Tech salaries are risk premiums - <AUTHOR> https://phildini.dev/tech-salaries-are-risk-premiums <comment><USER2> > Here's where we reach our very strange conclusion. If we take the above as > true, then every family member you convince to buy an iPhone or use Gmail or > subscribe to Amazon Prime is contributing some small percentage to your > salary increases at Random Startup, Inc. Which is a fascinating, if deeply > disturbing and perverse, incentive.

If we're extrapolating, this is just saying growing market means growing jobs? I don't know why this is disturbing or perverse.

The opposite is true, if people stopped buying iPhones all those people who support iPhones would be out of a job.

If one whole industry stops hiring then of course the premiums go down. The supply is huge and the demand is low.

Sorry, I feel like this article is taking something simple and making it sound complicated and insightful without necessarily bringing a new insight?

<comment><USER3> This article left the same exact taste in my mouth (eyes?)

The author has roughly described the concepts of wage inflation and supply- and-demand (for workers, in one industry, and for consumer goods), and reduced almost everything to "risk premium". Risk is everywhere in the economy, yes. The word "premium" implies additional cost over and above a base cost, which encompasses many more factors.

Edit: To be fair, I'm glad that the author and some readers are excited about learning new concepts. I have many similar blog posts written, though admittedly they stay in my drafts folder if I feel they aren't contributing significant insight :)

<comment><USER4> This happens to me too. I read a new concept or a book apply it to some real world problem and I am almost certain that my new hypothesis is the new Nash theory. Only to re-read it the next day to realize how I overcomplicated my hypothesis just to fit the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tech salaries are high for a number of reasons: programmers are highly productive, reducing the amount of work that others must do, the job is hard, and requires basically autodidacts to do it. The personality traits for being a good programmer, I think, are rare. There are a whole suite of poorly paid positions in the United States that are similarly difficult and not as highly paid as they could be: teachers, for instance.

But why do we even discuss it when there is a whole cohort of salaries that actually make no sense in comparison: All of the VP's, CEO's, etc... even stock holders just wasting efficiency collecting dividends from existing wealth and the productivity of others. Why are tech people trying to defend their salaries when we could just point at the next people up the chain?

<comment><USER6> You're saying that programmers have a unique set of skills which is why they're paid so much.

And in the next sentence you're questioning why CEOs get paid so much. A good CEO or CFO or CMO can generate value for the company at a scale that's much much larger than what a single programmer does.

During Satya Nadella's reign as the CEO, Microsoft went from people speculating its impending demise to a trillion dollar company. Don't you think he deserves a billion from that $700bn rise in market cap?

TSLA stock will tank the moment Elon Musk decides to step down? In a cynical world, maybe he's just a figurehead and there are others running the show behind the scene, but creating such persona is still something that a CEO has to do.

This is the same old Tesla vs Edison discussion. It's a common misconception among people that it's enough to be a genius lone worker to be able to provide value to a company.

<comment><USER7> Thing is, bad CEOs that drive their company into the ground still get paid way more than we do. Terrible managers often get paid more than the talented people working under them. Salaries are determined more by power than by supply and demand. Also by supply and demand, but more by power. People who wield power get paid more, even if they're bad at it.

<comment><USER8> Bad CEOs get paid a lot since if they fuck up, their failures are public and nobody will hire them afterwards so they need the money as insurance.

If you're a bad programmer, your failures aren't public and you can job hop to the next gullible company.

<comment><USER7> They don't _need_ the money; their pay is already more than enough to retire from. Also, a bad CEO needs to fail spectacularly to not get hired. Plenty of mediocre CEOs keep getting hired for insane salaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tech salaries aren't risk premia:

If tech salaries were risk premia, you would expect the expected value (weighted average over all foreseeable futures) of compensation packages at startups to be higher than those at established tech giants. This might be true, but it doesn't seem obvious: there are often comments on HN doubting the claims of high packages at tech giants, suggesting the commenters _aren 't_ getting paid more at their more risky (p(fired | laid off | shutdown)) jobs.

Software engineering salaries are high because there's competition for the 'best' software engineers. In a competitive hiring market, the absolute upper cap on compensation is the marginal contribution of an additional engineer, less some percentage to account for uncertainties. That marginal contribution is high at the largest tech companies, so salaries are high. Other companies can either pay high, too or, if they can't use a software engineer as efficiently (e.g. because they don't get as much leverage from software, or if their engineering is poorly managed), they won't be willing to pay the market rate.

<comment><USER10> Correct, the author is describing the effect of a competitive, liquid talent market. The other dynamic he correctly identified was asymmetry in switching costs (cheap for me to quit my job and go work at Google, expensive for Google if I quit and leave some project in the lurch). But he didn't call it this, and it's not a risk premium per se.

<comment><USER9> Yes, there's a competitive, liquid talent market.

I don't buy the part about asymmetry of switching costs. It's possible to argue that asymmetry exists in the opposite direction: each employee has one job, so switching jobs is time-consuming and risky; Google has thousands of engineers who have had the same training/experience on internal tools/standards, so it's easy to replace a single engineer when they leave a project.

The other point I made is analogous to Baumol's cost disease except that, instead of applying to different types of job, it applies to different types of employer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > If AppAmaGooFaceSoft ever stops hiring, if one day the heads of recruiting > at those companies say "Nope, that's it, we're done, full house over here" > then the ripples in tech salaries will be felt across the whole industry. > Salaries will be driven down, because working at AppAmaGooFaceSoft is no > longer a bargaining chip. It might cause a tech salary "crash", where > salaries drop way closer to the skilled worker median.

This seems very unlikely. Tech is probably very far from being "solved"; and the minute salaries stop being relatively high, that's when people will stop joining bootcamps and getting CS degrees, instead going back to finance or whatever the hot ticket is at the moment. This will likely cause a dampening effect on tech salaries, cushioning any decline in the short term, and creating a serious talent supply problem in the long term, which will just push salaries even higher.

I think that the truth is, tech is in demand everywhere. Because what tech really is, in many cases, is about improving your processes, automating work, and increasing efficiencies in all sorts of businesses - and that isn't something that has an endpoint. There are still many fields that have barely begun to benefit from what tech has to offer.

<comment><USER12> I am always actively recruiting mid to senior level candidates out of FANGs. I would say about half of these people are seriously poachable, given the right opportunity. For the other half, their compensation is simply too high to pull them out. If FANG salaries dropped by half, I estimate the number would increase to 80-90%. If venture capital funding dried up such that FANG salaries decreased AND Series A+ startup opportunities dried up, then I'd predict a reversion to founder-heavy garage based startups. Because the one thing that is not going away in the near term is the sheer number of unsolved problems/opportunities in tech.

<comment><USER13> Is this because of grant appreciation due to stock market trends or just raw compensation?

<comment><USER14> Both (anecdotally, from my personal experiencE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not so much that the article is false as it is that its using a very broad interpretation of terminology.

In essence all of'supply' and 'demand' would fall into this risk premium bucket by this interpretation.

</comment><comment><USER16> This article effectively is saying that if the demand for developers falls that salaries would fall. Which is obvious to anyone who has taken econ 101, but I have no idea how this is anymore of a "risk premium" than anyone else who works for a living.

> and the cut you're taking from not working at AppAmaGooFaceSoft.

This pre-supposes that:

A) Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft are the highest paying companies (not only not true for liquid cash, even less true if you factor in start-up equity expectation)

B) Salaries aren't being set by all the other companies as well. [Generalists, at least in the Bay Area, are in a competitive employment market, not an oligopoly]

<comment><USER17> The article is not saying that - if IBM hires 100,000 developers but AppAmaGooBookSoft have a hiring freeze, then then you get a much smaller risk premium. The point being that AppAmaGooBookSoft pay insane salaries so other companies need to pay their employees somewhat well to minimize risk losing their (best) employees to AppAmaGooBookSoft.

<comment><USER16> Can you define what "risk premium" means here?

I can't tell if the argument here is that the market isn't competitive or something else. It's not like FAANG pays high salaries because they are generous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Don't the salaries at AppAmaGooBookSoft (sorry, patio11's spelling is canonical here) themselves include a risk premium that is incenting the people there to stay instead of going to work at a small company with the opportunity to topple one of them?

How do you model those risk premiums against each other? It seems like they should both go infinity in order to keep anyone from ever leaving anywhere.

<comment><USER19> It's a market for risk. Risk premiums are worth what tech companies will pay for them. If it's more expensive to find a replacement than pay a risk premium, tech companies should and will pay the risk premium.

In the long run, the price of the risk premium = the cost of replacing the employee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This feels like an overreach of the risk premium concept. At the very least, it doesn't describe how AppAmaGooFaceSoft arrive at their compensation scheme. You need to separate out uncertainty from the supply function (sell your time to the highest bidder). If the risk is someone might come along with a better offer, but the job market is too opaque to know for sure, there are systems we can set up to make it more transparent. Or at least lock in the current rate for a span of time with a contract.

I'm relatively certain that if you established a clearing house for tech jobs the way the AEA does for economists, even if it removed all the uncertainty of who the highest bidder for an employee was, wages would remain high or possibly go higher. There's a lot of room for top tech firms to bid up wages yet, and even the small bootstrapped companies value programmer time pretty highly.

</comment><comment><USER21> The author misunderstands risk premium, which is the extra reward the market offers in expected value to induce you to take a risky proposition over a certainty equivalent.

I think programmers' salaries are weighed down by risk aversion. It's tough to measure marginal impact, you don't know want to be punished for being placed on a less productive team, etc. So salary is some function of your expected marginal productivity on an average team but scaled down by a risk premium. If you don't want to pay this risk premium, trading is an option.

</comment><comment><USER22> Risk premium: you could have your money in government bonds, so to entice you to put them in something riskier, you have to offer a better return. The riskier, the more people have to think it can outperform. That's not to say that this is what ends up being realised, otherwise it wouldn't be risk.

Not clear how this connects with this idea about tech salaries. Where's the uncertain outcome? Person potentially jumps to FAANG? What's the certain outcome in the analogy?

<comment><USER23> If I am reading this correctly, the certain outcome is when the smaller company pays a salary equal to FAANG. The person has no incentive to jump. The uncertainly is when the company pays less than a FAANG salary, pocketing the extra salary not being paid, and taking the risk the person does not jump. The lower the salary, the more risk the person jumps, but the more money the company saves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Speaking specifically about the Bay Area, I feel like salaries here are driven significantly by the insane cost of living.

There's the feedback loop between the salary competition and the stupidly constrained housing market.

<comment><USER25> Some people believe it's the opposite ( chicken and egg blah blah blah) that because a lot of people got very rich in the tech boom, it 1. attracted more people to the area and 2. gave them a lot more pricing power over the already constrained housing... the restrictive housing policies just poured more fuel on the fire.

I'm not close to the area so I'm happy to be corrected by those who saw things unfold over the years

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> AppAmaGooFaceSoft is only one part of the picture. The ability for engineers to open their own companies, from one person businesses to unicorn startups is the other part of the picture and I think even more important because, barring some extreme changes to our business laws, it's not going away as long as such companies are valuable. If salaries drop, I thin we would see a giant increase in entrepreneurs. The more the drop, the higher the increase. There's no need to build a unicorn to make good money. One or two people is all it takes, often. Startups know this because they all were in the same position not too long ago. What's to keep their employees from going out and forming their own startup with the same idea, especially when non-competes can't be enforced? Why wouldn't tech workers do so if their salaries dropped so significantly? Or pursue other ideas? Or work easier, non-tech jobs?

</comment><comment><USER27> AppAmaGooBookSoft ignores Netflix, which is important for salary calibration since they are cash-only. And FAANG ignores MS.

We need an acronym for all of them. (Facebook Apple Google Microsoft Amazon Netflix).

This also doesn't take into account the high salaries you can get in NYC in fintech.

<comment><USER28> > AppAmaGooBookSoft ignores Netflix, which is important for salary calibration > since they are cash-only. And FAANG ignores MS.

Why does it matter if it's cash only? The stock is equivalent to cash unless you care that much about the fluctuation.

At Google we have Autosale so any time I get a stock grant it's automatically sold and deposited into my bank account as cash.

At Microsoft I think they go even further and give you an amount of stock based on the cash value at the time you receive it so you don't even have to worry about price fluctuations. (At least that is my understanding)

I believe the reason FAANG ignores MS is that MS salaries are lower, but that is only based on my personal experience.

<comment><USER25> FAANG was coined base on stock performance and MS wasn't a hot stock at the time

It happened that because their employees are paid heavily in stock, the acronym became synonymous to high paying jobs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think you also have to factor in location. You can't pay someone 50k and expect them to work in SF or NYC.

As companies adopt more remote work strategies, I believe there will be downward pressure on salaries.

</comment><comment><USER30> This seems like a complicated way of explaining supply and demand?

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is taking a questionable idea way too far.

The reason I get paid what I'm paid, is because the company hiring me expects the work I do for them to be worth at least that much. If not, they would not hire me.

So the money I'm paid is not "risk premium", it's simply getting paid what you're worth. It could actually still be less than what my work is worth to them, but I don't have a good way of telling, and it's probably still more than what I'd be able to earn making my own product.

Though if there's one profession where it's easy to make your own product with very little risk or investment, it's software engineering, and that's probably the reason why we get paid much closer to what we're worth than many other professions; because to us, leaving and starting out own business is always an option when employers don't want to be reasonable about what they pay us.

Also, there's enormous demand for what we do, so that increases our bargaining power, and therefore our salaries.

So to what extent is our salary risk premium? I suppose an employer could pay us much less than what we think we're worth, and if we have nothing better at the moment, we might take it and leave the moment we find something better. In that case, it would be better for the employer to pay us more to discourage us from leaving.

But is that risk premium? If it is, then practically any salary, and perhaps any cost, can be considered risk premium. I don't see this as a very useful way of looking at things.

And Google and Facebook have little to do with my salary; they barely have any jobs in my field in my country, and I don't want to emigrate. Sure, I could make more if I worked in Silicon Valley, but I don't see that being worth it for me.

</comment><comment><USER31> Some strange assumptions here. For example, the article kind of implicitly assumes that AppAmaGooFaceSoft pays best. I don't think that's the case. If anything, people work for AppAmaGooFaceSoft because of prestige. But this would then contradict the whole article in a way.

</comment><comment><USER32> I also think that generally speaking it's a seller's market right now for tech skills, and has been for years.

At least where I live (Toronto), there are more jobs than (qualified) candidates. At my last job (a very large digital team inside one of the largest corporations in the country), we were hiring up to 20 people per month, and usually interviewing 100+ just to get those 20 people. And still had lots of job openings.

Most candidates would tell us that they're talking to 4-5 other companies, so we often didn't get people even if we made them an offer.

From speaking to colleagues elsewhere in the city and country, most (non- AppAmaGooFaceSoft + Shopify for Canada) companies are in the same boat.

<comment><USER33> Anecdata; but I know the hiring numbers of a tech-forward company with a couple hundred engineers in NYC: 1.2 in 100 applications results in a hire. They have a 4-ish step hiring process where between 1/2 and 3/4 are dropped each step.

It's an environment where both sides of the market are currently empowered to be highly selective.

<comment><USER34> > They have a 4-ish step hiring process where between 1/2 and 3/4 are dropped > each step.

Isn't part of this just the standard signal / noise resulting from the fact that most people who are capable of doing the job are currently employed, so a larger than normal number of applicants will be sub-standard, since they are the ones who can't get a job?

<comment><USER32> There's probably truth on both sides here..

We (my previous employer) were quite selective in our screening, so there were plenty of people applying that we turned away.

But I would say the majority of people we interviewed were employed but looking for something better or different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I am sorry, but this article is just an air (fiber?) tremor. The matter is much easier, it is pure free market process.

There are companies who needs software to increase their profits and/or gross margins. There are people who can engineer software.

There are different levels of software complexity (think between Excel spreadsheet's formulae and operating system). There are different skill levels of software engineering.

There are different gross margins obtainable via software of different complexity. There is everlasting competetion between companies for market shares.

Everything else is demand and supply curve from Economy 101.

</comment><comment><USER36> Of course, in practice, AppAmaGooFaceSoft (and "dozens more") will cap wages by simple collusion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

[https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles- wage...](https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing- cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/)

</comment><comment><USER37> This just sounds like a limited form of Baumol's Cost Disease.

<comment><USER16> That's actually a much better analogy. Companies at high scale can achieve higher productivity per developer every year.

Not at high scale? (say a one-off consulting project). Sucks for you -- labor market is surging from the high scale company's productivity improvements. Be prepared for your labor costs to go up much faster than inflation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Then what drives the high salaries at AppAmaGooFaceSoft?

<comment><USER32> The fact that those companies basically print money?

And the internal competition between themselves (that wasn't always there: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation) )

<comment><USER38> Why does a corporation making more money result in its employees earning more? Out of the goodness of the CEO's heart? I don't believe in this trickling down. They obviously need to pay more in order to attract the top talent, but why?

<comment><USER39> An employee costs you X per year, so you need to make a multiple of X to justify the hire. The higher that multiple is, the easier it is to make that decision. When there are lots of companies competing to hire tech workers for easy money, salaries rise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> For reference on the AppAmaGooFaceSoft pay market right now: [http://levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi)

</comment><comment><USER41> Taking a slightly lower salary can be a risk premium against being fired. The goal is to maximize the expectation value of all earnings, not instantaneous salary.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think this can be best summarized as "a rising tide raises all boats."

Unions have long fought to keep demand up for specific industries under this exact logic.

</comment><comment><USER43> Supply and demand of labor would be a more accurate and concise way to describe this.

You are worth more when there's more demand for your (and people like you) labor.

</comment><comment><USER44> The core idea here doesn't seem unique to tech.

</comment><comment><USER45> I am curious why nobody has mentioned where all this money comes from in the first place, namely: Intellectual Property.

Corporate programmers get access to monopolized technologies, improve them for the owners of the 'intellectual property' they create, so that the corporation they work for can (continue to) extract rents.

Professor G. Standing says this about 'rentiers':

"[Rentier capitalists] assert a belief in 'free markets' and want us to believe that economic policies are extending them. That is untrue. Today we have the most unfree market system ever created….

How can politicians look into TV cameras and say we have a free market system when patents guarantee monopoly incomes for twenty years, preventing anyone from competing? How can they claim there are free markets when copyright rules give a guaranteed income for seventy years after a person's death? How can they claim free markets exist when one person or company is given a subsidy and not others, or when they sell off the commons that belong to all of us, at a discount, to a favoured individual or company, or when Uber, TaskRabbit and their ilk act as unregulated labour brokers, profiting from the labour of others?"

"…today, a tiny minority of people and corporate interests across the world are accumulating vast wealth and power from rental income, not only from housing and land but from a range of other assets, natural and created. 'Rentiers' of all kinds are in unparalleled ascendancy and the neo-liberal state is only too keen to oblige their greed.

Rentiers derive income from ownership, possession or control of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce. Most familiar is rental income from land, property, mineral exploitation or financial investments, but other sources have grown too. They include the income lenders gain from debt interest; income from ownership of 'intellectual property' (such as patents, copyright, brands and trademarks); capital gains on investments; 'above normal' company profits (when a firm has a dominant market position that allows it to charge high prices or dictate terms); income from government subsidies; and income of financial and other intermediaries derived from third-party transactions."

Source: [https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day- corru...](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corruption- capitalism-guy-standing/)

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't even know given the cost of living in the Bay Area if $300K is even really "high" anymore.

If you max out 401k and IRA this is $275k, which is $168K take home or $14k a month.

1-bedroom in SF + Utilities: $4000

Car: $500

Parking: $200

Groceries: $500

Healthcare (copays/premium contribution): $200

Entertainment (incl drinks, streaming services, going out to eat): $500

Phone: $100

Misc. transit: $200

Debt payments (Student loans): $400

Left over: $7400

If you want a child or buy a home...

A 2-bedroom condo will take $1.5M or $300K for a down payment. Then you have to add insurance + HOA. A 1.2M mortgage + insurance + HOA will be close to $8K/month.

Full-time childcare costs $2K/month (+ need to save for college, then all the costs with raising a child).

<comment><USER16> Spending $14k/month is luxury living even in the Bay Area.

1\. Your housing numbers are "luxury" prices. (those are generally numbers you see in say SOMA).

2\. Having a car in SF in such premium neighborhoods is a further luxury item.

3\. Homes are also way overpriced here compared to rent, but that's another story.

Your childcare numbers are actually more on the average side, but again, $300k for a single earner (with stay at home spouse) is obviously way better than $300k combined -- meaning you either:

A) shouldn't count childcare.

B) it's another luxury item.

Now don't get me wrong - if you are earning $300k a year as a one-earner family, you'll probability still be feeling money woes, but that's more of a testament to the standard of living in your social group being so high (who sends their kids to public schools?? weird!!) than any absolute metric.

<comment><USER46> I think you have to factor in tech jobs are not as stable as people think. Performance review cycles regularly involve getting let go for a non- insignificant number of people. And people do not stay at companies for very long relatively speaking, either voluntarily or not.

Also hard to imagine that the bull run will last forever. A recession will hit the tech industry hard.

<comment><USER47> Top tech companies are very stable in terms of employment. It is notoriously hard to get fired at the likes of Google and even if you draw the short straw, you often have 6-12 months of notice. People generally leave because they get job offers for more money or a combination of same money + shorter commute or more interesting work or change of scenery. Finally, the last recession was a doozy and still hit tech no harder than any other industry. Most of the same tech giants you're talking about didn't even have layoffs. I would call that as stable as it comes.

<comment><USER46> Please read up on the performance review system at most tech companies because what you're saying simply isn't true.

<comment><USER47> I am quite familiar with the performance review process at top tech companies given that I work at one. The difficulty in getting fired (especially without advanced notice) is often laughed about. The only thing harder than getting into these companies is getting fired from them.

<comment><USER46> Maybe at Google. It just isn't true for (at very least) Netflix, Uber, Microsoft, and Amazon.

<comment><USER47> Netflix, Amazon, and Uber, no, but Microsoft is a hard yes. It was the first tech giant to popularize the whole "rest and vest" cliche and still does. Facebook and Apple vary by org but it's still quite possible if that's what interests you. Then drop down a tier and it's very easy -- the likes of Oracle, IBM, eBay, PayPal, Adobe, etc. push very few out because barely anyone wants to come in.

<comment><USER46> So I named 4 well known tech companies, and you admitted 3 of them do regularly layoff workers during performance review cycles, and yet continue to argue that it isn't true that companies lay off employees on a regular basis...?

Ok...

<comment><USER47> I admitted that it's not _laughably hard_ to get fired but it's still pretty hard if you show any semblance of effort. Naming three (of the most cut throat) exceptions out of thousands of companies is not an argument.

<comment><USER46> I named 2 out of the 5 companies that are a part of FAANG. The other is considered a big tech employer now.

The top of market salaries come from these large, competitive companies. It is more unusual to be making that much and "resting and vesting" than not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


On Selling Exceptions to the GNU GPL - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions

<comment><USER2> I don't know if this is a unique view, but I'll put it out there:

I don't use MySQL because it's open source. I couldn't care less if it's open source or not. I use it because it's free, in active development, and pretty much works well in the main.

I expect the fact it's open source means that the odd bug gets fixed that wouldn't otherwise get fixed, simply because there are more eyes looking at code (Although I do wonder how many people actively go through open source projects looking at code).

Open source is sort of nice n'all, but I don't think it's the reason things are successful or not. If MySQL changed to closed source I don't think it'd change much apart from for open source zealots like the author.

<comment><USER3> The fact it's open source means you can't get the rug yanked out from under you by the copyright owner.

\- They can't suddenly change their mind and make the next version for-pay.

\- They can't impose pushy conditions, Bitkeeper style.

\- They can't cease development, while sitting on the copyright.

\- And if they go bankrupt the code won't be left in legal limbo.

<comment><USER2> The worst thing for me about open source is the mass of abandoned projects no one cares about any more.

Don't get me wrong, I like open source and use it a ton, but it's not the only way.

As I say, IMHO the main thing is that someone is behind the software that cares.

<comment><USER4> You really think there are fewer abandoned close-source projects? It's just that you never even knew they existed, unlike the open-source projects. Classic selection bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This only makes sense for libraries, it seems, because it relies on embedding.

For end-user software, I wonder if you could do the opposite, charge _extra_ for a GPL version of the software? I know there would be times where I'd pay more for that.

The vendor would of course run the risk that I'd then start shrink-wrapping and selling it, so maybe you'd have to modify the license slightly to include distribution only as patches, not full source code. That way people could share code but would still need to buy initial access from the vendor.

Edit: The responses miss my point: I know it won't be copyleft / totally free software with such restrictions. But if such restrictions would convince someone to change distribution terms from shrink-wrap to partially open- source, I think many of the strongest reasons for advocating free software would be accommodated. That is, you _could_ modify the printer driver (or whatever RMS's initial reason was).

Or if Photoshop doesn't have the functionality you want, you can pay extra to get the source and patch it. And you could even share such improvements with other users, provided they have the full source.

<comment><USER5> No, you can't charge extra for a copyleft-licensed version of software. Any licensing change you made to try to do that would make you not copyleft.

<comment><USER6> As I understand it, you can in fact charge for GPL software.

<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html>

What you can't do, is to refuse to provide sources and to prevent your customer to stick that source on GitHub for everyone to do whatever they like with (including selling).

<comment><USER7> You can charge for GPL software but as I understand it, you can't charge something extra for the privilege of a GPL'd version of your program.

If you structured your licensing in such a way as to require this, it probably violates the GPL.

<comment><USER4> If you are the _copyright holder_ , you absolutely can. That's the entire point of the article. As a _user_ , you can't change the licensing terms.

<comment><USER7> The article's position is in the opposite way. Charging extra for the right to use the software under a non-free license.

<comment><USER4> I just meant that the point of the article rests on the fact that the copyright holders can change the distribution terms whichever way they want. The "other" licenses won't be GPL, of course, but there's nothing preventing them from releasing under two licenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always called this "dual licensing" and I'm very surprised that Stallman is in favour of it. I seem to remember him being against it. The arguments he uses now make sense, though they also made sense in the past.

</comment><comment><USER9> So proprietary is bad, unless someone pays a GPL IP owner for it? Seriously?

Come on rms, it wouldn't kill you to admit that sometimes non-GPL licenses are ok.

<comment><USER10> The central point of the article is that non-GPL licenses are not wrong, and a GPL exception is no worse than a non-GPL license. I think this point is very clearly spelled out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Standard GPL license discussions in three, two, one...

Nothing to see. Move along.

<comment><USER11> Am I _wrong_? This is the same series of overlapping monologues that arises each time the subject of GPL licensing is broached.

Each time time this horse gets dragged out of its casket.

Same stuff. Same blather.

License your package the way you want, and move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I got this far:

 _If someone buys an exception to embed a program in a larger proprietary program, he's doing something wrong (namely, making proprietary software). Does it follow that the developer that sold the exception is doing something wrong too?_

Then shrugged and kinda gave up. :) Initially some great points were made but after that paragraph it seemed to turn more into a postulation that GNU GPL was more ethical (his words) than other licenses.

<comment><USER13> I agree. What matters is to write great software, how you finance it is irrelevant to the end user.

Open source makes reverse engineering easier. Users don't care about reverse engineering your software. They care about great software.

My point of view is that great software comes from great engineers, not from a license.

<comment><USER14> > I agree. What matters is to write great software, how you finance it is > irrelevant to the end user.

Well, yes and no. If, for instance, you have proprietary software, and your users depend on it and have no source code, and you go out of business, they are up a creek. Or, if you have released some open source software that people like and find useful, and you can't find a way to fund more than sporadic development, that may be a problem too: in an ideal world you'd spend more time working on it.

<comment><USER2> Come on. That's a silly theoritical argument.

Dump 10MB of source code on the users and see if they bother to fix it or just move on to something else.

If your customers are also programmers who don't mind going through other peoples code, then possibly.

<comment><USER14> The first scenario happens quite regularly.

As for the second scenario, it happens quite often too, just that it's less visible: the software is still there, people use it, just that it doesn't get all the work it could because the main developer(s) have to make ends meet in other ways.

Nothing 'theoretical' about it, it's something many open source developers face, and is, in part, why there's such a big hullabaloo around Mysql: Monty doesn't think it's possible to pay for (enough?) developers if they don't sell GPL exceptions. Of course he's angling to get back control of the project too, for free, using the European Union as his hit man, but that's another topic. In any case, paying for open source development is absolutely not a solved problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Monzo has turned down two acquisition offers in the last month - <AUTHOR> http://tech.newstatesman.com/news/monzo-turned-two-acquisition-offers-last-month <comment><USER2> good thing - but difficult thing</comment>


Toyetic - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyetic <comment><USER2> I recall this term being used for a gag in _Freakazoid!_ (which is labeled "Steven Spielberg presents", although I don't know if he had any real involvement that would be relevant to the provenance of the word), complete with definition.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h6ab9nbByY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h6ab9nbByY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this extrapolate into the modern realms of appetic or videogametic?

</comment><comment><USER5> i.e. Why the movies Cars 2 and Cars 3 exist.

</comment><comment><USER6> Such a _Toy Story_</comment>


How to be kind to your future self and others - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/vicapow/5312339

<comment><AUTHOR> anyone have any other recommendations on how to improve code compilation for brain compilers?</comment>


Show HN: Write every day, measure your progress, achieve your writing goals - <AUTHOR> https://writingstreak.io/?src=hn <comment><USER2> I've been reading a book called Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini. He dropped a writing productivity tip he learned from a colleague which is to always stop in the middle of writing something so that the desire for resolution will pull you in and get you off to a quick start the next time you sit down to work. Humans crave resolution.

I do a similar thing with code. Walking away while my code doesn't compile or a test doesn't pass is the best because when I sit down the next day my attention is already focused where it needs to be. No time wasted trying to figure out where I left off or where I should start.

<comment><USER3> If I walk away in the middle of an unsolved problem, it persists in the back of my mind and is mentally exhausting. I won't be able to sleep or let go of the problem; only potential solutions race around my mind.

However, if there is a clear boundary of work accomplished, I break the build with a simple syntax error and avoid thinking about the next task. I can step away from work completely, without any lingering thoughts, and the next time I am back at it, the syntax error helps me jump in right where I left off.

<comment><USER4> I like the intentional syntax error approach here. That's way better than times I've done: /* NOTE: you left off here!!! */

<comment><USER5> I use #error (and on compilers that support it #warning) to leave unignorable messages over my codebase for things that need doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool tool, I really like the idea and workflow it promotes!

Only question I have is about the content I write into your text box. Is it still mine? Is it private to everyone (even your servers)? Writing is a personal exercise and can be creatively rewarding, but only if you've got the confidence that it's still solely _your_ writing and that you control who can see it and when. The only privacy callout I see in your about section is regarding other users on the app not being able to see your content. A paragraph about what you do with the writing I put in your tool would help me not feel worried that I'm writing with someone over my shoulder who owns my words as I pen them.

Again, good work so far!

<comment><AUTHOR> Before you sign up, all of the data is saved in your browser. Technically you could use it like this indefinitely, but this is mostly for demo purposes, so some of the functionality won't be available (like sharing data across devices, email reminders, public profile page). Also if I will make significant changes to my database in the future, this may cause issues. So that's not the best solution.

In the future I'm planning to create a desktop app, that might be the perfect solution if you really don't want your data to leave your computer.

Meanwhile, I can promise you that I will never share your data with anyone. I'm not using extra sophisticated encryption or anything like that (that would be an overkill for a writing app), but I'm using Atlas [1] to store your data (they're really good and competent database as a service provider), and on my end I've made sure that nobody can read what you wrote without your password.

There's no such thing as flawless security I suppose, but I'm trying to follow the best practices, so unless you're writing a short story about your social security number falling in love with your credit card pin code, or a novelization of NSA's deepest darkest secrets, I wouldn't worry too much about this =)

[1] [https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas](https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone!

I've just published a beta of my new app for writers, it is a simple tool meant to help you develop a daily writing habit, track your progress, and achieve your writing goals.

I'm looking for some feedback:

\- What are your first impressions? Does it look useful?

\- Is the functionality easy to understand?

\- What can I do to make it better? Any ideas on design, functionality, onboarding, marketing, etc would be very helpful.

\- Any other thoughts/suggestions/advice?

<comment><USER7> Great idea, but charging more than it costs to get Office365 was an immediate nope for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, at the moment I'm giving away free lifetime accounts just for some helpful feedback or social media sharing =)

<comment><USER8> Just from a marketing perspective...

We don't need to know that on your landing page. That's your business plan, and honestly you might not even follow it.

By the time you get to that point, you may have chosen to go with an ad model, or you may have added some new features that make this clearly worth $10 per month, and VERY different from Office 365.

Just remove that bit. Use this space to share with me the appeal of your tool RIGHT NOW, not the potential cost of your tool at some future point.

I'm excited to try your product. I've been struggling to get into a writing habit and definitely could use something like this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First impressions:

\- Cool a new writing app. I was looking for one of those (seriously)

\- The first thing i noticed was the content. My eyes totally skipped over the writing are.

\- I can start typing right away. Yay.

\- I can use google auth. Double Yay!

\- Overall concept is easy to understand and adds value.

Feedback:

\- kudos for releasing. That is a milestone many don't reach.

\- Quite a bit too monochrome. The muted colors take away from the marketing message. On the landing page, you can get a bit more poppy and save the mutedness for the actual writing area.

\- Landing page as primary interface is an interesting choice. On the plus side, you can start writing immediately, which is kind of awesome. On the other hand, your landing page content describing the hotness feels like so much clutter as a result.

\- Using the landing page as the primary interface means that the typing area is quite restricted in size. I saw that you can go full screen, but I just want to have the rest of my browser window work.

\- Halfway-adaptive design. Your site is smart enough to deal with browser window resizing, but why force me to a certain maximum width for writing?

\- I like all the writing gamification and timing features

\- The marketing content is presented in a quite dense way. You could add a lot of white space and get more 'bang' for you work. As it is, so many features are packed in that individually, they don't get the impact they deserve.

\- The marketing content comes off a bit too much feature driven. Almost like it was a feature description from a spec document. You could shorten the text up and cut it down by half and get more from it.

\- The design aesthetic seems to me a curious mix of muted and restrained, and yet still feels packed and cluttered. Consider adding some more white space and softening some edges.

I've got more but this is probably enough to start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for great feedback!

\- Many people have mentioned the monochrome scheme. Some like it, some don't, I've decided that I will add a bright theme as an option.

\- I will work on improving the design of the landing page, making it more concise and less cluttered. Meanwhile you can click the "About" button in main menu to hide all that information.

\- The narrow width and a restricted height are a design choice, I figured it's more convenient to see the whole interface at a glance, when the window gets too large it's hard to look at all the stats. I think I should add a setting allowing people to customize this stuff.

\- I will figure out how to write a better copy and improve the general UI design. I've tried really hard to make it awesome, but I think I'll need to do better. Maybe I'll ask for some advice from a professional copywriter/designer.

<comment><USER10> FWIW I found your feature descriptions pretty tight and compelling. It was cool to read through what's available and then pop to the top of the screen to see it in action (particularly the typewriter and blur modes).

The main thing I didn't get a feel for was how this works as your document gets longer, or you're working on multiple documents. If you're writing a book does the whole thing end up being in the same text area and you just scroll around? Is there a save/load?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree writing daily helps, far more than just writing.

I've written at least daily in my blog every day since January 2011. Here are the 3,000+ posts: [http://joshuaspodek.com/archives](http://joshuaspodek.com/archives).

Some side benefits: when I applied for a column at Inc. and they asked for writing samples, I could send them thousands. My book became a bestseller.

The main benefits: thinking more clearly, ability to start new habits, self- awareness, and many personal leadership/growth things like that.

I've spent nearly zero cash on the habit.

</comment><comment><USER12> "There are three ways to increase your writing productivity: Write more words."

As a daily journal-er....I'm wary of the idea that writing more words is a net-gain for writing productivity and favor the school of thought that you just pick up a pen (or keyboard) and write something for a consistent period of time, _period_.

Instead of writing more words, rack up more days consecutively where the conscientious decision to write something-a two sentence blurb about something interesting on your commute or a two paragraph summary of the day.

Volume will come naturally from this IMO. "Without commitment you'll never start, without consistency you'll never finish" \- one of my favorite actors[1]

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2aXT1aYI7k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2aXT1aYI7k)

</comment><comment><USER13> Well designed site!

I used something similar: 750words.com for a year

within few months the streak turned to torture.

There was no noticeable improvement in my adult writing skills yet I felt obliged to keep the chain going.

The happiest day of that year was when I mixed up time zones and missed one day.

Have not written anything seriously since.

<comment><USER14> That is like one Lord of The Rings or six 1984 every two years. A month and change for Animal Farm. Two months for "man bash".

It sounds like a full time job.

<comment><USER13> It really did not take that long each day maybe 30minutes max.

The problem stemmed from dearth of possible topics.

Thus my writing degenerated into some sort of free association chains reminiscent of most blogs.

Get those 750 words done and you can get on with your day!

Maybe an Edgar Wallace inspired topic generator would have been handy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There exists a similar "app" with the same premise: [http://750words.com/](http://750words.com/)

I used to use it long long time ago. It had other interesting features like sentiment analysis of entries. You could see for example that you were really sad that that week in december 2 years ago...

</comment><comment><USER16> Hugely underrated in the tech-blogger-sphere: reading books (not audiobooks), lots of them, and from a wide genre, time, and style spectrum. It's not just about plowing through the 10,000 hours, it's also about taking inspiration from really great writers. Writing every day and exclusively listening to non- fiction won't make much of a dent on your quality graph.

<comment><USER17> why not audiobooks?

<comment><USER18> Anything that is non-fiction or requires going over some segments more than once, reading is better than audiobooks.

And actually, even in the case of fiction, some books have had me re-read over certain parts a few times. For e.g. Three Body Problem has parts which I had to read over, in contrast all the four Hyperion books were relatively easy to follow in audio format.

Where possible, I use audio books as a follow up after I have read the text.

But, most non-fiction books (atleast for me) work better in text format where I can pause, take notes where needed, go over the content again and proceed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Personally, I prefer writing on paper to typing on a computer for my own personal purposes.

Writing with pen and paper just feels more immediate.

I also got some fountain pens a couple years ago, and I made a bit of a hobby out of it. Having nice tools makes thw work easier, and sorta motivated me to write more in the first place.

<comment><USER20> I have found that I can type much faster than I can write with pen and paper. I am curious what you think about that. Do you find writing with pen and paper equally fast or is it that the speed of writing does not matter while creative-writing?

Writing on a computer also offers the additional convenience of going back in the text, and correcting something, restructuring sentences, reorganizing paragraphs. I find these things to be clumsy while writing with pen and paper. What are your thoughts regarding this?

Finally, I would like to know why do you find fountain pens nicer than ball- point pens?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hey -

First of all, I really appreciate this! I love the timed sessions that makes you keep writing.

A few things:

1\. It lost a bunch of my writing. I was writing in zen-mode and went back to normal mode. I did this a few times. I do not believe I refreshed, but everything I had just written in zen-mode was lost (what I had from earlier in normal-mode was still there).

2\. I wish zen-mode didn't automatically go into full-screen mode

3\. I wish I could just have a normal-interface mode with a large writing area and no instructions below

4\. Am I missing something or is there only 1 writing "document" per day? It seems like I should be able to save what I've written and start a new piece. Otherwise it's hard to actually develop any real content there.

Thanks again, this is really cool!

</comment><comment><USER22> This is quite good. Maybe not the direction you're thinking of taking this, but it would be nice to have some optional social features; e.g. community writing prompts, commenting, etc. I used to use a site that would give you a 5 minute writing prompt and then allowed other users to read and comment on the daily entries. It was really fun and encouraging! I'd love to have an "HN Daily Writers" group to practice with.

Incidentally, it would also make the subscription a much more compelling value proposition.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want writing streak to be a simple tool that does one thing very well, so I tried to avoid adding a lot of extra functionality.

I have built a project that I think you might find interesting: [https://fictionhub.io/](https://fictionhub.io/)

It's a writing community where you can post stories, share and receive feedback, etc.

The idea of making it centered specifically around the daily writing exercises, prompts, etc is interesting. I might be able to use the fiction hub platform to make something like that, I'll need to think about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The visualizations are a really nice way to stay motivated. I have been hoping to see more of these types of concepts used. The Apple Watch has different goals that it sets out for long term accomplishments which have helped me plan out my month better to reach those goals. Following the 30-day cycle is a nice stepping stone for that. Maybe add more of these types of goals or rewards like "wrote x words in a day" "7 day streak" "new records" ... Etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hey, this is strikingly similar to a tool I built a number of years ago, and used personally for some time. All the way down to the color scheme and the heatmap style calendar. Great job on shipping - something I never did!

My only real immediate feedback is that your initial editor gets drowned out in the monochrome color scheme among everything else on the page. I had to go hunting for it. Otherwise the "just start, then create an account" is a great workflow that I've used successfully in other places. However, most users don't understand in-browser saving versus saving on your server. I would recommend making a stronger push toward signing up for an account in order to save.

In my app I had a feature built to "ramp up" your writing. This was great because I didn't have to immediately start out writing say, 500 words a day - I could start small with 50. Once I hit that the counter goes up and the next day I have to write 60, then 70, and son on. It doesn't have to be linear, but being able to start small and increase my progress each day was much less intimidating.

</comment><comment><USER25> This app is nice, but it encourages quantity and noise. Most literate people don't need to write more. They need to learn how to express themselves concisely and meaningfully: [http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit](http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit)

<comment><AUTHOR> My reasoning is that writing well is a result of high skill, and skill is the result of practice. The purpose of writingstreak is to help people practice.

<comment><USER26> Put this in big giant letters on top of your landing page. Many aspiring writers tend to confuse practice with publishable output. Practice a lot, output a little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why does everything have to be metrics-driven today? My creative efforts are the things I _least_ want to subject to metrics and tracking.

<comment><AUTHOR> "You improve what you measure."

Metrics help me to focus, improve my results, stay motivated. They turn sometimes difficult and confusing process into a fun game.

Like if you're writing a long novel, or trying to blog regularly - seeing a measurable, tangible progress is extremely helpful.

That's not for everyone of course, not all people need this, but some people like it.

<comment><USER28> Sure. But also.."When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." (a paraphrase of Goodhart's law)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think I'm missing something, there is no mention about _why_ I should do that? What's the purpouse? In other topics it's obvious to me, if I'd read "execise every day" I understand it's for health benefits, to get stronger, etc. But what do I get from writing every day? Why should I do that? Is it writing like a diary or a journal or what?

<comment><USER30> Speaking for myself, morning writing has been a very therapeutic and useful tool for me. I've noticed that on days that I start off with a half-hour of quiet writing in the morning, my thoughts throughout the day are a little clearer and I feel more focused.

Here's a good explanation by someone else who does this: [https://www.chriswinfield.com/morning- pages/](https://www.chriswinfield.com/morning-pages/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sounded promising, so I signed up. Then I realized I didn't really understand what to write about.

Would be cool if you gave prompts to write about. Also not a huge fan of the UX. Lot of icons and stuff, got confused a bit.

<comment><USER32> I frequently find myself encountering this problem when I feel like writing. Ideas to write about would be great - I've never been a great free-writer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I like many of these ideas, and I'd like an Emacs adaptation. I may start with this one:

> One very powerful way to break through the writer's block and produce more > words is to deliberately separate the process of writing from the process of > editing. To make this easier, you can press Alt+T to turn on the > "Typewriter" mode. It will disable all the text editing options (backspace, > delete, select), you will only be able to write. You can also press Alt+B to > blur the text you're typing, this will prevent you from rereading what you > wrote.

<comment><USER34> Less is sometimes more.

I'd also suggest mindfulness for writers block. Can't write? Meditate instead. Afterwards, you'll feel much more focussed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I quite like the visualizations, but I'm not too interested in writing on a new site. I feel inspired to try my hand at making similar visualizations of the commits I make to my wikis (blogs), inspired also by cw and [http://composition.al/blog/2017/11/29/the-power-of- blogging-...](http://composition.al/blog/2017/11/29/the-power-of-blogging- with-plain-old-versioned-text/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Interesting, the UI reminds me of [https://flowdash.co/app/about](https://flowdash.co/app/about)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoah what an awesome app. I'll learn a lot from this, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nice! Have seen others comment that they have trouble knowing what to write about. Maybe could add a feature where people can save writing topic ideas. When I'm in a creative mood I have more topics than I can write about, but there are times I don't know what to write

</comment><comment><USER38> In case anyone is interested in general purpose streaking, I made a website for people to do any kind of creative streak: [https://streak.club/](https://streak.club/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great job on the site!

I might as well mention that before writing streak I have built a similar habit tracking app for general types of habits:

[https://helix.startuplab.io/](https://helix.startuplab.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> this looks pretty cool, i'll give it a shot for a week to help me hit my personal writing goals outside of my professional work.

i'd enjoy it if there were different aesthetic theme presets. the blue one is nice,but for late night writing I'd prefer something that was a deep hue of maroon. black and green or black and white terminal style would be great also.

font control would be nice, too.

you should also add a link to the main menu from the "profile" page, it's hard to navigate back as it is now.

PS: i sent you an email requesting the lifetime membership.

</comment><comment><USER40> The decreasing health bar looks like a really weird idea. I don't like to be forced into thinking fast, I prefer to make a clear point even if it takes longer.

</comment><comment><USER41> To offer a different perspective from others, I really like the monochromatic theme of your landing page and its what drew me into reading the rest of the pitch.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've used a more generalized heat map visualization app called everydaycheck.com which I quite like

</comment><comment><USER43> The metrics and the motivational features are really neat, and well thought out. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER44> I like writing pen-in-hand into a notebook on my porch, with a crisp, cold beer on the railing. A cool, soothing breeze passing by. Recollecting what happened each day. Because only computers are for work.

<comment><USER45> I also prefer writing by hand, but this does bring up a possible feature suggestion for the OP: manual input of your word count, in case you want to use something other than the built-in editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'd buy this if it was a wordpress plugin.

</comment><comment><USER47> how private this tool is? Can you check my content or data?

</comment><comment><USER48> The only writing habit I have that I can do nearly everyday without effort is writing comments on HN. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing.</comment>


Video Shows Tesla on Autopilot Nearly Crashing on Hwy 101 - <AUTHOR> http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/04/04/video-shows-tesla-on-autopilot-nearly-crashing-on-hwy-101/ <comment><USER2> Pretty much what people expected, the cars cant handle roads with faded or incorrect white lines. Lots of people now looking for bad roads with incorrect white lines and releasing videos how the cars get confused and almost run into the barriers or walls.

Just amazes me theres no sensor detecting the upcoming wall.</comment>


Calculating Fibonacci Numbers, Quickly and Exactly - <AUTHOR> http://blog.richardkiss.com/?p=398

<comment><USER2> In the calculation, F2n=Fn−1Fn+FnFn+1 =(Fn+1–Fn)Fn+FnFn+1 =FnFn+1–F2n+"FnFn−1" =2Fn+1Fn–F2n

in third line, it is FnFn+1

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch... fixed it. Thanks!!</comment></comment>


Apple Supplier Foxconn Agrees to $3.5B Takeover of Sharp - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/30/foxconn-sharp-acquisition-finalized/ <comment><USER2> see also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11387937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11387937) for more details</comment>


Finding Web Vulnerabilities (a primer) - <AUTHOR> http://www.charleshooper.net/blog/finding-web-vulnerabilities/ <comment><USER2> This is an interesting overview but it explains more the process followed by the author when a worked example might be more helpful to others.

If you found the author's post interesting and would like to see some practical examples of how to test for application security vulnerabilities, then the following will help get you up to speed:

[http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Testing_Projec...](http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Testing_Project)

[http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Code_Review_Pr...](http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Code_Review_Project)

<comment><USER3> Is there a no-JavaScript version of this? I had to cancel the body {display: none} setting in order to see the site (usability failure), and I cannot imagine why it was necessary they hide the content like that.

Edit: Here we go:

The testing guide: <http://www.owasp.org/images/5/56/OWASP_Testing_Guide_v3.pdf>

The code review stuff: <http://www.lulu.com/content/5678680></comment></comment>


Hackers Came, but the French Were Prepared - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/world/europe/hackers-came-but-the-french-were-prepared.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> This is a smart way to combat these political hacking campaigns, it seems. Make them verify the information like any other venue, or they'll wind up releasing bogus receipts for bath salts shipped to the French Parliament.

Make them double check. Press them for time, and force errors on their part. Expecting your entire staff to be able to spot a phish is simply not good enough.

<comment><USER3> It may also have had something to do with the press simply refusing to publish anything from the leaks [1]. In fact that may be more relevant.

I'm not sure what I think about this. Firstly this is the government censoring the press by threatening individual reporters with criminal charges ... I don't know what to say. This is obviously very, very bad.

It completely baffles me how anyone can be happy with Macron.

[1] [http://www.salon.com/2017/05/06/french-media-warned-not- to-p...](http://www.salon.com/2017/05/06/french-media-warned-not-to-publish- fridays-hacked-emails-of-centrist-candidate-emmanuel-macron/)

<comment><USER4> Just tout clarify. The media blackout isn't specific to macronleaks or to this election. It is due to the facts the macronleaks were released right before the "période de reserve": * it is illegal to broadcast or print any political document on the day of the election and the day before (French electoral code - L49), * it is illegal for any candidate to publish any new argument if opponents would not have enough time to reply before the end of the campaign (French electoral code L48-2).

[https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do;jsessionid=8C1A...](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do;jsessionid=8C1A13C0E6DD7FB1974F876B6B73A5C2.tpdila12v_2?idSectionTA=LEGISCTA000006148458&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070239&dateTexte=20170511)</comment></comment></comment>


Slick (Unofficial Slack App, for macOS) - <AUTHOR> https://jaswsinc.github.io/slick/ <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure you'll be infringing somewhere by replicating the logo 1-for-1. The backing project you posted just 1 min before this one is way more interesting:

[https://jaswsinc.github.io/chrome-tabs/](https://jaswsinc.github.io/chrome- tabs/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Branding on this unofficial Slack app has been updated per the Slack branding guidelines. Thanks again for mentioning that.</comment></comment>


The quiet place - <AUTHOR> http://thequietplaceproject.com/thequietplace

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but I take great offense to the author's characterization of my social media interactions as some meaningless thing. The context is not lost on me. Obsessing over status updates and notifications isn't healthy, but they're paiting with very broad strokes here.

I live in a relatively rural county in Florida (the Treasure Coast area). There are not a lot of like-minded people around me. I have many long-lasting and meaningful relationships with friends who I've only met in person one or two times; many I've never met in person. These relationships are conducted almost exclusively through social media and occassionally working on projects.

This smacks of fashionable non-conformity.

</comment><comment><USER3> In case anyone is curious, the music is from the TV show Lost and is composed by Michael Giacchino. This is one of the best themes called Life and Death.

You can hear more at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nH1rCXv36A></comment>


Show HN: Let me read it for you - <AUTHOR> http://ketacode.com/readlist/

<comment><USER2> Damn, I was hoping you would read it _loud_. As in: Turn any blog into a podcast. Because that is a service I would _love_.</comment>


The Mathematics of Choice (goody heavy read) - <AUTHOR> http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/ely.dahan/content/greedoid.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Skip the abstract- it's too obtuse- the paper itself is pretty readable. Non- compensatory: when a customer is making a decision, and no combination of additional features make up for a lack of the feature they really want (e.g. it doesn't matter how cool the phone is if I can't play mp3s). Versus compensatory (e.g., well, news.ycombinator doesn't use ajax, but the fact that it's focused, spam free, and easy on the eyes makes up for it...)

You can translate the concepts to simple additive math and work from there.

Brilliant to be able to predict peoples' decision between hundreds of competing products based on answering just a few questions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, here's the presentation http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1932851428624192110</comment>


Mobile group chat is better distributed - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chattag.com/post/66390167702/mobile-group-chat-is-better-distributed

<comment><USER2> Sounds interesting. This seems to be a more natural way for conversations to develop. It mirrors real-world conversations where random users can just join and leave.

The analogy to hashtags makes sense. However since hashtag topics can last indefinitely, they can get stale and lose relevance. Allowing tags/conversations to expire after a period of time keeps the conversation topical.

The concept is also scalable, since you can either have a small conversation among friends, or a regional conversation about relevant issues in the news.</comment>


Generate Stripe credit card charges without setting up a web application - <AUTHOR> http://stripe.crawley-cloud.com/

<comment><USER2> \- In financial industry? check

but:

\- no imprint: check

\- no terms: check

\- no privacy policy: check

\- no SSL/TLS: check

\- singup vs signup: check

Try harder. Yeah - why is this front page?

</comment><comment><USER3> I worry about the simple spelling mistake in the navigation on the page. Doesn't really instill confidence in someone claiming to work with payments. Also, the site isn't SSL. Why is this on the front page of HN?

</comment><comment><USER4> What do you do exactly?

Does the stripe api really need simplification?

If you're trying to take the development out of using stripe, why not just use Square?</comment>


Why are van Gogh's paintings slowly turning white? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-03-09/why-are-van-goghs-paintings-slowly-turning-white <comment><USER2> Oil paint is in general not really good for long term storage. It expands as it oxidizes. Some pigments slow down or speed up this process. The thicker the layers, the faster they will crack. Combined with a lot of untested pigments and techniques, the art of the 19th and 20th won't last as long as pre- industrial art. 600 year old egg tempera paintings are often in better condition than 300 year old oil paintings.

And now I will back-up some jpegs to a usb stick that probably won't survive a single decade...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In a similar vein, ancient greek sculptures have lost their painted appearance. [http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/11/dazzlers- html](http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/11/dazzlers-html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Van Gogh is perhaps one of the most notable for artists whose work in person doesn't translate remotely the same to in print or on the internet. Go see some sometime if there's an art museum nearby that has some, if you haven't already, as it is quite awesome for the texture and colors.

</comment><comment><USER4> After seeing his work in person Van Gogh immediately became my favorite artist. It's sad to read this news and makes me want to travel back to Amsterdam to spend another day soaking in his paintings.

If you have any appreciation for art and you get the chance, you really should take the time to go see his work.</comment>


When murderers were hanged quickly (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28688474 <comment><USER2> _The trial of 24-year-old Evans and Allen, who was 21, began on 23 June at Manchester Assizes. On 7 July the men were found guilty and sentenced under the 1957 Homicide Act to suffer death "in the manner prescribed by law". Their appeal was heard just two weeks later - and dismissed the next day. A final appeal for clemency was rejected by the Home Secretary on 11 August. Less than five weeks elapsed between conviction and execution._

Versus:

 _Tony Medina was convicted in 1996, aged 21, for a drive-by shooting that killed two children at a new-year party. Since then, for 23 years, he has been awaiting execution._ [In solitary confinement.]

[https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/06/06/what- its-...](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/06/06/what-its-like-to- spend-half-a-life-in-solitary-confinement)

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems a divisive topic. I have few moral objections against executing people that are impractical to release back into society because of stuff they did. But there are too many practical ones to ever be sure and the price of getting it wrong is obviously too high. You can't un-execute someone.

The way it is practiced in the US is both inefficient, incompetent, often unjust (racism, poor legal representation, biased judges/juries, evidence tampering, unreliable witnesses, dna evidence, etc), often controversial, needlessly cruel, and obviously not working in terms of its supposed preventive function. It's a mess.

That's the reason why an increasing number of states are opting not to. It's just too controversial of a topic and the political price of getting it wrong is too high. It's a PR nightmare and it's one of those things that is only getting harder because of all the recent problems failing to get it right. At this point all executions are highly political and typically only pursued in states where this is relatively uncontroversial. All opponents have to do is point all of the above out. Which of course they do.

The hypocrisy around trying to humanize what is basically state sanctioned murder has resulted in weird practices around multiple executioners pushing a button to avoid knowing for sure whether or not you killed the person, weird rituals around selecting the means to kill where the result is neither humane, particularly efficient, or cheap. The whole thing is a weird guilt trip gone wrong. Ironically this has made it more controversial, not less.

From what I understand, killing people swiftly and painlessly is not technically hard. Any vet or butcher knows how to put down an animal humanely. This is done routinely every day. E.g. a bit of N2, N2O, CO, or similar is all you need for what is pretty guaranteed fatal and painless. Hypoxia followed by unconsciousness in seconds and death in minutes, typically. The main objection against this particular method seems to be that it is too humane (make up your mind already). The key point of that is that the death penalty is primarily about revenge and not about prevention. Stating this further de legitimizes the death penalty and is in itself controversial. State sanctioned torture is even more controversial than the state sanctioned executions.

At least the Brits were efficient and competent about hanging people. It's the systemic incompetence around the death penalty that is killing it in the US. Either way, I'd suggest fixing that level of incompetence and getting that off the table at least. I'd say the Brits were wise to get away from that.

<comment><USER4> > You can't un-execute someone.

You also can't un-imprison someone. Sure, you can release him, but he'll never get those years back; his relationships will never be the same again; the trauma of imprisonment will never leave him.

I think the thing which needs to be done is to fix the judicial system: if we can't rely on it to correctly impose death, then we can't rely on it to correctly impose imprisonment. Maybe we need to incentivise prosecutors differently; maybe we need to conduct investigations differently; maybe we need to adjust the jury system.

Some people are against capital punishment in any case even if it is 100% painless and the judicial process is completely correct. I don't really have anything to say to them: it's obvious to me that there are certain crimes which absolutely merit that punishment and that to refrain from killing the guilty in that case is a profound injustice.

<comment><USER5> > refrain from killing the guilty in that case is a profound injustice.

That's only the case if you believe in free will ideology. The injustice is "society" villainizing a person who had no control over their fate if you understand free will is an illusion because of determinism and how the brain functions.

<comment><USER6> By that logic there's no guilt on society's part, either. In fact, there's no such thing as injustice. Only fate.

<comment><USER5> Idk, injustice is a human expression and shared between one another as a word. Maybe it doesn't exist or maybe people can still find injustice towards their existence. The meaning of a lot of words can sure take a different shape with understanding fate. Guilt would even shape differently into an expression denoting misbelief & shame with society not wanting to fix the system of punishment to something else. We're all part of the existence for one another after all.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I don't want to get bogged down with irrelevant semantics. My point is that you're saying no moral judgement can be placed on human behavior because humans don't have free will, but such a judgement can be placed on society. How do you square this? Are you saying a society has free will, but the humans it's composed of don't?

<comment><USER5> I think my previous message isn't just semantics or irrelevant to what you wrote.

Free will doesn't exist in society and similar to humans. The will of society is a summation of all the preceding forces upon generations and without any real control. The result being what we experience today as our society we live in.

This all is important to understand because hidden in it is the knowledge of why we have what we have now. Also the fact of how important the majority operates, behaves and thinks.

Currently, the majority thinks contrary to the fundamental truth of how their life will play out. I hypothesis if this wasn't the case, our society would adapt and because there is something similar to moral judgement.

Basically, the collective unconscious of society. The objective is made with effort of being positive, fair and right. That's assumed with how the majority believes the justice system we experience today is right and without understanding the true knowledge making it neither positive, fair or right.

The incorrect perspectives of how reality is,.. collectively prevents evolution of society and because the collective unconscious is still fixed upon incorrect beliefs. Thus, I think I'm sort of answering your question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >"But David Cameron went into the 2010 election with a manifesto commitment to repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act. A lack of an overall majority prevented him from doing so. But Home Secretary Theresa May reiterated the promise to scrap the act at the party conference last year."

This gives me a flashback to when statisticians found that the number one issue that predicted whether or not a Brit voted for Brexit was their opinion on the death penalty: [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36803544](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36803544)

<comment> J-dawg Assuming the predictive link goes the other way, does this mean that a referendum on the death penalty would be somewhat likely to go in favour of reinstating it?

<comment><USER8> There was an opinion poll in 2015 with a slim majority against reintroduction: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32061822](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32061822) , original report [http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media-centre/archived-press- rele...](http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media-centre/archived-press- releases/bsa-32-support-for-death-penalty.aspx)

Shortly before the EU Referendum, support for remaining commanded a similarly small majority but then lost. Those supporting Leave ran a more effective campaign, including making use of data gathered online, targeted advertising via Facebook, and mostly emotional arguments. So I would be very concerned if a referendum were to be held on capital punishment.

MPs of all parties are overwhelmingly against reintroduction and there is no chance of it passing in a free vote in the House of Commons.

<comment><USER9> I remember that at the time, people were saying that leave and remain were running equally distasteful and underhanded campaigns. Now they're saying that Remain was worse. I think the memory might be getting socially Orwell'd.

<comment><USER10> The "remain" campaign operated the same playbook as during the Scottish Indyref: talking up the economic disadvantages, threatening a hard border between England and Scotland, and so on. This was successful in that campaign - but at the same time it got labelled "Project Fear". So in the Brexit referendum any suggestion that car plants would close etc got dismissed as "Project Fear".

Remain was nowhere near as dishonest as Leave, especially if you look at what the Electoral Commission said. Not to mention the _two_ contradictory Leave campaigns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One thing that I learned recently that I wish I hadn't is that it's not entirely clear when someone actually dies from hanging - even the long drop execution style used in the UK - apparently it can take up to 15 minutes before hearts actually stop beating - which is why bodies were left hanging for an hour before being taken down.

<comment><USER12> Hanging can be pretty gruesome. In an "ideal" hanging the condemned is dropped from a height that snaps their neck and kills them fairly quickly. Drop too far and they can be decapitated, drop too short and they strangle to death. It is certainly not a humane way to die.

<comment><USER13> Decapitation is certainly gruesome, but I don't know if it's humane or not. Is death instant?

<comment><USER14> Decapitation and gallows with a proper drop height were both designed to be fair, in the sense that everybody killed would get the standard execution experience. It was meant to be an improvement to the status quo of plebian criminals getting tortured to death while aristocrats were given swift deaths.

Both systems are humane _compared to the earlier status quo_ , but an even more humane system could certainly be devised. To answer your question, in the case of decapitation there is reason to believe death is not instant but rather that the severed head may remain aware for a few seconds. This is faster than hanging, but still not instantaneous.

A shotgun slug straight to the skull would be pretty damn close to instantaneous, but that's got a few problems. In addition to the psychological damage inflicted on any witnesses to the execution, it will have more inconsistent results. What happens if the shot is poorly aimed and 'merely' removes somebody's jaw bone? Done correctly, a shotgun slug would provide a more instantaneous death. However it's a less foolproof system. That's just an example though, it's easy to conceive of systems that are simultaneously more instantaneous than a guillotine but are simultaneously are more reliable.

Edit: re inert gas: Yes, though again there is the matter of reliability. An inert atmosphere will kill a human reliably, but the apparatus used may fail to provide an adequately inert atmosphere. This probably wouldn't happen with a mechanism designed specifically for execution, but it does happen a lot in cases of attempted suicide. Inert gas suicides will sometimes be botched, with the victim receiving just enough fresh air to survive the experience (typically with severe brain damage caused by the oxygen deprivation.)

Ultimately I think the whole matter is about risk tolerance. How much risk of executing an innocent man do you tolerate? How much risk of a botched execution do you tolerate? How much risk of releasing a guilty man do you tolerate? These are questions with subjective answers, and for many people their answer will be to tolerate no risk, e.g. abolish the death penalty. Other people are willing to tolerate more risk, so for them the answer might be "bring back execution but modernize the methods". Generally people on one side view the thought processes of people on the other side as alien or obviously defective, but I think that's generally not the case.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand why they don't anesthetize them before their execution. Put them under as if they are going in for surgery and then issues of inhumane treatment go away, and opens the way for far easier and less gruesome types of execution.

<comment><USER16> Turns out that proper anesthetization is more difficult than most people realize, especially since the competent medical professionals won't help for ethical and moral reasons. Also, drug companies won't sell the drugs if they are going to be used in an execution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The US constitution (amendment 6) ostensibly provides the right to a speedy trial. Amendment 8 forbids "cruel and unusual" punishment.

What I don't understand is how people can be against the death penalty but yet be totally OK with locking people up for the rest of their lives. I personally know someone who, if they live to be 75, will ultimately end up being in prison for over 5 decades. How is that not "cruel and unusual"?

<comment><USER18> >>What I don't understand is how people can be against the death penalty but yet be totally OK with locking people up for the rest of their lives.

So I'm one of those people. It's simple really - death penalty is permanent, while life imprisonment isn't. Yes it sucks that sometimes we might have to release someone who spent 30 years falsely imprisoned - but it's sure a hell lot better than finding out that there is no one to release because the person was executed a decade ago. And secondly, I just don't see any need to execute people, the risk vs reward is not worth it.

<comment><USER19> Someone consciously chose to permanently end another's life. There has to be decisions made.

<comment><USER20> In theory, if applied flawlessly, maybe nothing is wrong with the permanence of the death penalty.

In practice, mistakes _are_ made, regularly, and these mistakes are distributed unevenly, such that the poor and minorities suffer the most.

The many wrongful deaths at the hands of the government is a good reason to be skeptical of arguments which assume the death penalty can be applied perfectly. It can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Both cases are handled by a punishment modal that assumes humans have free will. I wish we lived in a society that handled these cases with a rehabilitation modal and understanding free will is an illusion by determinism & how the brain functions.

<comment><USER21> I guess you've never interacted with a large fraction of people that are typically committing violent crimes. A lot of them are these brutish unhinged characters, with low IQ. They are mentally defective, you can either lock them away for the rest or their life (more humane) or kill them (generally frowned upon). There is no way to rehabilitate them.

<comment><USER5> My perspective is people committing crimes are similar to persons suffering an illness. We as a society should be approaching both situations the same because that's how we obtain cures and not with the mindset of the current justice system. The justice system is slowing progress similar to if we approached illnesses with the mindset of the justice system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm wholly in favor for the death penalty. I've heard all of the arguments. Some people just need to be dealt with with finality.

Having said this, I'm for the death penalty for the following crimes, if they are proven beyond a shadow of a doubt (video evidence, bodily fluid DNA match, plethora of independent witnesses):

\- Forcible rape (either sex) \- Paedophilia \- Aggravated armed robbery (which is terrorism) \- Premeditated aggravated assault leading to injury (which is terrorism) \- Kidnapping at gun/knifepoint \- Intentional illicit drug sales to a minor child \- Sex slave trafficking (adults and minors)

* Please note that "terrorism" doesn't have to be political. Many states have laws against "terroristic threats" and "terrorism" (personal); sadly they are not often used.

I know almost everyone here will disagree, but let's be honest here. Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand and many other countries have these laws, and while I disagree with them on many points, they deal harshly and swiftly with the dregs of society.

My British uncle has personally witnessed several hangings in England before the death penalty was rescinded. As a senior police officer at the time, he made it a point to witness the hangings of those people whom he brought to justice who received the death penalty. Closure. Let's be honest: If I took months of my life to bring a child rapist/paedophile/killer to justice, I'd want to watch, too. People like that deserve it.

I disagree with lethal injection, firing squad, and gas chamber. They are too expensive and require too much oversight (chemists, European reluctance to sell drugs, doctors, etc.). Hanging is quick and cheap. The Singaporeans do it best.

The state has a right to execute heinous crimes. I think the Saudis have it right when the cut off hands for theft. Note, though, that theft of food, items to help one's family is not given that punishment. Car theft, bank theft, ID theft all warrant something like this in my mind. The West has, in my mind, grown soft. A serious crimes serial thief will continue to steal. A rapist will continue to rape. Paedophiles have the highest repeat rate. Why should I, a law-abiding tax payer have to pay for three hots and a cot for those who deserve the death penalty.

For those crimes warranting the death penalty, and for which there is ZERO doubt, the sentence should be carried out within 24 hours. No family visitation, no last words, nothing. If you are a terrorist, rapist, murderer, sex trafficker, drug dealer, or paedophile, you should receive zero consideration once convicted.

Considering the seriousness of ending someone's life, these cases would need to be 100% airtight. Video evidence, plethora or independent witnesses, DNA evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt. If these things are in place, and they are verified by say three agencies: police, FBI, independent lab, then go ahead.

<comment><USER23> > let's be honest here. Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand and many other > countries have these laws, and while I disagree with them on many points, > they deal harshly and swiftly with the dregs of society.

How do you know they're dealing with the "dregs of society", and not "here's someone we accidentally caught and killed"?

> I think the Saudis have it right when the cut off hands for theft.

!!

> Why should I, a law-abiding tax payer have to pay for three hots and a cot > for those who deserve the death penalty.

Because many do not agree with your views on who deserves the death penalty: note there are many criminals who have done things on your list and not become repeat offenders.

<comment><USER22> That's a very liberal view inconsistent with justice. If you rape, murder, engage in paedophilia, sex trafficking, etc., just once, that's once too many times. You've broken the social compact to the point where you need to pay dearly.

I don't feel sorry for the evil in our society. These people cost us dearly by dint of housing them, feeding them, providing medical care, entertainment. All the while, their dead victims, their raped and permanently-violated victims get no justice other than knowing that the evil person is behind bars. That's not justice. That's sweeping it under the rug and calling it good. It's intellectually dishonest to say the death penalty should not be used for heinous crimes. It breaks the social compact with the victims and society at large.

<comment><USER24> It's not

> If you <do bad things>

It's actually:

> If you _are convicted_ of <doing bad things>

You have made many very emotionally charged posts in this thread. Take a rest.

<comment><USER25> One of the limitations of the justice system: we cannot punish all people who do bad things, only those who have been caught and we can obtain the evidence against.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "On the stroke of 8am they would enter the condemned cell, strap the prisoner's arms behind his back and lead him to the gallows. The whole procedure often took less than 10 seconds from the hangmen entering the cell to the prisoner dropping to his death,"

10 seconds? Seems pretty improbable. 10 minutes maybe.

</comment><comment><USER27> Alas, even in smoking gun cases, it takes decades of wrangling to put the dogs down, imprisoning them in hellhole prisons at enormous expense, fattening the lawyers with endless rounds of appeals based on flimsy technicalities.

I wonder if many cases of officer-involved shootings aren't a side-effect of this, a short-circuiting of the justice system. For instance, I find it nothing short of miraculous that the Tsarnaev brother was taken alive, rather than winding up with a few bullets "resisting arrest."

<comment><USER28> > I find it nothing short of miraculous that the Tsarnaev brother was taken > alive

I mean, there is an obvious reason.

<comment><USER13> Now I'm curious. They did shoot quite a lot of rounds[1] into the boat he was hiding in. I can't think of any reason other than luck.

[1][https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/22/...](https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/22/22-watertown- boat.w700.h700.jpg)

<comment><USER29> To me the obvious reason is the null hypothesis: in the US law enforcement officers don't actually have the standard operating procedure of "putting a few bullets" in people for "resisting arrest". The alternative hypothesis is a double conspiracy theory, that they are generally cold blooded killers, but in this case for some whatever reasons, they didn't shoot the Boston bomber, but rather they kept him alive to make an example out of him? I don't know, this doesn't pass any type of smell test to me.

<comment><USER13> _" they didn't shoot the Boston bomber, but rather they kept him alive to make an example out of him"_

Yeah, doesn't pass the smell test for me either. 110+ bullets in that boat, and the guy wasn't far from dead when they brought him to the hospital.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lightspark - its time to make youtube people no longer smurfs on linux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lightspark/lightspark <comment><USER2> In case you are curious about the smurf reference:

[https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3109467](https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3109467)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not that I need flash anymore for youtube, I have given up on flash its slower and more crappy on any platform than webm / h264 video (where my browser is compiled with both).</comment>