare. Massively. We've already seen society that only had private welfare - look to our societies before public welfare existed, and you'll see that private welfare was basically a toy.

It doesn't even pass the sniff test; the idea that all these people whining about having to give up their money to other people would start giving up their money to other people if it was 'voluntary'? And people actually get sucked in by this argument?

<comment><USER16> People with higher incomes give more to charity. People with more disposable income give more to charity. Government "charity" consumes about 70 percent of the money in bureaucratic overhead. Private charity overheads are typically below 30 percent, and much better in many cases. What you want is more money in the pockets of people so that they can give more to charity. Any dollar spent on voluntary charity vs taxes is much more efficiently used to help the needy directly. If you really care about poor people you should want more money going directly to private charities not the government. In fact, private charities were a much bigger part of day to day society before the welfare state and poverty was decreasing between the 40s and 60s. When the government steps in it changes people's behaviour and takes away more and more of their disposable income. I know you'll find this hard to believe but its true the richest in our society give more than anyone else to charity.

<comment><USER15> Government welfare gets money to all locations over the long term. Private charity does well in short, acute phases (eg hurricane relief), but over the long term, it's only useful for socially attractive services - and even then, it's not enough. 'kids with cancer' charities do a lot better than 'young adults with mental illness' charities, which in turn do better than 'disabled people who need 24-hour care for life' charities.

> _poverty was decreasing between the 40s and 60s_

... something which had little do to with welfare or private charity.

> _I know you 'll find this hard to believe but its true the richest in our > society give more than anyone else to charity._

I don't find it hard to believe at all. What you're finding hard to believe is that even though the rich give more than others, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to government-supplied assistance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article suggests that the Bible commands basic income and that economic conservatives like the idea.

As a lifelong student of the Bible and as an economic conservative of 20 years, I can say with certainty that this premise of the article is faulty.

Very early on in the Biblical text is the divine command to work and provide through labor. Basic income undermines and ultimately aims to eliminate this divine directive.

Among economic conservatives, we generally see Basic Income as a fool's errand and a pipe dream pushed by idealistic, Utopian thought disconnected from real world economics. We see Basic Income as a foolish idea with disastrous implications for the economy if attempted.

<comment><USER18> It's not so much a command as a curse:

17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19 _In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread_ , till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

<comment><USER19> It's pretty widely held among both Jewish and Christian Biblical commentators that work existed before the curse per Gen 1:28. The curse just made work more difficult and unpleasant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't know enough to form an opinion, but a question comes to mind (actually, same question comes to mind whenever minimum wage increases come up)... What stops everything from simply getting more expensive and offsetting the BIG?

<comment><USER21> Here ya go [https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional- basic-...](https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income- just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7)

<comment><USER22> I read the article and i just dont agree on some points.

One point is that basic income would mean an increase in new businesses forming. The problem is that while yes, more people will have the ability to start a business. The increase burdon of taxes and most likely, regulations that go along with it, will make it difficult to move from the startup phase to actually running a profitable company.

Countries like denmark and sweden are great examples of this in action: small companies are scarce,the majority of investors avoid them, and most people either work for the government or a large company.

<comment><USER23> Do you have any links to back up your claim about sweden and denmark? I live and work in Sweden and my view is that there is great many small companies here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A New Golden Age won't come from basic income, it can only come from cheap, abundant energy. I won't dig out the sources atm, but its pretty obvious that coal, and later oil drove the last two centuries of rapid progress. Unless another abundant and cheaper source of energy is found, the world economy is in for a slowdown.

<comment><USER12> We have one. The only thing that stands between it and us is irrational fears of the public. I'm talking about nuclear (fission) power, obviously. It's more than enough to keep us up and running until we crack fusion.

<comment><USER25> There's also Methane Hydrate. Sure its a CO2 producer; but it is easily drilled for and delivered to coastal cities, which is where most of the (US) population lives anyway.

<comment><USER12> Isn't that the thing we could easily cook the planet with if we released it by accident?

<comment><USER25> I don't know about that scenario. Seems unlikely - the bottom of the ocean is cold; Methane Hydrate is locked in ice nodules under the ocean floor. Warming it slightly will release it as gas - making free natural gas wells.

I guess its a question of, is there oxygen down there, that could cause a fire if released? Thus creating a runaway reaction. Could be. If that were true, I'd suppose there would be no more deposits, as Earth is hit by meteors regularly and they would pierce/heat the deposits. So history/geology seems to say No there's not a problem.

Anyway, the Japanese already have test wells. They're ocean-locked and have no native fuel sources. So they're extremely interested in harvesting fuel from the sea.

<comment><USER12> Methane is something like 20-70 times more potent a greenhouse gas (depending on timescales you look at, estimates for 100 and 20 years respectively) than carbon dioxide; it's not burning that would be a problem, but massive release of unburned methane.

Aunt Wiki[0] seems to confirm it may be a problem.

Anyway, I only learned about dangers and potential as energy source of clathrates from Fate of the World[1], so I don't claim to know much about the topic.

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate#Methane_clat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate#Methane_clathrates_and_climate_change)

[1] - [http://store.steampowered.com/app/80200/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/80200/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Brazil has being doing something similar for almost a decade. It's by far the most efficient poverty reduction program in place.

<comment><USER27> And now Brazil has twice bad crippling inflation that threatens a drastic revaluation of the currency (the first time they even had to rename their currency the "real" \- who knows what's next) which threatens to retrace much of the progress made in reducing poverty. Who knows how much of that would have happened anyway due to economic liberalization and technological improvement?

<comment><USER28> I think its too harsh to blame fBolsa Família for the current state of the Brazilian economy. Its share of the budget is not even that big in the grand scheme of things. For example, subsidized loans the government/BNDES gives to large business (who coincidentally happen to be campaign contributors) are responsible for a bigger hole in the budget than the bolsa família.

Also, the reason we had to rename the currency last time was because Brazil had suffered from hyperinflation for so many decades that even after the government stopped printing money prices kept goingup out of sheer inertia. To give an idea, most supermarkets hired a person that would go around the aisles restickering things and mindlessly bumping prices by 2% every day.

Nowadays the government again has gone back to the times of a screwed up monetary policy but we are still far away from hyperinflation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think it would be awesome for people to be able to chill out and not work for a couple of years while they figure out their next steps in life, without going broke and/or racking up debt.

<comment><USER30> Can we all do that? Wouldn't that be great -- everyone just does a collective 3 year chill-out?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This might be politically impossible because of my mom:

Mom: "The democrats are taking away Bush's tax credits. They're a bunch of idiots. It's my money, not the government's."

Me: "Yeah, I think it would be great if we established a basic guaranteed income."

Mom: "But that's socialism."

</comment><comment><USER32> Reading the title I had a vision (sorry no grandiose talk here) of homeless free cities. Just being able to afford the slightest amount of private shelter, hygiene and nutrition.

</comment><comment><USER33> _" Once more of us are familiar with it, the Basic Income Guarantee should be an easy sell politically. It gives money to poor people, reduces taxes for rich people..."_

I don't have my work from the last time I ran the numbers, but I recall that the break-even point on increased taxes vs. guaranteed income was at about $70,000.

This didn't take into account the potential of eliminating social programs, but even without those, a BIG would require tax increases on the order of doubling the US federal government revenue. While I like the concept, I don't think you can sell it this way.

<comment><USER34> Also you'd have to get over the hurdle of people calling it communism XD That would be very tough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not bring back the WPA? The program was enormously successful and was only disbanded due to the need to focus on the WW2 effort.

</comment><comment> not-humanist Two main issues with Basic Guaranteed Income:

1) It assumes that, just because you're a member of homo sapiens species, you ought to get resources that others produce. Why? I care more about my dog than I care about most people. If someone kidnapped my dog and 100k random people and told me: "You can either save your dog or 100k random people. Choosing one will mean me killing the other". I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die.

2) Something very similar could be applied to dating and reproduction. Why not? You could argue that you live long enough to reproduce and that reproduction is the basic, biological purpose of life for all organisms. So, if someone is unattractive, just create a Basic Reproduction Guarantee. The same reasoning used for redistributing money could be used for redistributing sex. Since Basic Income is not considered stealing, then Basic Reproduction should not be considered rape.

<comment><USER35> What the flying fuck

>1) It assumes that, just because you're a member of homo sapiens species, you ought to get resources that others produce. Why? I care more about my dog than I care about most people. If someone kidnapped my dog and 100k random people and told me: "You can either save your dog or 100k random people. Choosing one will mean me killing the other". I would choose my dog to live and permit 100k people to die.

If you thought the trolley problem was a nice ehtics question, that right there is pure neglect for the value of human life. Can't do anything about that for you mate.

>2) Something very similar could be applied to dating and reproduction. Why not? You could argue that you live long enough to reproduce and that reproduction is the basic, biological purpose of life for all organisms. So, if someone is unattractive, just create a Basic Reproduction Guarantee. The same reasoning used for redistributing money could be used for redistributing sex. Since Basic Income is not considered stealing, then Basic Reproduction should not be considered rape.

The term "basic" income is stupid, and should not be used. What is basic is being able to live in reasonable conditions. As it stands, the only way to do that reliably right now is to have a guaranteed income. Sex is not necessary for you to survive. And contrary to what you might think, no, basic income is not stealing. Taxes are not stealing. That's part of living in a society. If you wish to not have things stolen from you, I highly recommend going to live in a remote part of the world, where noone will prevent you from doing your job. Of course, your job is probably only possible because of the whole framework that your society has put into place.

<comment> not-humanist > that right there is pure neglect for the value of human life

What value? If you believe in God and think that people were created in his image, then human life does have value independent of what anyone thinks. But, if you're not a believer, then people are just self-deluded carbon-based life forms with limited lifespans on some tiny rock in a vast universe with 100s of billions of galaxies and 100 of billions of stars in each of those.

> Sex is not necessary for you to survive.

Of course not. That is not what I wrote. The question is why you would value survival instead of reproduction. If reproduction is the basic, biological goal, then it should have more value than survival.

\- For example, the goal of working for the most part is to get the money. Since you like Basic Income, you would say that people should get the goal(money-basic income) and skip the work.

\- What I say is that people make money for the most part to find a partner and reproduce. So, using your reasoning, since the goal is reproduction, then they should get that goal(dating-sex-reproduction) and skip the money. Get it?

<comment><USER36> Ah, you're an anti-atheist using a stupid strawman to attempt to argue against the idea that morality can have a source other than divine commands. Most religious people aren't as stupid as you seem to be, so I doubt you'll find much buy-in for your arguments here.

[http://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/](http://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/)

<comment> not-humanist You're a total manipulator.

First, you don't provide a definition of morality. You could say: "I have a dog named 'Morality', so it's possible that the source of morality is something other than divine commands". What is your view of morality?

Second, you don't provide an argument for how it's possible that human life can have intrinsic value(independent of cultural of personal preferences).

BTW, I'm a non-theist and a moral nihilist.

<comment><USER4> The ideology of the free rider.

<comment> not-humanist Is that supposed to be an argument?

Ideology is a set of beliefs or preferences. Therefore, since morality is a set of preferences and beliefs, it is an ideology or mass delusion.

Moral Nihilism is a position based on acknowledging the truth that morality is illusory and used to manipulate people into submission.

<comment><USER4> No, it's supposed to be a dismissal.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Brief History of Agile - <AUTHOR> https://jacobobryant.com/post/2018/agile/ <comment><USER2> This is brilliant!</comment>


Show HN: Build a decentralized web chat in 15 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chr15m/build-decentralized-web-app <comment><USER2> I was disappointed by the implementation of the 'decentralized' bit. It's basically establishing a point to point connection between browsers using a representation of client address.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really enjoyed this!</comment>


Apple-centric guide to improve privacy and security - <AUTHOR> https://gacallea.github.io/posts/a-better-online-experience/ <comment><USER2> Note that your ISP can see/log your internet history _regardless_ of which Dns server you use (unless of course you use a Vpn/Tor.)

So be aware that using a Dns server other than your isp-provided-one, will result in giving your dns lookups to yet another third party (the public dns provider) without gaining an advantage. It might actually _decrease_ privacy.

Therefor, in my opinion, it only makes sense to do this if for whatever reason you distrust your ISP to mess with your dns lookups (censoring etc.)

<comment><USER3> > Note that your ISP can see/log your internet history regardless of which Dns > server you use (unless of course you use a Vpn/Tor.)

Not if you use DNSCrypt which is mentioned in TFA, and quite easy to install. It can't also be MITMed.

If you're using a VPN you can also fail to use DNS over VPN.

The article is furthermore rather specific about using a load of extensions (which is profilable), it suggests 1Password which is expensive (open source alternatives available, also cheaper alternatives available), it suggests WiFi Spoofing which is 20 USD on the App Store (free tools available in Homebrew and /sbin/ifconfig), it suggests some unknown VPN called Mullvad VPN which 'claims' it doesn't log (you never know that for sure). In short, reads like an advertisement without going into specifics about the competition. I, for one, would recommend ProtonVPN because of Secure Core and a wide array of VPN endpoints throughout the world. But I would not say I am an expert about knowing ProtonVPN's competition. Then it goes on: "By the way, should you be doing torrents, use qBittorrent." Why? Why not Transmission? Why not WebTorrent? Why not rtorrent? Etc. Why not use Usenet/NZBs? If you're cool shelling out 20 USD for a MAC spoofer and pay for 1Password why not consider also to pay for a Usenet provider?

<comment><USER2> > Not if you use DNSCrypt

That's not correct; Dnscrypt prevents against man-in-the-middle attacks, meaning your dns requests can not be _manipulated_. However, it does not provide end-to-end encryption.

<comment><USER3> DNSCrypt is an implementation of DNSCurve.

DNSCurve.org mentions:

"DNSCurve uses high-speed high-security elliptic-curve cryptography to drastically improve every dimension of DNS security:

Confidentiality: DNS requests and responses today are completely unencrypted and are broadcast to any attacker who cares to look. DNSCurve encrypts all DNS packets.

Integrity: DNS today uses "UDP source-port randomization" and "TXID randomization" to create some speed bumps for blind attackers, but patient attackers and sniffing attackers can easily forge DNS records. DNSCurve cryptographically authenticates all DNS responses, eliminating forged DNS packets.

Availability: DNS today has no protection against denial of service. A sniffing attacker can disable all of your DNS lookups by sending just a few forged packets per second. DNSCurve very quickly recognizes and discards forged packets, so attackers have much more trouble preventing DNS data from getting through. Protection is also needed for SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, etc., but protecting DNS is the first step."

Your ISP will see encrypted traffic on say port 443 TCP or UDP, and that's it.

<comment><USER2> I see.. interesting. I read this from the author:

"While not providing end-to-end security, it protects the local network, which is often the weakest point of the chain, against man-in-the-middle attacks." [https://github.com/jedisct1/dnscrypt- proxy/blob/master/READM...](https://github.com/jedisct1/dnscrypt- proxy/blob/master/README.markdown)

So my guess is that for example your dns requests could be intercepted/re- routed to say another dns server of an attacker and Dnscrypt would not notice/protect you against this.

However, indeed your ISP would not be able to see your requests :)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure whether it does certificate pinning or not. You don't know the security of the recursor either, and there is no E2EE between the nameserver of their domain and you. A hostile recursor could still cause DNS poisoning.

An easy way to remember is that DNSCurve protects you between client and recursor whilst DNSSEC protects from (cc)TLD till name server (while also adding gigantic bloat to DNS requests).

Trust issues often occur at the first hop: LTE (SS7 for example, lol), (public) WiFi (example: hotel, train station), or plain hostile ISPs who hijack DNS requests (like Comcast has done), inject ads, or government interventions (such as during Arabic revolution). DNSCurve/DNSCrypt can protect against these attacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know that the link isn't inviting at all, so here's a brief description:

In this Apple-user-orientend and safari-and-mail-centric guide to improve privacy, security, and speed for the Average Joe online experience, I suggest some small tricks, extensions, applications and components for both macOS an iOS. Based on this preamble, I don't pretend to be writing the perfect guide. I just want to share what I find useful from this perspective and hope that it can be helpful to someone else. If you have better options and they are compatible with my premise I'd like to hear about them, if you please sharing them.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I skimmed through it all (took me 5mins) and nice work! Some of the links and guides you're referring to are indeed very helpful.

The thing that surprised me the most, however, was your recommendation for antivirus bitdefender. I think that's not going to really help the average Joe but only give a false sense of security. Moreover, if I am concerned about privacy I wouldn't want to install an all seeing software that is closed source and provides no control over what is shared with the parent company (which is russian?)

I can't seem to find more links to the antivirus related argument (on mobile here) but in general folks on HN tend to strongly advise _against_ using one.

<comment><USER5> In my experience, most anti-virus software is very poorly written. They don't practice safe coding methods themselves.

Moreover, even if it was well-written, because of the nature of what you're asking the software to do, it will have full and complete access to everything on your system, and usually with significant privileges. So, that would make it a very juicy target for malware writers, if nothing else.

For non-savvy computer users, Bitdefender is the only anti-virus software I would trust, but for more savvy computer users, even Bitdefender might be more of a risk than it is worth.

So, are you computer savvy enough that you know the risks presented by even the best anti-virus software, and would be better off without it? If you are, then maybe you're not part of the target audience for this page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cookie 5 and WifiSpoof look interesting, but USD 20 each is steep.

To spoof your MAC address from the terminal, this used to work (until next reboot), but haven't tried it in High Sierra (use the correct interface (en0, en1, en2)):

sudo ifconfig en0 ether aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a really good article. Thank you gacallea. I have read many guides of this sort, and most of them are trivial or full of general common sense stuff I already knew. This is the first guide of its type that had information that was both new and useful to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> TLDR:

* use like a dozen Adblockers likely all using the same filter lists slowing the browser down

* use some Antivirus from Russia to grant access to your whole system

* use a third party vpn client for the one built into iOS

* use secure passwords

</comment><comment> francis-io Has anyone written up something like this for a Linux and Android setup?</comment>


Feast Your Eyes On Snow Leopard's Beautiful Icons - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/icon-porn-feast-your-eyes-on-snow-leopards-beautiful-icons/15764

<comment><USER2> Cool stuff, but I can't take paging through 11 pages. Pagination is evil.</comment>