Fiat is Effective: fiat for the crypto crowd [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.interfluidity.com/uploads/2017/10/Fiat-Is-Effective-Minitalk-light-edit-to-share.pdf <comment><USER2> Some of these arguments assume a single fixed-supply cryptocurrency, instead of the ecosystem of cryptocurrencies we actually have, which is more like Hayek's proposal for competing privately-issued currencies. He thought it would be stable without the need for active management.

As a _payment system_ I think cryptocurrency is vastly better; the more I use my hardware wallet, the more I'm horrified by legacy systems that work by giving vendors the ability to withdraw as much as they want. It's a fundamentally insecure system, made sort of workable by layers of hacky mitigations.

In theory, fiat payment could use a hardware wallet that gives vendors the ability to withdraw only as much as specified in a signed transaction. I doubt that'll happen unless crypto is successful enough to drag fiat providers kicking and screaming; in the meantime we could use fiat-backed tokens on a blockchain if governments didn't make that near-impossible with AML/KYC laws.

Reversibility could also be implemented in a token smart contract, if the market really does value that enough to put a central admin in control. So far that doesn't appear to be the case, but maybe just because that market segment hasn't been reached yet.

<comment><USER3> We had privately created money in Europe for centuries. It was a disaster.

<comment><USER4> I would strongly disagree with that characterization. The bank note system - the major form of private money - worked reasonably well for centuries in Europe, evolving into the check clearing systems that virtually every first- world nation has today.

<comment><USER3> That was much later on. I am talking about basically end of Roman Empire to 1600.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the words of Patrick McKenzie's tweet linking to this pdf, "Hey look, someone took the time to explain to cryptocurrency enthusiasts why the rest of us perceive money as working".

For those singing the praises of cryptocurrency I pose this question:

Say the United States decides to allow decentralized cryptocurrencies to become the dominant medium of exchange in the US; say it even gets rid of the $USD. What problem do you think this would solve? (assuming the US gov desires to continue all other operations in exactly the same manner as it does currently).

<comment><USER6> Well, whether or not it's a problem depends on who you're asking, but:

Remember in the first Captain America movie when his first role in the military was on a tour raising money for the war? That was actually a thing at that point in time. You had to actually convince people to invest or give money to fund a war. The USD was tied to gold in the real world and they couldn't just create more.

Nowadays, we don't have that. A President _might_ have to ask Congress for funding, possibly. And even then, that money might simply be borrowed (adding systemic risk) or printed (devaluing the rest of our money). As a result, the amount of public support required for waging a war (or any huge expenditure) is much lower.

That's a good thing if the people in power are correct despite popular opinion. That's not always the case, though.

<comment><USER5> Seems like a horribly inefficient national defense strategy. A country is on the brink of having a war levied against them by a belligerent, and plead for funds... some are scared for their life and donate their entire savings, others give nothing because they think/know their neighbors will.

Anyway, this is not a primary reason for having fiat money, but it is a reason.

<comment><USER6> Yep. I certainly wouldn't want to go to war asking for donations if the other side can use a pen to put half the value of his country's money toward fighting me.

It's definitely a benefit--it just also has the potential to be abused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Summary of key points:

• The case against fiat is an ethical case, much more than an effectiveness case. Crytpo advocates often misunderstand this.

* The primary reason fiat succeeds is it offers price stability. But stability is often purchased at the expense of workers and the unemployed.

* The management of fiat provides state actors with incredibly powerful, ultimately discretionary, tools which significantly affect who wins and who loses and how equal or unequal a society is.

(Edit 1: Based on the presentation's concluding "summary" slides. Edit 2: Removed the point about war as less germane.)

<comment><USER8> "Fiat money and associated banking systems are the technology that enables the finance of war on scales that would have been unimaginable a few centuries ago"

This quote appears in the summary but isn't really supported by argument within the article, and is quite a big claim!

<comment><USER5> What of countries that go full crypto, then later have a war levied against them; this suggests these governments would not have effective economic means to defend themselves.

Its almost like it assumes if citicens of a state switch to crypto their government would/could not tax them

<comment><USER9> > this suggests these governments would not have effective economic means to > defend themselves

They'll just re-introduce a fiat currency like they did all the other times that this was a problem. Assuming they want to survive.

Historically, communities that favoured philosophical consistency over self preservation tended to become, well, historical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These arguments against bitcoin have been the same since 2010. They seem to ignore the point of bitcoin (it is impossible to counterfeit, unlike fiat which is counterfeited as a matter of course by the central bank to pay the federal government so it can buy bombs).... and all the features of bitcoin which are increased privacy, better control over your funds, better security, etc.

At any rate, the past 7 years has shown the market accepting bitcoin and the price being driven up.

People don't want to accept this fact so they call it a bubble. It bubbles a bit, sure, and there will be a bitcoin bubble-- but we're not there yet.

Bitcoin is the internet of money. This isn't just a slogan. Bitcoin is a platform that provides many improvements to the existing system.

But as a technology platform it is going thru the technology adoption life cycle, so was more and more people hold some, the price goes up. It will be "volatile" until it's fully distributed.

So "speculating" is not bad-- it's how bitcoin gets its wide distribution. Over time as applications are built on top of the platform, the utility will come more into play.

This is ok. This is the early years. Bitcoin isn't meant to replace the entire system right out of the gate.

<comment><USER11> Bitcoin isn't _the_ internet of money, it is _an_ internet _for_ money. With this distinction in mind, it would be foolish to think that the first cryptocurrency would be the last. It took many implementations and iterations of wide area networks to arrive at the Internet Protocol we have today.

While Bitcoin doesn't share the same set of problems as fiat currency, it has its own burdens, and has proven completely ineffective as a functional money system outside of speculation and fraud. The novelty of Bitcoin is supposedly its 'immutable ledger', a phrase used so frequently in defending Bitcoin, that it has become divorced from its meaning, and divorced from the reality that solutions to distributed logging existed long before Bitcoin, and many more solutions to this problem will be developed with no regard to the blockchain.

Bitcoin itself will never replace anything -- cryptocurrencies will remain monolithic in purpose and function for a very long time. The underlying ideas to the Bitcoin protocol will be iterated on, and we'll see these ideas implemented in distributed software, but to incessantly hype Bitcoin as _the_ singular platform for cryptocurrency is to live in a bubble.

pls buy litecoin

<comment><USER12> Yes, it seems that human attention has become the ultimate luxury commodity. I think that a cryptocurrency derives a significant portion of its value from the mere fact that that a lot of people know about its existence.

A lot of celebrities these days make huge sums of money in spite of being untalented. Being famous is valuable in itself.

People (especially rich people) want to be loved and/or respected. The "why" doesn't actually matter. If you own a lot of something which a lot of people know about, then you will be respected.

The blockchain is public. Everybody can see it. It's the ultimate instrument of vanity. In the future you'll be able to show off your wealth without the stigma associated with actually showing it off. People will be able to look you up on a popular blockchain and know that you are an influential individual.

It solves a big problem that rich people have. They want to appear humble but at the same time they want other people to know that they are rich.

<comment><USER13> Yes, and we can see the Oligarchical squatters who acquired large stakes in Bitcoin.

      In economics, the Gini coefficient is the standard measure
      of how inequitable a society is. This is tricky to
      determine for Bitcoin, as it's not quiet a "society" in
      the Gini sense, one person may have multiple addresses and
      many addresses have been used only once or a few times.
      (The commonly-cited figure of 0.88 is based on one small
      exchange in 2011.) However, a Citigroup analysis from
      early 2014 notes: "47 individuals hold about 30 percent,
      another 900 a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 about
      25% and another million about 20%"; and distribution
      "looks much like the distribution of wealth in North Korea
      and makes China's and even the US' wealth distribution
      look like that of a workers' paradise

      Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir found in a 2012 study that only
      22% of then-existing Bitcoins were in circulation at all,
      there were a total of 75 active users or businesses with
      any kind of volume, one (unidentified) user owned a
      quarter of all Bitcoins in existence, and one large owner
      was trying to hide their pile by moving it around in
      thousands of smaller transactions. (Shamir is one of the
      most renowned cryptographers in the world and the "S" in
      "RSA encryption")"

[1] via [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So the argument basically comes down to that crypto is too volatile and not usable as unit of account?

1\. Crypto is still in its initial stage, where capital is flowing into it. Once it is there, it will be less volatile. You can already see this in Bitcoin[1], where relative volatility is dropping every year.

2\. There are projects coming that will enable decentralized trustless peg of fiat currencies into blockchians[2][3]. So you will have usd/eur in blockchians. Similar like Thether, but without central issuer. This will be very convenient for pricing (unit of account), but with all the benefits of blockchains.

And as author admits fiat is terrible as "store of value" \- so with this combination - fiat pegs in blockchain for accounting and native crypto as store of value (keep bitcoin for your grandchildern instead of dolar that looses 95% value over century), it might be the best combination of both worlds.

1: [http://woobull.com/bitcoin-volatility-will-match-major- fiat-...](http://woobull.com/bitcoin-volatility-will-match-major-fiat- currencies-by-2019/)

2: [http://cryptopeg.org/](http://cryptopeg.org/)

3: [http://www.getbasecoin.com/basecoin_whitepaper_0_99.pdf](http://www.getbasecoin.com/basecoin_whitepaper_0_99.pdf)

<comment><USER3> No, that is not at all the argument. The argument is that you cannot have an economy run on a deflationary currency, which bitcoin is. An effective economy requires a bit of inflation and the ability to issue new money when necessary for socio-political reasons. Crypto currencies are a cult, though the underlying tech is interesting.

<comment><USER15> While I understand the desire to have 2% inflation across the economy, wouldn't the individual parties prefer to hold their cash in a deflationary currency?

Put differently and going fast forward; how can you have a mildly inflating currency (eg. EUR) when there's a deflationary currency (eg. BTC) as a viable alternative around?

Would you propose we prohibit crypto currencies? (What would you propose?)

<comment><USER3> Crypto currencies can exist for those who want them, I don't see any reason to block them beyond ponzi scheme and marketing issues - similar to stock issues. So probably they need some regulation to not defraud unwitting people.

Bitcoin is not an alternative to Euros. That is the whole point. If you switched all euros to bitcoins and asked people to trade those, the economy would collapse as no one would want to trade their bitcoins because mathematically, they increase in value due to the limited issuance of them. Without modest inflation, the economy cannot grow as no one would spend money for investment purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice summary. The author has correctly observed that so much of the finance industry is really about clearing and settlement, and that what circulates are _claims on_ money.

This is present in the crypto world too. When you wire money to an exchange and use it to buy cryptocurrency, it doesn't immediately turn into a crypto transaction - you get a _claim on_ that cryptocurrency. Sometimes exchanges are unable to meet those claims or issue claim-like tokens ("Tether").

Also correctly notes that "inflation" worries are more to do with how your future asset and liability flows match up, which have very little to do with supply of the currency itself (apart from extreme Zimbabwe moments). Hard Money == Price instability.

<comment><USER16> Zimbabwe had little to do with supply of currency, and more to do with supply of stuff.

They forgot that our economies rely upon the magic of the pin factory. Unsurprisingly if you take land from a specialist farmer and give it to a load of people who have no such specialism, then you get a collapse in production.

The result of that is obvious unless you ramp up taxes to colossal levels to kill the excess money circulation.

<comment><USER17> Are you suggesting that a government, having regulated against specific capable farmer running farms, should raise taxes to colossal levels if they observe food shortages?

I suspect you want to rephrase your comment. That argument seems to have a non-sequitur in it.

<comment><USER9> I don't believe the GP is advocating it.

I believe he's implying that you'll get hyperinflation unless you do something draconian to take all the money out of the system.

This may well solve the hyperinflation at the expense of not having any (legal) economy left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Fiat currencies are not "backed by nothing". They are backed by the labor > and assets of all the humans who have obligations to pay in fiat

So when we "print" more money, we print more labour?

<comment><USER19> No, but if there is an increase in productivity and you don't print money there will be deflation.

<comment><USER20> Is deflation an awful situation ?

<comment><USER21> It is believed to be the primary reason for the great depression.

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

Deflation or Hyperinflation on the other side is nothing compared to the crises we have today.

They are both a path for disaster, this is the primary fear of economists.

Good explanation: [https://www.quora.com/Why-is-2-the-ideal-inflation- rate](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-2-the-ideal-inflation-rate)

<comment><USER20> I hoped for a logic rationale, not an interpretation of an historic fact :(

<comment><USER22> Let's suppose that today, a dollar will buy you a loaf of bread. Tommorrow, though, you have a very strong expectation that a dollar will buy you two loaves of bread, and it seems likely that next week a dollar will buy you a Lamborghini Countach.

What do you do?

1) Spend the least amount of money today that you can to continue living and put the rest under your mattress?

2) Anything else.

Being rational, you choose one. Now magnify this by _every other rational actor in the area affected by deflation._

You can no longer buy bread because the grocer decided not to spend his money on new stocks. You no longer have a job because your employer would rather have your wages than your work. The widget factory expansion gets canceled because no one will loan the company money to pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> On page 4/5 this presentation says: >this might not be true of a sufficiently credible Tether-like stablecoin whose value is pegged to a fiat currency, but there the crypto is piggybacking on the effectiveness of the fiat.

I was intrigued by this Tether thing and ended up on the site: [https://tether.to/](https://tether.to/)

It says:

> Every tether is always backed 1-to-1, by traditional currency held in our > reserves. So 1 USD₮ is always equivalent to 1 USD.

> Our reserve holdings are published daily and subject to frequent > professional audits. All tethers in circulation always match our reserves.

A nitpick I have on the site design is that nowadays sites don't put sitemap in the footer. So I have to difficult time finding the balance page: [https://wallet.tether.to/transparency](https://wallet.tether.to/transparency)

Can someone help me make sense of this? I thought the numbers are there for the claimed 1-to-1 USD reserve but that doesn't seem to be the case. The value there is from the assets issued on blockchain and not the USD balance on company's book.

Secondly, I might be wrong but can't seem to find who is conducting the audit. Is it one of the big 4 or some home office? If it is a small time office I will be even more skeptical of this whole thing.

<comment><USER24> You, and everyone else, _ought_ to be _very_ skeptical.

A peg like Tether isn't any kind of guarantee. It's so easy to imagine the insolvency of such a firm through government action, fraud, bank seizures, or a juicy combination of all three.

[https://hackernoon.com/the-curious-tale-of- tethers-6b0031eea...](https://hackernoon.com/the-curious-tale-of- tethers-6b0031eead87)

Having the private keys that controls a Tether token is not at all like owning a US dollar. That's why their legal policy states:

 _Once you have Tethers, you can trade them, keep them, or use them to pay persons that will accept your Tethers. However, Tethers are not money and are not monetary instruments. They are also not stored value or currency. There is no contractual right or other right or legal claim against us to redeem or exchange your Tethers for money. We do not guarantee any right of redemption or exchange of Tethers by us for money._

I don't think a centralized and fragile thing like Tether deserves to be called a stablecoin. We should reserve that concept for a decentralized and resilient collateralized token issuance system...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bitcoin is now at the peak of the hype cycle. A lot of the 23 year old traders don't know anything but a bull market. When it inevitably goes through a bear market, like every other asset, when there is $50 billion of sellers higher ready to sell on every uptick, what brings bitcoin back? Stocks very rarely come back from 70-80% declines, unless the stock is Amazon or similar. All the hodlers are going to turn into baghodlers if they don't sell pretty soon.

<comment><USER26> 1- Bitcoin is not stock so comparing with stock has no weight in your argument

2- It has already been on a very long bear market (2013-2015) where everyone said pretty much the same thing (fad, tulip, the experiment failed .... ). So yeah the new holders will go through rough times but your argument that it reached the peak of the hype cycle has no logical facts to support it since you could have said the same in the peak of 2013.

If anyone knew when the peak is(was or will) would not be here commenting on HN or talking about it but rather selling this knowledge ... and this holds true for any investment.

<comment><USER25> You're right, I have no idea when the top is going to be. My point is that bear markets have a very different feel and can be emotionally devastating if you're in the middle of one and bitcoin has not been through that and made it to the other side. Are the bitcoin boys ready for that? Because it's coming, sooner or later.

<comment><USER27> The exact sequence of events you are describing happened between 2013-2016 when Bitcoin fell from a hype induced >$1000 to (at its lowest) $200, and didn't rise above $1000 until this year.

It clearly did not kill Bitcoin, and Bitcoin won't die if the same thing happens again.

<comment><USER2> And before that, it hit a high of $31 and crashed to $2, and slowly recovered to $13 over the next year.

Ethereum crashed from $21 to $7 last year after the DAO theft. A couple months ago it went from $420 to $130.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This debate is dividing most of the technology space. It's a good sign, for the crypto guys. VCs, angels are experiencing their very own Uber moment.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you read/watch Debt the First 5000 years. A lot of this makes sense. The first form of money was credit. Which is Fiat.

</comment><comment><USER30> For anyone interested in understanding what money is, and the downside of commodity money without a central bank, Allyn Young wrote this[1] in 1924[2]. It talks about the gold standard, bi-metalism and decentralized banking that was taking place in the US in the XIXth century.

[1] [https://fr.scribd.com/document/251483136/The-Mystery-of- Mone...](https://fr.scribd.com/document/251483136/The-Mystery-of-Money-by- Allyn-Young) [2] it's just 11 years after the creation of the Fed. He had a good understanding of what is a financial system without a central bank.

<comment><USER19> I can't read the whole story without paying money. Is there a link to a free version?

<comment><USER30> Oh really ? I just googled it up quickly and found this link.

I uploaded a PDF containing the full version here [https://framadrop.org/r/Awpt0Pvlax#17V8BZqBeYZgyzW5F0WOXwDop...](https://framadrop.org/r/Awpt0Pvlax#17V8BZqBeYZgyzW5F0WOXwDopjMO9mvuACgHZRR84WU=) (will only live for 60 days though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The author uses a slide to say:

> fiat currencies issued by strong stable states capable of taxing their > citizens, with banking systems effective at encouraging widespread > borrowing, with large, diversified domestic economies (and so the capacity > to do with fewer imports if necessary) that borrow in their own currency, > and do not have sizable debts in foreign currency aren't weak.

This speaks to me as if the author has a modicum of trust in the current banking industry, saying: "I trust that we can still solve the problems we've created." Call me a skeptic, but I don't. That is the fundamental problem that cryptocurrencies were created to solve; trustless money.

I agree with the author on the part of currency needing to be stable, and cryptocurrencies in their current state are not stable. However, as more and more value is attributed to cryptocurrencies, and more and more people adopt it, those fluctuations will even out. I feel comparing crypto's stability with most fiat money is like comparing the gait of a toddler with that of a grown man. It takes time, effort, and entropy to gain the momentum needed to be stable, crypto is still in its early-adoption-phase.

> Fiat currencies are no more "created from thin air" than...

Fractional Reserve Banking would like a word.

<comment><USER30> > I agree with the author on the part of currency needing to be stable, and > cryptocurrencies in their current state are not stable. […] It takes time, > effort, and entropy to gain the momentum needed to be stable, crypto is > still in its early-adoption-phase.

The problem is : if you want a stable currency you need a money supply that grow as much as `inflation + growth + the slowdown of the money flow`, if you don't have that your economy collapses. All of this is changing over time, then you need to adjust the supply of money dynamically. And unless someone finds a way to do this automatically, you'll need a _pilot_ in charge of this. This is currently the job of the director of the central bank, it can also be the president of the country, the parliament, or anyone but you need someone (or some cleverly designed distributed mechanism that doesn't exist yet). If you don't address this, cryptocurrencies aren't better than gold money, which historically proved inefficient in an industrialized society.

<comment><USER32> There are project like MakerDAO that indeed use smart contracts (plus fiat price oracles and some other things) to implement monetary policy without any "pilot".

<comment><USER33> I think one of the problems is that there are now, what, a few thousand cryptocurrencies? The optics of the multitudes of ICOs? Those aren't good. No, no they are not.

A part of me wonders if this popularity boom might actually be the reason it dies out. How many hacks, thefts, and scams have there been? Sure, those happen with real money but real money isn't the one needing to work on its optics. We already accept real currency.

This one is anonymous, this one is for burgers in Russia, this one is tied to fiat currency, this one is for an online file system... The list goes on. I'm not sure that diversity in choice is a net benefit with this, at least not in the long term.

Someone important is going to lose some money and it's not that hard for a government to make it illegal. Depending on your jurisdiction, it's just a stroke of the pen.

If I did want to invest, or use, I'd barely have an idea of where to start and I'm pretty technically literate. Hell, I even mined some BTC when it was new. Now, there are so many varieties. Maybe too many choices. There are even sites to let you easily make new ones.

<comment><USER24> Maybe it's like the internet. There used to be a lot of different websites, and a lot of them were scams. Now there's just a handful of websites, so it's easier for people to understand what to do... And of course there's still a long tail of weird niche sites with new experiments.

The UN recognizes 180 different currencies, by the way. That's 180 different units of accounts, but the amount of forms of money is much larger, and then you have to consider the derivative forms of money, and the various credit systems. It's already an immense, staggering, crazy cornucopia.

I don't think it's realistic that world governments will just eradicate cryptocurrency through legislation. Banking, insurance, finance, the internet itself, all of those things were really chaotic in the beginning, but businesspeople recognized them as useful and transformative, so states didn't want to ban them, even though they were dangerous.

The IMF director is already saying that cryptocurrency will be massively disruptive and that they expect to play a part in regulating the ecosystem and that it's conceivable that the IMF would issue their own cryptocurrency.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/13/bitcoin-get-serious-about- di...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/13/bitcoin-get-serious-about-digital- currency-imf-christine-lagarde-says.html)

That makes me think it's really unlikely to just go away.

<comment><USER33> Your first paragraph, kind of. For many people, the net is just a few social media and streaming sites. The net has much of its wealth consolidated in just a few companies.

We shall see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Re price stability: A cryptocurrency adopted on a mainstream level (at tens of trillions of dollars market cap) for means of everyday payment would be very stable, more stable than any fiat today.

Re effectiveness: Bitcoin itself is not really fast, scalable and transaction fees are not that small anymore, but something like Dash for example can be much more effective than Fiat even at a large scale. (I mean small latency, small transaction fees, high throughput.) Should scalability become a really big issue, I am sure it will be solved by some projects. (There are already projects working on extreme high throughput like EOS.)

<comment><USER30> > Re price stability: A cryptocurrency adopted on a mainstream level (at tens > of trillions of dollars market cap) for means of everyday payment would be > very stable, more stable than any fiat today.

This sentence sounds like preaching. Do you have any evidence of this ?

IMO this is really unlikely because you can't dynamically adapt the supply of money. See my other comment in this thread[1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15481953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15481953)

<comment><USER34> "This sentence sounds like preaching." Yes, you are right, I was wondering whether to edit that sentence to sound less confident. :) I have no evidence, and I am not an expert on this. I just think that if a currency is a utility currency, actually used by merchants and everyday users globally across a wide range of industries, countries and people, it has a huge market cap (it is the dominant currency of the world): I just don't see what could cause big fluctuations in its 'price'. (When you start to be the dominant currency 'price' becomes an interesting concept, because the 'relative to what?' aspect starts to be very significant.)

<comment><USER8> The expansion and contraction of the real economy causes a change in the demand for _money_ , resulting in changes in the price level. This is usually summarised in the equation "MV=PQ"; see the economics literature for more detail on this.

(This is independent of what the money actually is, and was a big problem with price fluctuations under the gold standard)

<comment><USER34> Let's say we have a huge global cryptocurrency, that the whole world uses. If I understand well, when the economy expands, you can buy more BigMac for one unit, when the economy shrinks, you can buy less BigMac for one unit. What I am wondering now is whether is it something that needs to be avoided at all, (or can it be avoided in the long term at all).

<comment><USER30> For bigmac it's not a big deal, but for investment it is. Imagine your company have 10 millions in cash, you could invest on a new machine to produce more (or better quality, or cheaper). But if you knew that the machine was going to cost you only 9 millions in 3 months. Will you buy it now even though you know it's only going to make you earn 300k in 3 months ? Of course not, you'll wait those 3 months. This is the problem with deflation, nobody wants to invest and people delay or reduce consumption. this really harms the economy.

<comment><USER35> The Capitol Hill Babysitting Co-op is sometimes cited as an example of this. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Babysitting_Co- op](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Babysitting_Co-op)

<comment><USER30> Never heard of that, thank you !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's one huge problem with fiat currencies that Bitcoin improves on:

Trusted Third Parties Are Security Holes

[http://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third- parties/](http://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third-parties/)

</comment><comment><USER37> IS it not deflationary?

2015: Block reward: 25 btc * 6 blocks per hour * 24 hrs* ~250 euro = 900.000 euro worth of daily mined supply

2017: 12.5 btc * 6 blocks * 24 * ~2000 euro = 3.6 Million

<comment><USER38> Indeed, prior to 2015 it had double digit inflation, thought this has declined to just under 3% per year and will continue to fall.

Morever, some estimates suggest up to 1/3 of all BTC are unspendable (lost keys, malformed txns, minute dust UTXOs, etc) so the deflationary spiral could have already been under way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Steve has missed the main point.

The value of a currency is determined by the effort required to obtain it.

<comment><USER35> That's not its value, just an upper bound on its value.

If you disagree, boy do I have some currency to sell you. I worked very hard on it, I swear! :)

<comment><USER16> And the lower bound is the tax I have to pay in it.

I need 100 of your currency, here's a small caraway seed for it.

Now shall we negotiate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> onion-soup > unit of value

Nope, it's a unit of human work. Value is a subjective measure.

<comment><USER5> What is a "unit of human work", and how much is it worth?

Why are people paid differently for the same work?

<comment> onion-soup >What is a "unit of human work"

Money, obviously?

> Why are people paid differently for the same work?

Do you want me to do a crash course on history of economics in a HN comment?

<comment><USER5> I was hoping you would say that. Do you not realize the circular logic you're using to define "money"?

Q. What is money?

A. It's a unit of human work.

Q. What is a unit of human work?

A. Money.

If you cannot provide a concrete definition of either 'money' or 'a unit of human work', I have no idea how valuable 1 of your 'moneys' are.

Let's call your money 'CRYPTOS'. One may assume 'a unit of human work' is like a person doing some defined task for 1 hour; and the value of 1 CRYPTO is established as number of CRYPTOS (1) you would be willing to give someone for doing that task for 1 hour. Naturally, for this to work, there would also need to be someone willing to perform this task for exactly 1 CRYPTO per hour; and nobody willing to do it for less. Is that basically what you are talking about when you say 'money' is 'a unit of human work'?

Above you scoff at the idea of money representing a unit of 'value', and say that value is subjective. So let me again point out the obvious - people paid different amounts of money for the same work. If you pay people different amounts for the same 1 hour of human work, then a unit of human work isn't always worth same number of CRYPTOS. So explain to me precisely how you are defining 'a unit of human work' and how it equals X amount of 'money', without introducing some subjective concept of value or worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Even the most stable currencies of developed world can be influenced by a black swan. For example, see Swiss Franc or British Pound. If some cryptocurrency is adopted for mainstream use (big if), it won't have this risk, inherent to a centrally controlled currency.

<comment><USER8> This kind of exchange risk is nothing to do with central control, but to do with which economy the currency is associated with?

<comment><USER39> The Black Swans I'm talking about are about failed attempts to control the exchange rate by central bank. Fiat currencies are stable until they aren't.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_franc#End_of_capping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_franc#End_of_capping)

<comment><USER40> Attaching the value of a fiat currency to something is very unstable in the long run. This is independent of if what it is attached to, be it gold or another fiat currency. Imbalances will simply pile up over time and doom it to fail. This can be exemplified by your examples, but also by the currencies going off the gold standard during the Great Depression.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yelp Prison Review Faxbot - <AUTHOR> http://lav.io/2014/11/yelp-prison-review-faxbot/

<comment><USER2> Didn't expect to see Jerry Seinfeld to put a review for Sing Sing prison:) No idea it's real but looks legit. [http://www.yelp.com/biz/sing-sing- correctional-facility-ossi...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/sing-sing-correctional- facility-ossining)</comment>


De Blasio Makes $70M Commitment Toward Universal Broadband In NYC - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/de-blasio-broadband

<comment><USER3> That seems like not nearly enough money for an underground fiber network.

<comment><USER4> Some of those costs can be minimized by installing fiber while other utilities and maintenance operations are being performed. Some cities have adopted a "dig once" policy for this, saying every time there is a dig then fiber must also be installed if it is not already in that location.

I would also be surprised if a city like New York didn't already have a fair amount of dark fiber available.

<comment><USER5> Almost every residential and commercial building in NYC has fiber running in front of it: [http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/06/09/verizon-will- miss...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/06/09/verizon-will-miss- deadline-to-wire-all-of-new-york-city-with-fios/)

That last few feet? Dependent on landlords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The way this plan will work is that $25 million will go toward new wireless corridors, which will deliver free or low-cost access to 20,000 low-income households. Another $7.5 million will go to upgrading or expanding at least five existing wireless corridors. Then $1.6 million in state funds will focus on broadband around industrial zones for at least 500 businesses."

It's too bad his plan ignores the monopoly TimeWarner has over service to most of his city's customers. If more competition were introduced beyond the sporadic RCN and Verizon FiOS available to some buildings, it might bring down prices for all. I agree that universal broadband access is a net positive - but when the only innovation being introduced is a subsidy it's debatable whether state tax money should be spent to ensure his constituents have free access to watch Netflix and play Candy Crush.

<comment><USER7> Competition won't change economic reality. Verizon's average revenue per wire- line user is $125/month (mostly FiOS), and the operating income margin on that is 1-5% in any given quarter. Unless a competitor had fundamentally different economics than Verizon, there's no way it could profitably serve those low- income communities.

The city's approach, direct spending focused on deploying cheaper wireless technologies, is the least distortionary and most cost-efficient way to proceed. Better still would be just giving those poor neighborhoods cash and letting them decide whether to spend it on broadband, or food or clothing.

<comment><USER8> The only thing that changes economic reality is competition.

<comment><USER9> And in most cases, competition requires a (somewhat) level playing field - <USER2> job for government.

If you only rely on the Elon Musks of the world to disrupt entrenched interlocking cartels, you'll end up waiting decades to balance the inefficiencies of that market if you're lucky.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Women Fought to Wear Trousers (The Amazing History of Female Trousers) - <AUTHOR> http://convergencemakeovers.com/how-women-fought-to-wear-trousers-2/ <comment><USER2> From the guidelines:

        In Submissions

        Please don't do things to make titles stand out,
        like using uppercase or exclamation points, or
        adding a parenthetical remark saying how great
        an article is.  It's implicit in submitting
        something that you think it's important.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>


The king, his lover – and the elephant in the palace - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53749630 <comment><USER2> Is it unreasonable to assume that the mistress is just a high class hooker? Looking at the photos there can (to my mind) be nothing in the king that attracts this younger woman, other than $$$$$.</comment>


1965 Science advisory report on climate-environment [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira%20downloads/PSAC,%201965,%20Restoring%20the%20Quality%20of%20Our%20Environment.pdf <comment><USER2> Mostly correct wrt climate change. Except a strange thought that mitigating would be simply a matter of adding reflective matter to the top of vast tracts of sea.</comment>


Mother, Superior? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/13/apop011311.DTL

<comment><AUTHOR> _"I was very surprised," she says. "The Journal basically strung together the most controversial sections of the book. And I had no idea they'd put that kind of a title on it. But the worst thing was, they didn't even hint that the book is about a journey, and that the person at beginning of the book is different from the person at the end -- that I get my comeuppance and retreat from this very strict Chinese parenting model."_

<comment><USER2> I think the WSJ owes Mrs. Chua an apology.

Come to think of it, if they actually do release an apology, it will probably serve as an additional boost to the book's sales.

It makes me wonder whether the author of the original piece was just an inconsiderate asshole, or an evil genius who's getting a slice of the pie and planned out the "lie" and apology in advance as a marketing stunt. Either way, there's an idea. Don't recommend it though. :-P

<comment><USER3> > (...) it will probably serve as an additional boost to the book's sales.

I don't know; the book's only received negative attention by my perception.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't take a whole lot of looking to find that your perception may be non-standard: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This post by The Last Psychiatrist is an excellent breakdown of the article (and WHY it was in the WSJ in the first place). [http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/01/why_chinese_mothers_a...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/01/why_chinese_mothers_are_not_su.html)

<comment><USER6> I think the WSJ's intent in publishing it was a little more complex. The piece accomplishes two goals: it ridicules the ineffectiveness of soft, touchy- feely, liberal childrearing, and it presents the Chinese as alien, inhuman, and a superhuman threat, just like the Soviet scientific juggernaut we feared after Sputnik. We are supposed to be scared that the Chinese will "bury us" with inhuman discipline and achievement, and we are supposed to blame liberal attitudes for our weakness.

<comment><USER7> Those don't sound like the WSJ's goals to me.

In this case, I think the simplest reasoning, and one Chua herself hit on, is correct: They strung together the most controversial parts and got bundles of page hits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _I now believe there's a hybrid way of parenting that combines the two paradigms, but it took me making a lot of mistakes along the way to get there._

This is what I was hoping would be the truth. For all the reaction to the original trolling article, I also found myself agreeing with many of the criticisms leveled against Western child rearing practices (not all, but many).

</comment><comment><USER9> The article acts like it's Ms Chau vs. WSJ. But, it smells to me like a PR firm is the real culprit here (possibly even with Ms Chau's involvement).

<comment><USER10> It's Chua (蔡), not Chau. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> Why the attitude?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Asians don't have the genes to compete on sports. So entry to college is essentially going to be based around academic scores and music. Asians are also physically can't compete with caucasians when it comes to labouring, so a position in the office offsets that disadvantage.

Some of the hard work put into training the children is simply trying to overcome whatever physical disadvantage their children have.

This isn't particularly good in societies which are predominantly Chinese, because hyper competitiveness leads no where. There is nothing to hack.

However, in Western society, I'd think a moderate form of authoritative parenting is useful.

<comment><USER12> "Asians don't have the genes to compete on sports." Asia is a big continent, and there are a lot of sports. One is starting to see Chinese players in the NBA, and the Japanese and Koreans are showing up and doing well in major league baseball, to say nothing of gymnastics, swimming, and so on. And then there's cricket, squash, etc., but perhaps you aren't including the subcontinent.

"Asians are also physically can't compete with caucasians..." You might want to read up on the history of the transcontinental railroad. It seems to me more likely that people who have made it here from Asia over the last 60 years have figured out pay scales: doctor, high; laborer, low.

"This isn't particularly good in societies which are predominantly Chinese, because hyper competitiveness leads no where." No, except to the best schools, the best jobs, and so on. I am reliably assured the kids in Taiwan and Korea work awfully hard.

<comment><USER11> I'm speaking of myself as a person of southern Chinese descent. As one progresses north, people are physically taller.

Transcontinental railroad - it's a testament of hard work despite physical limitations.

"because hyper competitiveness leads no where." I lived in Malaysia and Singapore, and I'm speaking of the declining marginal utility of hyper competitiveness. It is a kind of mania that leads to overinvestment in a sector at the expense of another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Time and time again, people fall for marketing stunts. Before getting your knickers in a twist, read the book in question and magically find out that (place author name here) is actually making a quite different argument.

Don't believe what newspapers tell you. More often than not, you're worse off after reading them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Single-page link: [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/13/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/13/apop011311.DTL&ao=all).

</comment><comment><USER14> This article was submitted with the title "Wall Street Journal lied about Amy Chua's book", which sounds like excessive editorializing to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> The original title of "Mother, Superior?" was not nearly descriptive enough.

And considering that the article focuses on how the conclusion of the book is in direct opposition to the conclusion of the article (and how this decision was made by the WSJ and not Chau), I found the title apt.

<comment><USER14> I agree about the original title. I disagree that your replacement title is an accurate representation of the article. The article does cover the inaccuracy of the original Wall Street journal, but that didn't seem to be the main thrust of the article. The article is more about what Amy Chua's book is really about, rather than being about how the WSJ wrote a misleading article about it. I think a better title would have reflected that.

That said, I think even a title like, say, "Wall Street Journal article about Amy Chua's book was misleading" (basically "lied" ==> "misleading") would be better. Saying they "lied" is a much stronger statement than saying they "mislead", and the former seems to imply something more extreme, like that they were pushing an agenda. If the article had addressed the WSJ's motives and asserted that they were, in fact, pushing an agenda, the stronger title would have been justified, but, again, the article wasn't really about that.

All that said, I think it was a good article and I upvoted it. I also think it would be interesting to hear some thinking about _why_ the WSJ spun the article in the direction they did and as hard as they did. It seems like the WSJ is unlikely to have a specific agenda relating to the parenting styles of Chinese immigrants, but what do I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Erm... Am I still reading Hacker News?

<comment><AUTHOR> For reference:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090678></comment></comment>


Wanted to share this awesome Javascript Animated site - <AUTHOR> http://volll.com/#section_main

<comment><USER2> It's pretty neat; great attention to detail. Another one I like: <http://cliframework.com/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Take note of the details, like the spacemen which jump when you click them and the scrolling star background and then boat swaying in the breeze on the glistening water...

<comment><USER3> You can also open the lighthouse door by clicking on it. Trouble is, the Flash window covers up its top (at least in Firefox 3)</comment></comment>


SpaceX demo flight a month away, will be "especially dangerous," Musk says - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/spacex-demo-flight-a-month-away-will-be-especially-dangerous-musk-says/ <comment><USER2> > "But the biggest risk is staying home and not trying."

Hope NASA understands that well as organization.

Yes, we're right to expect - and work for - much safer spaceflights environments than e.g. 1960-s. At the same time after setting safety goal and achieving that, we ought to fly.</comment>


Tell HN: Why node will win, and why you need to use it. - <AUTHOR> In my job as a freelance consultant, I get to review about four or five web applications in a month. Most of them are written in Java, Python, .Net or less often Ruby. I have been doing this for a few years now, and I have seen different types of challenges faced by teams while building these applications. What made me write this post is that these challenges are slowly changing in a way that most programming languages aren't equipped to handle.
Well, none. Except Javascript.
When Django or Rails were conceived, the web was less demanding. AJAX was simpler and expectations were low; if the user performs some action on the page, do a POST and refresh the relevant section of the page. Today though, an increasing number of applications have more demanding interactivity requirements. Here are some common examples. 1. Interactions which do not require connecting to the server. Such as adding new entries to a list. The transformation of the view as a result of the user action needs to be done in the browser itself.
2. Many applications now hold contextual data in browser memory; and it may not be possible to refresh a section of the page without this data.
As a result, some of the logic to render the page needs to be on the client side.
This is where problems begin. Sizable applications start having rendering logic written in (say) a Python/Django template for the initial state of the page, and rendering logic written in JavaScript for all the client-side interactions that happen subsequently. After doing this for a while, we begin to realize that we should just get rid of the server side templates and handle rendering on the client. We could send JSON to the browser, and JavaScript handles the rendering. This may seem like an acceptable result, since we aren't duplicating any rendering code on the server and client. And the responsibilities are well divided too; server side code fetches data and client side code renders it.
Well, not so fast. Not all pages should be rendered client side. Some pages need to be indexed by search engines, and they need to be rendered on the server. Stuck. With a non-JavaScript framework, duplication of code is inevitable. A problem that will only worsen as the browser capabilities evolve to handle even more tasks currently executed on the server.
People raise some valid concerns about Node.js, such as scalability. But those aren't insurmountable, and people are working on them as you read this. Besides, if your application got to a point where those problems begin to bother you, it would be pretty easy to hire the expertise to sort them out. Some people complain about the language itself. Those are mostly little personal preferences. Most dynamic languages are have always been more or less equivalent. All of them have basic things that matter; classes, closures, lambdas. And if you know one, you can pick up another quite easily.
I didn't really get it a few years back when many people started talking about Javascript on the server. It was only after writing a few thousand lines of code with Node that I began to realize that this is a very fundamental shift. It wasn't about Javascript the language at all. It was about Javascript the platform. Write Once, Run Anywhere.
Javascript is the language of the web. You should evaluate it for your start up. <comment><USER2> _After doing this for a while, we begin to realize that we should just get rid of the server side templates and handle rendering on the client_

This is the only way to flatten the technology stack, anything else just created a bigger ball of technical debt. The advantages of REST and JavaScript applications over the old model are not apparent until you make this mental leap. Once a person does the simplicity of the architecture becomes apparent.

 _Well, not so fast. Not all pages should be rendered client side. Some pages need to be indexed by search engines, and they need to be rendered on the server._

This is not a concern if you do a little browser sniffing, if you run into a search bot, you send it to a server that has a headless web-browser script on it, that pulls the content from the primary server, and delivers it to the bot as a single unified page. Further most of the major search engines are fairly far along in their ability to index client side dynamic content, some you have to give a little help with #! and such, but for the most part, search is not a valid reason to hang on to the legacy of server side views.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Well, not so fast. Not all pages should be rendered client side. Some pages need to be indexed by search engines, and they need to be rendered on the server. Stuck. With a non-JavaScript framework, duplication of code is inevitable._

Why can't you just have the server serve up the raw data using a simple (RESTful) interface, then place all your logic in the client?

The search engines can index the restful interface... All the rendering intelligence can live in the client. If you do this, the server code doesn't need to be javascript and hence doesn't need to be node.js.

The real evil, IMHO, is server-side html templating, which I think people will move away from in a few years.</comment>


India Adopts the Tactic of Authoritarians: Shutting Down the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/world/asia/india-internet-modi-protests.html <comment><AUTHOR> whats an alternative for sharing information ? Cause in parts of India where protests got out of hand, they shut down the Internet and no news came in or out from there. They imposed a curfew too.

what can be the alternatives for sharing information during an Internet Shutdown

<comment><USER2> HAM radio, SneakerNet, semaphores, dead drops, printing presses, coordinated telephony, drone courier, trained pidgeon...

You just have to change your C&C structure to best accommodate the medium. The Signal propagated long before the Internet. It was just a bit slower.</comment></comment>


Chase posts, deletes tweet shaming people who buy coffee. Got a $12b bailout - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/samueljscott/status/1122935880828837888 <comment><USER2> Poor attempt at humor by their marketing department. Probably elicited chuckles when a person posted it on their own feed. Cringe inducing when a large corporation posts it on their feed.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cringy, but it's a non-story. Whoever posted it was probably in high school when that bailout happened.</comment>


Why Gene Patents Are Unlawful - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aclu.org/2009/05/22/why-gene-patents-are-unlawful/ <comment><USER2> patents are idiotic. capitalism worked before patents were invented.

<comment><USER3> The patent system as implemented may be idiotic. In principle, I don't see a problem with granting someone a temporary monopoly for monetizing discoveries that came about as the result of long and difficult work. Society is almost certainly better off if the patent system causes discoveries to be made sooner than when the patent was granted plus the length of the patent term. I'm torn on the gene patent though.One the one hand, a gene is a non-obvious mathematical formalism that offers an explanatory account of heredity. So we don't really have genes in our bodies and any arguments relying on such a claim are dubious. Furthermore, patents do have research exemptions. Now, my intuitions tell me such a patent is wrong but I'd really like to see a solid supportive argument.

<comment><USER4> How would you presume to measure the impact of patents? How do you know which patents should be granted or not granted? The benefit is for whom?

What about the inventors that got left behind because the other inventors got to monopolized his invention first? He didn't have a chance to try to put it on the market.

The problem is that the patent system cannot possibly account for all the impacts of the patents that affected the economy. The economy is a chaostic complex entity composed of many million of human beings making trillion of decision on the daily basis on what to buy and sell. The free market is astoudingly complex.

You have the audacity to think that you can improve the economy by imposing a monopoly on that one lucky inventor. You have no idea the unseen consequences that would result from your actions. Inventions never created, resource never allocated, and customers unsatisfied. The whole of history that we never knew changed forever by the course of a single patent.

Economic history is awashed with pirates producing books and making the authors rich, fortune ruined by patent ligitation, and untold stories of opportunistic inventors exploiting connections to widen their monopolies.

Interventionism in the free market is never without its cost. You would bet very well that the law of unintended consequences applied to the patent system as much as stupid laws mandating the price of gasolines.</comment></comment></comment>


Buffer: Composable Buffers for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/djherbis/buffer <comment><USER2>
       // Buffer 32KB to Memory, after that buffer to 100MB chunked files
      buf := buffer.NewUnboundedBuffer(32*1024, 100*1024*1024)

      pool := NewFilePool(100*1024*1024, "") // "" -- use temp dir

I seem to have a twofold feeling about this code: on one hand I really like the brevity of these statements, but on the other hand it does come at the cost of being rather cryptic: without the comments one can only guess what exactly is going on. To the point that should I want to use this in my own code and make it understandable I'd almost would be forced to either copy the comments as well or else wrap it in a method with another name or. In such cases it probably would have been better if the original API already had done this.

<comment><USER3> That's one problem that named arguments solve pretty nicely. Unfortunately, I don't think Go supports them.

<comment><USER4> There are a lot of ways to make arguments nicer in Go. The simple on is to just use a configuration struct (or anon struct) at that has nice names. But, for complex stuff, functional options as laid out by Dave Cheney: [http://dave.cheney.net/2014/10/17/functional-options-for- fri...](http://dave.cheney.net/2014/10/17/functional-options-for-friendly- apis) (video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24lFtGHWxAQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24lFtGHWxAQ))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice work. buffer.NewPool is a great convenience over writing your own sync.Pool.

I was previously using [https://github.com/oxtoacart/bpool](https://github.com/oxtoacart/bpool) as a 64K buffer pool for rendering (concurrently) template/html contents—so I can check for the errors from template.Render—before then using io.Copy to copy the "known good" contents to the http.ResponseWriter. I may have to look into using this.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey author here, happy to answer your questions.

<comment><USER7> Have you / would you consider extending this concept to buffers that are still single writer but support many readers -- something like a `FreshReader() io.Reader` function that returns a reader that starts from the beginning again? (I have an application that needs this semantic and ended up just rolling it quick-and-dirty; this sounds like very similar concepts done up with better gift wrapping.)

<comment><USER6> I'm currently working on something that does that sort of thing. [https://github.com/djherbis/fscache](https://github.com/djherbis/fscache)

It doesn't have the composability features yet, but it already handles 1 writer with many concurrent readers. Let me know if that helps!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a relative go newb, I do have a question about this: I thought channels/go routines were already essentially composable buffers. No?

<comment><USER9> Yes and no. Goroutines are lightweight threads - what other languages might call fibers. Channels are synchronisation primitives designed to work with goroutines but they do indeed provide some buffering. What OP is doing though is creating customisable buffers that allow you to control for memory usage and that are likely designed to replace things like bytes.Buffer rather then buffered channels. Of course I may be totally wrong ;)

<comment><USER6> You've got the right idea. bytes.Buffer is great (I even use it under the hood) but this repo is intended to give you more control over how your buffer behaves as the amount of data stored in it changes.</comment></comment></comment>


The quest to solve "Unfavorable Semicircle", a mysterious YouTube channel - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160225-the-quest-to-solve-youtubes-strangest-mystery <comment><USER2> Interesting. I don't think it's a numbers station-style system. Generating videos and uploading them via relatively complex protocol (where you have the potential to fuck up and leak info about yourself) to a server you don't control seems like a very roundabout way of broadcasting information to someone. Once you bring computers and the internet into the mix there's a _huge_ number of simpler and safer ways to broadcast encrypted information without requiring particular equipment or expertise of the receiver.

</comment><comment><USER3> Relevant podcast: 99% Invisible's incredibly creepy look into number stations [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/numbers- stations/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/numbers-stations/)

<comment><USER2> Great podcast! I didn't actually learn anything new but the producer has that great talent of making it interesting anyway. It reminds me of the better documentaries we sometimes get on BBC Radio 4 in the UK.

<comment><USER3> Glad you liked it! Podcasts are finally giving US creators the chance to match, or at least approach the quality of BBC content. There's a joke going around, two guys are sitting at a table recording a podcast and one of them goes, "Hey, remind me, are we recording your podcast or mine?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the description, it sounds like a Webdriver Torso-style account that was accidentally set to public. Muddied images like from an out of focus camera, items that last only a few frames, distorted audio. All things that would let someone tune codec settings over difficult corner cases. Once the account was discovered and publicized, they deleted the account, probably with someone being chided before the test corpus was set back up on a properly locked down channel.

<comment><USER5> It was suspended, not deleted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very similar to the MacGuffin from William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

<comment><USER7> Wasn't it called The Footage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The ironic part is that the videos included in the article don't exist anymore because the account associated with them has been terminated.

<comment><USER9> I suppose for some that will just add to the mystery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The name sounds like it's a more common phrase where someone substituted two synonyms.

Hostile Arc? Adverse Frown? Obviously that's not it. Semicircle could be a lot of things.

<comment><USER11> It reminds me of one of the Xbox profile auto suggested gamer tags. "Disliked Sphere" was one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems all the attention today brought the account to a close. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfavorable_semicircle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfavorable_semicircle)

</comment><comment><USER13> The last time I heard about something like this, it was the automated output of a machine learning project. Even if there is an interesting purpose, you have to be really bored and have an active imagination to worry about it.

<comment><USER14> There are apparently two videos being uploaded per minute, so it's almost certainly something automated. No human being would sit there and upload videos every 30 seconds all day.

<comment><USER15> I found some comments on Reddit that proposed:

> It's probably a channel dedicated to a paint-2-sound generator. Example > (that's very old software: Coagula). Pixels actually represent the spectrum > over time (X), and the color intensity the magnitude at frequency (Y)

>

> But what is its purpose?

>

> Synthesize mouth-like sounds. Anyway that's just an hypothesis. But the > pseudo of the guy matches to something in the domain, aka the sampling > theorem (unfavorable semi sircle: full circle = full spectrum = 2PI, but in > sound over 1PI = nyquist frequency, there's the folding phenomena).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Man I can't get into this stuff at all because the curiosity and uncertainty alone would kill me. This thing, the cicada thing, that reddit number subreddit thing. Ugh.

<comment><USER17> _that reddit number subreddit thing_

I must have missed that, could you elaborate?

<comment><USER18> Likely referring to the subreddit (now private) which this subreddit is built around 'solving':

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Solving_A858](https://www.reddit.com/r/Solving_A858)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd love to look at it, but all the videos have been taken down : (

I found this though: [https://www.reddit.com/r/UnfavorableSemicircle/comments/47l7...](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnfavorableSemicircle/comments/47l7ma/all_the_videos_i_got_to_download/)</comment>


Googling "Hacker News" does not bring News.YCombinator.com - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering why googling "Hacker News" does not bring news.ycombinator.com? it works on DuckDuckGo and Bing <comment><USER2> Number 2 in my search after "thehackernews.com" The exact url of the result is ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

SafeSearch off.

Here is the complete url of the search: [https://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news&oq=hacker+new](https://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news&oq=hacker+new)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would expect to see news.ycombinator.com in the result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It shows at #2 for me. I think it might not do as well as TheHackerNews because (a) PG doesn't worry about SEO and (b) not much in the way of backlinks.

BTW -- No one is buying ads on that link either. Might be fun to just do a minimal buy.

</comment><comment><USER4> I noticed this about a week ago. I don't keep bookmarks on my work computer and I always (unfortunately) use Google to find Hacker News. Since about a week or so back, it's not the first search result.

<comment><USER5> Typing news.ycombinator.com is too hard? Or you just prefer to keep google updated about your daily browsing habits?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's number 6 on Google UK - the result is [https://news.ycombinator.com/ask](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask)

</comment><comment><USER7> See: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5955043)</comment>


Show HN: Purrchr – Take back control of your twitter feed (Nuzzel for Tweets) - <AUTHOR> http://purrchr.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Show HN!

Here's my first project that I've built. I like to think of it as a nuzzel for live tweets that is user-centric. I'm looking for critical feedback and ideas to iterate towards awesome. You can sort your twitter feed by various attributes like activity, likes, and retweets. I'd love to answer any questions or concerns you may have!</comment>


Sparrow alternatives (Mac) - <AUTHOR>

So after Sparrow acquired by Google, I am looking for new alternatives (except Mail.app and Outlook). There was a product that will be going to be on beta stage few weeks ago, that I read a news about it on here also.<p>So what do you recommend? <comment><USER2> There's the new MailPilot <http://www.mailpilot.co/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot!

Too bad it's subscription based

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The biggest problem with other MUAs on OS X is Spotlight integration. I would love to have sufficient free time to write an mbox importer for Spotlight, because then you could run dovecot locally and still get the nice searching.

</comment><comment><USER4> Out of interest, why not stick with Sparrow? It won't cease to work now that development has discontinued, or does it rely on something that Sparrow were hosting?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm looking for new ones too!! Will check out mailpilot now

</comment><comment><USER6> I recommend to give Mail.app a second try.

</comment><comment><USER7> Postbox? Uses Thunderbird's backend paired with Mail's frontend. Not bad, still a memory and disk hog though.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know any useful "Back of the Envelope Calculations"? - <AUTHOR>

Intrigued by the recent HN submission regarding estimating the revenues of a company, does anyone have any other useful back of the envelope calculations?  Anything that you find useful for quick mental calculations - preferably for financial applications (but any are welcome).<p>Thanks <comment><USER2> One I use often is that 1 Mbps of IP packets ~~ 10 GB / day of data. (1 Mbps is 10.8 GB/day, but TCP/IP overhead will typically eat up at least 0.4 GB and usually close to 0.8 GB from that.)

Another, more often financial calculation: If you have X% growth, it takes 72/X time periods to double. (Accurate to within 1 time period for X% > 2%, and accurate to within 10% for X% < 29%.)

<comment><USER3> Using 70/X will also work just fine.

<comment><USER2> Yes, and for small values of X, 70/X is more accurate, too. 72 has the advantage of being a multiple of 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 12, whereas 70 is a multiple of 2, 5, 7, 10, and 14 -- knowing both of these gives you a whole- number answer for any growth rate under 15% except 11% (correct answer is 6.64) and 13% (correct answer is 5.67).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Memorize powers of 2 up to 9

      0   1   2   3    4    5    6    7    8    9
      1   2   4   8   16   32   64  128  256  512

and

      2^10 = 1K,   2^20 = 1M,   2^30 = 1G  etc.

then split anything else

      ex. 2^23 = 2^20 * 2^3 =   8M
      ex. 2^37 = 2^30 * 2^7 = 128G

Edit: Also useful in reverse

      ex. 400K: 256K < 400K < 512K <=> 2^18 < 400K < 2^19

At least memorize 2^4 = 16 (hex) and 2^8 = 256 (byte), then do doubling or halving as necessary.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's trivial but useful that an hourly rate multiplied by 2000 gives a year's worth (for a standard working year).

<comment><USER2> Yep, that one's good, subject to the caveat that the 2000 is really 1800 in Europe (more holidays) and 1500 in France (lots of holidays AND a less hours per week).

Related and very useful: Consulting rates should start at annual income / 1000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not quite a mental calculation, but still in the spirit: One rough estimation I often find myself using is that a US dollar bill is six inches long. Using either folding or flipping, you can approximate most distances in the wave- your-arms-about scale. Be it thinking about a new physical device or ball- parking blinds at Home Depot, I use this all the time.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use revenue per employee as a rough guide to the type of company in question (is it human-based or tech/marketing-based? is it a startup or an established business?). It's simple to calculate, and revenue is usually less sensitive information than net income per employee (so easier to get for non-public companies). My feeling is that for the average (non-public, not particularly successful but OK, non-automated) company the average salary is about 1/3 of that (more or less). Actual net income per employee of course depends on the degree of automation and success.

Example tables:

[http://www.jbryanscott.com/2009/02/07/nasdaq-100-revenue- per...](http://www.jbryanscott.com/2009/02/07/nasdaq-100-revenue-per- employee/)

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2283-ranking-tech- companies-b...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2283-ranking-tech-companies-by- revenue-per-employee)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've always liked this page - <http://www.vendian.org/envelope/>

and the dots clock is interesting as well

</comment><comment><USER9> The rule of 72 for me is a classic that comes to my mind.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72>

</comment><comment><USER10> Two:

* Golden ratio is also miles to ks. Which means you can use Fibonacci to convert miles to ks.

* Divide by square route of two for compound doubling time.

<comment><USER11> kilometer is km not ks. just sayin'

<comment><USER10> One is an abbreviation. The other is a coloquial term, pronounced 'kays' used in most western speaking metric countries.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Websites/Apps that you visit/use daily? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 4 months ago "What websites do you check each morning?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17853023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17853023) \- 30 comments

8 months ago "What websites do you check everyday?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17126505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17126505) \- 27 comments

3 months ago "What websites do you read every morning?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146731)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com) [https://slashdot.org](https://slashdot.org) [https://mail.google.com](https://mail.google.com) [https://hardforum.com](https://hardforum.com) <insert internal work wiki>

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://finviz.com/](https://finviz.com/)</comment>


Tracing aromatic molecules in the early Universe - <AUTHOR> http://exactlyscience.com/archives/11671.html <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/45496](https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/45496)

with author credit ripped out.</comment>


IETF working on IPv4.1 as alternative to IPv6 - <AUTHOR> https://packetlife.net/blog/2011/apr/1/alternative-ipv6-works/

<comment><USER2> I might have made it 64-bits, but I've certainly had this thought before on a non-April Fools basis. A long time ago I thought IPv6 was pretty much just IPv4 with more addresses. Then I found out that was wrong, and I thought it was IPv4 with more addresses and a couple of tweaks. Then I found out _that_ was wrong, and IPv6 is more like "we polled every network protocol designer to find out what features they liked in a protocol and took the set union of them".

I now consider IPv6 to be a textbook example of how not to design a protocol. It would have been hard enough to advance us all to IPv4.1, but transitioning your stuff to IPv6 is terribly harder than it should be. For any serious network program it's like ripping out your spinal cord and putting a new one in. It's no wonder it has basically failed to date, it has proved much more work than I would have expected to actually convert software to use it, let alone use it properly.

It might _still be faster_ for the Internet to actually create IPv4.1 right now, get to consensus, and fully deploy it, than to fully deploy IPv6 from where we are. Probably a close thing.

<comment><USER3> I'll just repost my disagreement from last time: It seems like the base cost of adopting any new protocol is pretty high, so simplifying IPv6 wouldn't have reduced the transition cost much. Given the high base cost, it actually makes sense to pack in as many fixes as possible IMO, especially since this is our one chance for the next ~25 years or so. (Some people are complaining that IPv6 didn't solve enough problems, like routing scalability.)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1929871>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope this isn't an April 1st joke, but it probably is. Really, this is what should have been attempted 10 years ago.</comment>


Ask HN: As a programmer, how should I teach coding to my kid? - <AUTHOR> My kid is now 8, and he seems very interested in what I do (I work from home).
I want to teach him coding properly, but I don't know where to start.
I don't want to overwhelm him, but I have a tendency of going too far when explaining something, like hooking a differential probe on an ethernet line to explain an HTTP request to my wife (yeah I'm crazy).
What language and environment would you use? I use vim, but I don't know if it's a good idea to teach him that first. Should I use a browser based tool? Should I teach him linux basics?
I have like a million questions sparkling.
What would you do? What did you do? I'm sure I'm not the first, I'd be happy to have your experience.
Thanks <comment><USER2> I'm not a parent.

If I had an iPad/MacBook around, I'd sit with him and work through the Playgrounds-app Apple has for helping kids learn to code. Within the app, there's a bunch of games. You can start with Learn to Code 1 which starts off with lessons on commands, then continues to functions, for loops, conditionals, logical operators, while loops, and finally algorithms.

A couple of summers ago, a bunch of my friends developed a teaching curriculum for a summer camp. We used Lego Mindstorm to teach kids how to program code.

We also had a class where we introduced the kids to a Raspberry Pi, then installed a program called SonicPi which was then used to teach programming by playing a synth with code.

We also used Google's educational material to teach basic MachineLearning that used a computer's webcam and kids taught the machine to run a function when it recognized a facial expression or something like that.

Surprisingly, one of the cool ideas that did work was teaching the kids basic Blender, then 3D printing their models. We also had a super basic game development class that used Scratch to make games.

MIT's Scratch is very versatile, it shows up alot when you look for guides to get kids into coding.

You know, you can also just play board games with him. I don't know what it is but folks who grow up to be good at coding always seem to have anecdotes about playing games with their dad. I guess DnD helps kids develop their cognitive skills, like thinking logically and abstracting large concepts, both of which helps lay the foundation for getting your kid to be a good problem solver.

All in all, as long as the two of you are able to enjoy the time together and repeat the sessions regularly long term, it will work wonders for him. Sons need their fathers.

You got this,

<comment><USER2> Also, I attended Strange Loop conference last September and there was a keynote speaker who discussed effective ways of teaching programming to kids. The talk is on YouTube and I gotta say, it's very insightful.

"How to teach programming (and other things)?" by Felienne Hermans Link: [https://youtu.be/g1ib43q3uXQ](https://youtu.be/g1ib43q3uXQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The most important rule is to cross your hands behind your back. Try to help giving oral order, not pressing buttons.

I think it´s better to start with Python (The turtle library looks nice, but I have not used it.) or Javascript (Make some interactive pages.). Some small interactive project that he can tweak is always more interesting than an abstract project.

Later he can choose to go to C or Racket.

\---

Also the languages you are use to is important. If you like C, I recommend using the fake language "C+" that is using the C++ compiler to compile programs in C, but using cout instead of printf and ignoring all the other features of C++.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not sure if this is what he's interested in but what initially sparked my interest in programming was robotics. I'd suggest maybe looking into something like that either Mindstorms, or some sort of ardruino based robot. There's an instant gratification from seeing a robot move with very little code.</comment>


I was wrong (part 2) - <AUTHOR> https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/i-was-wrong-part-2/ <comment><USER2> Good to see this change, but I wish people wouldn't go down this road to begin with.

Speaking as someone who sits in industry now, I have found it almost _impossible_ to successfully conclude negotiations between not-very-interested academics who don't really understand how licensing works (and the staff who supposedly help them) and a big, paranoid company.

When you put some rando commercial license or complicated terms on your (likely tax-payer funded) data or software, what it essentially requires from big companies is a extremely expensive legal review to see what we would be signing up for. This review might be considerably more expensive than the amount being asked for the data/software. What's more, if a small company signs up for this, and ever wants to be _acquired_ by a big company, the review may not happen (small companies and startups are usually more relaxed about this stuff) but will have to take place during acquisition.

Bonus points for when the academics or their representatives wander away mid- discussion.

As a final bonus, I have seen our commercial competitors in this area just essentially fund university researchers to do thinly veiled advertising by accessing the same dataset for an "academic" paper. Meanwhile I sit on my hands respecting "the latter and spirit" of the law.

<comment><USER3> As someone also on the industry side of things, what would be your recommended solution to the problem? On the one hand we don't want the legal mess that licensing entails, on the other hand I'm absolutely in favor of reimbursing the academics in some way. But how?

Some new, standardized, industry accepted commercial license (who will invest the required legal effort to come up with such a license that's accepted by both sides?)? A concept based on voluntary donations (good luck getting that by the finance department)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why you think you were wrong, based on the article. Surely it depends upon your objectives. If your goal is for researchers to use the software then one license might be preferable, if your goal is commercialisation then another license might be.

In the same way that some researchers wont use software which doesn't have permissive licenses, some companies wont use software which does.

I don't get it. I also don't get why you expected license agreements to be signed and completed in a single day by commercial entities. You couldn't sign and complete a 5 minute coffee date with most company's IP staff within a single day, nevermind have licensing arrangements agreed upon.

<comment><USER5> The wrongness I read from it is a certain level of arrogance, that there can't really be anything too complex in licensing and copyright issues, and all those lawyers just must be posturing or engaging in pointless make-work. The discovery that well-understood standard license terms are preferred for a reason, and that there are very real issues lurking in non-standard license agreements, and corresponding realization that maybe all the people saying "you're wrong" had a point... is a step toward correcting that arrogance.

<comment><USER4> That makes total sense but it sounds as if his realisation tended towards open licenses being preferable in all academic scenarios, due to a now-more firmly held belief that lawyers etc are a waste of time. This obviously isn't a rule which applies generally, and I'm not sure why it even applies here when his goal was to commercialise, not to please researchers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to commend the author for realizing that a commercial license was not achieving the goals he had for his software and being willing to own up publicly about why and how he changed directions.

However, while I have used MIT/BSD-style licenses in the past, I can no longer recommend them, as they potentially open up software users to malicious submarine patent attacks. That is, a contributor can intentionally contribute code that (purports to) read on a (not-even-issued-yet) patent, and then later threaten to sue users of the software.

That's why I instead recommend Apache-2.0. My arguments are more fully described here: [https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/01/cncf-recommends- aslv2/](https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/01/cncf-recommends-aslv2/)

<comment><USER7> Interesting, has this actually happened?

<comment><USER6> Yes, a patent-owning entity has tried to contribute code reading on that patent. Apologies that I can't give the details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been about half a block down this road. Thank God, the university office determined it wasn't worth the universities time to invite the lawyers -- and my project is happily open source.

<comment><USER9> One of my least favorite experiences in grad school was dealing with our school's tech transfer office. They fought hard to avoid using the GPL for licensing anything. Just getting them to agree that a simple (to be published) tool should have an open source license was difficult. (And took many meetings)

Fast forward to two different Bay area universities and it was a completely different experience. Open source licenses were agreed upon over a quick email.

<comment><USER8> I had a fun time with the library copyright office. 6 months before my thesis defense I emailed them with "hi what's policy and procedure for creative commons licenses on theses". Nobody had ever asked before...

edit: my thesis is cc-by licensed.

<comment><USER10> Is it traditional for students to sign away copyright to their thesis to the University? That seems outrageous to me, but perhaps I am missing something?

<comment><USER8> traditionally you register a personal copyright. it's implicit if you register nothing.

some students may choose to request an embargo on their thesis, in those cases where their thesis work will be published elsewhere (in a peer reviewed journal, usually), or if their thesis would constitute disclosure of something for which a patent application is underway.

my thesis was boring enough to avoid those cases.

<comment><USER10> If you retained the copyright personally, why would you need permission from the university to publish your work under a creative commons license? Was it just a courtesy email to let them know your plans?

<comment><USER11> I can't speak for OP, but in my experience it's very rare for a thesis to be _just_ your work.

It's based on data and research often paid for by the university, and includes the work of many different people. indirectly: advisors, lab partners, professors, other students. Directly: Co-authors of papers, research assistants, and other contributors.

It's a messy bundle of work.

<comment><USER10> But copyright isn't based on ideas and doesn't cover raw data/facts- it covers the expression of those ideas and the compilation of the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was an onlooker -- for four months -- as a university IP office struggled to license source code developed at the university, to one of its own researchers. When the drama was concluded, the IP office couldn't find the source code.

</comment><comment><USER13> BSD does not have a patent license clause so if Lior, et al. have a patent on any part of the algorithm then won't commercial use will still be ambiguous? And even if they don't it could still be using (infringing) on a patent of a third party. Basically software patents make using any software a risk but possibly more so when you're using something based on novel ideas.

Edit: GPL and ASL have explicit patent clauses (obviously only applies to patents the software licensor has authority to license).

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's the license for stampy, a popular read aligner from Oxford:

12\. License </comment><comment>=====

This is a release version. Permission is granted for the normal use of the program and its output in an academic setting, including in publications. If the program is used to generate data for a publication, please cite this paper:

G. Lunter and M. Goodson. Stampy: A statistical algorithm for sensitive and fast mapping of Illumina sequence reads. Genome Res. 2011 21:936-939.

The program itself may not be modified in any way, and may not be reverse- engineered.

This license does not allow the use of this program for any commercial purpose. If you wish to use this program for commercial purposes, please contact the author.

No guarantees are given as to the program's correctness, or the accuracy or completeness of its output. The author accepts no liability for damage or otherwise following from using and interpreting the output of this program. The software is supplied "as is", without obligation by the author to provide any services or support.

[http://www.well.ox.ac.uk/~gerton/README.txt](http://www.well.ox.ac.uk/~gerton/README.txt)

</comment><comment><USER15> Some context:

The blog author just wrote another post which was essentially a hatchet job on a 'rival' software package. One of the major differences between his software kallisto and the rival Salmon was the license - Salmon has a GNU General Public License.

<comment><USER14> 'I was wrong' part 1 was a really a discussion about how wrong / fraudulent some authors were who published in Nature in 2004. It looks like it turned into a bit of flame-fest[1], with the original authors chipping in.

[1] [https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/pachters-p- valu...](https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/pachters-p-value- prize/#comment-4436)

<comment><USER15> No I mean this blog post: [https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2017/08/02/how- not-to-perf...](https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2017/08/02/how-not-to- perform-a-differential-expression-analysis-or-science/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for sharing your painful journey!

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't take credit, I just follow Lior's blog :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There won't be too many comments on this post cause the internet ain't interested when someone says they are wrong. The internet wants to TELL them they are wrong, when they think they're right.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure that's so true. Everyone enjoys a good argument over what license the author should have used. )

I do get what you're saying but I think people discuss positive things all the time on even the worst sites. Admitting you're wrong isn't all that novel, but the changing of license is.

<comment><USER17> So you're saying I'm wrong?

<comment><USER19> What are you trying to argue? Can't people on the Internet both enjoy telling someone they're wrong, _and_ be interested in someone saying they were wrong, at the same time?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Where is Philae? When will it wake up? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/01/30/where-is-philae-when-will-it-wake-up/

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, it looks like Philae is destined to become the poster child for the continued use of radioisotope thermal generators (RTG's) in spacecraft (especially landers).

<comment><USER3> Could you provide some additional reasoning about why that would be unfortunate?

<comment><USER2> Because if someone had asked "What if it lands in the shade?" before it _actually_ landed in the shade, maybe this could have been prevented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For some reason the term "do science" cracks me up.</comment>


Ask HN: Developer agent for hiring - <AUTHOR> I have an idea. I an a developer and also a pretty social and outgoing person. I think it would be a good idea for me to embark into the agent business where I match developers and companies. Sure, call a recruiter, but I would like to take on the developers side more than the company who is hiring.<p>Does it make sense and is anyone else doing it? <comment><USER2> You can do it as a business, but as software engineers we like to make our own deals and normally build our own software to track competing offers, pros and cons of each offer and rankings of which one will benefit us career wise in the long and short term. Our own systems are pretty advanced as they are built catered to our needs, an agent would not be able to reach the depth of each and every developer as they all have their own needs and wants.

Though this might be good for the engineers without much real work experience to get a better job in the beginning, though it may not be very useful for those senior and above that have been in the game for 10+ years anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> @js_cheerleader[1] on Twitter has been specializing in helping JavaScript developers find work, acting like an agent for them. I don't know how successful she's been at it, but it struck me how unique the idea was.

[1] [https://twitter.com/js_cheerleader](https://twitter.com/js_cheerleader)</comment>


Learn Icon - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Icon_Programming

<comment><USER2> Icon and Pike are two programming languages that I probably didn't need to learn. Griswold's book on the Icon implementation was OK; it describes a complete compiler, intermediate instruction set and a VM in a compact book, but so did "A Little Smalltalk", in a far smaller frame and with class.

Icon is a "modern" SNOBOL, if you want that sort of a thing. Most Icon books and publications are online as well:

<http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/books.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> Some of the biggest reasons to learn a new language are the features that you can take back to more domestic ones; almost nothing that makes Icon special (backtracking, generators, string scanning) can be used in other languages</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hire a dude to bring you to Congress and argue to defund the NSA - <AUTHOR> http://www.welobby.us

<comment><USER2> > If we raise enough to pay for a meeting with a Congressperson or a Staffer > we're going to ask our lobbyist to bring in an iPad running a Google Hangout > that all of our backers will be invited to join so you can be a part of the > meeting too.

:) Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Democracy is one was of making political power more participatory and widely distributed. Elites tried to lock it up by pretending that money is speech. But we can also play the money is speech game.</comment>


Recurly vs. Chargify Review - <AUTHOR> http://chriscrompton.com/2010/12/recurly-vs-chargify-review/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know how Stripe handles this? They say they store cards, but I wonder if they do store cards themselves or use a vault provided by the payment gateway as well.</comment>


Why PokemonGo is sitting on a goldmine - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-pokemongo-sitting-goldmine-manish-garg?trk=pulse_spock-articles <comment><USER2> There is already a rumor one such deal is being made with McDonalds.

<comment><USER3> Most definitely. Someone just extracted a McDonald's logo image file from the game.</comment></comment>


Getting Hacker News'd Twice – Lessons Learned for Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://getpolarized.io/2019/04/02/getting-hacker-news-lessons-for-entrepreneurs.html <comment><USER2> I'm NOT an entrepreneur but rather a blogger. I started posting in August 2004 and my site has pretty much remained unchanged in terms of basics since then: multiple posts daily, 365 days/year, same design/appearance. I found your post very interesting even though I'm not at all technically inclined and don't know the difference between a webapp and a webbed foot. I too have found HN a treasure trove of value, almost like free money. I happened on it a couple years ago and only started contributing and reading it regularly last year, and it's now my favorite website. I visit perhaps 4-5x/day just to scroll down the homepage, pretty much every time finding something of interest to dive into. I share your opinion of the quality of the audience: razor sharp, blunt, acerbic, super informed, offering information and links to things I'd never otherwise happen upon. Sometimes I get annoyed by the gnarliness of the tone and irritated by the combativeness but at the same time I like it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah... sometimes they can be really really opinionated if you don't really explain yourself.

They don't give you much room for nuance and are pedantic and will rip you apart otherwise..</comment></comment>