The Schmidle Muddle of the Osama Bin Laden Take Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.registan.net/index.php/2011/08/04/the-schmidle-muddle-of-the-osama-bin-laden-take-down/comment-page-1/

<comment><USER3> _Schmidle has demurred from tackling this serious issue of credibility, integrity and veracity directly._

A flat lie. I saw him interviewed last Monday on PBS's _Newshour_ program and the interviewer asked him how he developed the story and whether he had talked to the SEALs on the mission in person. Schmidle replied to the latter question with a categorical and unambiguous denial; he could not have been more straightforward. This article is a hit piece that attempts to deceive its readers for traffic, but which has no basis in fact.

See for yourself: [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july- dec11/binladen_...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july- dec11/binladen_08-01.html) at 05:05-05:30

</comment><comment><USER4> I read the story and I enjoyed it. But I immediately wondered where he was getting some of his very detailed nuggets. There's no doubt that this was written to give most readers the impression that SEALs were, in some form, primary sources. So now we know, definitely, they weren't.

The real question: how in the heck did the New Yorker vet this thing, from a fact-checking standpoint? The New Yorker has what's likely the most venerable fact-checking process in the magazine business. Most magazines have dismantled much of their dedicated fact-checking staffs to cut costs. The New Yorker, however, has soldiered on (as far as I know). So how were these details squared? How is it possible to ensure veracity of details, such as those fingering the events inside the helicopter, without a primary source?

I tend to believe much of the spirit of the story. But this is not a ripping book account of the raid (where more liberties are expected to be taken), this is the New Yorker. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds...

<comment><USER5> The New Yorker has been the publisher of the best investigative journalism about the wars, and so it does seem like quite a change that it would publish a sloppy article that implied a firsthand account when none existed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't say it was "sloppy". The sourcing is more or less precise. And all of their most gripping stories put the reader "there"...For example, this phenomenal piece about a Texas execution of a likely innocent man:

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann)

But in that case, most of the main players had died, and so the reader already knows that he's getting details that come from letters and interviews...but we know that because we know who the main players are in the first place...In the New Yorker piece, all sources have been muddied up, deliberately, so that even if you know that no SEALs were talking, it still seems like this is a comprehensive report. But for all we know, this could be the Navy's public information officer. Or Pres. Obama himself. Neither of which would be considered the best sources for an end-all what-really-happened in-depth article.

<comment><USER6> They may have had access to helmet cam footage or similar.

<comment><USER7> The New Yorker piece specifically states that there were no helmet cameras, "contrary to a widely cited report by the CBS."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the discussion of the New Yorker article (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2830998>), a few commenters (including myself) objected to the (original) article on the basis that it heavily relied on one source. All of these comments were downvoted to hell, and a unfriendly argument about conspiracy theories ensued.

Why is it instantly deemed a conspiracy theory when people are questioning of matters such as this? Healthy skepticism is good in most discussions, and I would hope that the HN crowd would be open to having a good debate about these topics.

<comment><USER9> Warning: HN Meta commentary follows

I'm one of the original downvotes, and I also (rather rudely) replied to one of your comments.

I think the reason for the squelching of most of the discussion was because the tone of the questioning comments _was_ pretty conspiratorial. Comments like "Bollocks. Pics or it didn't happen", comments that treat "the government" like one coherent person, accusing people who believe the story of acting in a way that's "unscientific" and undirected "look deeper" sentiment tend to get shot down pretty quickly. (Note that these weren't all made by the same person, but they all got downvoted in the same thread.)

The posts that started with "Why did they report that XYZ?", instead of "Why should we believe that this happened at all" generated pretty good discussion. The distinction is somewhat subtle, but it's important for community management.

<comment><USER10> I was the poster of 'pics or it didn't happen'. I am not a conspiracy theorist, raging internet commenter, etc. I was actually fairly upset by the reaction to my post. I found the replies, and the downvoting, for the most part failed to take my point (though it wasn't spelled out) for what it was: 'pics or it didn't happen' is meant to be the reaction of both an assiduous journalist, and an intelligent reader when faced with a story given like this. I am not more informed as to the facts of the story than the author was - <USER2> can't offer counterpoints. What I can do, and what I didn't see displayed by a community I broadly have high respect for, is spot telltales of very bad journalism when I see it. Any scientific article posted here that doesn't link to the original paper, that doesn't question or review what it is discussing, generally attracts similar points. Why, on a story about the US seizing and executing Osama (in quite an unexpected manner!), does anybody effectively doing the same get turned upon so severely? You'll notice that the 'bollocks' post starts with an explanation of something in the story gives cause for concern as to consistency which neither author nor readers seem concerned with. Is the distinction even subtler than the one you highlighted, or is it in fact less real, or applicable to this situation, than you think it is?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's totally appropriate to raise questions about a story as detailed and important as this one, but this article seems more tendentious than the evidence suggests.

The claims against his character that the journalist makes at the beginning do not seem substantial enough to cast him as a liar.

Even more so, the parts of the story that do not add up, in the author's eyes, seem problematic but not totally unresolvable. For example, I don't think it's too farfetched to think that they may inventory the contents of the SEALs' pockets before departing on a mission.

The author of this piece also seems to imply that there is no good reason for the journalist not to reveal his sources, which is of course totally wrong, especially for something like this.

Lastly, the author totally ignores the fact that she is accusing of complicity a magazine known for the quality of its fact-checking. I would think it's safe to say the author's deception would have either have had to be astonishingly good or the new yorker to be particularly malicious for the accusations here to be true. One of those may be the case, but she should explicitly say that she is questioning the ability of the New Yorker's fact-checking team.

I guess at the end of the day, it's still worthy of questioning and investigating, but to me this article comes off as the argument of someone with an ax to grind more than an investigation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, but her point still stands: the disclosure should've been upfront, and the gripping quality of the narrative should've been toned down in the name of precision. The writer is very careful to note his sourcing, and a very careful reader would see that certain declarative statements are coming from the specops officer, or of, say, "A former helicopter pilot with extensive special-operations experience..."

It's not to say that these background sources are wrong. But they're getting pretty filtered info...the after-action report which consists of the compiled recollection of the actual operators.

Again, that report may be 100% truth, and it may even contain known unknowns and concerns of the operators. But can the spec ops officer who talked to the reporter be trusted to have summarized that summary correctly?

Let's say Obama was the New Yorker's secret source. No one would argue that he is not an authoritative and extremely important source regarding the OBL killing. But he is just one source, far removed from the action (remember that there was no helmet cam or otherwise-indoor video), with a definite vested interest in having the first detailed examination of the incident looking good for the WH.

<comment><USER11> I guess a lot of this comes back to the fact that this was published in the New Yorker. The New Yorker stakes their brand on the quality of their fact- checking, which to me requires less upfront disclosure. If this story was in fact fabricated, the reality of the story would be the smaller controversy, I'd argue. The real controversy would be the immediate destruction of one of America's most prestigious journalism brands.

To wit, see [http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/freelance- jour...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/freelance-journalist- scores-coup-with-account-of-bin-laden-raid/2011/08/02/gIQAEiaeqI_story.html)

"[New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David] Remnick says he's satisfied with the accuracy of the account. 'The sources spoke to our fact-checkers,' he said. 'I know who they are. Those are the rules of the road around here. We have the time to do this. There isn't always time' for publications with shorter deadlines to do the same checking."

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem isn't whether or not it was "fabricated"...I strongly trust the NY not to publish something that _was fabricated by a reporter_.

And that's what factcheckers do...help protect reporters from their own mistakes and also, protect the magazine from bad reporters.

In terms of secret situations, they do this by checking with the source. What happens when the source says exactly what the reporter recorded him/her saying, but the source him/herself is mistaken and there's no other way to check for that?

For example. The New Yorker's story has this statement:

>"There was never any question of detaining or capturing him—it wasn't a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees," the special-operations officer told me. (The Administration maintains that had bin Laden immediately surrendered he could have been taken alive.)

How does one factcheck this? You can call the source who will verify to you that yes, the reporter has quoted him correctly. Then you can call the administration who can also say, Yes, we have stated that OBL could've surrendered.

So what's truth and what's falsehood? The "truth" is that both parties here stands by their statements. If you want to know the truth about what shooting orders the operators really had, you would either ask an operator himself, or his immediate commanding officer. But the fact-checker doesn't have access to these, so while some anonymous source says that the mission was all about shoot-to-kill...we don't know if this article really gets us closer to the truth of that, and no fact-checker can help here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I was reading the article I had the impression I was reading a screenplay, since the author didn't mention specific interviews I was assuming all along that there was some embellishment going on.

I'm surprised too that the NY published such a weakly fact-checked account but a lot of the Christine Fair commentary reads like scoop envy.

<comment><USER13> I had the impression that I was reading Clive Cussler. I also assumed that there was some embellishment going on.

Honestly, I was just waiting for a "Based on a true story" disclaimer at the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting... I heard that NPR report that got corrected.

<comment><USER15> It did, the article mentions "NPR subsequently issued a correction for reasons noted below" and links to: [http://www.npr.org/2011/08/01/138884570/details- of-the-bin-l...](http://www.npr.org/2011/08/01/138884570/details-of-the-bin- laden-raid-recounted-by-the-seals) which has the correction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Before we jump to conclusions..

Active Military/Security Types with that high level of security clearance do not direct or indirectly talk to the press no matter what country they serve..it does not happen.

In the US there is several layers of liaisons to the press in the Military forces.

At no time would there be primary sources for this story..so that means that New Yorker did not just fail to run fact checking but ran duck and covered knowing full well there were no primary sources.

Let's stop lying NewYorker as there are times when non primary sources is all you have to a story..

</comment><comment><USER17> in the country where i live in Europe it is quite widely believed that Bin Laden was not killed in that operation in Pakistan, or at least there is great suspicion

and that in fact the Bin Laden probably was dead years ago already, waiting to be exposed when government needs a popularity boost

The main things why its not believed that he was killed then is that no part of the body was shown to the public ( remember Saddam Husseins teeth and examination was shown all over the world ) and the burial was suspicious too ( thrown into the ocean within hours ? )

<comment><USER18> So, the Bush regime would defer this for Obama to get a popularity boost? Doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Be right back, need to cancel my New Yorker subscription...</comment>


Why we're building Compass, a platform combining network science with Slack data - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jeffcmohr/introducing-compass-a-platform-that-combines-network-science-with-slack-data-52ca25cb7158#.ywp4slhkm <comment><USER2> Hi everyone, one of the Compass cofounders and developers here.

We're really excited to roll this out publicly but still a ways out. Happy to answer any questions.

If you're more interested in the technical side you might enjoy my post exploring single vs multi-tenant SAAS architectures [1]. Still not convinced single tenant is going to work but we're going to give it a shot.

Aloha!

[1]: [https://hackernoon.com/exploring-single-tenant- architectures...](https://hackernoon.com/exploring-single-tenant- architectures-57c64e99eece#.rhi0mpjhn)</comment>


Show HN: Machine Learning Algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://blog.datasciencedojo.com/machine-learning-algorithms/ <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I'm new to HN. Didn't realize Show HN wasn't for blog posts. Will try again some other time.</comment>


Show HN: Want Technologies - Merchant Portal For Want - <AUTHOR> http://www.wanttechnologies.com/ We just launched a new marketing site for Want(http://www.wanttt.com).  We used Bootstrap as a starting place.  You can see the Want button in action on our newest merchant Wiz Khalifa http://store.wizkhalifa.com/apparel-1/black-yellow-mens-standard-t-shirt.html <comment><AUTHOR> We just launched a new marketing site for <http://www.wanttt.com>. We used Bootstrap as a starting place. You can see the Want button on newest merchant's site, Wiz Khalifa's Merch Shop, [http://store.wizkhalifa.com/apparel-1/black-yellow-mens- stan...](http://store.wizkhalifa.com/apparel-1/black-yellow-mens-standard-t- shirt.html)</comment>


Profits Without Prosperity (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity <comment><USER2> (2014)

This is the Harvard Business School Review. When HBR says something that increases CEO pay is a bad idea, it almost certainly is.

Stock buybacks are an incredibly inefficient way of increasing CEO pay. Especially if they involve taking on debt.

We need to tax corporate dividends, interest paid, and stock buybacks at the same rate. There's a bias against dividends and in favor of debt in tax law, and that's why companies take on so much debt. It's a subsidy program for the banking industry, which is why it's hard to change in the US. It doesn't particularly help non-financial corporations.

Also, "private equity" is mostly debt financing in disguise. It's not people putting up their own cash. There's usually a little cash, and a lot of debt.

Something worth realizing: relative tax rates between business alternatives have a large effect on corporate behavior. Absolute tax rates, not so much. As capital gains rates have gone up and down over the years, capital expenditures haven't followed.

<comment><USER3> > Something worth realizing: relative tax rates between business alternatives > have a large effect on corporate behavior. Absolute tax rates, not so much. > As capital gains rates have gone up and down over the years, capital > expenditures haven't followed.

Maybe it's late and I'm not getting it. What does this mean exactly. Like the point of pointing it out?

<comment><USER4> When people raise Animats' argument, the beneficiaries of the relative tax rate imbalance typically make an argument like: "Oh, you couldn't _possibly_ increase the tax rate on interest paid. Any absolute increase in the tax rate will make corporations refuse to borrow, ruining the economy."

Animats was attempting to anticipate this argument with a counter argument: corporations don't seem to care what the absolute tax rate is; they only care what that rate is relative to the alternatives. So we should feel free to set all of those tax rates equal, raising taxes on interest paid.

<comment><USER2> I'd argue that we need to tax corporate dividends, interest paid, and stock buybacks at the same rate. That rate could be set to be revenue neutral. Dividends taxed less, interest and stock buybacks are taxed more.

All the ways businesses pay for their capital should be taxed at the same rate.

<comment><USER5> Interesting.

Would there be any other avenues available or would your solution be all that is needed?

But isn't this missing the forest for the trees anyway?

To use an aquatic metaphor, isn't this like plugging a leak in a dam with your finger when the entire structure is unsound and needs re-engineering?

<comment><USER6> The instability comes from piles of biases created by rules, exactly like this. Addressing these biases and correcting clearly ridiculous incentives will slowly correct overall behaviour, if enough rules/rates/whatever are tweaked in a better direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I did some back of the envelope calculations on Boeing in 2015. The spent about $86,000 per employee on buybacks and dividends. Just a year after strong arming the union out of their pension out of a supposed desperate need to compete with airbus. I really doubt airbus has lower employee overhead than Boeing.

<comment><USER8> To boot, they are the beneficiaries are massive, pork-laden propped up government defence contracts - and massive 'investment incentives' from states/municipalities like Seattle etc. who give them massive tax incentives etc. to build plants in their state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well the article's fundamental worry is right: labour's share of revenue has shrunk compared to the share taken by capital (and also high-level executive type employees). And this causes, or is at least related to, problems with society as a whole.

But he makes no real case that buybacks are driving this. So if some politician wanted to go on a populist anti-buyback campaign, this article would be useful to him. But as an attempt to actually address the problems it highlights, it looks more like a distraction.

<comment><USER10> Actually, both capital and labour shares of output have seen a relative decline at the expense of profits. [1]

Conventional theory suggests this would occur under conditions of increasing market power. Most of the symptoms of this (of which decreasing investment is one) can already be witnessed. [2]

It seems therefore that the increase in share buybacks is simply one of the symptoms of the overarching market concentration narrative. Monopolists have little need to invest/innovate due to lack of competition and are therefore free to commit resources to price manipulation or further increasing their market power.

In this context any anti-buyback campaign would prove ineffective unless carried out alongside policies designed to limit market concentration and increase competition.

[1] [https://promarket.org/responsible-declining-labor-share- outp...](https://promarket.org/responsible-declining-labor-share-output- michael-porter/)

[2] [http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/the-market- powe...](http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/the-market-power- story.html)

<comment><USER9> _Actually, both capital and labour shares of output have seen a relative decline at the expense of profits. [1]_

What am I missing here. I thought "profit" simply was a shorthand for "captial's share of revenue". I tried to understand the definitions at the promarket.org link but couldn't make sense of them.

I _think_ what you are saying is that profits are being increasingly being derived by barriers to entry. That makes sense, but still those extra profits are going to be counted as captal's share of revenue.

<comment><USER11> Profit is the surplus. How that's paid out (investors, labor, government, management/execs, etc) is another matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Consider the 449 companies in the S&P 500 index that were publicly listed from 2003 through 2012. During that period those companies used 54% of their earnings—a total of $2.4 trillion—to buy back their own stock, almost all through purchases on the open market. Dividends absorbed an additional 37% of their earnings."

That's shocking, is this is a case of lying with statistics somehow? That paints such an ugly picture that I can't believe it's the first time I've heard anything about it.

<comment><USER13> What do you find shocking about it? There is a big moral question about corporate profits vs. wages. But given that some portion of revenues become profits, they are either going to turn into a corporate cash hoard, dividends, or buybacks. I don't see anything shocking about choosing a buyback over the other two choices. After all, when a company takes investor money in a public offering, the idea is that the money will eventually be returned to investors, plus a profit if possible. A buyback is one way to close out the deal with some of those investors and return that money.

Edit:

Also, I think there's a bit of funny math here possibly contributing to a misunderstanding when the article says things like this:

> During that period those companies used 54% of their earnings—a total of > $2.4 trillion—to buy back their own stock, almost all through purchases on > the open market. Dividends absorbed an additional 37% of their earnings. > That left very little for investments in productive capabilities or higher > incomes for employees.

By definition, wages don't come out of profits. A company could increase wages by $1 billion, have $1 million profit, do a $1 million buyback, and then a journalist could write an article saying "company spends 100% of profit on buyback, giving none of it to workers."

In reality, many companies have a large cash hoard which is not going to employees or investors. Doing a buyback in those circumstances (notable recent examples include Apple and Facebook) doesn't have any effect on employee wages.

<comment><USER14> Stock buybacks have a distinct advantage over dividends: _they 're not taxable_

Done correctly, it's a synthetic dividend without the immediate tax burden on the shareholders. Those that want to cash out, can sell a portion of their higher priced shares.

<comment><USER13> IMO, there's an injustice here when things like stepped-up basis result in these gains never being taxed, but that seems like a separate issue from the question of wages vs. profits.

To be explicit, there is a decision tree where a company can decide whether to have wages increase or profit, then decide what to do with the profit, and the rise of stock buybacks vs. dividends is an answer to the second question, not the first.

<comment><USER14> They are taxed. They're just not double taxed.

The corporation pays corporate taxes on the money used for the buyback. The investors taxed are avoided because they haven't realized their gains. When they eventually sell their shares they pay taxes.

<comment><USER13> If the company made the money from selling beer, it was triple taxed due to the alcohol tax! Wait, if the customer paid for the beer with earned income, the beer was quadruple taxed. But if he paid for the beer with dividend income, it was quintuple taxed!

In the stepped-up basis case I mentioned, the investor may never pay taxes on the gains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article makes some great points, and more people should read about Piketty's research on wealth concentration. But it buries the fact that buybacks have actually been decreasing by certain metrics [0].

Granted, much of this slowdown is due to Apple waiting for tax law changes before moving money around. But an article that uses six-year-old statistics as its lede, but doesn't even reference recent trends, should raise red flags about its impartiality.

[0] [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sp-500-buybacks-have- droppe...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sp-500-buybacks-have-dropped- by-25-since-the-first-quarter-of-2016-2017-09-18)

<comment><USER16> Worth noting: article is from 2014. It's unfair to ask it to cite trends that started after the date of publication (and likely after the finalization of the research, which probably dates closer to 2012, the cited end date in the article).

<comment><USER15> Ah! I've been so spoiled by the moderation on HN that when I see an article that doesn't have e.g. (2014) in the title, I assume it's recent! You're absolutely right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Paying CEO's most of their compensation in stock was a theoretically sound idea when it was made— after all, shouldn't their pay be linked to performance?— but one that should be abandoned now that the empirical results have shown what it mess it has really been. It encourages tax and stock shenanigans like this in favor of real investment, further prioritizes short- term thinking, and is just generally useless since there connection between CEO performance and stock price has been shown to be tenuous even without the manipulation.

Let's go back to paying CEO's purely in cash with an annual performance bonus decided by the board.

<comment><USER18> "Let's"? Maybe you can start your own company with your own funds and do that?

<comment><USER3> The person you replied to is just trying to get a conversation and some potential pressure started. No need to instead be so aggressive and expect them to become a rich CEO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's another explanation. After companies get to a certain size, they can't deploy capital as efficiently. The low hanging fruit is gone, they have more principal-agent problems, and lots of waste.

The responsible thing to do is give it back to shareholders who can invest it in countries and enterprises that generate a better risk adjusted return. Boards invent the CEOs to do this rather than waste capital.

<comment><USER20> I know what you mean but I'm not sure I'd throw "waste" around so casually. Wages are not waste, from the employee's point of view. From a utilitarian point of view, it's not at all clear that the money would be less "wasted" if given to stockholders.

<comment><USER6> Of course wages are not waste. Corporate mergers for purposes of CV building and vanity are waste, and are the hallmarks of a company sitting on too much cash. Run your business properly and give any surplus profits to the owners.

<comment><USER21> The trend has been to both squeeze wages and engage in corporate buybacks, usually with the justification that the company can't afford to raise wages (which is obviously bullshit given how wastefully profits are used)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It is true that earnings management is an issue. The histogram of earnings % shows a discontinuity when earnings are negative but approaching zero, [1] which shows that managers will artificially inflate earnings to show a positive earnings per share.

But I find the idea of short-term-ism in managing profits a little counter to the goals of managers. Presumably, managers are motivated to stay in the job and make more money for themselves, and would do a calculation between short term and long term investment.

>>> "It concerns us that, in the wake of the financial crisis, many companies have shied away from investing in the future growth of their companies," Laurence Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock

This may be related to the complexity of driving returns that exceed the cost of capital by a sufficient amount, one that would be within the range that the company and their shareholders find palatable.

If people think that these companies should not be buying back their stock and instead invest them in growth opportunities, maybe this means that these opportunities exist for others to take advantage of. But the author does not mention that other companies do that. It somehow places the risk and responsibility of investing in the company that has the cash.

I think the issue is researches who spend too much time [2] sitting at their fancy desks and protected by grants or tenure. Maybe they should leave and actually go out there and start a company.

[1] [http://www.scielo.org.za/img/revistas/sajems/v19n1/02f01.jpg](http://www.scielo.org.za/img/revistas/sajems/v19n1/02f01.jpg)

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

<comment><USER22> Maybe I'm missing something amid all the technocratilly minded discussions on the virtues of paying dividends vs stock buybacks vs the issue of whether the profits of a company are more efficiently used to fund new investment compared to returning profits to shareholders (one way or another) so they can reinvest.

I thought the broader point was that successful companies are amassing profits, derived, presumably, from overall increased productivity.

But instead of sharing this surplus equitably amongst all the employees, by, for example, raising wages, executives are engaging in strategies that increase their share of the surplus, and possibly the shareholders share, at the expense of the lower level workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nope. Stock buy backs are a tax efficient way of giving dividends. The stock rises in price instead of issuing the dividend. So for me the owner of the stock I don't have a tax event for holding. The whole reason to own stocks, is to realize profit from ownership.

<comment><USER24> The author does address this. "Some people used to argue that buybacks were a more tax-efficient means of distributing money to shareholders than dividends. But that has not been the case since 2003, when the tax rates on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends were made the same."

<comment><USER25> Not all shareholders are USians.

As a Canadian, US dividends get taxed like full-income. Capital gains get taxed just like Canadian capital gains: at one-half the income tax rate.

In one of our tax-free savings vehicles: the tax-free savings account, capital gains would be tax free, but dividends are still stuck with IRS withholding taxes of 15-30% of dividends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A) So, wages are stagnant or falling and unemployment (real unemployment) is at 10%.

B) Companies reinvest in themselves through buyback and lobbying congress for subsidies. They freeze wages and reduce their workforces.

C) Congress subsidizes their research and development through tax payer funding. Costing a higher tax burden during which wage rates are falling / stagnant.

If B relies on C, and C relies on A, but A is destroyed by B - then what happens?

<comment><USER26> Spoiler: A will collapse, C will collapse, B will give themselves parachute payments and move to China (companies will tank of course).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The lack of prosperity is due to only top management receiving compensation in stock. What if legislation existed that mandated some percent of an employees pay must (if said employee chooses that is) be in the form of stock for publicly traded employers?

I understand that it's still peanuts compared to the structural imbalances at play here. More of a first step.

<comment><USER28> Well you mandate the all employees must have access to the same share option plan on the same terms that the executives do would be a start - this would stop the abuse complex LTIP for the board.

Or maybe mandate that PLCs can distribute a certain amount stock tax free to employees say $2000 per anum

<comment><USER27> Exactly. The same terms that the executives do part is crucial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How about changing the HN title to match the page ("Profits Without Prosperity"), rather than 0x4f3759df's editorialized version (currently "Stock buybacks as a mechanism to depress wages and increase CEO pay").

<comment><USER30> "Stock buybacks as a mechanism to depress wages and increase CEO pay"

Is what the article is actually about. "Profits Without Prosperity" is by comparison cryptic and uninformitive.

<comment><USER29> Either of our preferences aside, [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) is clear:

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or > linkbait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The article is politically motivated nonsense.

The author admits he wants to force companies to invest their profits in expansion instead of paying back shareholders, because he claims they have an obligation to maximize their wages and taxes paid.

If stockholders were never allowed to realize a profit, why would anyone ever buy stock at an offering?

The author sneers at icahn for not buying at the IPO, ignoring that icahn is making good on the implied promise that IPO investors would get to eventually cash out.

<comment><USER32> AMZN is a pretty good counter example of a company that invests in itself and it's workers rather than spend on stock buybacks or dividends. Surely someday in the future shareholders of AMZN will realize a profit!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The simple argument is that you can buy back shareholders and not increase wages or pay people more in the pursuit of greater innovation and/or productivity.

</comment><comment><USER34> Stock buybacks are also a credible way of showing confidence in times of uncertainty or doubt.

</comment><comment><USER35> Simple fix: 6% Ten Year Treasury...It would also resolve the vanishing productivity growth problem.

<comment><USER3> How would it resolve the vanishing productivity growth problem?</comment></comment>


Google planned to help Syria rebels to bring down Assad regime, - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-syria-rebels-defection-hillary-clinton-emails-wikileaks-a6946121.html <comment><USER2> The Chinese were aware of this risk when they banned Google.</comment>


Monads Explained Quickly - <AUTHOR> http://www.breck-mckye.com/blog/2016/04/monads-explained-quickly/ <comment><USER2> Stop explaining monads. There are two ways to approach them. One is by doing. The other is by math. If you can't understand how "monads are monoids in the category of endofunctors", you should try learning by doing.

Don't try reading about it, don't try reasoning about it. Just do it.

EDIT: okay, I'll explain. Haskell et al. have this really neat propensity to abstract well. That means that very many concepts (Promises, null types, etc.) can actually be abstracted into one concept (the Monad) because they all have the same behavior except for a couple of points. You won't believe me, but that's exactly it.

To explain "what monads are" you must explain _everything_ (or most things) that monads can do. Save yourself the time. Don't read or write such a thing. They're so general and so abstract as to be totally meaningless without understanding what they're built on (either in the PL/doing direction or in the mathematical/conceptual direction).

<comment><USER3> Well, that oft-maligned definition is actually what made it stick for me . . .

<comment><USER2> Right, the math does work for some people! But you have to have a mathematical background that's fairly hard to come across (category theory is pretty far from most people's reach and rarely applied except in PL and algo study)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Monads Explained Quickly, But Mostly Incorrectly" would be a better name.

Isn't what's defined here mostly just a functor?

<comment><USER5> Half of a functor and half a (co)monad; it's very misleading and will just increase the general confusion around monads for beginners.

Even when you think you figured it out, it's just one part of the puzzle too. I'd stay away from anything self-described as "quickly" or "the hard way".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some things are easier to learn by doing. These exercises ([https://mightybyte.github.io/monad- challenges/](https://mightybyte.github.io/monad-challenges/)) are what made it stick for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is almost entirely wrong

<comment><USER8> Everyone here is saying the article is wrong, but no one really adds anything or corrects the author.

Can you expand?

<comment><USER9> The problem with monads is that truly understanding monads renders one completely incapable of explaining monads to anyone uninitiated. This seems to be the most fundamental property of the monad.

It seems, from the plethora of monad explanation articles that get posted here, that many people, in their hubris, think they've learned monads and think that they will succeed where so many others have failed and come up with the first approachable explanation of monads. These explanations fall into one of two categories, either the explainer has truly learned monads and offers up an explanation that's correct but entirely confusing to anyone who doesn't already understand the concept. Or, as in this case, the explainer hasn't actually understood monads and offers up an explanation that is, indeed, approachable to someone learning monads but is, never the less, incorrect.

In these cases, it does no good for those who understand monads to try to explain where the explanation fails. Because as people who understand monads, their explanation will surely cause far more confusion than it will address. It is therefore all that they can do to simply point out that the explanation is wrong and that we're still waiting for the one true approachable way of learning monads.

<comment><USER10> I feel like you're overstating the problem, and I think that in itself is a good portion of the problem to start with.

Monads have acquired this mystique that actively makes them harder for people to understand, because they don't have enough moving parts to satisfy people's expectations of a difficult concept. More often than not, the reaction of someone finally understanding monads is "Is that it?", and the answer is yes.

There exist decent two reasonable pedagogies for learning monads, and good examples of them. The first is to teach people all the prerequisite concepts (HKT, typeclasses, Functors and Applicatives) properly, and then demonstrate a case where they're not quite enough, and you need a monad. Learn You A Haskell is a good example of this.

The other is to discuss different examples of monads in non-monadic terms until people start to see the common pattern between use cases. As I understand it, this is the approach taken by You Could Have Invented Monads.

And the final ingredient is just perseverance. I think at some point, all you can do is keep working until it clicks. Perhaps we'll eventually work out a pedagogy which avoids this, but for now all we can do is try to convince people they'll get it if they keep trying. Lots of people who don't consider themselves mathematical geniuses have managed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I appreciate the enthusiasm and the intent, but this is misleading. The maybe monad can be a wonderful abstraction, however the way used makes me think of something that can be expressed with applicative functors.

</comment><comment> white-flame There are so many attempts at describing what monads are, but so few attempts at teaching _why_ you would want to use a monad, and where it would be beneficial over other coding styles.

<comment><USER6> At risk of adding to the pile of half baked pedagogy, here's my take at why they're useful. The operation to chain things together (denoted >>= and pronounced bind) in the Maybe monad has type

       Maybe a -> (a -> Maybe b) -> Maybe b

In a more a java-like notation, this is like

      Maybe<B> bind(Maybe<A>, Function<A, Maybe<B>>)

The Haskell notation says that it's a function that takes two arguments (separated by ->). The first argument (Maybe a) is either something of type a or Nothing. Nothing is like null. The second argument (a -> Maybe b) is a function of one argument that takes a thing of type a and returns either a thing of type b or Nothing. The Maybe monad defines this chaining function for you. It uses a function you provide to turn a Maybe a into a Maybe b.

It's useful, because a popular alternative is to turn Maybe a into Maybe b by writing functions of type

      Maybe a -> Maybe b

To write a function like that, you have to handle both cases, a normal value and a null value. This is a pain in the ass and I don't enjoy it. Wouldn't it be easier to only have to write a function that handles the non-null value? If the value is null, then it should always return null anyways! Why should I have to repeat that for each step of my code? Let's let the language detect our context (the fact that we're doing a bunch of Maybe operations) handle that for us.

More generally, for monad m, >>= has type

      m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b

You can make new monads if you define this function for it (and another function that's easier but I won't talk about). The reason it's worth doing is because it's easy to write code that handles simple values and returns complicated things (a -> m b), but hard to write code that takes complicated things and returns complicated things (m a -> m b). With monads, you write the complicated version once and then write simple code every time you use it.

It's no silver bullet, but it turns out to be a common pattern worth abstracting when you have structured data that you have to unpack and deal with in the same way over and over again. It's flexible too, but I won't go into that.

<comment><USER12> For the "maybe a" case, you then need to take all of your code and place it in some machinery that knows what "maybe" means, and how to extract "a" from it.

And then you need to write or convert all your functions to return maybe values rather than just plain values.

All of this could be easily done with exceptions. Why do all that when something simple like an exception will do, is easily understood, and easily coded?

If there are other common usage patterns where monads are great fit, I'd love to hear it. But, given the examples of usage I've heard about, they seem to be a somewhat painful mechanism which are useful only in a few obscure cases.

Admittedly, I do not understand category theory, so I can accept that I might not be able to see the benefit unless I do.

<comment><USER6> Yeah sure, I'm in the mood to write, but didn't want to cram too much into one post, else risk muddying the message. It turns out that doing (a -> m b) instead of (m a -> m b) can still allow really cool control flow. But first let me address some of your points.

>For the "maybe a" case, you then need to take all of your code and place it in some machinery that knows what "maybe" means, and how to extract "a" from it.

This isn't too bad, since somebody else wrote all that machinery. It's just a nice simple library that is super flexible, and integrates well with everything around it (in haskell at least).

>And then you need to write or convert all your functions to return maybe values rather than just plain values.

I was worried people might think that. The other function besides bind needed to make a monad is called "return" or "pure." It's a function of type a -> m a. For Maybe, it just changes the type from a to Maybe a and retains the value. The constructor is called Just, because it takes 1 and returns Just 1. It's like a default way to stick a pure value into this monad. You can compose this with any of your regular functions instead of writing or converting your nice pure (a -> b) functions. So if I have a pure value like 1, and want to apply a pure function f that just adds 2, but need to return a Maybe, then I can use return, as in "return (f 1)". Now it returns the maybe type. With javascript syntax lambda functions, using bind, I can write

      bind(Just 1, one => {return (one + 2)})

or in haskell lambda syntax (\x -> f x) with the infix version of bind (>>=)

      Just 1 >>= \one -> return (one + 2)

That way, I didn't have to convert my addition function + to return maybe values (maybePlus or something), I just used it with return.

It is even more useful with two variables:

      Just 1 >>= \one ->
      Just 2 >>= \two ->
      aNullableFunction one >>= \x ->
      return (aNonNullableFunction two) >>= \y ->
      return (one * y + two * x)

Hopefully that convinces you that you don't need to convert your functions, like aNonNullableFunction, +, or * . Additionally, haskell has syntax sugar to make that chain of functions much prettier:

      do
        one <- Just 1
        two <- Just 2
        x <- someComplicatedNullableFunction one
        let y = someNonNullableFunction two    -- could have written "y <- return (someNonNullableFunction two)" in this case
        return (one * y + two * x)

>All of this could be easily done with exceptions. Why do all that when something simple like an exception will do, is easily understood, and easily coded?

It's just easy to explain with simple examples that can be dealt with other ways. By no means is it restricted to simple tasks. Random number generation is a fun one. In python, if you were determined to avoid global state for random number generators, you might have all your functions take a seed, like

      (x, newSeed) = randomUniform(seed)
      (y, newerSeed) = randomNormal(newSeed)
      return (x*y, newerSeed)

while in the haskell equivalent, you can recognize the common "takes seed -> returns value and new seed" and let all that passing around seed stuff be implicit:

      do
        x <- randomUniform
        y <- randomNormal
        return (x*y)

It's convenient because you can program with x and y as regular integers, not fancy wrapped values, but still not have to worry about passing the random number seeds around.

It's out of the scope of a comment, but the coolest case study might be software transactional memory (STM). I'm going to do what I hate in the haskell community and link a paper that explains it better than I could, but I'm getting tired. [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers/stm/beautiful.pdf) The idea is that STM let's you write code where bind appears to be simple pointer magic, but actually does things behind the scenes to keep concurrency nightmares from happening while being easy to use.

And you really don't need to grok category theory. Some of the most prolific haskellers have said they don't, which gives the rest of us hope.

<comment><USER12> Lets take your first example, lets say someone creates some nifty useful function grabPiFromWebPage that returns a "JustValueOrError" (which has the result or an error message" instead of "Maybe".

If I understand it correctly (please bare with me if I make a mistake, I'm not very familiar with haskell)

      Just 1 >>= \one ->
      Just 2 >>= \two ->
      aNullableFunction one >>= \x ->
      grabPiFromWebPage >>= \w ->
      return (aNonNullableFunction two) >>= \y ->
      return (one * y + two * x + w)

wouldn't work, because grabPiFromWebPage returns the wrong type of monad. If you wanted to see the error on failure, you'd have to have some special bind for aNullableFunction to convert its monad to "JustValueOrError", as well as convert the "pure" functions.

So now, because you want to add a new kind of function to the implementation chain, you have to write some sort of converter function for both the "maybe" and the "pure" functions. It seems brittle.

Secondly, it is also confusing as to what is actually happening in the code. When I look at:

      do
        x <- randomUniform
        y <- randomNormal
        return (x*y)

I then have to go some place (where I don't know because I don't know Haskell), and figure out what is happening there to confirm that this is operating properly. And if I make a mistake doing that, I could easily get the wrong impression and possibly think, for example in this case, that code isn't deterministic.

Finally, I've also seen examples where probability distributions are calculated and complex things like that. I could easily see a combinatoric slow down that is not self evident because everything is hidden in these complicated structures.

<comment><USER6> You're right that in the case of grabPiFromWebPage returning a JustValueOrError, you'd have to apply a jvoeToMaybe function if you wanted to use Maybe's bind. It could be an issue, but in practice, everyone uses the standard library tools for these things, so this issue shouldn't really come up. The general case problem can still arise, if you wanted to mix HTTP libraries, for example. It just isn't a huge issue in my experience. YMMV.

And I'd argue that the confusion of understanding the following isn't just a haskell issue:

      do
        x <- stuff
        return (whatever x)

You just have to read the docs (or the code) and see what "stuff" and "whatever" do, regardless of whether you're in python, haskell, or whatever. In fact, one of my biggest pain points in python (my day job language) is that you can't as easily infer what "stuff" does, because you can't just look at type signatures. If I want to use randomUniform and see that it returns a Rand Double or something, I can just look up the Rand monad and see how they work. At least in a static language like haskell. Poorly documented monads would probably be a huge pain in a dynamically typed language. Even well documented ones would be tough to use in any interpreted language, because the compiler telling you "No, imh, that has to be a Rand Double, not a regular Double!" is lifesaving.

A pure language is a great match too, because practically all code is deterministic. If you write use it twice it WILL have the same result. The only exception is something in the IO monad. Of course, interacting with the real world/random numbers isn't deterministic, so (in haskell) you need to use monads to do anything. Hence the proliferation of tutorials. So if you see a function that has type (IO Double), it's a nondeterministic double. But if it doesn't have that, then you know it's deterministic, just by looking at the type signature. This is the hardest part of learning haskell.

The point about all this not being self evident because of complicated structures is well made though. There's serious cognitive overhead sometimes, but it's a tradeoff. I've quipped a few times that haskell code doesn't get more complex, it just gets harder. It's a joke, but there's an element of truth to it. You can avoid some explosions in how many edge cases there are to consider by going up a level of abstraction. For example, using functions that operate on lists, you never have to worry about index out of bound exceptions, or using Maybe you don't have to think about handling nulls. But you do have to grok the map function for List or Maybe. Sometimes it's worth it, other times it's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd suggest a longer (1 hour) but much more correct explanation. It doesn't use math beyond high (or even may be middle) school. Video, unfortunately. [https://youtu.be/ZhuHCtR3xq8](https://youtu.be/ZhuHCtR3xq8)

</comment><comment><USER14> Wouldn't it be (with a little runtime typechecking):

function IdentityMonad(v) {

       this._v = v;

}

IdentityMonad.prototype.bind = function(f) {

       var o = f(this._v);

       if(!(o instanceof IdentityMonad)){

         throw new Error("function must return IdentityMonad");

       }

       return o;

    }

</comment><comment><USER15> I would now think beginners are easily misled by Haskell's do notation. The <\- syntax makes it looks like we are extracting values out of a monad, and the do notation certainly looks like it is chainable.

</comment><comment><USER16> What language is this? It looks like Javascript, but with some additional operators, such as "=>".

<comment><USER17> Ecmascript 6 added => as a short function syntax.

<comment><USER16> Ah. I don't use Javascript that much, and have been writing obsolete Javascript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> x >>= f = join (fmap f x)

Contemplate until enlightened. But don't write YAMT afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER19> I see monad tutorial after monad tutorial posted here, but never some new, awesome piece of technology produced using Haskell.

In fact, the only Haskell software I can think of is Darcs, a DVCS that was so buggy and slow when I first started learning Haskell in 2010 that the community recommended against using it, and of course xmonad, dons' tiling window manager that he flagrantly abused his moderator status on r/programming to aggressively promote.

Yet Haskell remains one of the most popular languages here. There are more stories about it than Perl or C#. From this I can only conclude that Haskellers are all talk and no action, and IMO, this reflects very poorly on the language and its community.

EDIT: Also, the downvotes that one swiftly and copiously collects from merely criticizing Haskell and its community also reflect very poorly on both.

<comment><USER20> pandoc, quickcheck and git-annex are the first things that came to mind.

<comment><USER19> Judging by the volume of posts here about it, there should be as impressive a portfolio for it as there is for C# or Perl. There isn't.

<comment><USER21> Mathematics is also a popular topic on HN but there isn't an impressive portfolio of projects written in that either. Pretty daming for mathematics.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can a 16 year-old programmer make money writing code? - <AUTHOR> Being so young there is absolutely no sane person that'd hire me for any freelance work.<p>So I'm wondering if there are any other ways I could make money writing code? <comment><USER2> My advice is to be patient and continue your education. You need to realize if you learn enough about the world around you, people will beat a path to your door.

The first phase in programming is learning _how_ to code. The second phase is learning _why_. Once you get to the second phase, people will ask you to help them.

Many years ago, I bought an early personal computer. I quickly realized what it lacked, and I wrote it, primarily because I needed it for my own work. Pretty soon the manufacturer heard what I had done and asked to see it. Over the next five years I made six million dollars.

I tell you this just so you know it's possible -- but you need to be able to figure out what's missing, what people need. Being able to code, by itself, doesn't assure success. You need to know _why_ to code.

[http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...](http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the inspirational comment and for the amazing article/story!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do you think it's necessary to reveal your age to those who hire you? Have a good portfolio and you're set.

The web provides you varying levels of anonymity; take advantage of it.

I made thousands of dollars before your age monetizing my Facebook apps with ads. Perhaps you should investigate doing stuff that doesn't rely on others who frankly care more about your age than your competence.

<comment><USER5> Some contracts aren't enforceable against minors. Do minors not need to disclose their age when entering into a contract? It seems like this should be a requirement.

<comment><USER6> I'd recommend that OP have a solid portfolio and get a potential client interested, and then only reveal their age when entering into a contract or doing something where it matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's already been great advice about continuing your education and putting together a portfolio, so I'm going to address your question from a different angle.

Problem solving is a big part of programming, and it's a skill that can be used outside of writing code. Do you actually need money to get those things you want? Or can you think of a creative solution that costs less or nothing? Note, I'm not advising you do something illegal that could get you in serious trouble. I'm just reminding you that hacking doesn't always involve a computer.

Perhaps you'll realize that money isn't your main goal, and you really just want to work on more projects. In that case, there are plenty of open source projects you could try.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am 17, and I have found that a lot of people don't really care if you can prove you know what you are doing. Whenever i'm talking to big people, I act as if I am 24. They usually ask your age at some point, I usually just say "It doesn't matter". If they pressure, then I give in and tell them, usually leading them to be more impressed than anything else. Just prove you are the right man for the job.

</comment><comment><USER9> I disagree that no one would hire you. If you have a decent portfolio and your rates are comparatively low, then you might pick up lots of work from Craigslist or other job boards.

Especially if you program HTML/CSS/JS. There is lots of project work out there that doesn't need big corporate guns.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Being so young there is absolutely no sane person that'd hire me for any > freelance work.

I'm 17. I've been freelancing for 2 years and have made a serious living. Best advice is to start small and build a portfolio. Age isn't a factor if you can prove that you're a capable individual.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to get work you need to have more than just a skill set, you need to learn how to sell yourself. If you're able to prove that you know what you're doing and that you can provide serious value, someone will hire you.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm 17 at the moment - been freelancing and doing paid work since I was 12. The way I see it is, people who discredit you because of your age are not the people you want to work for anyway. Stick to it and you will get there.

</comment><comment><USER13> >>>Bill Gates and Paul Allen were high school students at Lakeside School in Seattle. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traf-O-Data>

</comment><comment><USER14> Hey there, I'm Fouad and I started freelance work when I was ~14 - 17 now. Send me a quick blurb about what you can/want to do at holla [ at ] fouad.co and I'd love to share some tips.

</comment><comment><USER15> You could sell products instead of services, such as mobile apps or website plugins.

Or, there may be others your age that want websites or software. Start with people you know.

</comment><comment><USER16> What type of coding are you comfortable with? If you can get in with a good team then you should be fine. Shoot me an email (check my profile)

</comment><comment><USER17> What's your skill set? And do you have a link to some stuff you've made? I might have some work for you.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's all about networking. Take advantage of any connections you have. Meet as many people as you can.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you're comfortable with PHP I'll give you some contracting work today.

<comment><USER19> I'm interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> At I got an internship at a Fortune 500, so it's possible.

</comment><comment><USER21> You can sell plugins and themes in markets.

</comment><comment><USER22> you can join a startup.I am 17 and I did :D !

</comment><comment><USER23> Good you are this young. You have one thing others(older than you) don't have, a lot more time - as in actual time, number of days.

>> _continue your education_ @lutusp said it

Yes, indeed. And just in case the tempting 'rebellion' thought of I-droped- out-of-school/college-to-build-this-build-that kicks in, just weigh what you might be losing. You might be losing those life-long friends, pranks, drunken brawls, night-outs, heartbreaks and falling in love all over again &c &c.

Now, for some people this is less important. Just think about it and then take a decision.

Your post doesn't mention leaving school but seeing you are so much aware at this tender age and restless I thought I will chip in with my unsolicited advice.

Here are few things you can do to make money:

* Write some apps and put it on app stores - I think Google Android is a good place to start. There are lots of iOS apps that are not even available on Android. Hordes of quality apps can be written for Android(yes, paid ones).

>> _no sane person that'd hire me for any freelance work_

* contribute to open source - it will help you to build up credibility. It's not about you being young - it's about out of those 1^billion trillion coders out there, that sane person doesn't know if you are a real deal and most probably he doesn't have time to figure you out.

* Try freelancing portals and in the meantime do the above mentioned ^

* Keep having fun - do all this in spare time :-)</comment>


Apple, Google using "military-grade spy planes" to make new maps, says senator - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/apple-google-using-military-grade-spy-planes-to-make-new-maps-says-senator/

<comment><USER2> Is it outside the realm of possibility that Senator Schumer, Wall Street bagman, incorrigible publicity hound (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schumer>), could just shut the fuck up? These companies are making maps, for heaven's sake, based on information gleaned from the air, which, as far as I know, is still freely available to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an interesting privacy question, and symptomatic of the larger issues that are facing us as technology continues to ease information-gathering. A hard moral, not to mention legal and technical, problem if there ever was one.

> The letter requests that Apple and Google notify the communities they plan > to map in advance and automatically blur the photos of individuals

Doesn't Google already do the latter half of this?</comment>


Show HN: Startup Onesies - a weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://startuponesies.com

<comment><USER2> What about mommy's little start up? This seems like most of the start-ups I've come to know. Daddy, the non-technical co-founder just throws in some DNA and management and slaps his name all over the product. Mommy, the technical co- founder and lead engineer, does most of the work and doesn't get any recognition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! This has been a source of much debate, actually. Most female entrepreneur- friends I spoke with said they'd feel left out, and I hate that. But I had to start with one product, so I figured I'd go for the larger market first, and then expand. I definitely want to give credit where it's due :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool idea!

FYI a few years back when the Where The Wild Things Are movie made onesies super popular again my old company printed some for one of our bands and called them "onesies" \- Gerber sent us a cease & desist letter within a month for using their trademark.

Bummer because (infant) bodysuit doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh no! Is it a copyrighted word? That would put a damper on my plans... :-)

<comment><USER4> Some ideas: ourbabystartup.com, mybabystartup.com, lilstartup.com.

These are all available. And, it gives you options for other baby products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A onesie has a completely different meaning in England (it's like an all in one pyjamas) - I was expecting something like this : [http://c84e75a0be4d36ae45af-2d30e5c80739923c8e8ade725c23fc90...](http://c84e75a0be4d36ae45af-2d30e5c80739923c8e8ade725c23fc90.r36.cf2.rackcdn.com/images_thumb_cache/Unisex_Cookie_Monster_Sesame_Street_Hooded_Onesie_500_478_514_76.jpg)

But your site seems to be suggesting something slightly different? Either way, it's a cool idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, try googling "startup onesie" \- it's a bunch of grown-ups. The U.S. Would be my market focus, and I _thought_ this was the main term used here...

Another lesson learned in "know your market well".

<comment><USER5> Ah I see! Sorry I thought I was going to be able to order a onesie (all in one pyjama) with my startup logo/text on it! Congrats on building the site and getting it done though - always good to actually do it rather than just talk about doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well, shoot! There goes that idea... It's like Xerox. No one calls them anything else.

<comment><USER6> You might get away with "Onesies" if you actually use Gerber brand clothes to make your product. You'd need the Gerber logo tag in the product photo and even then they probably won't like it.

For alternatives you can go with one-piece, (baby)jumpsuit, or rompers. Creepers is the term everyone uses in the UK.

Source - Too much time dealing with this exact naming issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate you sharing your experience. Never even thought about it.</comment></comment></comment>


Blazor – Build client web apps with C# - <AUTHOR> https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor <comment><USER2> I really hope this takes off and is practical. Every time I have to touch the mess that is front-end JS development, I want to torch the building and go live in a cave far away from any computers.

Dynamic by default languages are a mistake. Languages where anyone can monkeypatch anything are a mistake. Languages that are so flakey and squishy that the best tooling in the world can't tell you reliably whether a symbol is or is not defined somewhere in scope, and jumping to definition relies on grep, are a mistake.

I don't know if Blazor is the right answer - in particular the server-side version of it, using SignalR to send events and diffs back and forth gives me some chills and flashbacks to ASP.NET WebForms UpdatePanels... - but something better for WebAssembly will come soon, and we can finally be free of the sub- mediocre monopoly that JS has enjoyed.

<comment><USER3> > Dynamic by default languages are a mistake

Have you met TypeScript? [http://www.typescriptlang.org/](http://www.typescriptlang.org/)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, TypeScript is still dynamic by default. You can still write messy JavaScript.

<comment><USER5> You can write messy anything. C, C++, C#, I've seen tire fires in all three.

Messy code is due to the programmer not the language. The idea that you can magically be a better programmer without spending time on learning and improving because you chose "a superior language" is silly.

Also we should be having this discussion in Latin. English is messy, you can write messy messages in English.

<comment><USER6> > You can write messy anything. C, C++, C#, I've seen tire fires in all three.

Come on, please. Of course you can write a steaming pile of trash in any programming language, but some languages allow you to do that more easily than others.

Comparing languages based on their absolute worst examples isn't really a comparison at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Blazor code executing on the server has the flexibility to do anything you > would normally do on the server, such as connecting directly to a database.

Frustrating to see even the splash page off in lalala land.

Write once, deploy no where because surprise, the 3rd party package you were using requires a database connection, or some other server side feature.

This kind of messaging is why Blazor code is a mess; its not a seamless change to run on WASM when its ready, its server side lock-in, making db calls from your code behind file.

..and for anyone who thinks this isn't webforms back from the dead:

> If you are a Web Forms developer and want to build a new application on .NET > Core, we would recommend Blazor which provides the closest programming > model. [1]

The sad thing is, the WASM c# end-to-end, using real full dlls in the browser is actually really cool.

...but somehow that got lost along the way.

[1] [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-core-is-the- future...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-core-is-the-future-of- net/)

<comment><USER8> Alternatively, don't use third party packages you don't fully understand.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if I could do much of anything as a developer if I didn't use third-party packages I didn't fully understand.

I suppose I could spend much of my day carefully vetting dependencies... but what about dependencies of dependencies?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not to diminish the achievement here, which is considerable, but I feel like a lot of these WebAssembly-based projects miss the forest for the trees.

JavaScript isn't really that big of a problem or a performance killer. The DOM is. I don't know what the answer is (rendering to a canvas tag is awful for accessibility) but I'm hoping that in time we see the improvement that is to the DOM as WebAssembly is to JS.

<comment><USER11> Performance is only part of it. Using a single language for the whole stack is very valuable to a lot of people. I think that's why Node gained popularity because many developers were using JS for the frontend so why not use the same language for the backend as well?

<comment><USER12> Yes, exactly. Xamarin is already a good cross-platform solution for "apps" and so Blazor is hopefully the missing piece for the web. The JS-based cross- platform mobile solutions are just not in the same league as Xamarin, IMO.

<comment><USER13> Can you show benchmarcks of an electron app vs xamarin for a same UX?

<comment><USER12> I don't have any, no. Benchmarks are going to be relative to what you want to compare though so you will likely have to take them yourself, especially if you are comparing something subjective like UX.

I know Paul Betts lurks around here sometimes (well maybe he used to, it looks like xpaulbettsx no longer exists), I would take his opinion on the two frameworks over anything I come up with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I scrolled back and forth and even checked the linked github site but... any live demos? There should be a "Live demo" button right at the top.

<comment><USER11> The official demo that uses wasm is here [https://blazor- demo.github.io/](https://blazor-demo.github.io/)

<comment><USER15> The component vendors are jumping on board as well [https://demos.devexpress.com/blazor/](https://demos.devexpress.com/blazor/) [https://www.telerik.com/blazor-ui](https://www.telerik.com/blazor-ui) [https://www.syncfusion.com/blazor- components](https://www.syncfusion.com/blazor-components) [https://www.matblazor.com/](https://www.matblazor.com/)

There's some good demos on their sites. The 'official' one could do with an update!

<comment><USER14> Hm, they all look kind of slow and Telerik's demos were broken on Firefox (the comboboxes wouldn't work). Only matblazor's demos looked responsive enough.

Though they all seem to provide basic controls like checkboxes, sliders, date pickers, etc. Shouldn't those be part of the core Blazor toolkit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has anybody used this in anger? It looks cool, but there is that obvious worry about investing the time to learn it, only to have it abandoned by MS.

<comment><USER17> I tried it out for a side project and I loved it. I've written more C# than javascript, but I think that web development is a mess. I've used Angular, Vue, and React, and, to me, they all have the same problems. They're not bad, but they all depend on npm, tons of packages, and stuff like webpack, which I wish I didn't have to understand, but it sometimes breaks my project. I am also opposed to coding a backend in JS.

I tried making a game using blazor. Think something like the Jackbox TV games. A room gets created, then people join, and then play together real time (not a 3d game, something that could be done with html/css). It was surprisingly easy. Lots of things I did that I didn't expect to work did. There was pretty much no boilerplate code. I wasn't creating models on the backend and on the frontend, and then writing an api so that they could communicate. I didn't have to use JSON anywhere. I haven't finished the game because I started working on something else though, using flutter.

I don't expect people use JS on the backend to convert. Or people who have a ton of experience with something like React. But I think it is awesome. It removes everything I hate about web development. All of the other frameworks for web development that I have used have felt like putting makeup on a pig. Blazor felt like a step in the right direction.

It seems like the support from MS is there for now. You have to be aware of the limitations depending on whether you pick server or client side Blazor. I think the limitations are pretty insignificant for the most part though. I doubt Blazor takes over the web, but I hope that something similar will one day.

<comment><USER18> The lack of having to write another $.ajax method is what draws me. We write internal use applications and actively avoid any SPA frameworks but like to enhance our applications to provide modal windows, etc. The fact I can do this with none to minimal js will be a game changer. Server side Blazor brings back the WebForms dev cycle without all the magic, postback and view state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wrote over 300 samples for ASP.NET Core, including 80 samples for ASP.NET Core 3 techs.

[https://github.com/dodyg/practical- aspnetcore](https://github.com/dodyg/practical-aspnetcore)

<comment><USER20> I haven't looked over the samples (but I definitely will!!!). The biggest samples I think _any_ frontend framework need to demonstrate is form validation (showing errors) and file uploading. everything else is pretty simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish browsers supported these languages natively. It seems like when the html standard was designed they thought about it. I know the script tag has a language attribute.

<comment><USER22> Well, with the headaches that differences in HTML and CSS interpretation in browser engines already can cause, I would not look forward to having the same kind of problems with compiled languages.

We could, of course, make the thing that compiles and executes the code a shared plugin, but then we would have reinvented ActiveX and Java applets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like blazor, I can't, however, get over the idea of having to download several megabytes of DLL's to get it to run.

<comment><USER17> That's only client side blazor. Server side just streams DOM changes (efficiently). Even for client side, the actual amount downloaded is usually pretty small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Blazor is definitely not a shiny new technology. It's been around for years but still hasn't seen it's official release.

Last significant bit of news from it was the "official preview" phase, back in April.

If I understand it well, it WILL be released soon given that .NET Core 3 has just been released too.

<comment><USER15> Blazor has been split into two versions, there is a server side and a client side version, both that share the same component model. The server side version went GA a last week with .Net core 3.0, the client side is looking like it will GA in April 2020. The reason given is that their not happy with the size of the payloads required for now, the aim to have everything compiled to webAssembly by then, not just the mono runtime that's running as an IL interpreter at the moment.

The server side version is interesting, it ships DOM updates to the client from the server over a websocket (musch like OOUI [https://github.com/praeclarum/Ooui](https://github.com/praeclarum/Ooui)). Not something that I'd use for production, but for quick internal projects which have the feel of a client side SPA, but while not requiring you to build the API layer it's quite neat.

<comment><USER10> > The server side version is interesting, it ships DOM updates to the client > from the server over a websocket

WebForms 2020! Amazing.

<comment><USER25> Except it is much more intuitive. A repeater- like construct (a foreach) just works. Collections just work. No thinking about data binding at the correct time in the life cycle of the page. You can even call front-end javascript in a sync-like (using async) matter. You can just call a javascript confirm if you like. It is awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Reminds me of SilverLight.

<comment><USER27> Silverlight was proprietary tech . Web Assembly is based on Open Standards. This is just a framework to develop for Web Assembly</comment></comment>


Decoupling your employment - <AUTHOR> http://jonathanconway.net/opinion/decoupling-your-employment

<comment><USER2> I've long thought that the single most underrated aspect of universal healthcare would be the increase in job-churn, an extremely beneficial economic phenomenon, would be much higher with people not afraid to leave their jobs and therefore lose their healthcare.

I, however, would feel extremely remiss if I didn't mention that it's likely unwise to consider Ayn Rand a hero of any sort. Besides being a wonderful writer of pulp fiction, she is a worthless thinker and an absolute unabashed crazy person.

<comment><USER3> I can see the theoretical argument for universal healthcare making people more willing to leave their jobs in search of better opportunities, but I'm having trouble squaring the theory with the reality I see today: I can't think of any country where job-hopping is more commonplace or more accepted than the USA.

The only explanation I can think of right now is that people in the USA tend to be more self-centered and this is responsible for both the job-hopping and the lack of universal health care; but I'm not sure I'm convinced by it. Any ideas?

<comment><USER4> I don't know what the job mobility statistics are, but remember that the US workforce is about one hundred and fifty million people and the European one is a similar order of magnitude. You need to scale comparisons accordingly (eg comparing the US to Canada where the latter has a workforce under 20 million).

Additionally it is far easier to move in the US. There are no immigration requirements, language barriers, major cultural differences, different education systems, certifications (sometimes states differ) or similar impediments. Many states are "at will" meaning that employment is not protected to the degree it is in many other countries. This means that mobility can happen from both employee and employer sides.

I don't think job hopping is due to being self centred (in the pejorative sense). The US tends to be very productive which means employment and employees are more able to move around to meet needs. That they do so is not a bad thing.

I've known couples where one works a big boring established company in order to bring in the healthcare while the other works at startups. They would both prefer to work at startups but by the time people approach 40 there is likely to be some health issues forecast if not already happening. (Even the fittest people wear out body parts!)

And if anything economic policies have been discouraging mobility. Higher house/ing prices makes people sticky and diverts income into unproductive use, but seems to be a goal. (We'd all be better off with a lot cheaper housing costs.) The lack of competition in communications (largely due to regulatory capture) means that remote participation is a lot less effective than it could be. And of course health care is dysfunctional and expensive, although the care received by some of the people some of the time is world leading.

<comment><USER3> _I don't think job hopping is due to being self centred (in the pejorative sense)._

I didn't mean it in the pejorative sense -- just that in Canada I hear people say they're staying in jobs they don't like because they don't want to "let down" their friends who are working at the same company... and I don't think I've ever heard that from people working in the US (startup co-founders excepted).

<comment><USER4> I worked for several years for a company just outside Silicon Valley where people said they stayed because they liked their colleagues so much, but otherwise would have left. Two anecdotes don't make data :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author implies a false dichotomy in the following paragraph.

"This is why I don't accept the usual "benefits" package. I go for the jobs that offer minimal benefits and high pay. I go for the jobs that challenge and improve me, not the jobs I'd settle down in and feel like I can't get out of."

Why not go for the jobs that offer great benefits, (at least) good pay, and challenge you? And, if you find you can't leave such a job because it is just too good, then maybe the job is worth sticking around for?

I work in an at-will state which means that I can leave my employer at any time for any reason and they can let me go under the same constraints.

If ever there was a phrase that deserves the derisive phrase "first world problem" it is "the benefits are too good for me to leave."

Finally,

"A less obvious reason [for great benefits] is that they increase the employee's dependency on the employer and create barriers to the employee leaving the company for a higher paying and/or more challenging job."

this isn't a less obvious reason at all. At my current employer, the company explicitly provides strong incentives to keep employees. People still leave when they find another challenge more to their liking, benefits and all. And that's exactly the way it should be.

<comment><USER6> I think an important factor is that benefits muddles the value of your total compensation. It gets really tricky to compare an offer for another job with your current package.

At my last job, I got subsidized gym at a fancy place with a pool, but it was as bit out of my way. At my new job, I get free gym, no pool, but right next to my office, so I can go in my lunch break. Which is the more valuable benefit?

I'm in the UK, so I have universal healthcare. But my last employer had a private add-on that was really good and not too expensive (benefit-in-kind, ie. company pays, but I pay income tax on the cost) which I took. My new one has an even better, but more expensive one, so I probably won't take it. Which is the more valuable benefit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The post is narrowly focused. Unless the author plans to make no friends with anyone at a place where most people spend more than half of his awake hours, his plan is insufficient to make it easier to leave a job. At this point, I would say letting down my peers and friends at work is a strong motivation for me. Perhaps in the eyes of some people, perhaps the author, caring about what others think of me makes me somehow weaker or less "rational". As a matter of preference, I would rather trade off some independence for the benefits of friendship and camaraderie.

Furthermore, his argument is unrealistic. Most of us don't compare one job with no benefits vs. another with benefits. The situation in the Bay Area at least means that we are often comparing jobs with very similar benefits. Thus, the benefits offered by my current employer is nullified by the equally good benefits of the competing offer, just as companies offering the benefits hope they would do. In the end, most jobs in the Bay Area are fairly comparable in terms of benefits and pay. What matters are the less tangible things: culture, opportunity, challenge, etc. The biggest factor that's keeping me at my company right now are the friends I've made there over the years and I have no regrets about having tied myself down with friendship.

</comment><comment><USER8> What is with all the Rand hate? I myself don't know that much about her beyond the big picture (books she authored, something called Objectivism, etc.)

There seems to be a large group that detests her. Where is that coming from? (Honest question looking for facts, not to start a pointless debate).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you that there are a lot of people who simply refuse to engage with Rand's ideas.

No matter how much one dislikes an idea, I think one should be willing to understand and engage with it, especially if it's an important idea that has had influence (as some of Rand's ideas have, for example, her concept of "force").

I personally agree with most of Rand's philosophy, but that doesn't prevent me from being willing to listen to and engage in discourse with Marxists, Keynsians, and other schools of thought which differ strongly from Objectivism.

If someone really thinks their ideas are true and right, then they should have the confidence to see those ideas tried and tested in the real world, against all the alternatives.

They should count it as a privilege to discuss/debate their ideas with opposing schools (as long as everyone respects basic manners/decency), because doing so will deepen their knowledge and improve their ability to convince others of their ideas.

Anyway enough ranting. :)

<comment><USER9> "If someone really thinks their ideas are true and right, then they should have the confidence to see those ideas tried and tested in the real world, against all the alternatives."

 _My idea_ is that dropping a bomb on _you_ would immeasurably improve the world. Care for me to try that, or are you ready to admit that some ideas _shouldn't be tested_?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This raises a very good point, but the Rand quote is sure to polarize people's responses and I personally don't think it's necessary.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Ayn Rand, a long-time favourite thinker of mine

I think disclaimers are generally best put near the top.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looking at your linkedin you do mostly contract work, so I'm not sure what you know exactly about what you are talking about?

People churn through employment based on ambition, boredom and opportunity. In 20+ years I've never met someone who stayed at a company strictly for the benefits. I'm sure those people exist, but my guess is that it's not the benefits thats keeping them there, it's their personal need for security and stability regardless of the offerings. These people are likely not ambitious nor risk takers by nature.

And then the Ayn Rand being your "favorite thinker" made me throw the whole of your argument into the rubbish bin on the merit of that alone.

</comment><comment><USER13> A lot of the time the benefits are there to 'sweeten the deal', their monetary value to a business is low. Turning them down won't net you their perceived value on top of your wages, they're also not a lock in to a single employer as for the most part most employers offer the same benefits, more often than not sold from the same group.

Plus I can't imagine anything more soulless than going to work every day and thinking that I'm there til I'm gone. Almost like getting into a relationship and thinking its just for the moment. Our jobs shouldn't rule our lives but it almost sounds like the author is just grinding it out, rather than throwing yourself in and revelling in the joy of the work you get to do.

Maybe I'm weird though.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm thinking of the perks he mentions in terms of a utility function. In other words, how much salary would you trade for paid vacation, company gym membership, company cafeteria, etc.?

Companies offer these things because they think, on average, employees will say "More than they cost the company to provide."

This post essentially reminds people that they should factor in the switching costs for all of these things. It also notes that those switching costs may increase super-linearly if multiple service agreements expire at the same time due to a change in employment.

</comment><comment><USER14> If he was offered a salary of $100 million per year, I'm sure the author wouldn't refuse it on the basis of a gym membership being part of the package.

This example shows that the services he names have some finite value (perhaps zero or negative) which can be added to the salary value. A person considering a change in employment just needs to figure out what that value is, so you can put competing offers from different companies on the same scale.

<comment><USER15> Since he's claiming to value benefits at near-zero, a better counterexample might be a job paying below-market wage, but with free use of a private jet, a personal chef and trainer, and other insane perks :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Now a job like that I would strongly consider. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Could it be the tax on these 'benefits' is less than that for salary? So if you were an employee that would've subscribed to these things anyway, both you and your employer would benefit having the employer pay for the benefits and incur less tax in the process.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I included the Ayn Rand quote because it's simply the most straight-forward and succinct summary of what my blog post was all about.

I hazard a guess that those who detest Rand's thought will probably equally detest mine. :)

<comment><USER17> _"A rational man never leaves his interests at the mercy of any one person or single, specific concrete. He may need clients, but not any one particular client — he may need a job, but not any one particular job."_

 _I included the Ayn Rand quote because it's simply the most straight-forward and succinct summary of what my blog post was all about._

In the context of your blog post, the Ayn Rand quote is arguing for MULTIPLE clients and MULTIPLE jobs to avoid dependence on any one client or employer. Your post argues for choosing ONE single particular job, with ONE single, specific employer, using criteria not based on employer benefits. I don't see what one has to do with the other.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you misunderstand my intentions. What I meant is that one SHOULD have multiple clients/multiple jobs, and that doing so will be easier if one doesn't become too dependent on any one employer due to benefits, etc.

<comment><USER18> SHOULD is still a strong word. I don't mean to say nasty things to a consultant. But consultant work isn't for every single developer. In fact, I don't like working with contractors. I want to work with the team that works for my company. I don't want to go outside and speak someone who doesn't understand our company's culture and how we work. Besides, consultant work DEPENDS on the market. You are tied to the market. Your value is depending on the market, not YOU as an individual. If your skill is no longer special because there are tons of people doing the same thing, your value will be lowered. It is a lot secure to work for a company. As a consultant, you need to either find a client yourself because you are starting, or you need to work your ass off just to make enough. I don't know about you, but most of us here can't make enough these days. consultant is freelancer, if you really think about it.

Moreover, I choose a job based on the role and the culture there. I can expect $80k ~ $100k on average for a software engineer nowadays in the city. I can keep myself comfortable with one single task, not multiple task.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The author is a consultant so I find this article biased. A friend of mine works as insurance manager and he has dealt with some startups and many medium-size companies. Group purchase is relatively cheaper and more convenient to manage.

So why people love universal health package from your boss? The most obvious reason is it cost a few thousand dollars per year to cover your own premium. [http://news.ehealthinsurance.com/pr/ehi/how-much-does- health...](http://news.ehealthinsurance.com/pr/ehi/how-much-does-health- insurance-218305.aspx) According to the source above, family is around $4000, and individual is around $3000

Google and Facebook always competes for the best people in this industry. Suppose both get rid of health insurance, but Facebook is willing increase salary by $1000 - $2000 on average. WoW. So which one would you go now, Mr. Author? Facebook? Yeah. Because that $2000 is used to cover premium. On the other hands, Google doesn't raise my salary and I would have to take out $4000 total to cover my whole family.

The fact that your employer has someone to deal with the agent, does all billing and contacts for you makes your life easier as a worker. You don't have to scratch your heads trying to find the best agent out there. All the basic health plan covers the same. Some big companies will purchase expensive package because they want to attract more talent workers.

The amount your boss will save by canceling health package is a lot, but they won't increase your salary by $5000 - $10k. They just won't. Maybe $1000. You still have to pay for the rest yourself.

Getting breakfast, lunch and even dinner all by yourself is a lot of money. Big tech companies are known to offer free meals because they want to make sure their workers can get the most out of their work time AND at the same time getting the most out of their salary. Which company would offer more than 20% of salary raise by getting rid of employee benefits?

Another problem is showing caring. Even in a small bakery shop, the #1 benefit is they can purchase left over food at very low price. Some nice owners even let workers to take them home (I used to work for a bakery). My boss didn't pay me health insurance because it was a small shop, but I get to save my breakfast for my parents by getting free food every night! Many Chinese takeout hire workers from other states and they live in the same apartment. That's their benefit. That kind of convenient makes both employer and employees happy.

I hate to say but people should stop trying to make life as a software. Seriously.

If you like software methodology, fine, here is one: stop re-inventing a common wheel. Let your boss does the billing for you. You use that third-party API. Now move on.

<comment><USER19> "According to the source above, family is around $4000, and individual is around $3000"

Additionally, I think the average listed there is a misleadingly low self- selector in that most anyone who has a pre-existing condition is likely to get quotes so expensive that getting an individual or family plan outside of the workplace is simply not a financially viable option.

There are many, many Americans for whom health insurance outside of a workplace group policy simply isn't an option, and that is sad, but the last thing needed to fix this problem is an application of Randian principles.

<comment><USER20> As somebody who is not an american, why would it be cheaper to get a health insurance through work if I had a preexisting condition - other than the obvious tax savings?

<comment><USER21> Your individual pre-existing condition does not bubble up to the group. However, when negotiating as an individual, then each pre-existing condition does get considered and factored into the cost. There's power in groups.

<comment><USER20> Thank you.

So at the same time, if one has no health conditions, one could expect to get a cheaper rate on an individual plan?

<comment><USER18> Well, in most situation yes. You as an individual. There other problem with pre-condition, it's very broad. They can make up all kinds of BS and claim your application must be filed different because of some "magical" precondition.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth moving to Silicon Valley for a 'lifestyle business' - <AUTHOR>

Say you don't want to start a 'startup', in the traditional sense.<p>Is it worth it to move to SV if you aim to achieve success from smaller projects more along the lines of those listed here 'http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487' <comment><USER2> It's worth moving to San Francisco at least, for whatever reason. :-)

<comment><USER3> Are you in the valley? Any recommendations on neighborhoods best for startups?</comment></comment>


The Chicago Open Government Movement - <AUTHOR> http://www.lauradhamilton.com/chicago-open-government-movement

<comment><USER2> That's pretty cool. I like the idea of making a more open government based upon what already exists and is available. Of course it is a passion of love and requires plenty of dedication and work towards the goal but it is very admirable and provides a framework towards how, using existing resources, the citizens can help make their government more open with what their government provides in rudimentary form.

<comment><USER3> I just hope that the projects that are created are generalizable across municipalities instead of being geared to just one city. Every time I see these open government projects they also come across as very city specific.

<comment><USER4> If it works @local why not @ Fed...the concept at least

<comment><USER5> It is happening.</comment></comment></comment></comment>