Does LinkedIn have a prostitution problem? - lone-star http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201305152206-0022761

<comment><AUTHOR> so the real reason why prostitutes use linked in isn't to FIND new clients or to create networks of whores on linked in -- it's to verify that their clients aren't cops.

in a lot of places, prostitution is illegal, and clients and "service providers" alike are worried about the repercussions of getting caught. some are regular people who are trying to make money, or like their side alter ego, but don't particularly want their friends or family to find out.

getting busted is scary for both parties. in order to protect themselves, they resort to ID verifications of sorts and a variety of other practices to help them increase the odds that the person they're spending their time with is not an officer of the law.

a busy linked in profile, business cards, and a drivers license that all point to the same person is a pretty good sign that that person ACTUALLY has the job they claim and they're not a cop.

source: i love hookers.

<comment><USER2> > whores

Can we at least call them prostitues if sex worker is too PC for HN?

<comment> loup-vaillant Funny, I didn't notice the negative connotation here. But maybe that's because of sentences I heard lately:

"Hey, what's the problem with being a fucking whore?" (Street whore¹ in Dexter –forgot which episode.)

"I have a lot of respect for whores." (witness in a radio documentary —quite moving, by the way.)

[1] I swear I mean no disrespect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Call me old fashioned, but I still don't get these articles that consist of 10 copy-pasted tweets. Where's the content? Other than the press release and some comments from random people, this has 0 information content.

<comment><USER4> It's a lazy version of Man on the Street, which news used to do a lot. The difference being 1) laziness and 2) the ability to cherry pick to a much greater extent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had never thought of it before, but LinkedIn is a brilliant place for a escort to market their services. Lots of business travellers, who are often a middle-aged man travelling alone. The marks should have money, are likely to be disease and drug free, and probably these exchanges occur in a low risk environment such as a business traveler's hotel.

<comment><USER6> The escorts definitely didn't miss the opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Technically they are professionals connecting to customers.

<comment><USER8> They're preventing them from getting a normal reputation, which is kinda sad :\

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem seems to me that sex work is stigmatized and, as a direct result of that, still not legalized and regulated in too many 1st world countries.

The 1st world global cultural gap (between e.g. the US and Europe, or even northern and souther Europe) may seem small when you stroll through your average mall to shop for apparel.

But it is often huge when it comes to views about morale and what is considered ok or not ok.

To someone from northern Europe who is living in a country where sex work is 'ok' in most people's view, legalized anyway and regulated in recent years, this LinkedIn stuff is one of these stories that sound like they're from another, previous century.

</comment><comment><USER10> Fiction becomes reality:

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-still-searching- fo...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-still-searching-for-hookup- subculture-on,29003/)

<comment><USER11> As they say, "reality is stranger than fiction"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aljazeera.com article a case for Betteridge's law of headlines?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

</comment><comment><USER13> No, just with social media marketing. But the two areas are easy to confuse.

<comment><USER14> Only one of them provides services for cash in an honest exchange.

<comment><USER13> In both cases the essence is the exchange of money in return for feigned affection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I deem this as an indication to the fact that LinkedIn is the de facto online social network for business.

</comment><comment><USER16> The reason this got talked about in my workplace was that another article covering it claimed that people were even endorsing prostitutes for various skills on LinkedIn.. the mind boggles :)

<comment><USER17> :) just as the social bookmarking buttons on porn sites, no one thinks they would be clicked yet some do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The title of the article raises a good question, though: what is the rationale for clamping down on this?

Have they had a real problem, or is it merely moralistic?

<comment><USER19> Potential PR problems

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> ok, in which countries do sex workers identify themselves with their name and actual profession and it is completely ok? likewho would even create a profile like this?

don't other families don't trash her as a bad mother, doesn't it affect their employment prospects, are their kids or parents not harassed etc?

if there is a country like that i want to live there.

<comment><USER21> Germany also has legal prostitution. And I think Belgium as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am speculating that the reason LinkedIn did it, is to get distanced from legal problems, not only in relation to prostitution laws (for example, Brazil says prostitution is allowed, but facilitating prostitution is not... LinkedIn was a facilitator? Also, several other countries have equally, or even more confusing laws on the subject), but also to law enforcement efforts against sex slavery and human trafficking.

I guess LinkedIn don't want the ball thrown on their court and be responsible for checking who is a real prostitute and who is a slave or a scammer.

</comment><comment><USER23> No.</comment>


Ask HN - JavaScript testing and dependency management - <AUTHOR>

For larger projects involving a large amount of javascript dependencies, what options are there to maintain a healthy code base? I am currently using Maven for accomplishing pretty much the same in Java (dependency management, checking code health, unit testing, generating documentation etc). Not saying that Maven is perfect, but it makes the entire process somewhat stream-lined. Are there similar tools available for javascript projects? <comment><USER2> Pimping my own projects here, but have a look at <http://jsclass.jcoglan.com/packages.html> and <http://he.jcoglan.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks really neat for runtime dependency management. However, what I am looking for more specifically is more of a preprocessing application/tool able to use scripts such as JSLint, JSCoverage and JSUnit.</comment></comment>


[Ask HN] Best way to generate thumbnail of websites? - <AUTHOR>

I'm creating a 'showcase of websites' website for a framework I use, and I'd like to automate the process of generating thumbnails of user-submitted websites. What is the best way to go about doing this?<p>If it helps, I'm using PHP and the website will live on a Linux-based VPS that I own. <comment><USER2> Here's a start: <http://cutycapt.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER3> IIRC Amazon Web Services has a web service for generating thumbnails of websites.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, it's dead: <http://aws.amazon.com/ast/></comment></comment>


MS Embraces Elephant of Open Source (Hadoop) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/microsoft-and-hadoop/ <comment><USER2> The article doesn't mention one of the most interesting aspects: Hadoop is Java.

It seems like Microsoft has had a policy of not touching Java with a ten foot pole for some time now. At least, since .NET came out, they've been pretty proactively anti-Java.

<comment><USER3> Probably has something to do with this:

 _"Sun Microsystems, the creator of Java, sued Microsoft in October 1997 for incompletely implementing the Java 1.1 standard.[2] It was also named in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust civil actions, as an implementation of Microsoft's Embrace, extend and extinguish strategy. In 2001, Microsoft settled the lawsuit with Sun and discontinued its Java implementation"_

Glad to see they're acting more mature these days.

<comment><USER4> > Glad to see they're acting more mature these days.

They still intend to port Hadoop to Windows. There is little to prevent extending it.

<comment><USER5> And I'm sure they will. . . but lately Microsoft seems to have grown up and learned to not create incompatible extensions. Perhaps they're finally starting to realize that nobody really loves them, so if they refuse to be nice to other children then they'll just get kicked out of the schoolyard. (Ballmer and upper management may not have, but they're facing the real possibility of a mutiny right now.) So it'll hopefully just end up being the kind of situation where if you switch platforms you'll lose some of the bells and whistles that were provided in a library on the old platform. Just like what would happen if you switch from one open-source platform to another.

What concerns me more is:

> the company is providing "connectors" for moving data between the two.

Microsoft loves to sink a lot of time into gee-whiz crap that lets their MVCs throw together gee-whiz crap using GUI tools without ever writing any code. They love it so much that they often waste all their effort on that stuff without bothering to get the fundamentals in order, and the end result is unusable garbage like much of ADO.NET and early versions of Entity Framework. That one sentence makes me fear more of the same old garbage: We'll get a port of Hadoop that comes with a plethora of toys in the System.DraggyDroppy namespace for impressing the suits, but is crippled by a broken set of bridge libraries for the programmers.

Which is fine. A Windows port of Hadoop isn't really necessary. We can just keep using REST or whatever to keep the Windows servers talking to the servers that do actual work, and Microsoft can keep chasing its own tail while it slides into irrelevance, and everyone can be happy.

<comment><USER4> > We'll get a port of Hadoop that comes with a plethora of toys in the > System.DraggyDroppy namespace for impressing the suits

Sadly, for programmers who work where the impressionable suits reign, it's usually the suits who pick the tools their underlings will have to use to assemble whatever was conceived in the demos. They'll end up having to deploy Hadoop on Windows 8 Server and talk to it using the vile offspring of Clippy and Hadoop that lives under System.DraggyDroppy.

<comment><USER5> And yet the suits wonder why there is such a shortage of competent developers who are willing to work in .NET.

<comment><USER4> A lot of things can be utterly incomprehensible to the suits. We have to be patient with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The company is now working to port the Hadoop platform to Windows — it was built for use atop Linux — and Doug Leland, general manager of product management for SQL Server, told Wired that the company plans to eventually release its work back to the open source community._

Haha, some things never change. A code dump of major changes developed in isolation. I'm sure the Hadoop commuity will love that.

</comment><comment><USER7> I m still waiting for the microsoft linux distro.

<comment><USER8> That is officially called suse [http://blogs.computerworld.com/17416/who_really_bought_novel...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/17416/who_really_bought_novell_microsoft) if you want to buy "protection"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's really great to see Microsoft moving on to embracing change, first WP7 and now this. A tendency and a positive attitude towards evolving the company is noticable.

</comment><comment><USER10> but what about dryad?</comment>


Supreme Court allows President Trump's travel ban to go fully into effect - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/supreme-court-allows-president-trumps-travel-ban-to-go-fully-into-effect.html <comment><USER3> This feels like the beginning of the end, doesn't it? You can almost feel the pendulum slowing down, pausing, and starting to swing in a different direction. Like we're passing into a whole new era...

</comment><comment><USER4> So for people asking just how much damage Trump's presidency could do - <USER2> is just the beginning. This is just a matter-of-fact done-deal with the Supreme Court in the pocket.

My sincere apologies to people affected by the ban.

</comment><comment><USER5> 7-2 was more surprising than I thought. Its sad the dissenters didnt write anything.</comment>


Minimal PDF - <AUTHOR> https://brendanzagaeski.appspot.com/0004.html <comment><USER2> I've spent much of the last year down in the internals of pdfs. I recommend looking inside a PDF to see what's going on. PDF gets a hard time but once you've figured out the basics, it's actually pretty readable.

Some top tips; if you decompress the streams first, you'll get something you can read and edit with a text editor

        mutool clean -d -i in.pdf out.pdf

If you hand mess with the PDF, you can run it through mutool again to fix up the object positions.

Text isn't flowed / layed out like HTML. Every glyph is more or less manually positioned.

Text is generally done with subset fonts. As a result characters end up being mapped to \1, \2 etc. So you can't normally just search for strings but you can often - though not always easily find the characters from the Unicode map.

<comment><USER3> That was informative, thank you.

I think a lot of people in the dev/power uesr community would mind paying $1 for a Kindle ebook where you note all your findings.

There have been so many instances where I wanted to do stuff with pdfs but ended up deflated.

> subset fonts

So you mean if a font has been embedded with three glyphs, 0x41=A, 0x61=a, 0x62=b, then string Aba would be \1\3\2?

<comment><USER4> The PDF reference is freely available and pretty readable too. I would recommend just read that.

To answer your question, subsetting a font just means taking a portion of its glyphs and it doesn't imply remapping. In fact for almost sane PDF files you will find ASCII characters mapped to themselves, making text search within decompressed PDF possible. My dirty watermark remover script basically uses qpdf to decompress the thing and then use regular expressions to search for Tj or TJ right after the specified string.

<comment><USER5> This is a copy of the ISO 32000 PDF specification:

[http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/pdf/p...](http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/pdf/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf)

This is a long document but it is very well written, if you read it on the bus or while you're waiting for your compiler to finish, you will get to understand it.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> See also on the same site: _Hand-coded PDF tutorial_ | [https://brendanzagaeski.appspot.com/0005.html](https://brendanzagaeski.appspot.com/0005.html)

If you need more, the "free" (trade for your email) e-book from Syncfusion _PDF Succinctly_ demonstrates manipulation barely one level of abstraction higher (not calculating any offsets manually): [https://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/details/eboo...](https://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/details/ebooks/pdf)

"With the help of a utility program called pdftk[1] from PDF Labs, we'll build a PDF document from scratch, learning how to position elements, select fonts, draw vector graphics, and create interactive tables of contents along the way."

[1] [https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk- server/](https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-server/)

<comment><USER8> >If you need more, the "free" (trade for your email)

Just a note that Google lets you get a new email address that isn't spammable, through security through obscurity:

-> You can use your gmail address, add a + after it, and add a keyword. So if you are email@example.com you can give out email@example.com and then later if that starts getting spammed you can redirect it.

NOTE:

This is an incorrect solution (Google, please fix this) because anyone can run a regex removing the + part.

Instead the correct solution is that if you have gmail open, in a single click you should be able to generate a high-entropy gmail address (that does not deplete the namespace) and link it on _your_ end with "syncfusionpdfsuccintly".

If I already have gmail open, 7 seconds to create a new gmail address as follows:

      1.  Click something to start the process

      2.  Type "syncfusionpdfsuccintly" to tag it on my end

      3.  Click something to copy a resulting high-entropy gmail name into the clipboard.

I should then be able to paste it into a form, get it delivered straight into my inbox ( _never_ spam), and redirect it to spam if it starts getting spammed.

This would allow people to contact us without ever getting into spam, while entirely removing their ability to contact us if this email address starts getting spammed. There are no downsides.

I believe Google's engineers are smart enough to move from security through obscurity (relying on the knowledge that no spammer can _ever_ invent and run the exact regex s/\\+[.]+@/@/g to remove the security through obscurity, as this would entirely break this security, exposing the underlying "protected" email addresses) to something that works.

Until that day comes you can rely on the security through obscurity to give out a secure email address that can't be spammed. Just add a + and a tag!

Please.

Google: I believe you are smart enough to understand this comment and implement this solution, which can be prototyped in 30 minutes and solves the spam problem forever. You can do it! I believe in you. You're 99.999% there and your security through obscurity works very well for me. I use it.

I hope you will go above and beyond and solve the remaining 0.001%. It would just make me feel better to know that a 13-character regex couldn't defeat your solution.

<comment><USER9> I wrote something in node.js that does exactly this. But I have only used it for personal use. I'm honestly surprised that nobody has done this already.

Right now it just silently drops expired addresses. But it is so satisfying to think about bouncing (but stuff like bouncing behavior is something you have to consider when running a mail service).

I was thinking of turning it into a service, but I'd have to read up on how to scale it. Running an SMTP server takes a lot of care. I've found that just using nearlyfreespeech.net's mail forwarding is most reliable to receive emails. So I do that for now, since it is on a small scale.

I just got so frustrated with how this problem has such an obvious technical solution. At least for us users, anyway. It's not a solution for the marketers.

I strongly suspect that Google is very reluctant to do anything to make the email landscape unstable. I think that if Google started offering this, it would shake up so much of their business.

<comment><USER8> As I mentioned, Google already offers this. Just add a tag with + to your existing gmail address and you instantly create a tagged new one.

<comment><USER10> Except as pointed out, a spammer (etc) can remove the tag and get the original address using a regex.

<comment><USER8> only until Google fixes it as suggested. they have some smart people there and I believe in them!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The biggest complexity (and security) problem with PDF is that it's also effectively an archive format, in which more or less every display file format conceived of before ~2007 can be embedded.

<comment><USER12> Maybe it's time for a PDF-2017 standard that drops support for those older exploitable formats

<comment><USER13> If they're exploitable, how would a new version help? Attackers would just use the older, exploitable versions. And if PDF viewers only allowed the newer version, you'd break support with every PDF made.

<comment><USER14> >And if PDF viewers only allowed the newer version, you'd break support with every PDF made.

That is not at all something that would have to be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> See also klange's resume: [https://github.com/klange/resume](https://github.com/klange/resume). Resume pdf that's also a valid ISO 9660, bootable toaru OS image.

<comment><USER16> Looks like he did it "the hard way" \--- and unfortunately it's not a truly valid PDF since the startxref isn't within the last 1KB of the file and the version number in the header is corrupt. Not all PDF readers will accept that.

On the other hand, it is possible to make a completely valid PDF and bootable ISO. The first 32KB of an ISO is officially "unused", which is probably why GRUB decided to put itself there, but that can be relocated somewhere else --- the El Torito boot descriptor will need to be updated to point to it --- and the PDF signature (which can be a valid one) and as many objects as will fit can be put in that area, with the rest anywhere else. The xref table can be moved to the very end and the offsets updated to point to the objects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've encountered .pdf files which internally embed a proprietary Adobe extension called XFA[1]. I think they are created using Adobe's LiveCycle product.

They are a real pain because they render fine in Adobe Acrobat, but most other PDF renderers (including browser built-in ones) can't render them. Instead they render a blob of interstitial "loading..." text that is also embedded in the PDF (which the XFA rendering would then overwrite). It was a pain to me personally because I had to figure out a way to do programmatic form-filling of some fillable form XFAs, and most PDF libraries don't work with them (they expect traditional AcroForms fillable forms).

But in reading the XFA specification I found it interesting it had its own JavaScript interpreter (including supporting XHR requests as part of some internet-integrated form-filling feature) and another proprietary scripting language called FormCalc. I guess it opened my eyes to PDFs being a container format and the kinds of things they allow you to embed.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFA)

<comment><USER16> That's unfortunate. I guess the same thing that happened to HTML pages (turning into less accessible JS-based SPAs) is now happening to PDFs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Plain text ... but with _hard offsets_ ... encoded as _decimal integers_. Yikes!

</comment><comment><USER19> This is good but Postscript is even better. Someday I'll learn it and see what I can do with it.

<comment><USER20> Very much worth learning, if for nothing else being an extremely cool stack language. I learned it for my first job that I only had Turbo C 2.0, foxbase, and an HP4 printer with the Postscript module to do graphical reporting on a dataset.

chris_st's recommendations are how I learned it.

<comment><USER21> You lucky guy.

I remember going though HP and Epson printer manuals, writing down their control escape codes into a xBase table so that our Clipper application could talk to the printers and do the respective formatiing.

Having access to a PS printer would have been a much more positive experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm frustrated by governments using PDF for full in forms and yet open source tools are very weak in this area.

This is not better than paper and pencil, in terms of accessibility. And we need to do better somehow.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you like this you might enjoy this repo: [https://github.com/mathiasbynens/small](https://github.com/mathiasbynens/small)

</comment><comment><USER24> Would be nice if browsers would support saving pages directly as pdf using there own pdf librarys.

<comment><USER25> Everything on the Mac has Print to PDF natively and it's _so nice_

It's one of the things I miss most when using an other OS.

<comment><USER26> Not just print, but also the ability to natively _manipulate_ PDF, because the Mac still has the display Postscript stack from the NeXT era and PDF essentially an envelope for it.

It's underused these days, but still available to apps, and they can interchange data in that format. Linux support for PDF isn't anywhere near as integrated.

<comment><USER27> > the Mac still has the display Postscript stack from the NeXT era and PDF > essentially an envelope for it.

This is a common misconception. Display PostScript was never present in any released version of macOS. It was replaced by the Quartz renderer, which is rather different.

Quartz can display and output to PDFs, but it does not use PDF as an internal format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Most PDF files do not look readable in a text editor. Compression, > encryption, and embedded images are largely to blame. After removing these > three components, one can more easily see that PDF is a human-readable > document description language.

Of course, PDF is intentionally so weird: it was a move by Adobe because other companies were getting too good at handling postscript.

Embedding custom compression inside your format is seldom worth it: .ps.gz is usually smaller than pdf.

<comment><USER4> It's hardly custom compression. It's just deflate and ZIP, IIRC.

<comment><USER28> Yes, true. But it's build into the format, instead of transparently applied afterwards.

<comment><USER4> The same could be said for PNG and many other common formats that use zlib.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This page was helpful to me a couple years ago while crafting the tiny PDF used for testing in Homebrew. [https://github.com/Homebrew/legacy- homebrew/pull/36606](https://github.com/Homebrew/legacy-homebrew/pull/36606)

</comment><comment><USER30> PDF is like c++

it's used everywhere because you can do everything with it.

This also leads to the problem where you can do anything with it.

so each industry is kind of coming up with their own subset of pdf that applies some restrictions in the hopes of making them verifiable.

the downside is that these subsets slowly start bloating until they allow everything anyway.

i'm looking at you PDFa. grr.

</comment><comment><USER31> PDF is literally the worst possible format for document exchange because it has the most unnecessary complexity of all document formats, which makes it the hardest to access. But popularity and merit are two totally different things.

<comment><USER25> That's unfair. It's terrible from a technical perspective (due to cruft, mostly) but nothing comes close from a deliverable standpoint.

It's simply the most reliable print-ready format. It is a Portable Document Format in every way that matters _to the end user_

There's a reason one of the main uses of LaTeX is outputting to PDF

<comment><USER32> Completely agree, as a dumb user of latex I only care that I can make a document and that it looks the same on every computer or browser or printed out.

That solution just happens to be latex, especially since virtually all computers will have some way of viewing and printing pdfs by default.

<comment><USER25> I really wish there was a better solution to typesetting than LaTeX (well, XeTeX if you're serious about Unicode & language support I guess, _which you should be_ )

I hate it _so much_ , if it wasn't for its excellent abilities in specific areas (hyphenation, etc) I'd much prefer CSS.

Yes, TeX makes me prefer _CSS_ for layout. That's how painful I find it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The preachers getting rich from poor Americans - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47675301 <comment><USER2> This isn't limited to the US either, City Harvest Church in Singapore is a great example of the prosperity gospel in action elsewhere. S$50 million (US$36m) of donations were siphoned from the church, of which half went into attempting to launch the pastor's wife into pop stardom, including this distinctly un-churchy video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSZQH_c9jOU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSZQH_c9jOU)

(Yes, that is Wyclef Jean; he was paid almost $2m to produce the song.)

More: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Harvest_Church_Criminal_B...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Harvest_Church_Criminal_Breach_of_Trust_Case)

<comment><USER3> It's an issue with the Charismatic Movement, which is particularly strong among Evangelicalism but hardly limited to it. It promotes a cult of personality, or rather numerous cults of personality.

Both Catholicism (even with the pope) and traditional Protestantism have mechanisms to resist this. Catholicism resists it because clericalism pushes back against cults of the person of the pope specifically (notice the incessant factional backstabbing), but also because the parish priest is more a functionary of rites than anything else--sermons in Catholic churches are generally brief. Protestant denominations like Presbyterianism, Methodism, and Lutheranism maintain (at least nominally) the Catholic tradition of apostolic succession and a system of Presbyters and Bishops, which diffuses theological power structurally. Notably Anabaptists and Pentecostalism discard these structures almost entirely, so no coincidence that they're more susceptible to cults of personalities.

I grew up Catholic in a small southern town. There was one Catholic church among dozens (if not a hundred plus) protestant churches; it was mostly attended by military families. I remember the parish priest (who was my confirmation sponsor as I had no family or close Catholic family friends to sponsor me) complaining that the community, including parishioners, gossiped that he wasn't godly enough. He drove around in a Cadillac and drank (moderately). What the community didn't know was that he was pretty much the only pastor who personally volunteered at local charities unaffiliated with our church, in addition to the work he did for the church's own programs. But he never made it a point to inform people of this because he did it on his personal time--just like he bought his Cadillac using his clerical stipend and drank on his own time. He refused to advertise this on principle. He railed against the cults of personality of local churchgoers (including his own parishioners) and of local churches. Their priorities were all screwed up. Since then American Catholicism specifically and Roman Catholicism globally has increasingly shifted in this troubling direction, in tandem with Christianity more generally.

Anyhow, to reiterate, it's not just a problem with Baptists or Pentecostalism, nor do all Baptist and Pentecostal churches suffer from the problem. But there's an interplay between doctrine and institutional structure. People will readily admit it when discussing how the Roman Catholic hierarchy protected child rapists; but they refuse to see the downsides to excessively decentralized institutions that put too much unchecked power and influence in the hands of local leaders.

The U.S. has exported the problem globally because it's exported the Charismatic Movement.

<comment><USER4> I found this comment very interesting. Can you give an example of a cult of personality within the anabaptist movement?

<comment><USER3> One piece of evidence: if you look at this Wikipedia list of megachurches, Baptist-affiliated (and especially Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated) churches are second only to so-called non-denominational: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megachurches_in_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megachurches_in_the_United_States)

Many of the others, including Calvary and many non-denominational ones, are largely derivative of Anabaptist theology--e.g. practice adult baptism. Pentacostalism originally drew most of its adherents from Baptist churches. Ancedotally, where I grew up people readily migrated between Baptist and Pentacostal churches. Interestingly, there was also a group of Catholic parishioners at my church who practiced--or I guess I should say experienced-- speaking in tongues.

More to your point, famous televangelists like Billy Graham were Baptist. Oral Roberts identified as a Baptist early on, and went to a Baptist seminary school. Likewise for Pat Robertson. Baptists really seemed to dominate the scene during the latter part of the 20th century when the rise of the megachurches began, though they were preceded and succeeded by iconic personalities of different denominations. Nobody really remembers the ones that preceded them, like the Roman Catholic Bishop for whom the word televangelist was supposedly originally coined, exactly because the shift toward cults of personality hadn't become widespread.

I'm neither a scholar of theology nor sociology, but I don't think this is all coincidental.

Part of it is likely that the Second Great Awakening ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening)) was largely dominated by Baptist and Methodist churches and especially charismatic (small 'c') pastors who at least nominally adhered to those theologies. IME, many modern American Methodist churches adhere to a significantly different theology than traditional Methodism, in many respects akin to Anabaptism. Methodism spread globally primarily through British colonies. IIRC, Methodism was the dominate Christian denomination in Singapore and Malaysia, and I'm pretty sure you could trace import of the Charismatic Movement into Singapore through the Methodist communities.

The critical element of Anabaptism isn't theological, per se, but the (lack of) institutional and community structures. Mennonites are Anabaptists but you don't find Mennonite megachurches or televangelists because the structures that Anabaptism removed were replaced with other communal structures. I do know a Mennonite who, with a Methodist spouse (whose father is a Methodist Bishop), attend an evangelical church--either Baptist-affiliated or non- denominational. It's a relatively easy transition from a religious perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They are extremely difficult to kill without government regulations, James Randi exposed Peter Popoff (80s televangelist faith healer) as a straight up 100% fraud and that didn't seem to really hurt him much if at all in the long run.

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

>He went bankrupt the next year, but made a comeback in the late 1990s. Beginning in the mid-2000s, Popoff bought TV time to promote "Miracle Spring Water" on late-night infomercials, and referred to himself as a prophet.[2] Business Insider remarked, "No matter how many times his claims are debunked, he seems to bounce back with another version of the same old scam."[3]

>Popoff was collecting almost $4 million per year in the late 1980s, according to Randi.[41] In 2003, his ministry received over $9.6 million, and in 2005, over $23 million. In that year, he and his wife were paid a combined salary of nearly $1 million, while two of his children received over $180,000 each.[42] Financial data is not available for Popoff's ministry since 2005 because Peter Popoff Ministries changed from a for-profit business to a religious organization in 2006, making it tax-exempt.[40] Popoff purchased a home in Bradbury, California, for $4.5 million in 2007.[43] He drives a Porsche and a Mercedes-Benz.[44]

</comment><comment><USER6> > [H]e dresses in a suit, pulls out a Bible and urges viewers to pledge a very > specific amount of money. "Don't delay, don't delay," he urges, calmly but > emphatically ... drawing in viewers who ... are desperate for change.

Can you imagine if this kind of stunt were pulled in the secular sphere? An aspiring leader dressed up in a suit, urging viewers to raise a specific amount of money. "Don't delay, donate today!" drawing in viewers desperate for change.

Wait a second...

<comment><USER7> Ha. I see what you're getting at. It's a little different because politicians actually do have the power to change things. Proof by existence: before there was no ACA, now there is an ACA.

While being a member of a church can probably improve your life in some ways -- a built in community of like-minded people -- it won't directly fix your problems in a way that another community can't. And if you're not using church for community, there is really very little chance that donating will do anything positive for you. At least, if it did, you'd think someone would find evidence of the same.

<comment><USER8> Are you saying that organized religion doesn't have the power to influence change? Politicians do not have a monopoly on impact, in fact, I would say that they have become quite inefficient at it.

<comment><USER7> At least in the United States, organized religion is officially supposed to be apolitical, at least if the church is organized as a 501(c)-3. So if you're asking whether the church can influence social policy, the answer is obviously yes, but officially it is meant to be "no." And in any case, donations are not really connected to that process.

But if you're asking whether churches do good directly, then the answer is obviously yes. The question is one of degrees. I believe that most church income is spent on church matters (salaries for ministers, staff, rent, evangelism, programs, etc.), and a relatively small amount of it goes to actual charity -- although this belief is a supposition of mine, so I am open to being corrected. In light of this belief, no, I don't think churches in practice can effect systemic changes in the well-being of non-employees. Certainly not nearly to the extent that the government has that capability.

<comment><USER8> Churches file separate articles of organization for political donations, and members donate to those separately purposefully for influencing change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a great documentary called Marjoe (a conjugate of Mary and Joseph) about how scammy some of these people are. It won Best Picture in 1972: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjoe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjoe).

</comment><comment><USER10> It really is a thing.

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

</comment><comment><USER11> It is not just limited to US. You will be surprised how much of that money goes back to forced conversions in countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc. In India, the state of Nagaland has 90% christian population. They destroyed the local cultures and traditions.

<comment><USER12> Local traditions like headhunting?

The Naga were headhunters before converting to Christianity, National Geographic has a clip about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLs- UoqzLlU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLs-UoqzLlU)

<comment><USER11> Nagaland has more than 16 major tribes and there are 20 minor tribes. Not all them practice this.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_people#Encounter_with_oth...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_people#Encounter_with_others)

Also, the headhunting was a resistance by the tribals to christian missionaries.

<comment><USER13> >>Also, the headhunting was a resistance by the tribals to christian missionaries.

Source please? (The Wikipedia article does not say this).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I grew up near the Falwell family's sphere of influence and I'm still stunned at the extent of their deceit. They effectively control a mid-tier city, a large private Christian university, and a huge voting bloc of conservative Christians

</comment><comment><USER15> It's not just televangelists; the local variety of parson is just as exploitative. I grew up in the Mississippi Delta—every "Reverend" drives around in a Cadillac while most of his congregation struggles to make ends meet. These same Reverends preach on the religious benefits of daily fasting while the children of their congregations get their one square meal of the day at school. </anecdote>

<comment><USER16> For some data points:

"When it comes to clergy, new Catholic priests, which includes bishops, can expect a salary somewhere in the mid-$20,000 range, with median salaries varying slightly depending on geography. The highest median salary for a new priest is in the Midwest, at $29,856, while the lowest median salary, $24,960, is found in the Central region, which spans from Minnesota to Texas. The maximum salary for priests ranges from $29,744 in the West region to $44,417 in the Midwest."

Now this is Catholicism, so it's going to be regimented, along with mainline protestant ministries.

But even for the more 'American flavours' of Christianity, I suggest the average income is probably lower.

I'd consider these hustlers about the same level of the vast number of people who hustle products on their Instagram accounts which is to say some do very well, most don't.

Oddly, I'm not sure how much authenticity and revenue correlate for this, or any other field of service. It's the 'marketers' that tend to win.

[1] [https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/08/11/how-much- do...](https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/08/11/how-much-do-catholic- priests-and-their-lay-colleagues-make-new-report-gives)

<comment><USER17> but everything included, so that is basically 35k, tax free, or in a lower tax bracket since so much of the compensation is non monetary, purely disposable.

edit, this says the median is 45k [https://work.chron.com/much-catholic- priests-paid-12915.html](https://work.chron.com/much-catholic-priests- paid-12915.html)

<comment><USER18> Bear in mind that while church organizations don't pay taxes, individual employees (including priests) do still pay income tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My favorite new instagram is [https://www.instagram.com/preachersnsneakers/](https://www.instagram.com/preachersnsneakers/)

Clearly a quest to reach "new audiences" but it gives me a good chuckle.

</comment><comment><USER20> Crooked preachers have been around for a long, long time.

The bar to entry is now lower, scammers don't even have to learn to talk smoothly or quote scripture. Anyone that can dream up a sympathetic story can be a GoFundMe scammer.

</comment><comment><USER21> There is little hope for under educated people. It's weird that educated people still believe in the supernatural.

</comment><comment><USER22> What happened to "receive free, give free"? (Matthew 10:8)

</comment><comment><USER23> It surprised me to read that they had been informed by John Oliver, because I have always assumed that Oliver's reach would be rather insular because of both its content and nature of distribution.

<comment><USER24> Indeed! Serendipity.

> In August 2015, the couple were channel-hopping in a Jacksonville motel > room, when they caught an episode of John Oliver's satirical news show, Last > Week Tonight. > > "I never watched John Oliver. I had never even heard of > the guy," says Larry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Smart ones profiting off of the masses, like the stock market, or just how the whole world works.

<comment><USER26> You assume that the whole stock market is a zero-sum game which is patently false. Businesses raise money , many if not all use this money to grow their businesses and return money to shareholders via dividends / buyback. Stock appreciation is a result of this activity. FYI , a dollar invested in S&P index in 1926 was worth 5000+ dollars in 2014 ([http://skloff.com/growth- of-1-dollar-investment-1926-2014/](http://skloff.com/growth-of-1-dollar- investment-1926-2014/)). If this is profiting off the masses, I don't know what to say :-)

<comment><USER27> There is a small army of portfolio managers that under perform index funds year after year. Like almost all of them. And investment banks both selling securities and betting against them at the same time.

The non zero sum part is called the real economy. Which itself is under performing the market.

Or the current crop of tech companies which exist solely to launder negative interest central bank credit.

<comment><USER26> Can you define current crop? If you think Uber , Lyft etc. you're right. I'm talking about stock markets as a whole. Not one or two crazy stocks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Good to hear that Ole Anthony and John Bloom (Joe Bob) are still at it!

</comment><comment><USER29> why is this in hn? if it is relevant, would hn link to articles on any selfless acts and charities by the religious(given that in reality hundreds of millions are helped by them)? seems there is an anti christian bias in this sort articles selected by hn; only the ones reflecting badly on christians are allowed.

<comment><USER30> Google "hacker news atheism" if you want to see unflattering articles about atheist.

Among the first page of results for me include:

"Atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19445855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19445855)

"You don't need religion to find /r/atheism obnoxious" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087955)

"When atheists lack the courage of their convictions" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18425245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18425245)

Also cultural articles are shared and commented on like most everything else that the community here finds interesting. Asking why this is on hacker news is just lazy virtue signaling tbh.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should we have an explicit 'Home' link in our site's nav? - <AUTHOR>

Or is the logo enough?<p>We're redesigning the results page for www.autotempest.com to turn it into more of a one-page web app (ie kayak.com for cars).  The 'app page' will have a different layout and a similar but different style from the homepage and rest of the site.  I'm wondering whether it needs a clear "Home" link in its navigation, or if a sufficient percentage of users are likely to understand that clicking on the logo takes you to the homepage. <comment><USER2> Because a large, complex site can be intimidating to navigate, it's always desirable to have an easy way to return to the home page from anywhere within the site's structure. This avoids the problem of people getting so lost and frustrated that they bail and go somewhere else.

But you know, you can establish this for yourself by performing an A/B test, one with, and one without, a home link on each page. See which design holds onto visitors longer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that there should be an easy way to get home from each page. That's why it's become standard to have the logo link to the homepage. The question is whether enough people are aware of that convention to dispense with the additional Home link in the navigation.

True that we could test it, and we may well do so, but there are a lot of things we'll want to test about the new design, so we want to aim as close to optimal as we can to start with.

<comment><USER2> > I agree that there should be an easy way to get home from each page. That's > why it's become standard to have the logo link to the homepage. The question > is whether enough people are aware of that convention to dispense with the > additional Home link in the navigation.

How about having the logo tag have a title field that says "Go to home page" as well as changing the cursor to a hand? This will prompt users who hover over the icon without taking up room in the layout.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both good things to do, but they don't really solve the problem IMO. In order for any kind of mouse-over effect to work, the user has to move the mouse up into the corner and mouse over the logo. If they're doing that, they probably already have a good idea that the logo goes somewhere - likely the homepage. I'm wondering what percentage of people have no clue about that and would be likely to just get to your homepage however they got there in the first place (probably Google) if they can't see an explicit "Home" link. I expect this depends a lot on the audience though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Evidence Suggests That Human Limbs Evolved from Shark Gills - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/new-evidence-suggests-that-human-limbs-evolved-from-sha-1771427923 <comment><USER2> First off, credit goes where credit is due, that is great research from the team at Cambridge. If proven further, that evidence is sure to change every evolution course taught in the future.

For me though, that headline just _killed_ the story. Come on Gizmodo. Find someone else for the evolution assignments.

I know it's a deep subject to wrap your head around, but you _just can 't say_ that human gills evolved from shark limbs. What should have been squeezed into the headline is this: our ancestors' limbs evolved from what were once the gills of an ancient species -- that eventually evolved into a thousand other species, but who most closely resembles our modern sharks.

"New evidence suggests that human limbs evolved from our ancestors' gills" is just as evocative, and has the nice bonus of not being a blatant lie.

</flame></comment>


Hacker League Acquired by Intel for Undisclosed Amount - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/03/hacker-league-mashery-intel/ <comment><USER2> For those interested, here are some other posts about the acquisition:

\- [http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/12/03/intels-mashery- acqu...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/12/03/intels-mashery-acquires- hackathon-management-platform-hacker-league/?fromcat=all)

\- [http://pando.com/2013/12/03/new-yorks-hackathon-superhero- se...](http://pando.com/2013/12/03/new-yorks-hackathon-superhero-sells-his- hackathon-hack-to-intel/)

\- [http://masherydev.tumblr.com/post/68875086630/hacker- league-...](http://masherydev.tumblr.com/post/68875086630/hacker-league-is- joining-the-mashery-family)

\- [http://www.mashery.com/blog/expanding-our-commitment- develop...](http://www.mashery.com/blog/expanding-our-commitment-developers)

</comment><comment><USER3> Whoa thats awesome. I wonder how many devs were on Hacker league?

<comment><USER4> Just three. [https://www.hackerleague.org/about](https://www.hackerleague.org/about)</comment></comment>


An airbag for your smartphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2011/jeff-bezos-put-airbag-smartphone

<comment><USER2> That's fucking retarded.</comment>


EBay acquires Magento - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/06/06/ebay-acquires-magento-builds-a-commerce-os

<comment><USER2> Interesting set of acquisitions by eBay. Bodes well for the company's future-- it sounds like somebody behind the scenes there has a couple of big ideas.

</comment><comment><USER3> Magento seems too complicated (XML files, install) for eBay merchants.

<comment><AUTHOR> It _seems_ too complicated. But for any experienced PHP coders, it's only based on Zend Framework.</comment></comment>


How to Build a Static CMS with Roots, Contentful, and Netlify - <AUTHOR> http://carrot.is/coding/static_cms

<comment><USER2> This seems really complicated and expensive (if you're not using the free tier of each of the services) for something that could be really simple.

<comment><USER3> Maybe Cockpit CMS could be used? Self hosted CaaS style CMS and seems to have a REST interface. I wonder if it could be used with static generators? [http://getcockpit.com/](http://getcockpit.com/). I Have been thinking about this for a while and would love to see it work with metalsmith.io, Assemble.io or maybe even my favourite harp.js.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for mentioning Cockpit CMS, it looks great!</comment></comment></comment>


Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I'd do differently after 2 startups - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/04/02/ycombinator/

<comment><USER2> I hate to be a downer, but sometimes these things don't sit right with me. "After successfully launching their consumer offering (7% week-over-week growth!)"

Why are the traffic charts essentially flat for the last 6 months, or worse on quantcast.

I think "3. We didn't spend enough time on marketing" is probably the most important, but then I'm not convinced the idea is "sticky" enough in the first place.

Still an interesting read though :)

<comment><USER3> I use their product and haven't visited the site in months. I just look at the weekly summaries to get a decent picture of how productive my week was (hours in work opposed to waste of time).

Traffic to their site is not nearly as useful as their signups growth is for statistics.

<comment><USER2> Fair point. Might be worth having the application show something from the website, so that website stats are more representative, or at least look more impressive :)

<comment><USER3> You are starting to sound like a lot of the big web portals out there.

'Let's break an article into 10 pages so we get 10 times the hits!'

'Let's turn that AJAX gallery that loads really quick into separate pages so we get way better traffic scores!'

In jest to you - but they really have those types of meetings.

<comment><USER2> Again, fair point :) As long as the subscriber numbers are good, that's cool. I'm used to looking at websites rather than desktop software so it's a whole different game.

Also depends on their strategy. I'd expect the summary to display some recommendations from a website, maybe some recommended software (adverts), etc Maybe some social networking - "Here's some people who have similar usage patterns to you. Go chat."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure I would ever pay for software to tell me where I am spending my time.

<comment><USER5> No, but your boss would.

<comment><USER6> Not exactly making the world a better place, is it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I loved the landing page design. Great layout, big red call to action buttons, multi-column displays... That alone got me to sign up.

<comment><USER8> Their web designers went to the "let's see how close we can get to a 37signals design" school apparently.

I've seen it 100 times and it's always boring.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't blame the designers directly. In my experience designers tend to be pressured into trendy styles. The 37signals look just happens to be what's in right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the group version could be cool, and might be worth paying for... Think as a project manager you can see how exactly everyone is doing - I.E. the designer spending 30% of each day researching design, and 20% in photoshop... just sounds neat, Im trying the personal version for sure!

<comment> a-priori It does, however, have the potential for being an employee's worst nightmare in the hands of a micromanaging boss. That's my concern with it being used in a corporate environment.

"Why did you spend 31 minutes 40 seconds reading 'Hacker News' today?!?" "Gee, boss, because sometimes I need a break..."

However, that's not Rescue Time's fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a great post with a lot of good data that oughta be very interesting to people here. Possibly the best kind of post we could have. I'd like to see a lot more of these. Thanks, Tony!

<comment><USER12> Tony writes plenty of good stuff on his blog over here: <http://www.tonywright.com/>

In terms of amount-of-insight/word his blog is perhaps the most informative I follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm reluctant to have my data stored on their server. If it's software that I run on my PC, why does it need to save its data on their system?

</comment><comment><USER14> Things we did right: "didn't focus on internet marketing" - Things we did wrong: "didn't do enough marketing"

:/</comment>


Design coupons for Apple's Passbook using PassVerse [Invitation Code: HACKER] - <AUTHOR> http://www.passverse.com Register at http://passverse.azurewebsites.net/account/register <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the broken registration page. There was a bug in my Prefinery integration. This has been resolved now!</comment>


On Becoming a Thing - <AUTHOR> http://abiekatz.com/2012/05/on-becoming-a-thing/

<comment><USER2> Might want to fix the link - the proper one on your site right now is <http://abiekatz.com/2012/05/o-becoming-a-thing/>

(Note: "o-" as opposed to "on-" here on HN.)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best tech gifts this season? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> My mom grew up in a time before computers and never really acclimated to technology. The things that frustrate her the least are her Amazon Echo and Chromebook.

The echo is used as a glorified speaker: I set it up with their Prime account and it plays all the music she could ever want through voice commands. For some reason she finds it hard to use Siri on her phone, but something about the blue light on the Echo makes it really obvious what's going on. Also, the small things make her happy like asking about the weather or the news.

The Chromebook is nice because it's super hard to mess up - you just install an adblocker and you're good to go. For someone who only uses the computer to surf the web, it's perfect. The best part is I don't have to play tech support anymore :)

I don't think I'd get either of those things for myself, but I'd definitely recommend them for your non-technical family members.

<comment><USER3> This Christmas, we're getting my girlfriend's mother (mid-60s, not tech illiterate but never worked professionally with tech) the smaller iPad Pro. Target had them on sale for $200 off (Black Friday deal, available online). She has a first-gen Mini right now, and it's her primary internet device. It works really well for her, but it's slow these days and can't run any ad- blocker, since it's not a 64-bit chip :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Context needed! For me, it'd be a Samsung 960 Pro [1]. Or perhaps an Arduino starter kit [2] or an excellent introductory DIY speaker kit [3].

For a more mainstream audience, I dunno, you can't go wrong with a giftcard to Amazon.

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/10754/samsung-960-pro-ssd- revi...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/10754/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review)

[2] [https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoStarterKit](https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoStarterKit)

[3] [https://sites.google.com/site/undefinition/diy- overnightsens...](https://sites.google.com/site/undefinition/diy- overnightsensations) and/or [http://www.parts-express.com/overnight- sensations-mt-speaker...](http://www.parts-express.com/overnight-sensations- mt-speaker-kit-pair--300-706)

</comment><comment><USER5> A thousand bucks for the [https://holidayhole.com/](https://holidayhole.com/)

<comment><USER6> Didn't know this existed thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you subscribe to the notion that a gift should be something that will bring the recipient joy, but that the recipient wouldn't buy for themselves, I'd say VR headsets, drones, and 3D printers.

If it's an Apple household with a pair of speakers somewhere, an Airplay target (Raspberry Pi or otherwise) is also pretty nice.

<comment><USER8> Drones are particularly good on the "bringing joy" front, and you can get very fun ones for a lot less than a VR headset.

If you have the cash available, a Vive plus a computer powerful enough to run it is an incredible gift. But if your budget's a bit lower than that, a Hubsan x4 and a spare pack of rotors will cost about $50 and provide days of fun for a very wide range of people.

It's one of those gifts that tends to spread through families - I know more than one which started buying a cheap quadcopter for the youngest generation, and ended up with the oldest generation and all the ones in the middle being equally enthusiastic (and often buying their own).

They're also a lot of fun for a group, which is something that can't necessarily be said of a VR headset most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two games that would delight any programmer from Zachtronics:

TIS-100 [http://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/) SHENZHEN I/O [http://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/)

TIS-100 is not very long, but then it's not very expensive.

<comment><USER10> FYI: TIS-100 is included in the "pay-what-you-want" part of the current Humble Staff Picks bundle: [https://www.humblebundle.com/nicks-staff-picks- bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/nicks-staff-picks-bundle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For kids that are a little older try snap circuits or Lego Mind Storm.

<comment><USER12> This makes me pine for the days of KNEX tbh

<comment><USER13> You're in luck! It looks like KNEX is still a thing!

Now I wanna build an RC car out of them...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Drones have been pretty popular in my family, lately.

</comment><comment><USER15> For the youngsters: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057791)

</comment><comment><USER16> How about a VR device? I think it can be a great gift.</comment>


The Untold Story of ILM, a Titan That Forever Changed Film - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/05/inside-ilm/ <comment><USER2> The personal anecdotes here are amazing. Betting a 100M$ project on a liquid metal set of pixels. Animators going mad. People tearing up when seeing life- like CG creatures for the first time.</comment>


The Debate on Whether America's Best Days Are Past, or Ahead - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/business/economy/a-somber-view-of-americas-pace-of-progress.html <comment><USER2> Consider the framing of the article, using a tv show to describe the reality of the past. Is there more than a vanishingly small percentage of people who have ever lived as a sitcom portrays?

With such an intellectually bankrupt start, and remember, this is a framing device meant to set your opinion on a guided track, what could we actually expect to get from this article?

<comment><USER3> >>this is a framing device meant to set your opinion on a guided track

This is all too common with the NY Times.

<comment><USER2> It is common with all media. The key is to be aware of the framing and question what the author wants you to believe is true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that people are far too pessimistic and have lost sight of the end goal.

The goal is not to create _productivity_. The goal is to create _leisure_. And, so far, we've done a really shitty job of that.

<comment><USER5> That's the thing, we were all supposed to be living luxurious lives, instead we're working 60 hour work weeks. And the elite think that more of that should be in store for us, you know because the economy just isn't doing all that well. Mainly because they are busy disrupting everything and automating it, using massive piles of capitals they have amassed on our backs to coerce us to work harder and produce more with less money -- productivity.

With automation they need less of our work, so we should work more for less, while the capital they have amassed does most of the work through automation.

Logically nothing we do as a species makes sense unless looked through the logic of economics, consumption, and production. It's a system with its own logic and we are so conditioned to think in its terms that we can think of no other way of organizing people and/or work.

The best days for America was the American Dream as George Carlin said you have to dreaming to believe it. It was simply a hope that more of that money would trickle down to pretty much anyone if they worked hard enough.

That hope is no longer there. No matter which way you frame it.

<comment><USER6> Pretty Cynical there. Its really all about perspective. Look at this.

As we continue to automate things, we reduce the time and effort required to manufacture the things we need. This creates an immense amount of leisure time. As we focus on creating social systems which provide basic income and living needs, we are currently on trajectory for a system where people can choose to do whatever they want, with complete leisure. All need for food and devices is sustained by machines, we are provided with all basic needs by the government and you can do whatever your heart desires.

Now people may think that is pointless, but imagine what people could accomplish with the ability to pursue anything they want. There is 7 billion people on this planet. Its impossible to expect everyone achieving the american dream through sheer handwork.

<comment><USER7> >As we continue to automate things, we reduce the time and effort required to manufacture the things we need. This creates an immense amount of leisure time.

The first sentence has been very true as we progress with technology and the economy, etc. The second has not followed and there is no reason to believe it will. Less time and less effort will be required to produce, but that will not translate to leisure time for the underclass (it never has -- benefits go to the people who have the power to decide where the benefits go tautologically, i.e. capitalists), it will translate to more profit for the overclass.

So long as wealth inequality continues to get worse and we dive wholeheartedly into capitalism progress will just mean centralization of wealth and a stratification of the overlords and the peasantry who work until they drop being paid nothing for someone else's profit.

Embracing socialism a little more will help, and failing that the wealthy may realize living surrounded by unwashed hungry angry violent masses is unpleasant and set up some kind of charity for those who behave according to their wishes.

<comment><USER5> In the past the over-class needed the peasants and serfs to mind the farms. They no longer need the peasants and serfs for anything. The capitalist class needed them to produce goods they could sell for a profit. We basically need some role for the elites to play to justify giving money to other people that they no longer need.

<comment><USER6> I think the cynical thing here is assuming that the Elite class will continue to grow and make the lower economic classes suffer at their expense. The thing is though that being overly rich in a shit world is not much of a benefit to anyone. The Elite could set up there own little world (I'm kind of thinking like Elysium), but even that eventually will break into some elites who have more than other elites, and the cycle repeats.

The system will improve once we democratize resources more and more.

<comment><USER8> > The system will improve once we democratize resources more and more.

Where do you see evidence of this happening?

<comment><USER6> To use a tech example, look at computers. Just 20 years ago they were extremely expensive and out of the hands of many people, especially schools in poorer communities. Through manufacturing processes, we have driven there price extremely low (ex raspberry pi) enabling even the poorest communities to have access to learning programming and creating things. This would not be possible without the democratization of technology.

Another example is food. Advances in science and agriculture have enabled us to create vast amounts of fruits, vegetables, etc... and our distribution system allows for these resources to reach even the smallest of communities; And this can be done at extremely low costs. Here is a way to put it into perspective. 50 years ago you couldn't go to a rural community in Northern Canada and get a pomegranate without paying a huge premium to have it delivered there from a warm country where it is grown, thus only rich people in that community could enjoy a pom. Now, Poms are growing readily and moved around the world, so for a couple dollars anyone can enjoy one.

That is the power of democratization of technology and resources, and the next big step is democratizing our financial systems and marketplaces to distribute wealth better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This whole debate seems philosophically sloppy. The rate of return on capital investments, the pace of technological change, the disposable income of ordinary people, and subjective quality of life are all different things that are only loosely related. But if we throw around the word "progress" without carefully defining it, we might imagine they're all the same thing.

<comment><USER10> The central issue is economic growth, not some wague "progress". You should read Gordon's research paper, not articles about them if you want more rigor.

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315](http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315)

>Even if innovation were to continue into the future at the rate of the two decades before 2007, the U.S. faces six headwinds that are in the process of dragging long-term growth to half or less of the 1.9 percent annual rate experienced between 1860 and 2007. These include demography, education, inequality, globalization, energy/environment, and the overhang of consumer and government debt. A provocative "exercise in subtraction" suggests that future growth in consumption per capita for the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution could fall below 0.5 percent per year for an extended period of decades.

<comment><USER11> Which just makes the point - growth is a meaningless statistic if it's not widely distributed.

A more accurate statistic would be median disposable income, as a proxy for general economic self-determination - and that's been on a steady downward slope since the 1970s.

The tragedy is that there's plenty of physical work that could be done, outside the pointless confines of Web 2.0. The US and the rest of the West needs better energy distribution grids, smart everything, renewable power, and mitigation against climate change.

A lot of the existing infrastructure, including surface transport, is barely fit for purpose. Improved education at all levels is an easy win. And so on...

None of this is likely to happen within current economic and political narratives. So yes - the US and the West do not have a bright future, unless the narratives change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm really sick of seeing articles about this guy's book. He identifies a trend and claims that the trend will continue. Yet the existence of the trend itself has no inherent predictive value.

Current income inequality does not tell us anything about tomorrow's policy environment and its effects on future income inequality. Demography considered in isolation does not predict economic growth. Decreased labor force participation from boomer retirements may in fact reduce inequality by restricting the supply of labor and raising its price.

Not to mention that he blithely refuses to consider what technological advances are actually in the R&D pipeline and how they may affect economic growth. Any one of the long list of potential tech revolutions over the next 20 years could reverse the trend. Fusion and miniaturized fusion (e.g. what they're developing at Skunkworks) could completely eliminate emissions and completely crash energy prices. Self-driving cars and trucks will drastically reduce transportation costs. Imagine the effect of fusion-powered 99% automated ships on the cost of global supply chains. Biotech is increasing quality of life and the length of time workers are able to participate in the workforce while cutting down on time spent out of the workforce due to disability or illness. And that's just scratching the surface.

Gordon fails to realize that innovation tends to happen in bursts. Information technology did not have as much of a direct impact on productivity as previous technological revolutions, but it has impacted innovation itself and will increase the frequency of those bursts.

</comment><comment><USER13> Two quick things,

-Has America ever considered that it is not a loss of American power as much as its an equalization of power across the world. Everyone wants what America has and roughly, they are getting it. This should not really diminish what America has or will get. This does not need to be zero-sum.

-There are a couple of things that keep America ahead of everyone else (even though as I established, it is pointless) and that is soft-power and immigration. Everyone wants what the latest Hollywood star has and everyone wants to move close to Hollywood (or other American power centers).

</comment><comment><USER14> Whenever I read an article like this I think, well, what is the purpose of life anyway? I like to think our destiny is to colonize other planets. So if you look at it that way, from an economic point of view, we have built and are continuing to build the infrastructure needed for future space exploration and colonization.

<comment><USER15> What will we do on other planets? Begin building new infrastructure to colonize more planets? I think that's a philosophy of a virus dressed in a shiny space suit with NASA logo on it.

Exploration is great and it's worth pursuing, but making it a main goal and coincidently (or on purpose) an excuse for ruining our only real existing livable planet is I think wrong.

<comment><USER16> Humans are the tools that bacteria use to colonize other planets.

<comment><USER17> Richard Dawkins would say it's the gene's tool for colonizing other planets. Plus if genes are going to survive the sun exploding they are going to have to get even more mobile :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the article: "What does this portend for our well-being over the next half century? Has technological progress slowed for good?"

Yes -- but is that a problem? Technology naturally reaches plateaus from time to time; at present, we're on such a plateau, able to catch our breath and more fully deploy our ideas before whatever it is that comes next. Africa has skyscrapers now; who cares if we don't have jetpacks?

</comment><comment><USER19> >Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth.

-Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964

<comment><USER20> An under-appreciated little book. Although sometimes pushing its theses past the breaking point, it sports quite a few interesting insights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've heard of Gordon before, and I've understood his important point to be less about innovation and productivity, and more about the remarkable historical and technological circumstances of post-war America and the associated economic growth that Americans tend to accept (insist?) as _de rigueur_.

It was a perfect storm of capital, values, and scientific progress, but notably, it has never been seen before and it is unlikely to last forever.

I think because comfortable (say, median income or better) Americans literally cannot even imagine how uncomfortable things can actually get (or how uncomfortable they actually are in some places) these conversations tend towards unwarranted optimism.

<comment><USER22> > the remarkable historical and technological circumstances of white, cis- > gendered, cis-sexual male post-war America

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> NPR had a debate recently about this

[http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past- debates/item/1...](http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past- debates/item/1251-declinists-be-damned-bet-on-america)

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

</comment><comment><USER24> Life expectancy has 'only' increased by 10% in 50 years? That sounds pretty damn good to me.

<comment><USER25> Moreover, contrary to opinions often expressed on Hacker News, the demographic data from all countries with good data show that increases in healthy lifespan are occurring at all ages, even age 40, age 60, or age 80. "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."[1]

[1] [http://www.prb.org/Multimedia/Video/2010/humanlongevity.aspx](http://www.prb.org/Multimedia/Video/2010/humanlongevity.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They are always ahead of us.

</comment><comment><USER27> What's depressing is that I think most of us would agree that America's best days are not the current era, therefore they must be in the past or future. :(

<comment><USER28> What metric exactly makes you think things are in a decline? Currently GDP per capita $53,041.98 (2013). Human Development Index Rank: 8. Unemployment rate 5%. GDP $17T, worldwide rank #1 ($3T in 1980 which is $8.6T fixed for inflation, so DOUBLE the GDP of the 80s). Violent crime rate 4.4 percent, lowest since 1970s, etc.

Those pining for the productivity of the 50s and 60s certainly are allowed their biases, but be aware this includes making sure women and minorities can't get good jobs and keeping college enrollments expensive and out of reach for many. You needed to be a middle-class or higher white male to get the benefits of society at that time. Why do we assume in this hypothetical where we go back in time and enjoy those peroids that we aren't a woman or a black person or that we don't care about any of the social issues of the time?

Also, I hope you're not a steelworker in 1960's in this scenario or actually any manufacturing, because in a decade your job will disappear permanently due to foreign competition. Oh and all the good jobs are "company men" jobs so daily overtime is expected, drinking with your coworkers is expected after, socializing only with your coworkers is expected, and the family is the sort of thing your wife manages and who you interact with on the weekends.

<comment><USER19> GDP and Unemployment rates are very poor measurements to look to for indications of "progress"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Which "best days of the past" ?

Let's limit it to just the past 50 years to be fair.

The ones where people of color couldn't drink at white water fountains?

Jim Crow laws only ended in 1968 and you can be sure their mindset persisted for years after that well into the 70s where it may not have been illegal but it could end your life.

Or maybe it was the vietnam war years?

Maybe it was the decades when two people of different color couldn't marry or two people of the same gender?

How about the living hell decade Bush put us through over invading Iraq for literally made up reasons and caused ISIL?

If you think the past was great, you probably were privileged one way or another and fortunate not to be a minority.

America can only get BETTER, it certainly isn't hard to do better than the past with all of our poor choices.

<comment><USER30> Remember the 90s? Terrible time for LGBT community.</comment></comment>


The Bibighar Massacre: The Darkest Days of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 - <AUTHOR> https://mimimatthews.com/2015/12/06/the-bibighar-massacre-the-darkest-days-of-the-indian-rebellion-of-1857/ <comment><USER2> Am I suddenly supposed to feel sad for the British?

How's about we get more stories about the Bengal famine of 1943? 3M indians died b/c Churchill took their rice.

Or the 5k-10k indians that die each day b/c westerners don't let us have access to viable uranium powered energy?

Where are those stories?

<comment><USER3> Or the 5k-10k indians that die each day b/c westerners don't let us have access to viable uranium powered energy? \</comment></comment><comment>---

Slightly off topic but there seems to be a historical love for past events and catastrophes,But the present is hidden from the limelight

[http://www.dianuke.org/whats-killing-the-children-in- jadugod...](http://www.dianuke.org/whats-killing-the-children-in-jadugoda- india-uranium-mines/)

This nuclear issue is like a trickling bomb for the past 40 years.

</comment><comment><USER4> Jallianwala Bagh Massacre British troops opened fire on unarmed protestors and pilgrims. 400 to 1000 men women and children were murdered by British soldiers who were under the command of Colonel Dyer. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre)

<comment><USER5> What relevance does an event 60 years later in an entirely different place have?

<comment><USER6> It demonstrates consistency of British attitude toward Indians.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In India, we never refer to this as the "sepoy mutiny" or any crap like that.

It is always called the First War of Indian Independence. It would take us another hundred years and Gandhi and the nonviolent freedom struggle to be finally rid of the British.

But the greatest irony comes from this : that was undivided India (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). We went from that to the most dangerous nuclear flashpoint in the world today.

<comment><USER8> Wrongly called as First War of Indian Independence. There was Vellore Mutiny in 1806.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "British Indian history". That pretty much sums it up. No country should ever have the ignominy of appearing second in its own history. Every Indian wishes the 1857 revolt had snowballed to freedom.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, there really was no 'India' before the British cobbled one together. Unlike China, there never was one power that controlled the whole subcontinent. It's hard to know how things would have ended up politically if not for British hegemony. Would there be a country like India, or would its various disparate parts have continued as distinct sovereign entities? Part of the miracle of the whole Indian project is that it has remained basically intact since independence. This isn't something one would have taken for granted a few decades ago.

<comment><USER11> India was like Greece, China like Rome. China had central control while India had independent states that didn't control each other politically but were unified in terms culture, communication, roads, infrastructure and importantly commerce.

Today it wouldn't make sense to say "there really was no 'Greece'". Same for India.

<comment><USER10> The Greeks at least had a common language, from what I understand. That's far from true for India.

<comment><USER11> If you said it's not 'strictly true for India', you'd be correct, but when you say it's 'far from true' then not so much. India has two ancient languages Tamil and Sanskrit and modern languages are derived from these (but I am def not an expert). The modern forms are considered different languages, but they are quite close to each other, easy to learn one from the other e.g.the grammar is the same and words are usually just different pronunciations/intonations of a common root. It's easy to see that in the ancient past they would have had more similarity.

The original point was "there really was no 'India' before the British cobbled one together". If so, then where was Columbus trying to go? Of course there was 'an India', it just wasn't structured like a modern nation state, which is true for every other modern country as well.

<comment><USER10> Everything you say applies just as well to all of Western Mediterranean Europe. In fact, even more so, since you're dealing with just one branch of a larger language group (the Latinate/Romance languages) rather than two completely disparate ones (Indo-Aryan and Dravidian). No one now thinks of this area as a nation-state.

Western Europe, through the British conquest of the subcontinent, was woefully unaware of the internal differences. That Columbus ill-advisedly thought of India as a monolithic entity is no marker of anything.

<comment><USER11> >> Everything you say applies just as well to all of Western Mediterranean Europe.

The language thing sure does. But the only time in ancient history Western Mediterranean Europe has been part of a single state was during the Roman period. the rest of the time they evolved separately and uniquely. In contrast each part of modern India has been politically linked to the other parts multiple times through history resulting in a common culture but with some obvious diversity. E.g. Indian festivals are largely common throughout the country, a marker of commonality stretching back through history.

>> That Columbus ill-advisedly thought of India as a monolithic entity is no marker of anything.

He said nothing about it being monolithic, just that there was a place called India, and it was worth a visit.

Your original comment was "there was no 'India' ...".

There has been an India through most of history. But of course the borders of the modern state were drawn relatively recently. These are two different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those interested in this topic, I can't recommend "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple enough.

It chronicles the crumbling Mughal Empire in Delhi, the slow shift in the Indian-British relationship from one of equals to a colonizer-colonized relationship, how perilously close the British came to losing India in 1857, and lots of painstakingly well-researched interesting anecdotes about life in that era.

Here's what he writes about the last of the Mughals: "As the political sky darkened, the court was lost in a last idyll of pleasure gardens, courtesans and mushairas, or poetic symposia, Sufi devotions and visits to pirs, as literary and religious ambition replaced the political variety."

And about the East India Company in the 1850s: "So removed had the British now become from their Indian subjects, and so dismissive were they of Indian opinion, that they had lost all ability to read the omens around them or to analyse their own position with any degree of accuracy. Arrogance and imperial self-confidence had diminished the desire to seek accurate information or gain any real knowledge of the state of the country."

<comment><USER13> The last sentence is as true today as it was then. India memory and its strength however have faded to the point where even its vestiges appear intangible.

<comment><USER14> What a strange coincident. Was discussing about EIC this morning. It is sad that critical exploration of its operation is not encouraged. For most Indians, it is the company that came to trade and end up ruling them.

Yet how did it operate, monopolized trade, grow and maintain it's sepoy armies ? It took them more than a hundred years to establish control and another century passed till we had 1857 and almost another to gain independence. It's been 70 years since that, where are we on the continuum. Can we recognize another EIC (internal/external) or are we condemned to repeat it.

If one understands this and can draw parallels with the way modern corporates function, people hopefully will be able to see past their doublethink.

India gained independence from the British, but the structures that held the populace in thrall weren't torn down. They still exist. The government and the corporates are it's inheritors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A fictionalized but highly readable account: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman_in_the_Great_Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman_in_the_Great_Game)

<comment><USER15> I love Flashman but the prose is not something I would call everyone's cup of tea. Great writing, but not "readable" as in "easy to read".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any list on the lives that were taken by the colonial swords and guns?

</comment><comment><USER6> It's hard to work up much sympathy for invaders.

<comment><USER13> Oh no, not invaders. Nah mate. They brought civilization, education, technology and everything of value in India. /s

(For the record this is what is taught in most Anglophone nations; also true shamefully within India itself.)

<comment><USER6> Not at UNIS :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am actually surprised this article made it to the front page on hacker news. It presents a very narrow view of a much larger war. It almost looks like it came straight from the British propaganda machine.

</comment><comment><USER18> The tone of the discourse here irks me. A small story about my late grandmother that continues to inspire me -

My grandmother had gone through the pain of seeing my grandfather all bruised up from non-violent protests against the British. When my father studied ethnomusicology in the US, he used to have many of his musician friends, some of whom were his students, over at home during his visits. Initially, to my grandmother, they were "white people" and she'd give them the cold treatment. Over time, she warmed up to them and even made good friends of many of them, despite hardly knowing any English. She would make yummies for them to express her affection.

That someone who's seen her husband come back home bruised can rise to forgiveness and move to love and friendship is something that will stay with me forever.

That is the only force that can heal the world. Not retaliation. Not counter hatred. Not "proper historical perspective". Not any analysis of which violence is worse, or who started it.

</comment><comment><USER19> As the comments in the article point out, it's very convenient that a female prostitute gets blamed for it without firm evidence.</comment>