Five myths about Bitcoin's energy use - <AUTHOR> https://coincenter.org/entry/five-myths-about-bitcoin-s-energy-use <comment><USER2> >but that amount is substantially less than the energy it costs to keep no fewer than three Fortune 500 financial companies running at full steam for a few days.

Ridiculous comparison. They are working on other transactions as well. Currently a bitcoin transaction uses 427kWh.

One thing that is interesting to think about is that once block rewards go away, increasing the transaction capacity of the chain will probably lower energy usage. Competition on transaction fees will dry up if more transactions can fit on the chain per minute, reducing the total reward from fees and making mining unprofitable until total network electricity costs go down (by miners shutting down) until equilibrium is reached again.

But txn fees are still only 15% of the total block reward so those effects won't really matter for a while. If satoshi had predicted this rise in value, he would have made the block rewards drop faster than once every 4 years. Secure network consensus is not what the mining market is getting paid by, it's getting paid by the $140k USD created out of thin air every 10 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Regarding the proof-of-stake part: Ethereum devs are also working on sharding which will make scaling on the Ethereum Blockchain way easier. I really think that Ethereum will be the No.1 cryptocurrency in the near future. Bitcoin devs showed plenty of times, that they are not capable of keeping pace with demand (couldn't even get the block size thing right). Bitcoin is virtually dead. No one can really use it for real world transactions. Plus Bitcoin in reality is a really central coin, completely in the hands of the miners. Even if the Bitcoin devs decided to go with PoS, the miners wouldn't agree.

<comment><USER4> Proof of Work (Bitcoin*, ...), Proof of Stake (Ethereum Casper), Proof of Space, Proof of Research (GridCoin, CureCoin,)

Plasma (Ethereum) and Lightning Network (BitCoin (SHA256), Litecoin (scrypt),) will likely offload a significant amount of transaction volume and thereby reduce the kWh/transaction metrics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > But electricity costs matter even more to a Bitcoin miner than typical heavy > industry. Electricity costs can be 30-70% of their total costs of operation.

> [...] If Bitcoin mining really does begin to consume vast quantities of the > global electricity supply it will, it follows, spur massive growth in > efficient electricity production—i.e. the green energy revolution. Moore's > Law was partially a story about incredible advances in materials science, > but it was also a story about incredible demand for computing that drove > those advances and made semiconductor research and development profitable. > If you want to see a Moore's-Law-like revolution in energy, then you should > be rooting for, and not against, Bitcoin. The fact is that the Bitcoin > network, right now, is providing a $200,000 bounty every 10 minutes (the > mining reward) to the person who can find the cheapest energy on the planet.

<comment><USER5> This is ridiculous. The economy is already incentivized to find cheaper electricity by forces far more powerful than Bitcoin. By this logic, you would defend a craze for trying to boil the sea.

<comment><USER4> If the market had internalized the external health, environmental, and defense costs of nonrenewable energy, we would already have cheap, plentiful renewable energy. But we don't: the market is failing to optimize for factors other than margin. (New Keynesian economics admits market failure, but not non- rationality.)

So, (speculative_valuation - cost) is the margin. Whereas with a stock in a leveraged high-frequency market with shorting, (shareholder_equity - market_cap) is explainable in terms of the market information that is shared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bitcoin's energy use will tend to raise to match the mining profits. As long as both BTC's price and transaction fees keep raising, the energy miners spend will continue to raise. BTC's price is going up due to speculation, and transaction fees due to blocks being full.

<comment><USER2> Even at current levels, BTC's built in block rewards dominate tx fees (12.50BTC built in + 1.38 tx fees). The 12.5 built in reward is essentially a subsidy for mining.

<comment><USER4> The block reward is an incentive for redundant distributed replica nodes.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup School 2011 videos - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/videos?2011 <comment><USER2> If you're trying to decide which to watch, I recommend:

* Lindenbaumm on Heroku and creating a great developer experience. * Ashton Kutcher with the story of Carl Fischer. * Matt Mullenweg on the journey of making WordPress. * The office hours with Paul Graham (if that's there). Interesting to see the questions he asks the startups.

Some of the talks were actually Q&As, which aren't my favorite format. Talks are much more compelling to watch because (ideally) the speaker tells a story and each part adds to the story. Q&As may have a few good answers or quotes sprinkled throughout, but most of the content is not so useful.

The VC talks were also not as interesting to me, as they seemed mostly to recap information that most of us here probably know (like the examples of entepreneurs in Conway's talk).

It was really cool to see the people behind the startups -- its easy to forget that products like WordPress and Dropbox were just nuggets in someone's head at some point.

<comment><USER3> I like talks if they're compelling stories, but in my experience, most aren't. They're usually canned same-old-crap stuff.

Q+A on the other hand, love those!

<comment><USER4> My problem with Q+A sessions is that the ones that are from people in the audience to presenters (like the last portion of Ashton Kutcher's video) I have no clue what the audience members are asking since they don't have microphones.

<comment><USER3> Definitely agree with ya there. I wish organizers would remember to mic the people asking questions if they're going to film it.

<comment><USER5> or the presenters remember to repeat the questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I set my alarm and sat at my desk on Saturday to watch the streams live (which may say more about me than I'm comfortable with), and my recommendations for the three to watch (if you don't want to watch all of them) are:

* Max Levchin's talk. I'd never seen him talk before, but I thought he was great. I thought he had a good mix of cool insider-y founder story and useful advice.

* Matt Mullenweg's talk. I'm not a huge fan of Wordpress, but I thought his talk was incredibly personable (he comes across as a ridiculously nice person, which is kind of heartwarming).

* Ashton Kutcher's talk. I was among the people who were surprised by him. I don't immediately assume everyone famous is an idiot, but I wasn't sure if he was going to be able to target a talk to an event like this. I think he did a really good job.

By all means the other ones were good as well, but those are the three that I see myself watching over again in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Ron Conway labeled video is another copy of the Drew Houston video, as far as I can tell. Any way to get the Ron Conway video fixed?

</comment><comment><USER8> That's a lot of videos to wade through. Any recommendations for top videos to watch with _actionable_ content?

<comment><USER9> Ashton Kutcher's was good. He had an interesting and motivational story about Carl Fisher and he gave some insight into how he perceives founders.

<comment><USER10> But if Carl were as blind as a bat, how could he see the city he indirectly developed from... a blimp?

<comment><USER9> I wondered the same thing. Doesn't really add up. Maybe he was as blind as a seeing bat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Too bad Mark Pincus' talk is not there.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's the quickest way to open on mobile? I'm on ios5 and I have the justin.tv app.

<comment><USER13> The justin.tv iphone app doesn't support vod's at the moment. I'm afraid you'll have to watch on a computer.

<comment><USER14> See this sucks. When I look at the damn site on an ipad and see that I cant seem to be able to view it then I Would think of buying the iphone app so that I can.

Now later if I fidn that even though I've shelled out 4.99 for hte app (equivalnet to paying for $30 meal when a regular mean costs $10) that I still cant watch the damn videos, then I'm really going to hate justin.tv ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Where's Mark Pincus' talk?

<comment><USER16> It wasn't filmed because they're in a quiet period due to their S-1 filing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> thanks for posting these, guys.

one request - could you please get rid of the devastating meebo bar?</comment>


The next $100 billion technology market - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0117/features-jonathan-rothberg-medicine-tech-gene-machine.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I work for Ion Torrent.</comment>


Please review ipTrust - <AUTHOR> https://www.iptrust.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Howdy, so this is ipTrust, my company's first commercial-side application. We're in Beta now but a premium version is coming out in January. Our main product is our API, which lets you build applications against our large and unique dataset of botnets seen in the wild.

I'd love to get some feedback on this if you are in a networking or security related field!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Actually, use this URL to bypass the setup page: <https://www.iptrust.com/demo/?code=a33b9>

This is good for a one-time shot, and if you like the app please sign up.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you do database version control, deployments, etc? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a side project and I want to deploy the application to production as soon as possible, but I'm dreading having to deal with deploying schema changes, testing database deployments and everything else. In the past I've rolled my own primitive deployment scripts and database versioning scheme, but I'm wondering if there is a more robust solution out there. Is there a solid CD or CI solution out there for databases? <comment><USER2> There are various database agnostic schema migration tools that can help. There are rails, django and laravel migrations or alembic if you use python/sqlalchemy. There also pure sql based migration systems such as flyway. There is a great pluralsight course on proper way to do migrations using flyway. Most of it applies to migrations with any migration tool. You might be able to check it out with the free trial. But basically you want to do all your add columns and add tables before deploying a new version of code. Just to make sure the old version still runs. Then after deploying the new version of code. at some point you can delete the unused columns and tables. I also like to have one database object per migration file. That way the cost of each migration is smaller and if the migration fails you don't have to fix a partial migration since each migration operation is atomic.

<comment><USER3> I really like flyway. It's lightweight and the best thing I can say about it is that I rarely have to bother with it. It just works.

I too find it useful to keep the migrations small and succinct. For Oracle do migrations where the DDL cannot be rolledback I choose to separate these from straight data manipulation.

A downside to the project that I see is that although it's quite mature the author is very very slow to engage with open source modifications.

I'd still make it my first choice because of its simplicity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have never found a tool better than "by hand"

Simply put the DB isn't code, and a DB changes are in another category when looking at the risks involved. Deploying to your own MYSQL cluster vs AWS vs Postgres vs oracle are all very different mindsets, tools and requirements.

Can you get away with a tool in the short term, probably - and it would be one specific to the language you work in. Pick something your side project is written in, or something your interested in learning if your willing to go higher risk.

<comment><USER5> How does this scale once you have multiple developers/teams and an automated CI/CD process in place? Could you elaborate on how to manage this manual step (potentially for multiple environments) when an automated deployment depends on them being done?

<comment><USER6> If the database changes are substantial enough to break the applications, I would have a new schema setup to have enough time to test carefully and then when ready, point the application to the new schema.

For small changes, we use scripts 'INSTALL_[SCHEMA].sql' and 'ROLLBACK_[SCHEMA].sql' which do everything needed including backups / restores of any tables needed.

This is tested in the DEV/QA environments as needed then run in Prod right before deploying the application changes.

We haven't had high availability requirements and can get away with a scheduled 3 minute outage but this works for us.

The beauty is that if something goes wrong, the rollback script gets us out of trouble.

<comment> no-s _The beauty is that if something goes wrong, the rollback script gets us out of trouble._

ah, would it be that were true. Suppose you need to roll back until after the next install? I defy you to set up a reliable test plan that will handle the usual series of casual database tweaking popular with modern devs. The time spent developing and assuring the quality of the rollback will be mostly wasted energy when you're faced with rolling back a change which the next N changes are dependent on.

(more) seriously any sane scheme like yours seems to run into trouble when people want to add columns to some base table. Thusly I think "Alter Table" should be a banned operation for devs in any live system. But it's great job security for a DBA (speaking as a DBA, btw).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Flywaydb does schema versioning and migrations and is pretty simple. Each migration is a single SQL script. It doesn't support rollbacks as the authors claim from experience that rollback scripts tend to be needed rarely, and if needed they tend not to work.

Flywaydb doesn't cover db testing.

</comment><comment><USER8> I built a system for MySQL a while ago so database patches (data fix, schema change, etc) are applied with code deploys. All database patches are written to be repeatable, which means they contain logic that checks if they've been run already. They also have release and sequence ID so they're tracked and may be run out of sequence if needed. Once everyone got accustomed to the system, it's worked well for several years now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Flyway, Liquibase or Nextep ( [https://github.com/christophefondacci/nextep- designer/wiki](https://github.com/christophefondacci/nextep-designer/wiki) ) depending on which client, which project...

</comment><comment><USER10> Ruby on Rails migrations do best for me for over decade. If you don't work with RoR project then you can also try [https://github.com/thuss/standalone- migrations](https://github.com/thuss/standalone-migrations) which is "Rails migrations in non-Rails (and non Ruby) project".

</comment><comment><USER11> Check out dbup (in c# land) for a strategy and tools , and check the migrations into your repo along with your side.

</comment><comment><USER12> For a side-project you're probably going to want to use the migrations logic of whatever ORM/language you're using, but alternatively there are db devops tools like dbmaestro or datical, although those are typically targeted at enterprise companies

</comment><comment><USER13> You could try Liquibase.</comment>


Ask HN: What's a low-effort replacement for Facebook messenger? - <AUTHOR> Messenger is my last facebook service. I'd really like to sever the last tie and take my friends with me.
So I have two questions:
1. What's the lowest-friction replacement (for Android/iOS/desktop or web) with comparable features and good privacy?
2. How'd you get people to switch? <comment><USER2> What feature about facebook messenger are you trying to replicate? I have never used facebook messenger (deleted my facebook prior to messenger) so I can't speak to it specifically. However I have no issues with using group text or group email which seems like what people use messenger for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me personally? Just the people.

Friends seem to like 'rich chat' stuff like gifs and stickers and all that crap.

Voice/video chat would be a bonus too.

<comment><USER2> I don't know about Android as I got sucked into the the Apple ecosystem early on, but FaceTime satisfies the video chat component. Android users can use Skype, I believe. I personally don't use gifs/stickers etc (what is the age range of the people using these things? Not judging, just curious) but some people I know use bitmoji in their iMessages. "Voice chat"... isn't that aka a telephone call?

People.. are these your real life friends and coworkers or online only? If they are real life people, they should be happy to contact you in whichever way you are reachable. Not sure why you would have to have facebook messenger otherwise fear dropping out of the social sphere. Is this a self-fulfilling FOMO situation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Telegram.

2\. You tell them it has cooler stickers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Signal

<comment><AUTHOR> Either this or wire seems to be what people suggest.

How do you convince people to use one of them though?

<comment><USER5> Signal supports "unencrypted SMS" alongside the ciphered messages. You can then use Signal as a central client for both SMS and Signal chats

<comment><AUTHOR> SMS is what everyone abandoned for messenger. Signal looks like a winner though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whatsapp

<comment><AUTHOR> Owned by facebook...</comment></comment>


CBS confirms reporter Sharyl Attkisson's computer breached - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/cbs-confirms-reporter-sharyl-attkisons-computer-breached/2013/06/14/321b77f0-d504-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_print.html <comment><USER2> A couple months ago I turned VNC on quickly, without a password, just to test out an app that turns my iPad into a trackpad for my computer. Of course, forgot to turn off VNC after learning the iPad trackpad wasn't a great solution for me.

A couple days later as I was working, my cursor kept getting pulled away from me and I figured there must be some tracking issue with the mouse, not giving it a second thought.

I started reading something at my desk and looked up - a tab had been opened in Chrome to some .ru domain name and someone was clicking a 'Pay with PayPal' link on the page.

With my PayPal password auto-filled, they would have had easy work of getting into my account to pay a large, arbitrary amount to themselves.

Luckily, I caught it just in time. They were so good at keeping control of the mouse that I had to run to unplug my router.

Point is, VNC is a really easy vector to gain access to a computer and there are apparently people or bot constantly port scanning everything to find what's unsecured.

Was definitely a wake up call for me and I wouldn't be surprised if this is a similar case.

<comment><USER3> If someone was able to initiate a connection to your desktop behind a router, and you did not manually set up port forwarding, it sounds like you have UPnP enabled. I strongly suggest turning that off.

This would not happen behind any home router I know of with UPnP disabled, unless you have malware on the machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The dumbest script-bound teenagers will appear "sophisticated" to the Washington Post. How you know this attacker wasn't sophisticated: the Washington Post "detected" them.

 _Note: as was pointed out downthread, I 'm being sloppy; CBS "detected" them._

<comment><USER5> Who profits from this breach?

I have a hard time believing any sort of script kiddy would risk major jail time and a high profile arrest for hacking into a journalists laptop for no profit.

The NSA/Gubberment however, does have quite a bit to gain from this information/deletion

<comment><USER6> The thing with script kiddies is that they are not necessarily mature enough to realize and properly weigh the risks associated with their illicit hacking. It's fun and it gets them "cyber cred". Gangsters are often the same way. They risk jail time for flashy stunts that earn them respect from their peers.

<comment><USER7> A script kiddie would do as much damage / steal and leak as much information in as dramatic and public fashion as possible. That indeed doesn't seem to be the case here.

<comment><USER4> No, also not true of "script kids". They do that when it suits them. You're naive if you think the only systems they break into are the ones that land on Pastebin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am curious why this information appears now. Is this in reference to Microsoft given exploits to the government?

If that is the case, could this problem be solve by installing linux? I am not a linux fan, but the point of the source code being open and review by millions of people starts making me feeling more secure.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft doesn't give "exploits" to the government. Microsoft doesn't have the in-house expertise to write many of those exploits. It provides information about verified security vulnerabilities (different from exploits) before they're patched, because their patch schedules are elaborate and necessarily create a window of unpatched vulnerability. Microsoft also gives the same information to many commercial vendors, so they can write antivirus and IPS signatures.

NSA does not need Microsoft's help to break into computers.

<comment><USER9> This is going to sound dickish, but technically it's " _the_ NSA," not just "NSA".

"National Security Administration doesn't need Microsoft to break into computers." vs "The National Security Administration doesn't need Microsoft to break into computers."

Too much of a tangent, perhaps?

<comment><USER10> Tangent or not I'm interested. I think its less settled than you think. In fact I was always on the opposite team; its "NSA/DoD/DoE did x" just like it is "IBM did x" and not "the IBM did x."

I did enough research to conclude that it was not a settled issue. Its clear that if the initials were lower case and referred to a generic agency that deals with national security it would be "the national security agency" similar to the "the fishing tackle section of a sporting goods store." On the other hand a gander at DoD's style guide[1] makes it clear that they do not like the "the."

I'd love to see why you think its opposite. That's not dickish, that's a desire to answer a question that's been nagging me for a long time.

[1] [http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/writing/Writing_St...](http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/writing/Writing_Style_Guide.pdf)

From the english.SX:

"Is it proper to use "the" before the name of a government organization?" [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/76976/is-it- prope...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/76976/is-it-proper-to- use-the-before-the-name-of-a-government-organization)

"Using the definite article with acronyms and initialisms" [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30596/using- the-d...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30596/using-the-definite- article-with-acronyms-and-initialisms)

"Definite article with proper nouns, titles followed by a common noun" [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2327/definite- art...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2327/definite-article-with- proper-nouns-titles-followed-by-a-common-noun)

"The definite article usage with objects that have names" [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16988/the- definit...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16988/the-definite- article-usage-with-objects-that-have-names)

"Capitalising the definite article in names" [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/84288/capitalisin...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/84288/capitalising- the-definite-article-in-names)

<comment><USER11> Maybe it is clearer if we note this as proper usage: "the IBM _corporation_."

Similarly, "the _Department_ of Defense", "the National Security _Agency_ ".

<comment><USER10> Frankly that does not make it any clearer to me. Which could be because I am bad at the nitty gritty of english syntax. But most importantly, with all due respect you are not Strunk and White. I am looking to a clear definitive reference and in the future I cant say "I know it is written this way because hga said so."

<comment><USER11> Well, you can start here for a well referenced treatment of these nouns: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun)

<comment><USER10> The reason your comment did little to clear things up is because it relied on spelling the agencies/organizations names out. It is clear that the rules change for acronyms and abbreviations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 How can you detect what commands were run on a laptop by someone months ago?

If you assume the OS is Windows, is it normal to even log those?

<comment><USER9> Well, if you're on any arbitrary Unix system with bash installed, just open up a terminal emulator and keep hitting the up arrow key. It should give you a full history of all commands entered. Unfortunately, there's no date tagging to my knowledge, so you'll just have to remember when you entered a command and if you see any anomalies.

<comment><USER12> >It should give you a full history of all commands entered.

Commands entered by that user, in a shell, assuming the shell's history file wasn't cleared. So maybe you'd get a history of what someone did if they sat down at your computer and typed things while you were away refilling your coffee.

Your shell history isn't going to show a trace if someone actually remotely roots your computer and starts executing commands.

<comment><USER9> If it was done through a root account, then

      sudo su

and accessing a shell history should do the trick, right? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER12> It would IF they obtained a root shell and started typing commands into it like they were at the console, and that they didn't just go ahead and delete the history file right afterwards.

But if someone's used a privilege escalation method on some vulnerable software and injects code that makes system() calls as the root user, that's not going to show up in root's shell history.

Shell history is just a convenience for the user typing things in the shell; it doesn't log everything that goes on in the box as that given user, and isn't an audit trail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is your computer waking up in the middle of the night a sign that it's being accessed? I've seen this with my laptop often, I have Windows 7, and I didn't think twice about it. Now I'm thinking twice...

<comment><USER14> Windows Update is, I believe, scheduled for 3am by default. If connected to AC, it can wake up your computer to install updates. You can look into this more with the powercfg command (from an Admin console).

        powercfg -lastwake

"Computer waking up" is meaningless without controlling for updates and other factors, including dog/cat/mouse bumping into a mouse cable.

<comment><USER15> If your desk isn't level or if you have a fan on, the mice could move enough to wake the computer. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was right around the time when there were numerous other attacks on press and US industry networks by Chinese IP addresses. There's not enough info here to draw any conclusions, but I certainly wouldn't jump on the NSA bandwagon just because they're up in our netz (they probably wouldn't need to compromise her specific computer anyway).</comment>


F-Secure Security Cloud API for AWS - <AUTHOR> https://campaigns.f-secure.com/aws/index.html <comment><USER2> We also offer one, except for free: [https://guard.certly.io](https://guard.certly.io)

Not sure why they're binding this to the AWS Marketplace. Safe Browsing is also free, though I'm not sure how comprehensive it is.

<comment><USER3> Free but not free if you hit the limit:

"5,760 checks/day"

<comment><USER4> That's $1500 on f-secure

<comment><USER5> My math says $190 with 1 URL in a request or $38 with batching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. So they're offering a reputation check for URLs at 3 cents a pop. That seems rather steep, compared to the free SafeBrowsing API. Anything I'm missing?

<comment><USER7> I don't know if there's any functional difference, but the obvious difference is that the SafeBrowsing API has volume limits in place which might affect you if you're running a high-ish volume service:

      If you use the Safe Browsing APIs (v4) to warn users about unsafe web resources, the following restrictions apply:
        Lookup API (v4): You can query up to 500 URLs in a single POST request.
        Lookup API (v4) and Update API (v4): A single API key can make requests for up to 10,000 clients per 24-hour period.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Amio.io – The easiest multichannel messaging API for developers - <AUTHOR> https://amio.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi folks,

It's been a while since we started to develop Amio platform to help developers, SaaS companies and brands implement different messaging platforms into their software, build bots or just optimise costs for SMS they're sending. We've worked with banks, help-desk companies, delivery companies and also with single developers to fine tune our API.

Our ultimate goal is to make your development as easy as possible not just with clear API but also with extensive documentation full of examples, tools you need, integrations and message logs to see whats happening in all conversations.

Today, we're officially launching our platform. We would be more than happy if you try our service and provide us with any feedback. Looking forward for what you will build!

Cheers, Matous from Amio</comment>


LXC containers are awesome, but Docker.io sucks - <AUTHOR> http://iops.io/blog/lxc-application-containers-docker-initial-thoughts/

<comment><USER2> This article is a year old, and was based on early development versions of Docker. It's not a good basis for discussion of the current version's pros and cons.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually less than a year old -- but I think that point is more important...

the Docker.io team is forcing their way into the Linux community egregiously fast by being everywhere in every discussion always, sometimes even spreading fud about things their product might do in the future... and... their project is barely a year old now yet calls itself "enterprise ready". The Linux community really needs to pump the breaks on this one...

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's comforting to think that somehow the Docker people strong-armed the whole world (maybe they're part of the Lennart conspiracy), but realistically they're not that powerful. People are adopting Docker because they actually like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Except that a great many people are using it for the wrong reasons, mostly mistakenly thinking Docker somehow is providing huge security benefits to them, when it really is not. Docker (and all containers for the matter) are about application portability... the running applications can still modify your rootfs by design -- it is not a "super chroot" that some people think it is. The worst part is when Docker employees come on and start feeding this fire with promises about future features, etc, people read them as-if it's like that today.

<comment><USER4> "citation needed", solomon hykes (hn username: shykes) has been OVERLY forthright about container security. I could easily find a dozen posts showing so, but don't think you can find 2 to the contrary.

<comment><USER4> And for other people reading, this is from the docker project founder:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7910117](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7910117)

"""Docker will soon support user namespaces, which is a great additional security layer but also not a silver bullet! When we feel comfortable saying that Docker out-of-the-box can safely contain untrusted uid0 programs, we will say so clearly."""

You simply don't get any more authoritative than the guy who wrote docker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seconding what markbnj said, the publish date on this article makes it not relevant at all to the current version of docker:

04 Nov 2013 by Cal Leeming</comment>


Our Path Forward - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aereo.com/2014/07/path-forward/ <comment><USER2> If I understand correctly:

Broadcasters: Aereo is a cable company!

Aereo: We're not a cable company!

Supreme court: We decree that Aereo is a cable company.

Aereo: Ok, I guess we're a cable company, so let's litigate under the statutes that apply to cable companies.

Broadcasters: But you said before that you weren't a cable company so therefore you aren't!

<comment><USER3> Also, Aereo: Oh, and remember that SCOTUS only specifically said we're infringing when things are rebroadcast nearly simultaneously. Because they punted on the question of later playback, you should totally let us do DVR- style playback, even if you grant an injunction.

<comment><USER4> I don't know if it is as weak as you are implying. Remember the injunction is only supposed to protect the plaintiff, not kill the defendant. An injunction that only applies until the show is over would provide most of the benefit the plaintiff needs while not destroying Aereo in the mean time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Although I have no love in particular for the plaintiffs in this case, and I think that Aereo's new strategy is probably something they should be allowed to pursue, there was one sentence in their response that really rubbed me the wrong way. Aereo wrote:

"Aereo has been careful to follow the law, and the Supreme Court announced a new and different rule governing Aereo's operations last week."

Their claim is that the lower courts had one rule, and the Supreme Court announced a new rule. Although I understand where they're coming from, I'm not sure I agree with that characterization: I believe it would be the position of the Supreme Court that their interpretation of the law has /always/ been the correct interpretation of the law, and that Aereo was simply misguided earlier (but that that does not excuse their failure to act in accordance with the law).

ABC are probably right that Aereo should have brought up the S111 argument before; this sort of thing, I understand, is common (the legalese for such being 'arguendo').

<comment><USER6> Yes, it does feel particularly disingenuous. There was a loophole in the law that Aereo exploited. The Supreme Court judgement closed that loophole.

<comment><USER7> It wasn't a loophole, it was the law. Aereo were following Copyright law and previous case law _as exactly as possible_. The Supreme Court changed that law in their ruling, because they felt it went against the 'spirit' of the law.

<comment><USER8> Isn't doing something that is legal but goes against the spirit of the law by definition exploiting a loophole?

Edit: now that I think about it, there is room for a distinction between areas where case law hasn't ventured and exploitable holes in areas that case law _has_ explored. But I'm interested in hearing if there's a more formal definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> TLDR:IANAL

(i) After SCOTUS characterizes Aereo as cable company, Aereo appears willing to pay statutory content licensing fees that apply to cable companies. (ii) Aereo also seeks to retain the remote DVR feature of their service because the SCOTUS ruling only applies to live or near-live content transmission.

The former would create added costs, while the latter would obviously harm Aereo's value proposition because of the lack of live sporting events. Hope they find a way to survive.

<comment><USER10> The programmers have never been willing to treat OTT providers as legitimate MVPDs, if they were we would have had "internet cable" years ago. The real risk to Aereo here is that this opens up competition and will likely trigger a bunch of MFNs that will allow traditional cable companies get into the OTT market. Since the programmers' rates cards are largely based on the number of subscribers Comcast and company will be able to kill them on price.

<comment><USER7> I've been an Aereo customer since they first entered my city. I'm looking forward to paying again if they start offering a DVR-only service. I would never pay Comcast a cent for a similar service. I'm using Aereo to _get away from Comcast_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I say Aereo and or another should become a wireless ISP like NetBlazr (article about them [http://goo.gl/TpBh9A](http://goo.gl/TpBh9A)).

NetBlazr sets up WiFi antenna's on rooftops now. While you set up my Internet antenna, please set up a TV antenna for me - one I can access streaming via the web. I only pay for Internet service and a one time TV antenna set up fee.

Now if this company, whether it be NetBlazr or Aereo wants to offer more channels via their web site where I watch my local channels then great! I just might buy more channels.

<comment><USER12> In major metros it is really hard to get roof rights. In larger buildings HOAs even have exclusive agreements with cable and satellite resellers that install a single set of equipment for the entire building.

You are trading one set of ridiculous laws for another.

<comment><USER13> Supposedly those exclusive deals are no longer allowed:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/federal-court- uph...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/federal-court-upholds-fcc- ban-on-exclusive-cable-deals/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The broadcasters have been given a huge amount of very valuable public spectrum that is increasingly useless. It really should be taken away from them and made unlicensed. Can you imagine the benefits to society if these useless giant companies stopped hogging the spectrum and a million innovators got to play in that playground?

</comment><comment><USER15> If they want to become a cable company maybe they should merge with Intel/Verizon OnCue to get better economy of fail.</comment>


A look at the J language: the fine line between genius and insanity (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/a-look-at-the-j-language-the-fine-line-between-genius-and-insanity/ <comment><USER2> This is a really old blog of mine. I was so influenced by J I tried to do a startup in 2015/2016 making a more legible APL/TSDB. At present I'm more or less running a small cryptocurrency HF in J and using the J database engine jd.

<comment><USER3> Hey Scott...didn't know u were on HN. I've enjoyed most of your writing tremendously and am sad Kerf didn't work for you and your business partner. I hope you find time to write more about J in the future. Your comment on not wanting to write another single For-Loop has really resonated with me. I've played with J/APL/CommonLisp/Clojure and nearly another dozen languages, but Python has traditionally been my daily driver. Recently though I've been using Mathematica and have been very impressed with the terseness. There are zillions of functions that are very easy to combine to get things done. It is kind of like a Lisp on the backend as most functions consume and create lists. I've found having primitives for charting, graph-theory, numerical solvers, and OS level stuff to be very enjoyable with no explicit looping. They also have plenty of primitives for things like FFT and Linear Algebra...the price is quite high though.

<comment><USER2> I guess I use R for the sorts of things I might use Mathematica for. Mathematica is kind of the opposite of J; with J you only have a few primitives. Mathematica is a swiss army knife for data and math. Python is fine; I was an early adopter, I just don't have any reason to prefer it to R (package quality perhaps).

Kerf was a tough slog, but Kevin and I landed on our feet. We'll do something with the code one of these days.

<comment><USER3> Agreed on that front. I've used R & Mathematica as a swiss-army-knife for those things as well, although the stats stuff I do is a lot more basic than the stuff you do professionally. I'd like to get more proficient at J & APL, but that is a long road I've found.

Glad to hear y'all found something after Kerf. I would've guessed there would be some market for a tsdb cheaper than kdb+ (what I assume y'all were trying to do). Your blog post mentioning overhyped tech really gave me a chuckle. In college I started to focus on nanotechnology before going to a career fair and talking to some companies. Thousands of students getting degrees focused on that and there are only a handful of startups hiring researchers and only so many grad-student type jobs. I had a physics professor tell me a niche field comes up like that every decade which gets a lot of funding, but essentially under delivers and dies out. I think there is some benefit to nano materials like high strength cables, but not the miracle sauce that is getting preached everywhere.

<comment><USER2> Material science is real; nanotech, not so much. Glad you found your way out of that dead end. I have a friend with a Ph.D. in nanotech. He is a pretty good GPU programmer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Programmers continue to discover and re-discover APL and array-oriented programming.

If someone is serious about array programming/APL and wants to make a lucrative career in it, study KDB+/Q/K. There's a small but active community around them.

Just to relate an anecdote: I used to be a fairly active KDB+ programmer in finance but left both finance and programming ~8 years ago. Just yesterday, I got an email from my friend who's building a statarb fund around cryptocurrencies. They were going to use KDB+ and offered me a job for "300-500k base with incentives"...

My friends clearly don't know that I now work in sales & marketing :D

Aside: Roger Hui, the creator of J, is a programming sibling of Arthur Whitney, the creator of K/Q and the founder of www.kx.com

<comment><USER5> I understand the advantages of array-oriented programming, but why the J/APL syntax? There are plenty of column-oriented databases available. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_column- oriented_DBMSes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_column-oriented_DBMSes)

Also related is range-based programming. [https://wiki.dlang.org/Component_programming_with_ranges](https://wiki.dlang.org/Component_programming_with_ranges)

        return
            // Start by generating all dates for the given year
            datesInYear(year)
            // Group them by month
            .byMonth()
            // Group the months into horizontal rows
            .chunks(monthsPerRow)
            // Format each row
            .map!(r =>
                    // By formatting each month
                    r.formatMonths()
                     // Storing each month's formatting in a row buffer
                     .array()
                     // Horizontally pasting each respective month's lines together
                     .pasteBlocks(colSpacing)
                     .join("\n"))
            // Insert a blank line between each row
            .join("\n\n");

Much more readable than something like "(~R∊R∘.×R)/R←1↓ιR".

<comment><USER6> _Is_ it more readable? I'm even less familiar with D than APL, and that D code only looks more readable to me right now because it's mostly comments.

Wouldn't adding 8 lines of comments help newcomers to APL, too? This seems like a rather unfair contest.

Familiarity counts for a lot. 25 years ago when my primary language was 6502 assembly, I would have said 20 pages of assembly code look more readable than either of these.

In the long run, though, in every field I've worked in, being able to turn 20 lines of code into 20 characters has turned out to be a huge benefit. Once you familiarize yourself with the vocabulary, you can operate at a higher level. Nobody fears concise names and symbols when it's in a context they understand. I think even the most APL-phobic would admit that "a←b+c" is more readable than "assign(a,sum(b,c))".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Heres the .q file I use to read HN. Hobbyist programmer; corrections/improvements welcome. Better yet, how would I do this in J?

cat 1.q

       \c 2000 200
       k)-23!t:select from .:`:t.kdb
       k).Q.fs[{`t insert +:`url`title`user`item!("SSSS";",")0:x }] `:hn.csv
       k)-23!t:?:select from t
       `:t.kdb set t
       \\

As for how to get hn.csv, I use shell scripts to download all the pages of HN html (in accordance with robots.txt specified delay). Then I use a simple lexer (made with flex) to transform the html to hn.csv with the above selected columns.

After some years, the file hn.csv can grow quite large, larger than available memory.

To read and select articles from t.kdb, I use less(1) and some small shell scripts.

This lists all the articles, starting after a given offset, or zero by default:

          echo -e '\\c 2000 2000\nk)select i,title from .:`:t.kdb where i>'${1-0}'\n' \
          |exec q > 1;
          exec less 1;

Then, to select and read an article or its comments I use the ":!cmd" feature in less(1) to invoke an appropriate shell script (actually, an execline script). Quit, and I am returned to less.

Have seen lots of systems for reading HN made by HN readers, using various databases I guess. This is mine, using kdb+.

<comment><USER8> Neat, but why don't you use lynx?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shameless plug but I recently picked J back up as a hobby and it's been super fun. You can read some of my findings here: [http://thatjdanisso.cool/j-fibonacci/](http://thatjdanisso.cool/j-fibonacci/) [http://thatjdanisso.cool/j-pascal/](http://thatjdanisso.cool/j-pascal/)

I encourage you to give this language a shot - it's got some really cool ideas.

<comment><USER10> These are cool, but how practical would it be to produce a blog post akin to, "Here is a web app running J in the back end"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somewhat tangential, but some concepts and operators from J have been integrated into the audio programming language sclang for Supercollider [1]. Pretty neat! (I'm currently learning SC [2]).

[1] [http://doc.sccode.org/Guides/J-concepts-in- SC.html](http://doc.sccode.org/Guides/J-concepts-in-SC.html)

[2] [https://github.com/Engid/superfun/blob/master/first- impressi...](https://github.com/Engid/superfun/blob/master/first- impressions.md)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've read a bit about APLs and I've seen them popping up in HN a few times. They do seem incredibly awesome and the products around it (K/KDB+ etc) amazing.

However, in case I ever felt like learning one of these, I'd always wanted to know: the syntax crazyness, "a la brainfuck", is it a feature? a bug? Is it really needed? Can't they make an APL "look like Python" but using the same concepts, etc? Or is it "a thing" / something ultra-core to these languages, to be extremely terse / cryptic and intensely dense (each line packs a ton of punch!)?

e.g. just read [http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/didot.htm](http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/didot.htm) and some of the stuff in there can be translated quite well:

i. 5 --> list(range(0, 5))

i. _5 --> list(range(0, 5))[::-1] or list(range(4, -1, -1))

i. 2 _5 --> [list(0 + j, 5 + j)[::-1] for j in range(0, 10, 5)]

P.S. any pointers to content / books about the philosophy and ideas behind these programming languages are welcome! :D

<comment><USER3> Certain things translate, but not everything. In J when almost everything is an array and you're using points free form, you can pretty much combine everything without having to build classes...etc. Those python examples are much longer even for simple stuff. As far as books go, Dyalog APL has "Mastering Dyalog APL" for free and although Dyalog costs money, a hobby license is free. There is a guy who writes programming languages and books for a living. He recently wrote an array language called "Klong" and a book on it. J has several books. There's not a whole lot on the philosophy, but using it teaches you what you need. It looks like line noise at first, but you start to recognize idioms and phrases. Aaron Hsu did two HackerNews discussions on here and a YouTube broadcast on his "co-dfns" GPU compiler for Dyalog APL. That was pretty amazing. He talks about trying to write it in Scheme, Java,etc...but APL lets him put it all on a few pages to where he sees everything at once. At his level, abstractions aren't necessary.

<comment><USER13> I did a cursory Google search for Klong after your mention. The author of the language (and its book) posts his writings to t3x.org

Thank you for the brief mention -- I've been perusing his website and writings and am enamored. There's something about niche, obscure tools (and their authors) that give me some profound joy.

<comment><USER3> I was thoroughly impressed as well. It would take me years to read all his stuff. Klong us actually written in his other language. That is impressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who has written APL professionally, Numpy and Nd4j are much better choices to spend your time on. It might not be exactly the same thing, but thats the point. I only miss the linear algebra from APL and there are very awesome libraries that do better.

<comment><USER3> Numpy does have much better scientific capabilities, so you can use vanilla Python for the basic coding and Numpy routines when you need them.

APL uses arrays for everything though. I just wish it had taken off more on the scientific front instead of the financial side as the linear algebra stuff isn't nearly as fleshed out as Matlab/Numpy/Mathematica.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> read through the OP and scanned a few examples on the J Project Wiki

i suspect that, to capture the full value of J, one needs to already know the array-oriented paradigm (or at least have a strong motivation to learn the two in parallel)

knowing the AOP paradigm also helps understand the programming patterns as well as the syntax

still, the dense syntax has extraordinary power

for instance, n-queens in J (from Rosetta Code) is just 4 short lines:

        perm   =: ! A.&i. ]
        comb2  =: (, #: I.@,@(</)&i.)~
        mask   =: [ */@:~:&(|@-/) {
        queenst=: comb2 (] #"1~ mask)&.|: perm

a fundamental AOP patterns is evidenced here:

line 1: create the 2D array (n x n chessboard)

line 2: populate the array with candidate solutions

line 3: eliminate invalid solutions ('mask' them)

<comment><USER16> _i suspect that, to capture the full value of J, one needs to already know the array-oriented paradigm (or at least have a strong motivation to learn the two in parallel)_

Yes, that's the power that's specific to J. Having a library of functions like anagram index, nub, antibase, matrix inverse, etc. can be done in pretty much any language. So can using really short names for everything (have a look at the J implementation). What J has that isn't so easy to export is the way first-order functions work on arbitrarily high-rank arguments, and even a lot of APLs don't let you mix argument ranks in the way that J does (e.g., vector- matrix addition). Without the inherently rank-polymorphic function application semantics, it would just be an idiosyncratic pointfree programming syntax for people who don't want to use anything higher than second-order functions (and maybe have a grudge against static parsing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The talk "APLicative Programming with Naperian Functors" shows an approach to APL-like programming in Haskell [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1sT0xNrHIQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1sT0xNrHIQ)

Many APL idioms, when translated to Haskell, are related to applicative functors. A smidget of dependent types is needed as well, to express the dimensions of vectors, arrays, and the like.

</comment><comment><USER10> Writing J code feels a bit more like you're interacting with a database, in that the code is being executed in a way that isn't immediately obvious based on the logical instructions you give it. It seems like the higher level and terser you can make the instructions, the faster it will generally run, because J can more ideally optimize the operations.</comment>


Gas Prices Climbing Toward $5 Per Gallon - <AUTHOR> http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/04/11/gas-prices-climbing-toward-5-per-gallon/

<comment><USER2> Interesting how the media pundits call "$5/gallon" a few months back, and somehow we move towards that. I'd like more people to predict $2/gallon, and perhaps we'll move in that direction.

This seems more to do with the USD value than pure supply/demand/inventory. But I may be wrong.

<comment><USER3> _This seems more to do with the USD value than pure supply/demand/inventory. But I may be wrong._

I sold my Mustang back in January because I predicted gas would be $5/gallon within 18 months. At the time my reasons were based on the possibility that the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt would cause unrest in the Middle East. As it turns out, I was pretty accurate in that assessment. Additionally, the continued weakness in the US dollar isn't helping, and Japan's (and the rest of the worlds) inevitable short term shift away from nuclear power will only put more strain on the world's oil supply. $5 a gallon will be a reality sooner than we think. If anything, the US may ease pressure by releasing from the strategic oil reserves, but eventually we'll have to pay.</comment></comment>


Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118285/workaholism-america-hurting-economy <comment><USER2> That Cadillac ad is awesome. I'd never seen it before.

It watches like a parody, but at the end you're hit by the reality that yes, this guy is being completely serious. The message really is "sure, I traded away my quality of life, but _look at all this stuff!_ "

That's actually the notion that Cadillac is trying to sell. Amazing that they're doing such a good job of it.

Fortunately, there's no real trick to getting back that quality of life. You just need to take more vacation time. You can negotiate this in to your package, but if you're in as hot a talent market as we are today, you might find more success with simply taking it. "Hey, as a heads up, I'll be taking 3 weeks off at the beginning of June" followed a few months later by "Hey, I'm off to Kalymnos for a couple weeks in October", followed by "I'll probably be out of contact between Xmas and New Years."

Note the lack of "asking" above. The correct attitude to take is that it's _them_ who are acting irrationally by suggesting that you shouldn't take a healthy amount of time off to live your life.

<comment><USER3> The ad also inspired several parodies, including this one from Ford. The Cadillac ad is clearly trying to sell to an affluent, white, conservative audience which still believes their hard work and no vacation pays off. In the ad, they show their success with the car they drive. It's a study in market segmentation.

Ford's parody spins it around by focusing on social consciousness, eco- friendliness, and diversity, a better message for their electric vehicle audience. You could look at the ad subject's "dirt from food" startup as a literal circle of life, an homage to organic farming and green living.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAN61QK0aUI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAN61QK0aUI)

<comment><USER4> Exactly. It's not so depressing when you realize that Cadillac is selling to generally older people who have already made these decisions. It's a 60 y.o. thinking "I did work hard, and I deserve a Cadillac", not a 25 y.o. thinking "I'm going to bust ass working for the Man so I can drive a Cadillac".

Interestingly, the car is a hybrid, which is barely mentioned in the ad.

<comment><USER3> > Interestingly, the car is a hybrid, which is barely mentioned in the ad.

Technically speaking, both the Ford C-Max Energi and the Cadillac ELR in these ads are extended range electrics. They have smaller batteries than battery electric vehicles, but the gas engine exists only as a generator of electricity.

As I've always said, humans care about narratives. Most people and market segments value the story a car says about its owner over the details of the technology. That's why they don't mention it explicitly.

<comment><USER4> Right, it's just that the technology is forward-looking while the sales pitch is so regressive. I suspect the target market would actually like it less if they knew more about the technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even worse is the new trend in technology companies to eliminate "Set Vacation". It used to be the case that you felt "obliged" somehow to take your 10 days of vacation a year, because you saw it piling up. Even better, if you were laid off, you could get the vacation in cash, and that helped when you were cut off without a job.

But now, a lot of technology companies are saying, "No Set Vacation - you need to negotiate with your manager if you want some" \- which, in my experience, has resulted in a lot of people over the last two years taking zero vacation. It's not good for them. It's not good for the company. About the only people who are happy about this are Finance who no longer have to carry that liability on their books.

<comment><USER6> Is there no legal requirement for minimum number of days off?

<comment><USER7> _Is there no legal requirement for minimum number of days off?_

It depends on the nature of the employment. A few occupations (notably in banking) have MANDATORY days off. (Forcing bankers in certain categories of jobs to take vacations is a good way to detect long-term embezzlement schemes.) But there are definitely programming jobs in the United States in which the company says, "You can take time off whenever you like," which in practice means "You can take time off whenever the company isn't in crunch time," which ends up meaning never. Freedom of contract and flexibility in working arrangements is the hallmark of the United States economy and indeed is one of the reasons that the United States is as wealthy as it is--people choose the trade-offs they like among many possibilities.

<comment> brown9-2 The banking example you cite are voluntary industry practices or self- regulation, not legally enforced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's frowned upon to take any time off in the US. I've seen it viewed as a sign of a lack of commitment or even laziness. Consequently, we take less time off because we're scared we're going to lose our jobs.

No one is congratulated for taking time off in the middle of a project for your 'sanity' or 'to re-charge'.

Everyone is scared. There is no safety net. It's no way to live, but it's our reality.

<comment><USER9> > There is no safety net.

That's a wonderfully succinct way of describing the US. It seems like in a lot of EU countries if you fail there is something to catch you (higher, longer, easier to get unemployment pay for one example), whereas there really is no lower limit on how low the US will let you fall (e.g. healthcare is a privilege not a right in the US).

They do say that the US has some of the highest anti-depressant medication usage in the whole world (or was it more than the rest of the world combined? I can never remember). That isn't a surprise when literally your health, shelter, food, etc is all riding on keeping a job.

Thank god for Obama care and the new ban on pre-existing condition limits (i.e. that you could not get insurance if you were sick before). It kept people enslaved into a single job if they ever got sick since they could never afford to lose that health insurance or they'd die.

<comment><USER10> >It seems like in a lot of EU countries if you fail there is something to catch you (higher, longer, easier to get unemployment pay for one example)

For the avoidance of doubt, that does not include England (these days). People with cancer in the final stages are declared fit to work

<comment><USER11> Can you show me a link for that? I'd be interested in reading about it.

What I've read is that a lot of people on disability benefits (higher than jobseekers allowance) were in fact just fine and when properly re-examined magically stopped being disabled.

However, that assumes the review assessment was more reliable than the old one. I'd be interested in data showing whether it is or isn't.

<comment><USER12> Well this goes back decades when in order to massage the unemployment figures GP's (family doctors) where encouraged to mark people as disabled to get the figures down.

now the government has outsourced the test to a third party who get paid on the "savings" the produce so you get things like terminally ill people so yes the tests are now being fiddled

<comment><USER11> Seems this story is relevant:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/atos- quietly-d...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/atos-quietly- dropped-from-carrying-out-repeat-reassessments-by-dwp-internal-memo- shows-9151893.html)

The part about Atos wanting to pull out because of death threats against its staff is particularly nasty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And yet compared to those European countries, the US experiences significantly higher GDP per capita. Doing work and getting paid for it hardly seems like it's hurting the economy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita)

As to the studies cited in the article I would point to the OECD labor productivity statistics which, in the aggregate, seem to disagree. [http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL](http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL)

The fact that Americans seem to only be able to find identity and meaning in their work, so much so as that it causes a psychic crisis to leave even temporarily, is the real problem, if it need be called such, rather than some imagined hurt to the economy. But that problem is so ingrained in our culture it is never going away.

<comment><USER14> > _the US experiences significantly higher GDP per capita_

This is to be expected, if Americans are working longer hours than their European counterparts.

If you do a little back-of-the-envelope normalization (GDP/capita/average hours worked), the results are much closer. Norway, of course, absolutely dominates by this metric.

      US: 28.9
      France: 24.3
      Germany: 26.4
      Sweden: 25.4
      Norway: 38.0

<comment><USER15> > Norway, of course, absolutely dominates by this metric.

This is North Sea oil, right? Hard to generalize from.

<comment><USER14> > _This is North Sea oil, right? Hard to generalize from._

Wasn't really generalizing, just stating fact.

Norway has far fewer proven oil reserves than Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Algeria, Ecuador, Nigeria and on and on...

Oil is not a panacea. The combination of a progressive culture and resource endowment tends to win. But don't assume that the latter is most important.

<comment><USER16> > The combination of a progressive culture and resource endowment

Don't forget having a relatively culturally and ethnically homogenous population (when compared to countries like the US), something that is often forgotten when holding up Scandinavian countries (esp. Norway) as a model.

<comment><USER17> And the fact that there are fewer people in Norway than there are in New York City.

<comment><USER18> I think that's kind of why 'per capita' is used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article focuses on professionals, but I don't know if that's the angle I'm concerned about. American professionals work more, but they are also paid more. They also have much better vacation and leave policies. More concerning is the plight of median workers, who aren't making a lot more these days than their European counterparts, but have much worse vacation policies to deal with.

<comment><USER20> Vacation policies are the least of it. How about the lack of a safety net? Take health care. Civilized people should agree that medical care in a rich country should be available to everyone. The thought of people dying in the streets from preventable disease and injury sounds pretty horrendous.

But for the past 20 years we've been fed the same fabricated FUD about socialized medicine that has no basis in reality. People still genuinely believe that America has the best healthcare, which is arguably true for the 1%, but not for the average person. We have major structural problems the media completely ignores.

Just one personal example, last December I needed to buy a 6-pill dose of medication while visiting family for the holidays in the US (I currently live in the UK). This cost me $600, $100 per pill. And it turns out that this medication is _not as effective_ as the generic that would cost $2 per pill. But because there is no profitability this medication _is not currently manufactured in the US_. Had I been in the UK I could have walked into a pharmacy and bought this medication for £10.

Incidentally, while I was in line, the woman in front of me was purchasing a perscription of antibiotics, which cost $200, but she only had $100, so they only sold her half the dosage! I was shocked a trained pharmacist would be allowed to do this considering the perils of antibiotic resistance, but it's also pretty inhumane to withhold medication.

Frankly, the patriotic bullshit that Fox News and CNN feeds the populace about how much better we have it than Canada or the UK needs to stop. America needs to pull its head out of its ass and realize we are little better than a third- world country for anyone below median income who doesn't have a good group health insurance policy.

<comment><USER21> Your example of the cost of medication is an odd one. Most (all?) states in the US have mandatory generic substitution. That means the pharmacy _must_ fill your Rx with the generic unless the doctor wrote "Dispense as Written" on the Rx.

Now, if the generic was not available in the US that is a different story. Patents don't all end at the same time, so the drug may already be off patent in the UK, but not in the US.

Finally, to say "there is no profitability" in generics is laughable. The US has _lower_ generic prices that most of the EU due to fierce competition for the US market.

And finally, although the US may not have a single payer system, we do have public health for the old (Medicare) and the poor (Medicaid). In addition, if you are sick and you go to a hospital, _you must be treated_ regardless of your ability to pay.

<comment><USER22> >The US has lower generic prices that most of the EU due to fierce competition for the US market

This is not the case.

From direct person experience I can attest that:

Betaserc is 1/25 the price in Spain as the generic in the US

Nebivolol is 1/10

Lovastatin is 1/5

Enalapril is 1/2

<comment><USER23> I quote the parent poster: "The US has lower generic prices that _most of the EU_ "

Emphasis mine. Perhaps, if they were consistently "cheaper" than the US, fine. But your singular example doesn't quite contradict the person you're responding to. So it actually _is_ the case, unless you prove your findings for other EU countries.

I have no idea if that's the case, just pointing out the obvious flaw in your logic. Perhaps a little too-quick to look for contradictions if you disagree with the general point?

<comment><USER22> Quite correct: I have no idea what the price is in Lichtenstein. Nor have I compared the price of every drug manufactured. Nor even a majority of those thousands.

I have, however bought a dozen or so different drugs and have done so in France, Italy, Croatia, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. All of which were tiny fraction of the price in the US.

So given two hypothesis: the US is cheaper vs the EU is cheaper, and a bunch of data points all pointing that same way, a little bit of Bayesian statistics shows us which hypothesis is over overwhelmingly more likely doesn't it? We can agree to use Bayesian statistics even though there's no entry in the conservapedia can't we?

Contrast, for example, with the parent poster's hypothesis which comes form no more data than a.m. radio infotainment, I think there's only one rational tentative conclusion don't you?

<comment><USER21> I'd take a Commonwealth Fund analysis over your "Bayesian statistical analysis".

[http://managinghealthcarecosts.blogspot.com/2012/03/united-s...](http://managinghealthcarecosts.blogspot.com/2012/03/united- states-and-world-prices-of.html)

<comment><USER22> Ah yes that is obviously much better than extrapolating from anecdotes.

But of the few European countries compared, at least two have deregulated pricing for generics which is exactly the point we're talking about isn't it? The others may or may not (I don't know). But why were Norway, Sweden and Denmark omitted from that comparison when they are in every other comparison on the original page? It's a strange omission because generics in Scandinavia are lower than western Europe. Inside of Europe, countries that have deregulated their generics simply have higher prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Often, when articles highlight bad laws or customs, economical arguments are brought up.

Workaholism -> backfires and is bad for the economy

and in recent threads here on HN:

Workplace surveillance -> backfires, people feel controlled and performance suffers

Government espionage in USA -> backfires, people lose trust in US businesses

I don't feel that this is the strongest argument. "Please treat us better, it is in your own interest!"?

Germany's vacation was achieved through politics (labor laws) and unions (labor contracts).

The economic argument probably won't work, since economic considerations (real or imagined/short-term/local maximum...) have led to the current situation in the first place.

<comment><USER25> It's the only argument here in the USA.

It sucks that things are this way, but the only way to justify anything or argue for anything is an appeal to higher profits.

Money is this country's highest value, and all other values such as decency or shared prosperity have been thrown into the garbage and decried as socialism or wishful thinking.

<comment><USER26> And that is (in my opinion) the biggest problem of all. Focusing on profit margins alone (without any respect to the people), leads to burn-out, social discrepancies to the extreme (go to South Africa/Kapstadt, if you want to see, where it will end) and at last will dehumanize the human race. I write that, because I see in my country, where it goes and we long where an isle inside the ocean of capitalism. Now, capitalism has conquered humanity and capitalism will kill humanity finally, it seems.

Our capitalism of today exploits all the resources of this planet (oil, water, air, environment, humans, ...) in an increasing fashion and because this planet has only limited resources, soon all will break down. The question only is, what entity will break down first: capitalism, this planet, the human race.

What use will you make of your five smartphones, three tablets and seven cars, when your children will have no future?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Even as a trained neuroscientist, I was amazed to learn that even mild stress impairs brain functions involved in memory formation and retrieval, attention, and decision making.

If you are working long hours, you aren't really working. On less sleep, your brain has to work harder. With chronic stress, you start to impair your core competencies. Sleep is the body's way of mitigating the effects of daily stress.

</comment><comment><USER28> While the lack of safety net and fear of being fired are all valid reasons for Americans not taking vacation, what about another reason- they don't know how to vacation.

From personal experience, I get twitchy just from being sick/away from work for more than a day. I only take one day at a time of vacation (usually on Friday's to stretch out the weekend, and usually to get extra studying done or run some errands) only to feel like I wasted a day. It could be cultural, my family never took many family vacations (maybe 1 or 2). I'm lucky that my work encourages taking vacations, but the idea of doing so seems so weird for me.

<comment><USER29> I know what you mean! In my old office people would bank hours and rather get paid out then take their full vacation. Most of my friends in Europe tell me how their managers practically force them to take time off! (especially in the summer).

It seems like it has become so ingrained in the culture that not taking vacation, working long hours and being "busy" has become a badge of honor. But with more and more articles like these I see a shift coming as the new generation seeks more balance and lifestyle.

<comment><USER28> I'm 50/50 on the 'badge of honor'. For some it's true. For me, I don't know what to do on vacation. People get bored/anxious when they have nothing to do. Even going on a trip can be hard (planning, financing, dealing with changes, having to rest after the trip).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >The United States is the only advanced country that doesn't guarantee that its citizens will get paid vacation time and holidays

I find the reasoning consistently maddening. What they should be saying is that there is no federal mandate for private employers to pay workers during vacation/convalescence/maternity leave.

In point of fact, for government workers there is paid annual/maternity/paternity leave which ends up being "use or lose" and in effect becomes a mandatory leave - something universally omitted in these articles.

I think this just comes back to the classic debate about how the American economy is organized. Our constitution and US Code is not organized such that the government can easily dictate laws to private employers, that is by design.

<comment><USER31> > and in effect becomes a mandatory leave

this is a good thing, as the rest of the evidence presented in the OP suggests. People _should_ take all the leave they are entitled to.

<comment><USER32> I've pointed this out in other threads about this subject, but there are actually employers who pay out a bonus to employees who use 100% of the PTO in a given year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you're in tech, the way to do avoid this is:

\- Develop mission critical systems.

\- Make sure no one else understands them.

\- When you're gone, break them so your employer suffers and realizes they can't be without you.

\- Act like you don't care and want your time off.

Works for raises,too.

Of course, if you have a good employer, none of that is necessary.

</comment><comment><USER34> "keep the nose to the grindstone"

LOL there's a classism component that a guy spending 60 hours in the office, 30 of them on facebook, twitter, amazon, or HN, is an office overtime hero, but a guy using a shovel 39 hours a week while being paid for 40 is a lazy slacker who should be fired.

Aside from the class problem, another big problem is in a euro country with low income inequality, it means something to divide the total pie by the number of roughly equal people eating it. But if you have a pie where almost all the pie will be going to a couple fat guys and half the "eaters" are going to starve then dividing the pie by the number of "eaters" is utterly meaningless, or at least it is not comparable to the more equal country. It is a meaningless math problem.

If I bring a pack of oreos to work and serve them at a meeting as a snack/bribe, then dividing the pack by the number of people means something. If I bring in a bag lunch and eat every single oreo by myself other than maybe giving one to my college buddy while everyone else in the dept looks on jealously, then the division result is meaningless, or at least not worth comparing.

In a "let them eat cake" scenario if 12 people eat 12 equal-ish sized slices, the average slice size means something. In winner takes all USA, one fat dude eats the whole cake and 11 get nothin and the numerical average means nothing, nothing at all.

</comment><comment><USER35> Related: "Bring back the 40-hour work week" [http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...](http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/)

<comment><USER36> Fuck that. Computers, robots and the rest of automation / efficiency gains should (have been, and) be translated into 10-20 hour work week instead of increased consumption and consumerism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It seems like study after study shows that longer working hours don't result in long term productivity increases, but managers aren't listening. Is this an example of market failure or is there more going on?

<comment><USER38> My guess is it is people trusting their 'gut' over a study. Working long hours looks impressive. If you stay late or come in early you look like a team player who is willing to put in the extra effort. Whether or not that effort is actually valuable is immaterial, the appearance is what matters.

Call me cynical but I'd imagine that drives a lot of these overworked schedules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> You know it is very easy to be generous with another person's money. Yet mandating yourself rights to their money will likely lead to less jobs as many can be off shored. I know, what about those service jobs; automation.

Guild tripping works to a point. However this is a two way street. Many companies voluntarily offer paid maternity leave, some offer time off and paid time off. Yet who is there to hold the workers accountable? Just the cost of doing business? We all know people at work or have know that so abuse the system it makes your head spin.

In professional fields we have a choice who we work for, we can choose the good companies and if they continue to do well that will encourage their competitors to step up their game. However we should never assume we deserve something just because someone else has it or we convince ourselves its a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER40> One of the things the move towards a socialized healthcare system will do for this country is focus a debate on how to increase overall well-being within the country, and how to balance that with economic output. Something I think this article misses is the effect our work habits have on our health as a country. Studies have repeatedly shown that those last several hours per week are only marginally productive, but how detrimental might they be? I would imagine the health effects (stress, blood pressure, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, etc.) become amplified in those very hours in which productivity becomes nearly worthless.

It's hard to quantify any of this, however, so it might be completely glossed over in the article on purpose. I'm sure that thinking like this will become more prevalent...

</comment><comment><USER41> > Professionals, managers, and executives with a smartphone spend 72 hours a > week (including the weekend) checking work e-mail.

No, they spend 72 hours a week "interacting with work" in any way. Though the thought of an executive sitting and refreshing an inbox for 10+ hours a day is quite amusing.

</comment><comment><USER42> Since such trends are definitely harmful, at what point does it become a human rights issue? If so, the UN or some other organization should put their foot down and set some guidelines for which a country's citizens can sustainably achieve value to their employers and the economy.

</comment><comment><USER43> Overall Americans are not suffering from workaholism.

Americans are working less hours than they ever have as a whole.

The BLS reports the average is down to 34.5 hours per week:

[http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm)

The hours per year are comparable to Japan, Italy, Canada, New Zealand, and only 1.4% greater than the OECD average:

[http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS](http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS)

Meanwhile, a smaller percentage of Americans are working than at any other time than in the past 35 years:

[http://i.imgur.com/c5iStWB.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/c5iStWB.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER36> People in tech industry (all I know) tend to call in sick to "recharge" or get things done (that are causing them stress) rather than take vacation. The interesting thing is that this tacitly known to not really be sick and accepted both by peers and management. Vacation == lazy. Sick days == we all pretend we work 60hr weeks non-stop.

Cultural anecdote example from [http://maebert.github.io/jrnl/installation.html#quickstart](http://maebert.github.io/jrnl/installation.html#quickstart)

      2012-03-29 09:00 Called in sick.
      Used the time to clean the house and spent 4h on writing my book.

<comment><USER12> Ah gross misconduct as the lawyers and HR tend to call it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What I find interesting about mentioning the Cadillac ad and workaholism, is how Ford actually found workaholism decreased the efficiency of his workers:

> On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company took the radical step of doubling > pay to $5 a day and cut shifts from nine hours to eight, moves that were not > popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford's > productivity, and a significant increase in profit margin (from $30 million > to $60 million in two years), most soon followed suit.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight- hour_day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day)

</comment><comment><USER45> According to the BLS only 146M people are working in US - 46% of total population or 59% of working-age adults. And 26M of these are parttime. Goes to show you working hours are not evenly distributed among people.

</comment><comment><USER46> I feel this article is a little weak in one major sense: comparing the US to European countries based on non-working time is okay, but you also need to compare a metric like GDP. Using this, the US is #6 world-wide only behind two European countries. So yes, Euros may get more time off, but the US is a way more economically powerful and productive country economically.

Hurting the economy, sure people get burned out, but it is hard to come to that conclusion based on the data given and the authors points.

<comment><USER47> it also tries to state that working hard leads to less productivity, when US productivity eclipses most european countries.

i had a consultant complain that they hate working with europeans. the people always go on vacation and projects get held up, and they come back and have to get oriented with everything again. by the time they catch up they are on vacation again

<comment><USER48> How big a sample size of Europeans does your consultant have? Your claim that "Europeans go on vacation and projects get held up and they can never catch up again" is... dubious at best.

<comment><USER47> i made a statement, backed it up by mentioning productivity, and then made a reference to a real world example that I have observed, unlike the article that just mostly made platitudes.

if you'd like further evidence, the EU area has an unemployment rate close to 12%. companies are not anxious to hire europeans for one reason or another.

<comment><USER48> Platitudes? On the contrary, the article made a lot of claims to back up the central point, and backed almost every one of them with research papers.

The countries with a high unemployment rate are also poorer and lack other benefits, most notably the mentioned vacations. We're talking about developed EU countries, and that's what we're comparing against the US.

<comment><USER47> France, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain are developed nations, they just don't suit your argument. They all have or did have very long vacation days per year.

And you cant just cherry pick a few european countries and compare against the whole of the US. If we are going to play that game, why not pit them against silicon valley, manhatan, etc.

<comment><USER11> Greece and Portugal barely qualify for being developed. Greece in particular is basically a third world country that sits on Europe's doorstep. They got into the eurozone through gross fraud and manipulation of their own economic statistics, then borrowed money at German rates for years to enjoy a first- world standard of living. But the fundamentals in Greece were not first world at all. One memorable quote I saw in an article about this was, "We imported flat screen TV's and exported tomatoes".

What's happening in Greece is basically the huge pain of reality reasserting itself. Greece is more like a poor Asian or African country; enormous corruption, largely unskilled workforce, rampant tax evasion, no real industries to speak of outside shipping, huge imbalance of payments and so on.

Portugal is in much the same boat. It's "developed" in a sense, but like Greece up until very recently was actually a military dictatorship of the like you'd expect to see in the developing world. It's not developed in the same way Germany is.

With respect to the others, Ireland and Spain are indeed first world nations, suffering very badly thanks to the financial crisis. Ireland took on its banks debts and became poor in the process. Spain had a huge construction bubble.

France, well, OK .... ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> When you look for jobs find companies that will let you have adequate vacation time and actually make you take it. The older you get you'll start valuing your and your family's time more and more. Making loads of money and then waiting for that 1 week vacation to blow it off, or wait until you are old to travel is not optimal the way I see it. By that time you'll have so many ailments travel won't be an option for long.

</comment><comment><USER50> There is surely some freedom in being able to set whatever policies you like at your company without having a federal entity stipulate you give each employee X days of paid vacation.

If you want to heavily incentivize a cultural shift towards more vacation time for US employees, I don't think a federal mandate is as attractive as just an economic incentive. (Tax break to companies where X% of employees take more than Y days per year etc)

</comment><comment><USER51> It's actually really hard to find a job that pays a decent wage and gives a good amount of time off. The kind of job where you can 'work to live'.

Our mentality of "Americans love to work hard" is misleading. I'd say Americans are just optimistic. We are sort of 'forced' to work hard so we're optimistic and try to make the best of it.

</comment><comment><USER52> How does this stuff get so popular on YC?

Is there a founder anywhere that didn't put in months of 100+ hour weeks? Or, to clarify, a successful founder?

<comment><USER34> Thats kind of the point, there's an idealized platonic form of a startup with 100 hour workweeks and open plan offices and pooled time off and no vacations ever.

Everything mentioned above has been researched and proven to be a dismal failure at actual financial productivity.

Therefore in a disruptive startup-py manner there are, on average, enormous fat stacks of cash to be earned by going against the idealized platonic form.

WRT successful, I think it unlikely there are many holders of BS degrees who didn't experimentally binge drink in college. I certainly did, till I outgrew that phase. That correlation does not imply successful earning of a degree, in fact the cause/effect relationship probably implies getting alcohol poisoning is anti-productive at the goal of successfully obtaining a credential.

So the battle is between the cargo cult crew, who think success is the result of better following the platonic form of the ideal startup even if its a dumb idea, vs the rebels who know based on research they'll on average make more money if they disruptively toss the idealized platonic form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This seems too simplistic. The article focuses on one of the inputs to a nation's economic system -- labor and the price of that labor (wages). It seems to truly answer the question "What is it all for?" in an article whose title refers to "hurting the economy" it would make sense to at least discuss the output of that same system by citing GDP or some similar metric.

</comment><comment><USER54> How do you define "workaholic" ? Please take a look at Foxconn workers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Alas, this is about the level of analysis I've come to expect from years of reading _The New Republic_ on issues like this. Neither cultural nor legal conditions surrounding employment in the United States are ideal for workers who have the preferences of the author of this article,[1] but neither are they so horrific that the economy is "hurt" in a big way, especially compared to the economies of other countries.

Other comments posted before mine have already pointed out that overall prosperity in the United States is quite high, and I might add that many of the newly industrialized countries of east Asia (which characteristically have high population densities and limited natural resources, and thus are a model of what policies it takes to be prosperous despite a lack of natural advantages) increase steadily in wealth and general prosperity[2] despite ignoring parts of the author's advice.

For me, the crucial fact to keep in mind in any of these decry-America threads on Hacker News is that people vote with their feet. The United States continues to be a highly desired country to immigrate to,[3] so whatever trade-offs the United States economy offers, there are still a lot of people who think they are better trade-offs than the trade-offs in the familiar home country they were born in.

[1] [http://www.newrepublic.com/authors/bryce- covert](http://www.newrepublic.com/authors/bryce-covert)

[2] [http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/17/business/world-rich- list-s...](http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/17/business/world-rich-list- singapore/)

[3] [http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide- drea...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-dream- life.aspx)

[http://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign- born.html](http://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born.html)

[http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/immi...](http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/immigrate/immigrant- process/petition/file.html)

AFTER EDIT: I note the downvotes indicating disagreement, and I am curious about what you disagree with. Please let me know.

And I am amused by this correction to the submitted article: "Correction: This piece originally stated that workers with smartphones spent 72 hours a week on their off time checking work e-mail. In fact, the 72 hours include working hours, and the workers are just professionals, managers, and executives. We regret the error." We are not talking about a strongly numerate analysis here.

<comment><USER18> > Other comments posted before mine have already pointed out that overall > prosperity in the United States is quite high,

I've seen more that people have pointed out that _America_ is prosperous, not necessarily that America is _overall_ prosperous. The US seems to have one of the highest gini coefficients out of the OECD countries.

> For me, the crucial fact to keep in mind in any of these decry-America > threads on Hacker News is that people vote with their feet.

Which can't be easily decoupled from how well America has managed to market itself in the last 60 or so years, and marketing does not necessarily reflect reality. While the US hasn't been universally loved in all that time - see for example US foreign policy - it seems to have been able to market itself as a great place to live, also for people from developed countries. How long has there been a noticeable trend of "decry America" w.r.t. living standard on the Web?

<comment><USER43> Part of the problem is a double standard with regards to America. The other part of the problem, is that America bashers know a lot more about America, than the average person is likely to know about their country, so the basher feels free to attack and never fears their country will be put under a spotlight for its terrible qualities. It's a game of bash and hope for ignorance.

For example, if America doesn't have paid maternity leave, that's considered very backwards, and America frequently gets bashed for such things. If Spain has 34% real unemployment, somehow that isn't considered wildly backwards by comparison, because hey they have paid maternity leave and six weeks of vacation.

Or if Albania (or Nigeria or Congo or Vietnam) has a drastically better gini number than the US, somehow that's considered amazing. Except it's ignorant analysis.

I see this all the time in regards to Europeans bashing the US. They're counting on Americans not knowing enough about most of Europe to lodge a counter response.

<comment><USER18> > Part of the problem is a double standard with regards to America.

I don't know what that means.

> The other part of the problem, is that America bashers know a lot more about > America, than the average person is likely to know about their country, so > the basher feels free to attack and never fears their country will be put > under a spotlight for its terrible qualities. It's a game of bash and hope > for ignorance.

I don't know if that is _intentional_ , but it might be what happens.

But this could easily swing the other way - a lot of non-Americans know about America, so they can discuss it and amplify anything that they think is positive about it.

> For example, if America doesn't have paid maternity leave, that's considered > very backwards, and America frequently gets bashed for such things. If Spain > has 34% real unemployment, somehow that isn't considered wildly backwards by > comparison, because hey they have paid maternity leave and six weeks of > vacation.

What? The ridiculous unemployment of young people in Spain is seen as a big problem. Certainly a bigger problem than a small amount of maternity leave.

If it is viewed as _barbaric_ by comparison, then it might be because maternity leave is a matter of social policy, while unemployment is obviously not. It might be a symptom of mismanagement by the government, but no a matter of social policy.

I think Spaniards are more busy with protesting the government than with feeling smug about being better than Americans. On the other hand, a lot of them have a lot of 'free time', so who knows. :)

> Or if Albania (or Nigeria or Congo or Vietnam) has a drastically better gini > number than the US, somehow that's considered amazing. Except it's ignorant > analysis.

Oh come on. I have never seen America been compared to countries like Congo over stuff like this, except perhaps hyperbolically.

> I see this all the time in regards to Europeans bashing the US. They're > counting on Americans not knowing enough about most of Europe to lodge a > counter response.

Thankfully for America, there are plenty of prideful Americans willing to take a stand, it seems.

Keep in mind, though, that not all America bashing is from Europeans. Americans can do it, too. And even if a European (or whatever) country is being hailed as _better_ than the US, it might not be people from that country who are saying it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> What about Asian cultures?

</comment><comment><USER56> The entire first world could get by with 100% time off on the back of the poor of this world. Why not just lose the pretense and admit that the rich americans and europeans can truly afford to spend all their days idle, consuming stuff imported and made elsewhere by people who work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, while you all spend your days debating 35 vs. 40 hours of invaluable pretend work. Such hubris.

</comment><comment><USER57> Can someone explain to me why paid vacation is ok? If you don't work, in other words contribute to your job, why in the hell should you be paid? By the way that doesn't mean I don't believe in the workers' welfare, but just not in this way.

<comment><USER12> You do know that if your salaried like 99.9% of NH contributors are your not paid by the hour your paid to perform a job or function.

Some weeks I get hardly anything done but I once saved my employer 1/2 million pounds in an afternoon.

And British Telecom the company accountant and I once saved 3/4 million in around 2 days (fixing the AR system the FD brought)

You salary is averaged out over the 52 weeks for ease of running the payroll and tax systems for one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58>
        Ninety-four percent of professional workers put in 50 or more hours, and nearly half work 65 or above.

This sounds crazy exaggerated without any citation. According to wiki, "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average non-farm private sector employee worked 34.5 hours per week as of June 2012."

EDIT: reference.. [http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm)

<comment><USER59> Your quote includes Wal-mart greeters and burger flippers. I don't find it hard to believe that white collar professionals put in over 50 hours a week on average. My experience is in engineering for manufacturing.</comment></comment>


If you have a Facebook group, you should migrate it to a Page - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18966

<comment><USER2> Would be nice if it were possible to migrate from a Group to a Page.

<comment><AUTHOR> To elaborate, you should start a page, then message the group members to switch to the page to continue getting updates. After a while it seems you won't have the option to contact the members anymore.</comment></comment>