Where did all the wealth go? To our kids. - <AUTHOR> http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/03/where_did_all_the_wealth_go_to_our_kids.php <comment><USER2> I don't understand how the wealth is being passed to the kids of baby boomers? I'm a child of a baby boomer, 28 years old and on my second home that was purchased at the height of the real estate bubble (first in 2004, second in 2007). Both homes I purchased were owned by baby boomers.

Looks like it's the kids who are passing the wealth on to the boomers to me.

If your kids are lucky, they either held off on purchasing a home or were too young to buy in. Otherwise they're probably like me, young and with a mountain of debt and while we're a long way from retirement, most likely there will be no SS benefits for us. Enjoy your retirement boomers!

</comment><comment><USER3> "Because the future earnings of GE, and for that matter most U.S. corporations, are essentially the same today as they were two years ago.."

Are they?

<comment><USER4> Certainly not. The current earnings of the S&P 500 are down about 70% from 18 months ago. Obviously the market expects earnings to bounce back, since on a current basis, with the P/E of the S&P 500 about 28, stocks are a bad investment if you think things will continue. A dollar of earnings today is worth more than any future earnings, and near-term (five years or so), I think we can expect earnings to be less than they were eighteen months ago, so I don't think that the children have necessarily made out -- it's some combination of wealth destruction and wealth that was never really there.

<comment><USER5> I suppose that 'future earnings' holds a pretty nebulous value. Still, to the writer's point, how long do you think today's children will be working/investing? My bet is that it's more than 5 years. IMO, now would be a good time to start a child's college fund.

<comment><USER4> The question is really that if you buy stocks now, what is the discount rate necessary to make the current valuations reasonable, and how does that compare to what the boomer generation enjoyed? The theory of the article is that the children who are buying stocks right now are going to enjoy a superior rate of return at the expense of the retirees. I don't think that's true. Corporate profits expanded to an unusually high percentage of economic output in the past decade and a half, and I would expect that to go down. Even if you anticipate that the corporate profit fraction remains constant, and that earnings will be twice their current level in a couple of years, the stock market still would have a 14 P/E ratio, which is historically a bit high. Even at the current depressed valuations, I think that you have to be a pretty big optimist to expect big gains in the market over the next decade or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> WHAT? This from the generation that just borrowed a trillion dollars from us?!

<comment><USER7> don't forget the fifty trillion or so to pay their entitlements til (avg) age of death. or the extra three trillion they'll peel off of the stock market when they are forced by law to start liquidating their 401ks faster than we can make contributions to ours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> articles like this are written by people who are still ideologically stuck in the pre-2000 crash world. That wealth didn't go to someone. It is just gone because it was an illusion in the first place. The fed pumped our system full of credit. Now we act surprised when bad credit starts getting washed out.

Every empire that has tried fiat currency has failed for this very reason. The people in power simply can't keep their sticky mitts off the printing press. It's just too tempting.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps there was too much currency in the system, but I think the actual, real wealth of many people did decrease too. They were better off than they are now, their wealth physically went down. They don't have things now that they did before. The output of the economy decreased, while the resources stayed roughly the same, so less wealth is being created. This is true even if you completely forget about the existence of money.

<comment><USER8> right, but by necessity most of the wealth that disappeared was involved in non-productive economic activity. The wealth lost that actually was involved in productivity is a side effect of the massive fluctuations in imaginary wealth.

If it didn't effect the productive portion of the economy we wouldn't even have to worry about the shenanigans of the fed in the first place.

The real effect of this fluctuation is reflected in the fact that america has had an aggregate negative savings rate for the last 10 years. The imaginary wealth made people think that they could spend the real wealth, get returns in imaginary wealth (home valuations for example) and be net ahead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The amount of wealth in the world is roughly the same, but the perceived value of cash has risen relative to everything else. The "wealth" has gone to the people who happen to be sitting on a lot of cash at the moment while people with lots of Plasma TVs in storage (for example) are finding they're not as wealthy as they thought they were.

I expect our kids are still going to have to work as hard as we did in order to buy those Plasma TVs. Even if they cost less, they'll probably be getting paid less too.

</comment><comment><USER11> A lot of this is just wishful optimism, but he's right to point out that deflation is not necessarily bad. I've been quite perplexed at Bernanke's efforts to stop the deflation that brought gas prices around here below $2 for the first time in seemingly forever.

<comment><USER12> It's the deflationary spiral that's bad. A little drop in price is nice, but when a feedback cycle occurs, it becomes very dangerous.

<comment><USER8> explain how. has deflation ever destroyed a country? no, not once in history. Inflation has destroyed MANY countries.

<comment><USER13> The deflation of the Great Depression and the ensuing unemployment resulted in the election of the dictator FDR, the destruction of the old republic, and creation of the modern American civil service mega-state. If you could go back in time, and put yourself at the head of the Federal Reserve in 1930, would do you anything differently?

<comment><USER8> you've got some reading to do. America's Great Depression <http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf>

<comment><USER13> I've read it. Rothbard is dead right about the dangers of fractional reserve and the need to avoid inflation in the first place. But he's dead wrong about what to do once the crisis hits. I do not buy his arguments that Hoover's actions after the crisis caused the severity of the downturn. It's very unlikely that Hoover's cajoling was the cause of sticky wages. Right now we are seeing businesses across the economy choose layoffs rather than wage cuts, even in non-union, non-regulated sectors like tech. Furthermore, the major cause of the unemployment was businesses going bankrupt. Businesses went bankrupt because when the money supply shrank they could no longer payoff their debts. The debts were all nominated assuming a much greater money supply. Deflation caused the unemployment.

<comment><USER8> wow. you're the first person I've run into who has a strong grasp of the facts. I would argue that debts nominated during a time of a much larger money supply led to businesses that were predicated on artificial demand. when the demand shrunk these businesses went bottom up. The great depression is an almost perfect example of economic latency. Those workers did eventually get assimilated back into productive industry, it just took a long time.

<comment><USER13> The demand was not artificial. For example, before the crash people bought a lot of cars. After the recovery, people bought even more cars. So why was it necessary to go through 5-10 years where nobody made or bought cars, factories sat idle, and laid off autoworkers went hungry? There are cases in recessions where the unemployment is beneficial. For instance, "financial instruments" have been overproduced, and it would be beneficial for Wall St. workers to be laid off and then find more useful jobs. But a depression is marked by lots of collateral damage - people get laid off in industries simply because of instability in the banking and moneterary system, not because they were not being productive.

Let me ask this question: Imagine a gang of thieves slowly slipped counterfeit bills into the money supply for a long period of time. Eventually, half the money supply was counterfeit bills. The thieves had long traded their counterfeit bills for wine and women. The bills were now evenly distributed across the economy, in every home and business. Suddenly, the crime is discovered. Now no one will except the counterfeit bills. The money supply drops in half. Businesses with debt and wage contracts created before the counterfeit money was discovered start to bleed red ink.

What is the proper policy response to this scenario?

<comment><USER14> I am not sure of the answer you are expecting to your question. Or if you expect one at all. Here's my amateur take.

One way is to do nothing and let the chips fall. I imagine this as the economic equivalent of a broken chain in the anchor room of a battleship. Disorderly with lots of collateral damage, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

There is the Andrew Mellon approach to "liquidate! liquidate! liquidate!" the misallocated capital and redeploy as quickly as possible. This means accepting that some portion of the productive capacity at peak monetary supply was based on phantom demand and it needs to be torn down and converted to something productive that will have real demand going forward. Yes, a whole lot of hard- working folks literally wasted years of their lives. I don't know what the collateral damage would be -- probably nasty. This is actually the function of recessions, and a fierce but orderly unwind with social support for the displaced would seem preferable to the constant terror and confusion of attempting to delay the inevitable liquidation and redeployment.

Another option is the path we are taking (I say 'we' grudgingly because I disagree, but I am a passenger aboard the United States of Titanic). Attempt to keep the monetary base stable, even though half of it is based on phantom demand. 'Legitimately counterfeit' the balance, theoretically giving businesses and individuals enough cover to pay down debts and become net savers again, then wind down the monetary base to equilibrium. This really hasn't worked for Japan. I'm just speculating...without a market incentive to liquidate and redeploy capital don't we just end up with zombie industries serving the same old phantom demand? Everyone has a job building shit nobody needs, and nobody has a job building shit everyone needs. The remaining productive industries get crushed under the tax burden of supporting the zombies, until it all ends in tears and there is nothing left to redeploy anyway ('Ayn Rand Endgame', anyone?).

There is no policy cure for massive fraud and theft. Neither is the tinfoilers' favorite a cure: 'gold-backed non-fractional banking'. There is no magic economic triple antibiotic that will make the owie go away. There is only facing the truth -- you got duped -- excluding those responsible from society, and directing our future efforts to things that _actually_ raise our standard of living (I may be biased, but to me this means technological increments that help us use our limited energy more efficiently).

<comment><USER8> _There is no policy cure for massive fraud and theft._

this is the best one liner on the economic crisis I've ever seen. Pundits should be paying you to write.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I appreciate the rosy outlook, but this is sheer absurdity. Sure, assets like homes and stocks can be purchased at a lower price for roughly the same actual value as before. But that assumes that a) people still have the money or the fortitude to buy those things and b) that the economy will rebound entirely. Sure the latter is likely true, and the author makes some good points. But as a young investor myself with parents who have lost much, I'm not inclined to be so optimistic about the future.

If nothing else, hopefully this all teaches us to be accountable for our own money and know what we're doing with it.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Social Security and Medicare systems are simply a means of making a younger generation pay for an older generation's retirement, since both of those systems are pay-as-you-go. Obama amd Congress have signed us, and especially young people, up for the largest debt burden in US history, both in absolute and relative terms. The debt accumulated in World War II doesn't even come close to what's being signed into law these days.

Still, we of the 60's generation are thinking of you. And we when head out to the golf course while you're heading to work to pay for our benefits, I swear we'll wave to you.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's hard to believe this article when some UN groups are pitching out the Dollar is the world's prime currency.

If future generations are indeed richer, the value of what they hold isn't going to be the same.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Where's my money, Lebowski?"

That was inappropriate, I'm sorry. The author gave me an impression of attempted optimism, something to help people see good coming of all this crap, but perhaps he focused to much on that and not enough on more dark realities.

</comment><comment><USER19> _It is grossly irresponsible for the baby boom generation to expect Generations X and Y to be saddled with our national debt, our trade debt, and our infrastructure debt -- and the retirement debt created by baby boomers enjoying long retirements supported by future tax increases on their children._

That's one of the most responsible things I've ever heard a member of that generation say.</comment>


Ask HN: Has FOSS Software Won? - <AUTHOR> Considering the following markets
- Embedded / IoT
- Server / Web / Cloud
- Gaming Console
- Mobile
- Enterprise Software
- Desktop
In all the markets except desktop open source software has > 50% market share.
If you consider Mac and Chrome OS, Virtual Machine Installs, Desktop reinstalls, people using both Windows and Linux at $work ... I would wager that FOSS Desktop Market share is well over 15%.
Based on that would you say FOSS has won ?
On a side note would you consider carpentry / IKEA as a model of OSS, where openness is obvious ?
Where FOSS has failed IMO is closed computing and closed data.
Reducing a general purpose computer to a vendor purpose computer by means of special firmware (the Apple CPU being the new culprit on the block). This also happens on the cloud. This is why Mac or Playstation are still considered closed source as compared to Android which allows you to install ROMs for the most part.
For some strange reason it is acceptable for data to be closed source. It is clearly where the money is. The user owns the data and the more I look at it ... the idea of transferable copyright for perpetuity is absurd. <comment><USER2> Ironically, I'd argue that FLOSS has simply served to enable proprietary software vendors.

In embedded/IoT, devices might use FLOSS but they are usually violating the licenses and the parts that make the device special are usually proprietary (think robot vacuums running Linux with a proprietary daemon doing house mapping etc). Often there are proprietary drivers or firmware too.

In servers FLOSS operating systems have indeed won, but lower level hardware- facing software like UEFI has not and indeed most proprietary UEFI implementations are based on FLOSS implementations, but with proprietary features or hardware support added that means users can't use the FLOSS version.

On the web FLOSS has indeed won, it is fairly rare to use proprietary JS/backend frameworks, but the things that are built using FLOSS web tools are mostly proprietary.

On the cloud FLOSS may have won the VM side, but the hypervisor side is trade secret land and management interfaces are mostly proprietary, very few cloud vendors use OpenStack.

Gaming consoles may use some bits of FLOSS internally, but they are locked down and proprietarised.

Mobile OSes may use some bits of FLOSS internally, but they are locked down and proprietarised to the extent that it takes a lot of work to get Linux running on a newly released device, sometimes even requiring exploiting security vulnerabilities.

Enterprise Software might be based on FLOSS but it is all proprietary at the end of the day.

On the desktop, the trend continues, macOS is FLOSS+proprietary, Chrome OS is FLOSS+proprietary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Precisely, this is why I think open data should be the next battle. All code takes input and gives output. I don't mind closed source as long as the interfaces are open ... but data being bought and sold is really troubling. Apart from public data sets, most data sets are closed. I am not sure if there are companies that publish _all_ the data they collected openly.

<comment><USER2> The data issue is that it most of it shouldn't be collected in the first place, not that it should be public.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well thats a chicken and egg problem in a way. Without data you can't build some types of software. I think you have three types of data.

1\. Private data / Linked Data

This is the data contributed by the user. Shopping data for example. I think the EU data laws are meant to guard this. I think it is both unethical and illegal to sell / publish primary data without the user's consent.

2\. Public data

In social networks you also get interaction data, which the user had made public. I don't see any reason for companies not to publish this. Right now people use crawling to get this data.

3\. Insights

This is the data generated by ML and statistical analytics.

By open data I mean user should be able to get a dump of all three and the organisation should? publish 2 openly and 3 if it wants to openly as well.

Also see: [http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000810.html](http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000810.html)

<comment><USER2> I don't think any of those things should be collected nor published.

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you solve a basic e-commerce use case then ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> OSS has won the cloud. This makes sense as companies gain a lot by collaborating on Server Technology, and don't lose much.

OSS has won mobile (kind of). Android makes sense as multiple companies can collaborate on the same OS and put their own layers on top.

Basically FOSS has excelled in every field _except_ the desktop. This is because:

\- Hardware is tightly controlled by a lot of PC manufacturers, which aren't all that interested in supporting a different OS.

\- Apple and Microsoft which have developed their OS's for decades, gaining private experience in GUI design and user experience, which doesn't seem to be as popular in Open-Source desktop OS's.

\- Majority of people don't even know you can change the OS.

I think until manufacturers start releasing desktop computers with FOSS preinstalled, like Android phones... FOSS has not won

</comment><comment><USER4> Depends on the market. The following ones have definitely seen open source win:

Servers (as mentioned, various Linux distributions with things like Apache also being open source on top of that)

CMS systems (WordPress, Drupal, Magento, MediaWiki et al)

Programming Languages (virtually no one pays for one anymore)

Source control (Git)

Web browsers

These are dubious though:

Mobile (Android is open source, but iOS still holds a decent percentage of the market)

Enterprise software

And I don't think the gaming world has been won by open source software just yet. I don't see Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft/Valve open sourcing their dev kits/OS software/firmware/whatever, and those companies dominate most of the market.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most Enterprise software is not FOSS - it's either written in house and owned by the corporation which wrote it, or it's SAP etc. You probably meant the stack that enterprise software is running on and not enterprise software itself?</comment>


Computer History Museum 2018 Fellow: Guido van Rossum - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/guido-van-rossum/ <comment><USER2> Congrats for Guido and Python.. the point I wanted to make is: Oh how much I miss this place!!It's a techie's-over-40-dream-place. So many memories when you walk around there, all the hardward and floppy disks.. such a beauty!!

<comment><USER3> If you miss it because you're now in the UK, there's a museum with an impressive collection (especially of the very first machines; EDSAC, WITCH, and Colossus) just outside of London.

[http://www.tnmoc.org/](http://www.tnmoc.org/)

<comment><USER4> I highly recommend a visit! I went a few years ago and had a great time. It's right at the top of Bletchley Park and only costs a few pounds. It's a bit of a shame that it feels neglected by the main museum (it's a separate area/exhibit/entrance to the main Bletchley Park museum). Easy to get to from London, regular trains run from Euston all day.

I took a bunch of photos when I visited [1], I could've easily spent days there. It's unlike any museum I've been to before, towards the "end" there are lots of rooms with just piles of books and computers you can sit down with for however long you wanted - lots of tactile interaction! It was also wonderful to see machines like Colossus running as well as all manner of oddities like early UNIX systems, air traffic computers and calculators.

[1] [https://photos.app.goo.gl/uhYyF3qgRnXtLy183](https://photos.app.goo.gl/uhYyF3qgRnXtLy183)

<comment><USER5> Also, a while back CHM did a live event talking to the author of _The Preservation Game: Saving Bletchley Park_: [http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/the-preservation- game-h...](http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/the-preservation-game-how- social-media-saved-bletchley-park/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Guido is a great example of the right leader for a software project. Always kind, knowing how to delegate, knowing which are his limitations and encouraging other people to step up.

<comment><USER7> Somewhat related: the origins of the title _Benevolent Dictator-For-Life_

[https://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=235725](https://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=235725)

I have to say though, and this probably is me because I'm not that deeply invested into the Python community, but I don't really know _anyone_ else in the Python community who represents the core language. In most other programming language projects of this size there are a multiple people who are public faces of the language itself, beyond the first people who designed it.

<comment><USER8> The last few years we've seen a few others help carry the torch (from active discussion on the python-ideas mailing list, core contributions, and major library compliments driving the ecosystem forward):

* David Beasley * Raymond Hettinger * Yuri Selivanov

I'm sure there are more but those are the first few that come to mind.

<comment><USER9> Tim Peters definitely had a high profile back in the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It will be nearly impossible to find someone who disagree with him getting this award IMHO. That's so well deserved. Slow clapping time here.

<comment><USER11> Mmmmh I don't disagree, but python is a little slow.

Python is my favorite language, but I wish it was faster.

<comment><USER12> Simplicity, speed, abstraction: Choose two

[https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/57904/why-do-we- have-...](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/57904/why-do-we-have-to- trade-abstraction-for-speed)

<comment><USER13> Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that interpreted vs compiled has far more to do with python's speed then abstraction in this case. Also the post you linked literally states that abstraction doesn't necessarily mean slow.

<comment><USER14> If making a language compiled is a magic bullet for speed, why isn't every language compiled? Because they have different levels of abstraction that lend their implementation to compilation or interpretation. You're just citing a specific example of one of the tradeoffs made in the language design that falls along those three axes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> DC-3 Well deserved. Few other language even come close to Python in filling the gap between scripts and larger projects.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very well deserved, many congratulations to Mr. van Rossum

</comment><comment><USER16> Glad to hear! As I was typing away at python the other day, the thought occurred to me that Guido (and every python contributor) have had an eerily strong impact on my day-to-day life.

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember 'discovering' Python in my old Programming Languages class and it is still as fascinating now as it was then. Congrats to Guido.

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting, I didn't know there was such a thing, well done Guido

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats Guido! :-)

</comment><comment><USER20> Congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER21> That grey on grey text is awful

<comment><USER22> Look who's talking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> While I'm very much in support of Guido winning this award the 'Its code should be understandable as plain English.' goal was clearly not met.

It is interesting to me because many high level languages have had this exact same goal (COBOL for instance!) and none have ever delivered.

Is Python the language that comes closest to this goal? And if not, which is?

<comment><USER24> > Is Python the language that comes closest to this goal? And if not, which > is?

In the end, it's subjective. And "understandable" and "plain English" may not sit together well, as it can lead to overly verbose code.

But, here's a few examples for you to judge between. (Examples lifted from RosettaCode, which is well worth the look.)

All these languages have claimed, at some time or another, to be easy to read, and close to "plain English". Obviously, this is just a taste.

Python

        def fib(n,x=[0,1]):
           for i in range(abs(n)-1): x=[x[1],sum(x)]
           return x[1]*pow(-1,abs(n)-1) if n<0 else x[1] if n else 0

        for i in range(-30,31): print fib(i),

Ada (A safety-oriented language)

        with Ada.Text_IO, Ada.Command_Line;
        procedure Fib is
            X: Positive := Positive'Value(Ada.Command_Line.Argument(1));

           function Fib(P: Positive) return Positive is
           begin
              if P <= 2 then
                 return 1;
              else
                 return Fib(P-1) + Fib(P-2);
              end if;
           end Fib;

        begin
           Ada.Text_IO.Put("Fibonacci(" & Integer'Image(X) & " ) = ");
           Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line(Integer'Image(Fib(X)));
        end Fib;

AppleScript (Seeing less support from Apple these days, but part of macOS)

        on fib(n)
            if n < 1 then
                0
            else if n < 3 then
                1
            else
                fib(n - 2) + fib(n - 1)
            end if
        end fib

BASIC (Easy to read, easy to use, easy to get lost.)

        FUNCTION itFib (n)
            n1 = 0
            n2 = 1
            FOR k = 1 TO ABS(n)
                sum = n1 + n2
                n1 = n2
                n2 = sum
            NEXT k
            IF n < 0 THEN
                itFib = n1 * ((-1) ^ ((-n) + 1))
            ELSE
                itFib = n1
            END IF
        END FUNCTION

Clojure (A modern Lisp, bits of Scheme, Common Lisp and Java)

        (defn fibs []
          (map first (iterate (fn [[a b]] [b (+ a b)]) [0 1])))

COBOL, it's so ridiculously verbose, I'm not adding it here. See [https://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence#COBOL](https://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence#COBOL)

CoffeeScript (Billed as a better JavaScript, it was popular until ES2016)

        fib_rec = (n) ->
          if n < 2 then n else fib_rec(n-1) + fib_rec(n-2)

Delphi (One of my first programming languages. Probably the least verbose staticly typed language without inference I've seen.)

        function FibonacciI(N: Word): UInt64;
        var
          Last, New: UInt64;
          I: Word;
        begin
          if N < 2 then
            Result := N
          else begin
            Last := 0;
            Result := 1;
            for I := 2 to N do
            begin
              New := Last + Result;
              Last := Result;
              Result := New;
            end;
          end;
        end;

Elixir (Kinda like Ruby, but running atop Erlang's massively-concurrent VM.)

        defmodule Fibonacci do
            def fib(0), do: 0
            def fib(1), do: 1
            def fib(n), do: fib(0, 1, n-2)

            def fib(_, prv, -1), do: prv
            def fib(prvprv, prv, n) do
                next = prv + prvprv
                fib(prv, next, n-1)
            end
        end

        IO.inspect Enum.map(0..10, fn i-> Fibonacci.fib(i) end)

Elm (A new language for the web. More a framework that replaces HTML, CSS and JS than just JS.)

        fibonacci : Int -> Int
        fibonacci n = if n < 2 then
                n
            else
                fibonacci(n - 2) + fibonacci(n - 1)

FORTRAN (I've done too much professional work with FORTRAN to like it. It looks straight-forward, but you can do pretty much whatever you feel like with memory, and it'll let you.)

          FUNCTION IFIB(N)
          IF (N.EQ.0) THEN
            ITEMP0=0
          ELSE IF (N.EQ.1) THEN
            ITEMP0=1
          ELSE IF (N.GT.1) THEN
            ITEMP1=0
            ITEMP0=1
            DO 1 I=2,N
              ITEMP2=ITEMP1
              ITEMP1=ITEMP0
              ITEMP0=ITEMP1+ITEMP2
        1   CONTINUE
          ELSE
            ITEMP1=1
            ITEMP0=0
            DO 2 I=-1,N,-1
              ITEMP2=ITEMP1
              ITEMP1=ITEMP0
              ITEMP0=ITEMP2-ITEMP1
        2   CONTINUE
          END IF
          IFIB=ITEMP0
          END

Go (Google's somewhat naive language, can be odd to set up, but is fast, static and fairly readable. Lots of people switch from Python to Go.)

        func fib(a int) int {
          if a < 2 {
            return a
          }
          return fib(a - 1) + fib(a - 2)
        }

Julia (It's a language aimed at scientific application. That means a great number system, a really good compiler, and access to things you usually need FORTRAN for.)

        fib(n) = n < 2 ? n : fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)

Lua (Fast but small. Standard library isn't much bigger than C, but has LuaRocks, a decent package manager, with an active community. Some think of it as a better JavaScript, though it was designed for embedding and has a fantastic C-interop story.)

        function fibs(n)
          return n < 2 and n or fibs(n - 1) + fibs(n - 2)
        end

Nim (Think Python, but staticly typed, and much faster.)

        proc Fibonacci(n: int): auto =
          var fn = float64(n)
          var p: float64 = (1.0 + sqrt(5.0)) / 2.0
          var q: float64 = 1.0 / p
              return int64((pow(p, fn) + pow(q, fn)) / sqrt(5.0))

<comment><USER25> To be fair, here's plain English (from Wikipedia, re-entered by me):

The sequence f(n) of Fibonacci numbers is defined by the recurrence relation:

f(n) = f(n-1) + f(n-2),

with seed values

f(0) = 0 and f(1) = 1

And a possible variant in Python:

        f = [0, 1]
        for i in range(100):
            f.append(f[-1] + f[-2])

<comment><USER26> heck, if you really want that:

        @functools.lru_cache
        def fibs(n):
            if n == 0:
                return 0
            elif n == 1:
                return 1
            else:
                return fibs(n-1) + fibs(n-2)

Technically you could also write it as

        def f(n):
            if n in {0, 1}:
                return n
            return f(n-1) + f(n-2)

which is a bit trickier, but arguably better matches the way the seed values are described in english.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> More than deserved.</comment>


Why we gave up web design after 10 successful years - <AUTHOR> https://silktide.com/why-we-gave-up-web-design-after-10-successful-years/ <comment><USER2> In the beginning, people just wanted to have their website as a contact page with basic info. You can do this now with facebook or google places for business. The boutique market still exists but it's shifted to javascript rich applications. It's different but as an engineer who is terrible at css, I'll be the first to say there's value in someone that can do take on the design elements of a web application.</comment>


What are some YouTube channels to progress into advanced levels of programming? - <AUTHOR> There are some cool YouTube channel suggestions on
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16224165 But I wanted to know which of those are great to progress into advanced level of programming? Which of the channels teach advanced techniques? <comment><USER2> Watching tech talks from language conferences can be pretty enlightening - Python and Golang for example both have a lot of great videos kicking about on YouTube about lesser known or more cutting edge topics. Check out the Pycon 2017 YouTube channel for example: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrJhliKNQ8g0qoE_zvL8eVg/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrJhliKNQ8g0qoE_zvL8eVg/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=p). There are lots of channels like this.

For Python, I've found watching Raymond Hettinger's and Dave Beazley's videos especially interesting, even though some of the topics they talk about are pretty esoteric. If you find someone who is better than average at presenting tech talks, you can binge-watched their most popular stuff on YouTube (or only the stuff that is relevant to you).

Pluralsight ([https://www.pluralsight.com](https://www.pluralsight.com)) is decent for structured video courses - the quality is generally high but content gets outdated fast, and my impression was videos can seem drawn out (I think authors get paid by the minute of video watched). Still worth starting a trial if you haven't done so yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aside from just techniques, it would be great to have videos about: \- Discussing interesting open-source codebases architecture and detail their design decisions. \- Implementing complex algorithms like Paxos, or some bit- twiddling walkthroughs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly what I'm looking for. That would be priceless

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These aren't channels, but a number of the links are marked with "(video)":

[https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview- university](https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university)

[https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview- university/blob/...](https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview- university/blob/master/programming-language-resources.md)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Package Main is awesome: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI39wKG8GQnuzFPN5SM55qw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI39wKG8GQnuzFPN5SM55qw)

</comment><comment><USER6> For advanced programming topics, books are the best friends.

</comment><comment><USER7> As you go into more advanced topics, youtube might to be the best media. Have you tried looking into books about topics that interest you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, it's hard to just learn from books. YouTube videos are that personal connect if you are a lone developer. It feels like you are working with whomever is in video

<comment><USER8> If possible you might consider looking for the personal connection in a more face-to-face setting, and choosing a broadcast learning medium that works best for you without that as a consideration (which may still be video for some people, but I'll echo the sentiment that books and textual stuff seems to work better and be faster in my experience.)

Even if you only study/work on your own, there are conferences, meetups, user groups, social/networking events, etc... That gives you the added bonus of being more than just a blip in the view count of the person you're learning from. Worst case, even if there aren't any in-person options in your area, try forums/chat rooms/etc... with a focus on your subject(s) of interest (especially if they're more learning focused ones rather than just social -- the communities around many of the MOOC and online bootcamp programs come to mind.)</comment></comment></comment>


Kid Cannabis (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7683923/kid_cannabis

<comment><USER2> A good article on what happens when you let criminals control the soft drug market -- murders for no reason. If weed was legal, you can bet that nobody would be killing each other over territory; it would just be yet another thing you could buy at Starbucks or the corner convenience store.

<comment><USER3> "A good article on what happens when you let criminals control the soft drug market -- murders for no reason. If weed was legal, you can bet that nobody would be killing each other over territory; it would just be yet another thing you could buy at Starbucks or the corner convenience store."

If weed was legalized, the dealers would just move onto something heavier, like cocaine. Not only that, but the weed you get from the government would have to be regulated and it wouldn't be the same as the stuff you get on the streets, which would still result in dealers selling it illegally.

When you can't get it at starbucks (which probably won't happen unless they get a license) or as easily as you want it, will you still buy from a dealer down the street?

The problem I see is that many of the pro-marijuana users are just like the pro-piracy people. They won't stop until they get exactly what they want, which is just unrealistic.

When music piracy first came to the masses in '99 (I know it was around well before this), the main argument was that music was too expensive and the artists were getting screwed. Now that you can get music for 99 cents and the artist can sell it without a recording contract, piracy is worse than ever and there are a whole new set of excuses.

This is why I believe that the illegal sale of pot will never stop unless it's completely unregulated, which will never happen.

We also don't have any really good long-term studies regarding pot. Cigarettes cause cancer. Do we really want to legalize another substance that does the same thing or worse?

You also seem to shift the blame of the violence on the government. So, it's the government's fault that kids decided to sell pot illegally, make shit-tons of money, and attempt to get another dealer killed (and get killed in the process). They could have somehow magically prevented the situation by legalizing pot.

It's this kind of thinking that has blamed the cigarette companies for killing people when in reality, we all have free will. If you start smoking tomorrow, it's your own fault if you get cancer, not the company that sold it to you.

<comment><USER4> Okay, here we go.

 _If weed was legalized, the dealers would just move onto something heavier, like cocaine. Not only that, but the weed you get from the government would have to be regulated and it wouldn't be the same as the stuff you get on the streets, which would still result in dealers selling it illegally._

If weed was legalized, dealers would be shit out of lock for product to sell. They would not be able to compete with industrial corporations pumping out perfectly rolled marijuana cigarettes (joints), scaled operations, marketing/brand trust, and distribution. This wipes out tax dollars wasted on weed enforcement from police on the ground to clogs in the justice system, and in fact raises tax revenue for states (see California). If dealers decide to switch to serving harder drugs, they would only saturate existing cocaine/meth/heroin markets. Thats a big IF, because those drug productions are not as simple as growing plants and are significantly harder to enter at a big scale.

 _We also don't have any really good long-term studies regarding pot. Cigarettes cause cancer. Do we really want to legalize another substance that does the same thing or worse?_

We have thousands of years of marijuana usage in humans. We have studies, just uneducated people.

Marijuana fights lung cancer:

"The active ingredient in marijuana cuts tumor growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread, say researchers at Harvard University who tested the chemical in both lab and mouse studies." [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm)

Marijuana fights brain cancer:

"THC, causes brain cancer cells to undergo a process called autophagy. Autophagy is the breakdown of a cell that occurs when the cell essentially self-digests. The team discovered that cannabinoids such as THC had anticancer effects in mice with human brain cancer cells and people with brain tumors. When mice with the human brain cancer cells received the THC, the tumor growth shrank." [http://www.webmd.com/cancer/brain- cancer/news/20090401/marij...](http://www.webmd.com/cancer/brain- cancer/news/20090401/marijuana-chemical-may-fight-brain-cancer)

Marijuana fights breast cancer:

"A compound found in cannabis may stop breast cancer from spreading throughout the body, according to a new study by scientists at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute. The researchers are hopeful that the compound called CBD, which is found in cannabis sativa, could be a non-toxic alternative to chemotherapy." <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312132,00.html>

Marijuana unlikely to cause cancer. [http://www.webmd.com/smoking- cessation/news/20000508/marijua...](http://www.webmd.com/smoking- cessation/news/20000508/marijuana-unlikely-to-cause-cancer)

 _You also seem to shift the blame of the violence on the government. So, it's the government's fault that kids decided to sell pot illegally, make shit-tons of money, and attempt to get another dealer killed (and get killed in the process). They could have somehow magically prevented the situation by legalizing pot._

An economics 101 class would do wonders for anyone and everyone. When something is illegal to have, there is a risk of being caught. When theres a risk of being caught, you need incentive to put your ass on the line. When the incentives are big money and fast money, people start getting crazy. Gangs and organized crime get involved, and shit goes down. Why aren't gangs killing each other over tobacco and alcohol dealing?

<comment><USER5> > _Why aren't gangs killing each other over tobacco and alcohol dealing?_

[sarcasm] Because tobacco and alcohol are gifts directly from God, but pot gets shipped into the country on the express train from Hell packaged by none other than the Devil himself. Anyone that even looks at a joint is touched by the hand of the Devil and must be purged. [/sarcasm]

It never fails to amaze me how people seem to deny/forget that alcohol and tobacco/nicotine are drugs too. They just happen to be drugs that were sanctioned by the government as 'legal' instead of 'illegal.' Marijuana was added to the list of drugs in the 1920's (IIRC). Do you really think that there was much scientific though/research put behind that? Hardly. [Note: It was made illegal by an act of Congress so I'm sure you can search the archives for the minutes of the session] It was 100% a political decision, the same as the 'child porn' witch-hunts that we have today (where we are charging sex- ting teens as child pornographers). And because it's illegal it makes it even harder for researchers to actually do research on marijuana since they have to jump through all sorts of red tape just to make it legal for them to have it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I knew a lot of these types of drug dealers when I was that age in the mid 90s. It's mind boggling that they got so big so fast. It starts to get pretty dangerous by the time you're moving just a couple thousand a week, first from gangs, but then from the DEA. They're lucky they didn't get killed.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is from 2005, and should be marked as such.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it really matter? I changed it, but this is pretty obviously not a "current events" story.

<comment><USER7> I had read it before, and with the year I would not have re-read it.

<comment><USER8> so you re-read the article then realised you had read it before?

<comment><USER7> I re-read part of it before I recognized it as the shitty article it was. It was fluff in 2005, it's fluff in 2010.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I posted a book review about a guy with a similar story, except he dealt cocaine, and got a 25 year sentence. His book, however, focuses mostly on life behind bars; it doesn't detail any of the glory days.

[http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/03/book-review-inside- life-b...](http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/03/book-review-inside-life-behind- bars-in-america/)

</comment><comment><USER10> by far the most interesting thing iv'e read in a long itme.

</comment><comment><USER11> Booya, Spokane / Coeur D'Alene is famous for something!

(i grew up there, wooo trips to Canada!)

</comment><comment><USER12> A fascinating story, but singularly disheartening. One of the main characters regrets nothing of leading a life of crime, and the author is willing to give him the final say. This is moral laxity. He plays up the drama to the point where the story is entertainment, and therefore transmits nothing.

Let me write my own end then: some people will never regret their evil actions, even if they are caught. These people should be avoided because ruin travels closely on their heels.

<comment><USER4> Dealing marijuana doesn't make you an evil person. You should reconsider what you believe to be a "life of crime". He took advantage of a system that doesn't work (marijuana prohibition) and got rich for it.

Laws against marijuana don't make sense. Millions of people are incarcerated for simple possession. Prohibition simply raises the profit margins for it, pushing dealing to organized crime, and eventually violence.

Who in the story was hurt by marijuana directly? No one. No one was evil for dealing drugs, just young and stupid.

<comment><USER3> "Laws against marijuana don't make sense. Millions of people are incarcerated for simple possession. Prohibition simply raises the profit margins for it, pushing dealing to organized crime, and eventually violence."

Millions for simple possession..really?

Unless you are dealing, most cops will not bother you. Many states now also will only slap you with a fine.

Anything illegal will have a black-market behind it. Prostitution, gambling, and even illegal fireworks. The only way to get rid of the organized crime and violence is to legalize everything that is illegal..which isn't very practical.

It's not really prohibition. It's illegal. Alcohol prohibition only lasted for 13 years. Marijuana and many other drugs have been illegal for 70+ years. Otherwise, we would say there is a prohibition on rape and murder.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, your points made no sense to me. Prohibition means prohibited which means illegal. Marijuana has been used throughout human history over thousands of years, and all of a sudden in 1920s its illegal. Legalizing and regulating things is actually quite practical. The government regulates tobacco, alcohol, firearms, pharmaceutical drugs, our food, the toys our children play with, etc.

You don't see organized crime killing each other over the alcohol and tobacco markets, thats because theres no profit for them, big companies scale better. Illicit drugs however, pay well.

As for the incarceration numbers: " _According to the most recent figures available from the FBI, police arrested an estimated 786,545 people on marijuana charges in 2005 -- more than twice the number of Americans arrested just 12 years ago. Among those arrested, about 88 percent -- some 696,074 Americans -- were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.

These totals are the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and make up 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Nevertheless, self-reported pot use by adults, as well as the ready availability of marijuana on the black market, remains virtually unchanged._"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jurassic Park: Trespasser CG Source Code Review - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/trespasser/index.php

<comment><USER2> I couldn't help but chuckle at this part:

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

Trivia : The first things one should run on a new codebase are the following greps :

        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case fuck   {}   \; 2>/dev/null
        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case shit   {}   \; 2>/dev/null
        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case hack   {}   \; 2>/dev/null
        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case lame   {}   \; 2>/dev/null
        find . -exec grep --with-filename --ignore-case stupid {}   \; 2>/dev/null</comment>


'Vegetative' patient speaks to scientists using his brainwaves - <AUTHOR> http://news.scotsman.com/science/I39m-alive-39Vegetative39-patient-speaks.6041415.jp <comment><USER2> If that patient is actually aware of his surroundings, then he has been trapped in a body with almost no sensory input for almost 6 years. Personally, that sounds like the worst hell imaginable.

I've told everyone close to me that if I am injured badly they are to ask for 'no extreme measures' for this exact reason...

<comment><USER3> It's just the opposite actually, and worse. If he's aware of his surroundings, he's been trapped for 6 years without any output instead. Able to observe and think, but unable to move, unable to speak, unable to interact with or affect his environment except as a comatose patient.

Being Locked-in is one of the worst things I can imagine and yet is very real.

<comment><USER2> Yes, you are absolutely correct. I was kind of thinking in terms of interaction but got it backward.

What I was trying to convey was that no matter how dedicated your loved ones are they're not going to be with you every minute of every day if you're apparently comatose. That means this poor guy has probably spent most of the last six years lying in a bed by himself with nothing going on around him...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great news, comminucation is the most important thing.

Here is the story boy that was unable to speak or contact with world and was considered "vegetable" by doctors, till he picked up a language BLISS from a teacher that was teaching some other child in his hospital room.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvpGLxU6fVY>

He is a poet now.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reported earlier: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099274>

That sank without a trace - no comments, no upvotes - perhaps this report will get a better response. I think it's interesting, so I hope it does.

It's a fascinating idea, getting yes/no answers from brain scans. The potential is there for using text output devices similar to those that Hawking uses, except driven by the patient imagining playing tennis.

<comment><USER6> > That sank without a trace - no comments, no upvotes -

That's because it didn't mention the Ipad.

<comment><USER5> Now it's appeared via a New Scientist link as well:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1100899>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This story gave me goosebumps--imagine the depth of joy he felt when he was finally able to get through to someone. Blows my mind.

</comment><comment><USER8> There was a book written by a man with locked-in syndrome after a stroke. It made me want to write a living will.

"The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid, which took ten months (four hours a day). A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. The book also chronicles everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterf...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly)

<comment><USER9> So she went linearly through the whole alphabet until he found the letter he wanted? Sounds like somebody should have used a binary search! Hey-oooo!

<comment><USER10> I wonder which would actually faster - binary search on the standard ordered alphabet or going linearly in order of letter frequency.

Even better - some hybrid algorithm that goes through the most common letters then goes into binary search for the remaining letters (many of which appear at approximately equal frequency)

<comment><USER4> Binary search in unbalanced tree with shorter branches to more frequently used letters will be probably best (this is really huffman coding, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a much more informative link, with actual science! <http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1550>

</comment><comment><USER9> This whole story is really very fascinating, although a few details seem a bit odd.

For example, the patient didn't answer the last question because.. he fell asleep? I would imagine if I was trapped inside my body and suddenly given a mechanism to communicate, I would be too excited to fall asleep.

Did they observe any signs of excitement that I would expect a person to feel in this situation? Increased heart rate or other brain activity? Did the man try to convey his own message using the new-found communication mechanism?

It almost sounds like they are communicating with some small ghost of the man's subconscious, something that can respond to basic queries and recall memories, but lacks what we would really consider a consciousness.

<comment><USER12> _Did the man try to convey his own message using the new-found communication mechanism?_

If I understand correctly, he was given the means to convey "yes" by imagining himself playing tennis. The concept of "no" was encoded by the absence of "yes".

If he had wanted to send some message, like "tell my children I love them", or "I feel pain in my abdomen", how would he encode it?

<comment><USER13> "No" was encoded by imagining himself walking from room to room.

The absence of anything was recorded as "no answer".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an interesting new development in what was a couple of years ago an already observed phenomenon by half of the same team:

<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5792/1402>

However, I think their publishing the idea that these patients were "conscious" is morally questionable. The reasons for this are expressed far more elegantly that I could manage by Parashkev Nachev in the following response:

<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;315/5816/1221a.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't even to begin to imagine the loneliness you have to feel trapped inside your own mind like that.

</comment><comment><USER16> I could imagine this becoming part of a regimen for "physical" therapy. Also makes me wonder about others who have had the plug pulled...</comment>


Apple: U.S. founders would be 'appalled' by DOJ iPhone request - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-idUSKCN0WH2UI <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293949).

</comment><comment><USER3> On a technical level I really don't understand something about this situation. All the discussion I see presupposes that the only option for Apple to comply with the FBI is to build & sign this new version of iOS, and then give it to the government, who will distribute it internally to unlock hundreds of phones held as evidence in local court cases across the country, at which point it may or may not (but probably will) be stolen.

It seems like there's another possibility, where Apple takes the phone, signs the compromised version of iOS on an air-gapped computer deep in Cupertino somewhere, decrypts the phone, sends the decrypted hard drive image to the FBI, and then erases the signed version of the software. Why would this process have any higher risk of being compromised than Apple's normal release process for signing new iOS versions?

I get the reason this case matters at a more fundamental level, the precedent it sets and whether or not the government can force Apple to spy on its customers. It just seems like Apple is exaggerating their argument that it's impossible to build this new iOS version without it being hacked.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very odd, nearly all of the comments got deleted. But the post is still there (accumulating points).

</comment><comment><USER5> The constitution is meant to keep the government on a very short leash and put that leash in the hands of private citizens -- though I'm getting the feeling they desire to be the other way around.</comment>


CEOs are exiting at a record pace - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/25/ceos-are-exiting-at-a-record-pace-with-wework-juul-and-ebay-bosses-out-in-just-the-last-24-hours.html <comment><USER2> Nothing to see here, really. Economy starts quaking a little, things move around, people who did fine in an expansion don't always make it through a recession.</comment>


New Orleans' Tech Scene is Not on Bourbon Street - <AUTHOR> http://siliconbayounews.com/2012/01/27/new-orleans-is-more-than-bourbon-street/

<comment><USER2> Ok, but how do we readers act upon the article?</comment>


Germany wants to stop the world from descending into the chaos it once caused - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1512186/merkel-pitches-germany-as-leader-of-the-free-world/ <comment><USER2> As a German I don't know how people can get away with reminding the world constantly that we were once the bad guys. It's offensive.

What about UK? Destroyed and plundered India and other Asian countries.

France plundered Africa in a way they still haven't recovered from.

Spain destroyed south America.

Why is Germany singled out? Constantly?

US bombed Japan just to show off to ussr. What about them?

<comment><USER3> On the demographics here (mostly western and English speaking), many more of us had family fighting and dieing against Germany than any of your examples, some of which were centuries ago.</comment></comment>


An Interview With Twitter's Forgotten Founder, Noah Glass - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-cofounder-noah-glass-2011-4?op=1

<comment><USER2> I remember hanging out with Noah at Pycon 2008 in Chicago, he was just getting started on a game. A very passionate fellow. He mentioned he was a twitter cofounder, but through the years as I read through the news articles about twitter's history, I never found anything mentioning him. Not being from SF, I always wondered if he was just someone claiming to be part of something that he wasn't really around for. I'm glad to discover that he was involved, and is doing well despite gaining very little from Twitter's success.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Y Combinator a submarine communist plot? - the-dude I started wondering: basic income, planned cities, planned economy? ( through their funding proces? ) <comment><AUTHOR> Actually, the real history of the world is the hidden struggle between YC and the so-called "Paypal Mafia" \-- in fact the continuity organization of the Nazi Abwehr.

Both these groups have full access to the alien records and have upgraded leading personnel to a very high level. Apparently there was a full-out psychic duel between Thiel and Altman at Bilderberg this year -- no word on who prevailed, but both seem to have survived. This time. "Brexit" may be a sign, though.

</comment><comment><USER2> And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling commenters.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's it! I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

</comment><comment><USER4> YC won't be deploying the submarines until the last few hitches in the fusion reactor design are worked out, probably by the end of next week.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. As is often the case, they think that because they do one thing dramatically better than anyone else, they must be fundamentally wiser and smarter in all things.

"A wise man is humble."

</comment><comment><USER6> Comrades the left are no good at being themselves anymore.

As somebody just slightly to the left of Moldbug, I say we pivot to take advantage of this gap in the market. With Biotech We Can Have Soviet Combinator Startup Make You.

To the Command & Conquer Soundtrack of course.

[https://youtu.be/MEc1Dq3sh4U](https://youtu.be/MEc1Dq3sh4U)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hopefully, that's about the only thing likely to steer us away from calamity.

</comment><comment><USER8> Planned cities, if privately owned and governed, are the opposite of communism.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, a capitalist venture program is a communist plot. Is this a joke or what? These things are only being promoted by YC because in the long run they are good for the capitalists.

<comment><USER10> > These things are only being promoted by YC because in the long run they are > good for the capitalists.

More a testament to what happens when geeks get their hands on excess capital. They have an urge to do nice things. It's a sleeping aid I guess. E.g. Gates, Zuckerburg etc.</comment></comment>


Create iOS games on ipad with Codea - <AUTHOR> http://twolivesleft.com/Codea

<comment><AUTHOR> Found out about it from the first game created from it: [http://www.cultofmac.com/162616/cargo-bot-is-the-worlds- firs...](http://www.cultofmac.com/162616/cargo-bot-is-the-worlds-first-game- to-be-made-entirely-on-an-ipad/)

Link to videos of games generated is interesting too.</comment>


Show HN: Framebase.io, Video for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://framebase.io/ <comment><USER2> "All plans come with a free 30-day no-risk trial. We won't ask for your billing information until your trial ends. If you're not satisfied, you can export your data at any time."

I like that :D

</comment><comment><USER3> I need details of your transcoding and streaming capabilities. Specifically, can you transcode well known formats to h.264 at various output resolutions and then create m3u8 playlists for HTTP-Live streaming? We had to roll our own solution to handle doing just that from user-generated content. I saw that RTMP was mentioned but that's it.

For doing any sort of video on mobile apps this could come in handy. Most people are just using progressive downloads on small clips or offloading to youtube these days.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was making a video CV recruitment based Startup. We used the API from Youtube and were thinking of changing to a paid plataform. We had to options, Framey.com and framebase.io. We almost choosed framey, but I left the startup.

If the founder of framebase want a good advice from someone who used to be a potential customer, please change your pricing. Don't charge for minutes, minutes don't mean anything. Charge for numbers of video, even 1 minute videos. It's much better to know that I can have 1000 videos. And really choose what kind of charge you wanna make. If it is based on watched time or recorded. These are two different markets.

<comment><USER5> For video, pricing by minute is much closer to the cost for the provider to encode that video, so Framebase users win because they end up paying a price much closer to the actual cost.

What you're proposing would be akin to S3 just charging per file rather than by the amount of storage...

<comment><USER4> I'm proposing in a view of a potential customer. If you see the pricing of a competitor, like framey.com, they make it easier for you to choose your estimated price range.

It is just a more marketing standing point. What is better, 4gbs of music or 1000 songs?

<comment><USER6> Songs are comparable in duration (and file size), videos are not. With UGC, video file size can easily vary by the factor of 1,000. So the infrastructure required to transcode, store, and deliver a 5GB file would cost much more, compared to a 5MB file. It's difficult to come up with "simple" pricing that would fit all.

<comment><USER7> You could of course include a weasel-phrase like "videos over 5 minutes long count as one additional video for every additional 5 minutes."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have you considered a free plan for open-source projects? Allowing folks to record screencasts and contribute them as video tutorials to help new users get up and running on open-source software would be a huge boon to many a project. This would also, I imagine, have a considerable effect on Framebase.io awareness among the very developer community you're targeting. What do you think?

<comment><USER9> What's wrong with using youtube for this purpose?

<comment><USER10> Some people may prefer to avoid using Google services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love the idea of this service; was just discussing the need for something like this last week (was looking at the Youtube Upload Widget).

I was sad when I went to record a test video and received this message "Chrome's version of flash has a bug which prevents sound from being recorded. Disable pepper to continue."

Ugh. Disabling "pepper" probably isn't a big deal for me, but for my end users, this could be a major show stopper. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Thanks so much for your support.

Our recording is currently still in beta right now, but we're coding so fast that are hands our virtually bleeding. We're looking to continually improve this feature and one of the long term goals solutions we see for this is WebRTC which should be very exciting. Keep on following up and we'll be sure to have more updates soon!

<comment><USER12> Can you tell me more about this "pepper" bug. I built a few video streaming/recording sites for some of my clients and I have yet to run into a case were the audio wasn't recorded. Maybe I can provide some guidance.

<comment><USER7> I'm also curious.

He might be referring to the new PepperFlash bug that makes Flash not give microphone feedback when doing the usual attach to a null NetConnection.

We've had to disable our automatic microphone detection for VideoView.com because of that one.

P.S. Do you have a twitter handle as well? I'd probably like to stay in touch as we're apparently working on similar fields.

<comment><USER12> Agree PepperFlash has some quirks, switching between the default mic and the enhanced mic (for noise cancellation) some times crashes, as well as some other odd ones. I do have twitter but I'm one of the few that don't use it (only for testing purposes :D) so best if you hit me up via email in profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The big problem with recording any kind of video or audio on the web is Flash. It's a nightmare with well-known _major_ bugs in Chrome (good luck clicking on "Allow" if you're a Macbook Pro with Retina display user). If you guys can find a way to (a) solve that, and (b) take away that pain for other users, then you have real value here. Seriously, I can't wait for HTML5 to be fully supported.

<comment><USER7> Chrome's introduction of PepperFlash was just horrible.

They opened with a massive bug that crashed every webcam recording service on the internet.

When they fixed that they crashed for every service that displayed sound volume for multiple microphones.

That bug they fixed by just not giving volume feedback for microphones at all.

Sadly enough, HTML5 video recording will be quite a while out still since you'd need a reliable server to capture the stream, but none of the major provider (FMS, Wowza, Red5) have any plans for WebRTC support so far.

You can go for Lynckia, but that's about as unproven as you can get...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Note that the highlighted text in the headline and in one of the sub-headlines should be tested against the same version without highlighting, and another with a [red,blue,green] underline. I say this because this sort of highlight tends to test lower than underlines. But in your case it needs to be tested (if you haven't done already).

<comment><USER15> I found the "inverted" CSS style to be very annoying, since it looks almost exactly like text that I have selected (yes, I'm one of those compulsive text selectors).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks very good - just had a quick look at the REST API - is it not possible to get a full list of all videos? (sorted/paginated maybe) - I'm thinking there would be use cases where you'd upload videos in the dashboard and then import them to a website later.

</comment><comment><USER17> Was just hoping for something like this. Totally genius -- awesome work guys!

</comment><comment><USER18> "hey I see you played a video... here's a CTA" ... there are some alert()'s lying around in your "cases"... guessing they were meant to be removed :)

Is the USP here the video recording? If I was comparing to services like zencoder, transload.it, pandastream etc

[1] <http://zencoder.com/en/> [2] <https://transloadit.com/> [3] <http://www.pandastream.com/>

</comment><comment><USER19> Awesome product, but holy shit are you guys expensive for anyone who does volume.

3000 'minutes' uploaded for $200 ? Tell me thats a monthly allowance and not a one time fee? You better be using some fancy CDNs and having 10 different versions of my file in different resolutions for that price.

Maybe let people opt for no transcoding to bring the price down? I would never use you guys at the current price. A few open source scripts and a dedicated server at 100tb.com is 500 times cheaper.

<comment><USER20> Let me know how your open source scripts and dedicated server work out. I'd like a great, but insanely cheap solution too.

<comment><USER21> with amazon and a bit of scripting you can get pretty far while keeping the costs low. For my company for example, I transcoded 35 000 minutes of video in 2 days for about 300 euro. Of course it took me a good week to develop the whole system but in the end it was much so cheaper than other services out there. (Zencoder, Amazon Cloud Transcoding etc.) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fun little use I noticed: you can upload video to framebase from the command line with a single curl command:

 _curl -F "file=@full-path-to-file-here" -F "token=your-app-token- here"<http://api.framebase.io/video/> _

This technique will work for plenty of other services as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks neat. Could be a service i will use in the future. Only thing i noticed is that you use flash to record the videos. In my case, this is broken because of the peper flash player from chrome. Is it not an idea to use the getusermedia API where supported?

</comment><comment><USER24> Great idea for a service to alleviate the pain of video uploads (& more)!

One thing that should be clear from the Pricing page but is missing though: one-time, monthly or yearly pricing? (Monthly makes the most sense but it should be said either way.)

</comment><comment><USER25> I love projects like these. In a few minutes I can have some advanced functionality and make myself look way smarter than I am.

Just a thought for the future, perhaps come up with a solution for iPhone/iPad apps.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Clicking on get started for free button and not typing anything in the input panel generates an DB error" -Just Saying

</comment><comment><USER27> I would love such a service for mobile platforms. Any plan to go beyond browsers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! We're developing SDKs for iOS right now and constantly trying to improve our mobile web experience as well. In fact, with the uploader widget, if you were to open up the page on iOS 6, it should ask you if you want to record video right from your phone. It still requires more testing though.

If you want to email us at firstname.lastname@example.com, we would love to talk to you about what you'd like to see in our future mobile SDKs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it compliant with HTML standards to have input type="framebase"?

<comment><USER29> Yes. Anything the browser doesn't understand for input type will be treated like a text input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> AdBlock just killed all your examples on Google Chrome, guys.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure it is AdBlock. Whether I have it enabled or not I get the error: "Error:Chrome's version of flash has a bug which prevents sound from being recorded.". Seems like a genuine bug with the Chrome Flash player.

<comment><USER30> It is. I paused/deactivated AdBlock and it worked perfectly.

<comment><USER29> Or AdBlock just deactivates the Flash plugin, and the HTML5 video plays as the fallback?

<comment><USER30> I dont see even the flash window. So, yes, maybe just erase the whole div. I just see the gray div but not the content in it. That's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I keep thinking that the text "easiest" is selected. Dammit.

</comment><comment><USER33> Trying to upload a video but it doesn't seem to register...

</comment><comment><USER34> Gosh, this is amazing.

I'd love to see a framework like this for audio.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm wondering is there a similar service for audio?

</comment><comment><USER36> "Video for PHP Developers"

</comment><comment><USER37> whoaa!</comment>


UK intel agencies spy indiscriminately on millions of innocent folks - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/uk-secret-police-surveillance-bulk-personal-datasets/ <comment><USER2> Do not lose sight of the fact that Britain is one of the Five Eyes.

Which means that their data sets include everything that the NSA collects. And they don't have pesky (though effectively unenforced) NSA restrictions against spying on Americans.

Enjoy your lack of privacy!

</comment><comment><USER3> Hacker, yes. News - probably not.

I've depressingly come to accept this as part of being British.

<comment><USER4> I've heard China's less restrictive in some ways.

You can't call for the overthrow of the government in China or read about Tienanmen Square, but in Britain mildly positive remarks about designated terrorist groups or disparaging speech about minorities (like the man who argued with a Muslim woman and posted about it on Twitter) can get you arrested.

Even if this isn't true there's a perception of monitoring and risk which chills speech. Britain doesn't need too many lessons from the USA, but one exception would be the First Amendment.

<comment><USER5> > like the man who argued with a Muslim woman and posted about it on Twitter) > can get you arrested.

The important part is "argued with a Muslim woman" \- in real life, AFK. Not "then posted about it on Twitter".

But the CPS were very clear that the police should not have arrested him, and that they definitely should not have charged him, and that the CPS would not prosecute.

<comment><USER4> The important part, in my view, is "arrested". We have a police force that feels empowered to arrest people for what they say on Twitter and Facebook. And this wasn't the only occasion.

The effect of this kind of thing on what we feel free to say in public shouldn't be ignored.

<comment><USER5> They did not arrest him for what he said on twitter. They arrested him because he confronted a woman in the street to racially harass her.

Twitter is just how they found out about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can't do bulk data collection without spying on a significant amount of innocent people, can you?

<comment><USER7> GCHQ/government would claim people aren't spied on until an analyst looks at their data. They have normalised 'collect it all' and created a mental distinction between that and mass surveillance. Obviously running analysis on the data doesn't count as someone looking at it for this logic to work.

<comment><USER4> Is that the Copenhagen Interpretation of spying?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> See also [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/21/bulk_personal_datase...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/21/bulk_personal_datasets/) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11540777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11540777)

</comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately, this will not surprise many folks here

</comment><comment><USER10> Is bulk data collection government regulated? Meaning, is it legal for a person to start building and sharing databases about other people e.g. about the same people working for the organizations mentioned in the article, MI5, MI6, GCHQ?

I'm not interested in doing that, just wondering whether there is a double standard for this kind of activity.

<comment><USER11> >Is bulk data collection government regulated? Meaning, is it legal for a person to start building and sharing databases about other people e.g. about the same people working for the organizations mentioned in the article, MI5, MI6, GCHQ?

Yes, the Data Protection Act implements a number of EU directives regarding personal information and privacy.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998)

<comment><USER12> But there is a blanket exclusion for the purposes of 'prevention and detection of crime'.

It is widely used by the Police (obviously) but also by the likes of insurance companies (e.g. unsubstantiated suspicious of "suspect" insurance claims) and high street shops (the major stores operate a facial recognition database of 'known' and 'suspected' shoplifters which they use to target people on entry to stores and either eject or detain them as they determine they want to do).

All you need to do is construct an argument about preventing and detecting crime and you're pretty much free to store and process whatever and however you want. The only case I've heard of this failing was in the building industry blacklist (which GCHQ helped create and was run by Sir Robert McAlpine, Balfour Beatty, Costain and Skanska Construction [1]).

Databases like that are part of the 'bulk collection' being used here. It has gone on since at least 1984 (the Telecommunications bill instigated the legal framework for it).

In the mid-80's, I worked in the UK with someone who was in the middle of some business dispute (normal business stuff, nothing unusual or noteworthy). A lot of the business involved dealing with military type customers who generally worked at the 'discreet' end of the business. In casual conversation with one customer, the dispute came up and frustration was expressed at the lack of ways to resolve it. A few days later a large envelope arrived with a complements slip from said customer, containing a huge ream of printouts of extremely personal and sensitive details on the business competitor, their businesses, their family and some choice friends. My colleague had the sense to burn the paperwork ASAP (but did look through it!) and was always way more careful about what and with who he discussed things afterwards.

From that incident, I know that any sort of record in the UK is fair game for GCHQ and it was normal for your doctor visits, bank records, credit records (purchase details), any store accounts etc. - everything - to be sucked up, even in the 80's. Any sort of political activism (of any type) moved you way up the interest & monitoring list, especially things like donations or driving your car near any sort of demo or sensitive site.

The irony was that 1984 was the year the UK made legislation for it. But it got way worse under Tony Blair, who is often chastised for treating Orwell's 1984 as an instruction manual rather than a warning.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/mar/03/blacklisted-...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/mar/03/blacklisted- building-workers-court-hopes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting how "folks" is replacing "people" even in headlines/journalism.

<comment><USER14> It feels extremely American (to a Brit).

<comment><USER15> Obama uses it a lot so that's probably at least part of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So much for difference between US/UK and, say, China.</comment>


RSS readers on Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2013/03/14/rss-readers-on-linux/

<comment><USER2> I guess this comes up kind of in response to the google thing. Honestly I don't know why people keep using anything from google. About two years ago I decided I would never use a google product again, and I never looked back.

For RSS, I have been using Liferea since then, and I totally recommend it.

<comment><USER3> yes, Liferea is awesome. is it possible to port it to a web platform? meaning to make it online?

<comment><USER4> Liferea supports Tiny Tiny RSS sync, so that could be it. You can host <http://tt-rss.org/> and use Liferea as desktop app (and may be the web interface for mobile).

In fact that's the only part that I really liked of Google Reader: it was the perfect backend (I got used to the web interface, but the real experience was with the native apps).

It would be nice to have a "standard" API for RSS sync that could be implemented by servers and clients. In that way we could host our own RSS backend in the same way we run a SMTP and IMAP servers to have our own independent email infrastructure.

Tiny Tiny RSS API could be a good start, or we can agree on a Google Reader compatible API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've updated the post to include more readers people have suggested.

<comment><USER6> Sage (Firefox plug-in) works with Firefox Sync, so you can have your RSS feeds synced across devices.

<comment><USER7> Sage is still around? For a while, it was stagnant and then was sort of forked. There were some rendering/vulnerability issues that were not being addressed in a timely fashion (in some cases in one fork, in other cases perhaps in both forks).

Do you know enough about it to briefly describe where it is at, now, and/or which fork (if still forked) is better and why?

I haven't looked at it in... some years, now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Canto[0] is also very nice.

[0] <http://codezen.org/canto/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised that Opera isn't getting more love.

<comment><USER10> I know! I was about to mention Opera too.

They are just jinxed that way! Do it all right, but just not getting the mindshare that they (in a way, rightly) deserve (despite being closed-source)!

And the browser itself is just fantastic in terms of speed, configurability and performance (despite failing on pages here and there due to no fault of theirs).

<comment><USER11> Opera Software recently took the decision to leave the old browser-foundation behind for Chromium[0], which may change the things you listed for better or worse. Since Chromium doesn't support RSS natively, it is currently unknown whether it will be supported in future versions of Opera.

[0]: [http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move- to-...](http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move-to-webkit)

<comment><USER12> Opera are only replacing their rendering engine with the one used in Chromium, they are not using Chromium to replace their browser. Opera's RSS feature doesn't even touch the rendering engine and is built entirely with their native widgets - but even if they were to put it into the rendering engine, RSS is just XML, and can be styled in any way they want using standard web technologies.

tl;dr: The move doesn't affect Opera's ability to put RSS in their browser.

<comment><USER10> A better worded reply than my off-the-cuff one. I think I better log-off and get some sleep!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>