Looking for sponsors of geometric algebra research software - <AUTHOR> I'm a computer algebra researcher working on making geometric algebra software freely available:
https://grassmann.crucialflow.com
Please help support the important work I am doing by sponsoring me:
https://liberapay.com/chakravala
https://github.com/sponsors/chakravala
https://patreon.com/dreamscatter
https://tidelift.com/funding/github/julia/Grassmann
https://music.crucialflow.com <comment><USER2> Clicky [https://grassmann.crucialflow.com](https://grassmann.crucialflow.com)

It is written in Julia. [Usually the language you are using is important here.]

Do you have some blog posts about how to use the software? Each subtitle looks like a blog-post-worthy subject. Usually here it is better to post each week/month something interesting done in the project and add a link at the top and at the bottom asking for support. YMMV.

<comment><AUTHOR> If people want to gain the most benefit from my software, I recommend hiring me as a consultant.

While I may publish some blogs in the future, it is not my priority to help random strangers who do not invest in my work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What are some practical applications of your software, how can it be useful for the typical HN crowd? If you want money, you need to sell.</comment>


Gittip minimum raised from $0.25 to $1.00 - <AUTHOR> https://www.gittip.com/about/me.html

<comment><USER2> I've written down my experience of tipping in Australia, as an illustration that the word "tipping" has different connotations in different cultures.

Historically, Australians don't tip. During much of the the 20th century Australia had quite a strong (relative to the US) tradition of socialism and unionism, resulting in a strong set of minimum employment conditions. There was very much a view that a decent living wage was an entitlement and a matter of dignity, not something that a worker should have to stoop to collect. People didn't tip, since the common perception was that the potential tipee was as equally entitled to a minimum wage as the potential tipper. Indeed, I'd say that people actively didn't tip as an act of homage to equality.

Tipping is probably more common today than in the past, and the above is being eroded, but I think the above is still generally true. A tip is rarely expected, or let on to be expected, as that is a sure fire way not to get a tip.

I mention the above, in the supposition that it has connotations for a site like gittip that liberally uses the word "tipping". Some cultures don't do tipping. As an Australian, I'd be more inclined if the idea of compensation was being sold on a "equity" (as in fairness) basis rather than a giving basis. I know it's semantics, but semantics does influence decisions.

I hope the above is constructive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Love it, thank you. Noted here:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/138>

<comment><USER3> Maybe something along the lines of 'patron/patronage' would be a better term?

A play on the word for domain names such as patronous.com (full of patrons) or patronian.com .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So to start, I am not a target user of this site (at least at the moment), as I am not very active on github and I don't follow open source projects very closely.

With that said, I have followed these discussions, and I think this may be the wrong approach. I think that you should implement a balance transfer feature. This would prevent a lot of the money from getting eaten up by processing fees. Once that is implemented, you should just leave the amount up to the user, no mins, no maxes. If someone thinks that $0.25/wk is too small, then they are free to tip more. But at $0.25/wk, that comes out to $13/yr. At $1/wk, that is $52/yr. I am a man of modest, yet comfortable means, and giving some people ~$10/yr to support their cause is well within my discretionary budget, but at ~$50/yr, that starts setting off my internal 'frugal' alarms, especially if I want to donate to more than one project.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a distinction between truly supporting a person, and being part of a long tail of "oh well here's a few cents." I see us trying to feel out how to work with those two cases. My current thinking is that the long tail of support for an individual will come via their association with various projects, groups, companies, brands--whatever we want to call them. Here's the ticket where we're tracking this:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/27>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Gittip is a site for micro-subscriptions to fund open source developers. I got a lot of feedback this week on HN and GitHub that the minimum subscription should be raised from $0.25 to $1.00:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/180>

I rolled that out today, so if you wanted it, go use it. :^)

<https://www.gittip.com/about/me.html>

<comment><USER5> me.html is giving me a 302 redirect to the home page. Am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're already authenticated then it redirects to your profile page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, should give you a message now if you're anon.

<https://www.gittip.com/about/me.html>

<comment><USER5> Nice, that's a little less confusing. :-)

Just as a heads-up: Google "gittip minimum raised from" or search Twitter for the same ([http://twitter.com/#!/search/gittip%20minimum%20raised%20fro...](http://twitter.com/#!/search/gittip%20minimum%20raised%20from)) ... there's a collective audience of tens of thousands of people, any of whom could be seeing Gittip for the first time from this submission. Linking to a blog post, even a very brief one, might be better for picking up new interest in the future.

I feel like I'm being a pain in the ass between this and yesterday's grousing over needing a Github account. Sorry about that.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're a pain in the ass then I'm sittin' on sunshine.

Definitely could do a better job of converting traffic. Don't feel like I have that nailed yet. :-/

<comment> john-n Just my 2 cents, but I did not/do not know what gittip is. The above link invites me to sign in using github, I'm extremely cautious of logging in using github anywhere as my personal account is also my work account.

Any page where I can land and be asked to log in should do a better job of saying what you do, especially where trust is involved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for feeding back. I'll try to do better next time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know this sounds lazy, but it would be really nice to stream line the process of 1) Finding a project 2) Getting a list of the top contributors to a project.

For instance, I'd love to go to a site like this and give $100 to whoever is the most active contributor in glib who is accepting contributions.

I generally don't know people's github account names. Digging it up is a pain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Working on it:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/27>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gittip is well suited to use bitcoin (I even saw it mentioned a few times in issues [https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/search?q=bi...](https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/search?q=bitcoin) ), bitcoiners can even fund that feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the main ticket:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/14>

Basically I'm open to it if the bitcoin are transparently converted to dollars.

Code talks. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> apologies for soliciting on hn, but i couldn't find a support line through the site.

 _must_ donations be recurring? why can't send one-off donations? also, at the risk of sounding vein, _must_ the donations be anonymous? these things are keeping me from giving my money to people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gittip is designed to pay the mortgage for donees, and mortgages are recurring. I expect we'll mix in one-offs eventually. Here's the ticket for that:

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/5>

Donations are anonymous in the particulars but public in aggregate on the homepage by default.

<comment><USER9> Many devs don't have recurring income. It'd be good if i was able to simply say "10% of every invoice I send gets sent to gittip for me to distribute amongst the projects I used to generate the work in this invoice."

Freshbooks Integration?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ticketed with comments: <https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/196>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the speed that you're implementing feedback and new features.

I was curious about your payment processor since you're working as a marketstyle service. For reference on a project I'm working on, were there any hurdles to getting such an account? Also, how do you plan to handle chargebacks?

<comment><USER10> he's using <https://www.balancedpayments.com/>

<comment><USER11> hopefully the site will grow larger and he'll change that. They're taking about 1/3rd more than if he opened a real merchant account.

<comment><USER12> Until his service grows much, much larger he'd be paying more with most merchant accounts. And he'd be on his own for paying out to the donation recipients, which this company is handling as part of their transaction fee.

I've worked with 3 different merchant account providers over the past 8 years. All of them, in the end, ended up costing more than twice the rates they originally quoted when I applied. Downgrading most cards to higher fee schedules, having a dozen fees 3rd party processors simply build into their flat rate, and the ability to raise rates every month for years can add up to a very high _effective_ transaction rate.

PayPal, once you pass $10000/mo for the 2.2% tier, is currently my cheapest processor when you factor in all the processing, gateway and monthly fees. I still accept credit cards directly for various reasons, so I'm trying to move off directly storing cards in Authorize.net's CIM to a service like SpreedlyCore that will let me switch merchant account providers without losing my current customer billing info.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to hear from someone with experience, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


UK 'a tax haven for multinationals' (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27187398 <comment><USER2> It is quite hard to think of a tax haven that is not part of the Commonwealth or former British Empire, Panama being one of the few. A true tax haven is a different thing to mechanisms like the 'Double Irish', seems UK PLC is getting even with that.

The Square Mile - 'City of London' \- is like a country within a country too, so lots of strange finance things go on with London being one big black hole that money orbits, mysteriously.

This is how Britain punches above its weight to make London a 'world city' as far as global capitalism is concerned. This has been going on for centuries.

<comment><USER3> Australia also has very lax money laundering laws, it is said that Mossack Fonseca would have faced less regulation being based in Australia vs Panama.

Tories are all about extracting wealth through property and money management (tax avoidance and money laundering are forms of asset management really).

<comment><USER4> Australia is in the Commonwealth: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Commonwea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Nations)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And don't forget the Channel Islands and Isle of Mann. Lots of sorta-British tax havens there.

<comment><USER6> You missed a few British territories.

Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Jersey, Isle of Man, and Bermuda is the full list I think.

Makes statements from Cameron on the topic especially hypocritical.

<comment><USER7> You forgot Gibraltar, but your point stands.

<comment><USER8> What about the City of London within London does it have separate banking rules?

<comment><USER9> The "city" as a social group has a lot of _indirect_ influence. The City of London Corporation is an unusually-shaped local authority with a long history. It's not the banking regulator, that falls between the BoE and the FSA. The City does however have control of the anti-fraud police.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone else feel like the problem here isn't tax havens but the tax system.

Is there a better approach than collecting taxes?

What if inflation was used as a tax (printing money)?

<comment><USER11> That's why VAT is such a popular tax in Europe. It is very hard to evade. As soon as you spend money, you pay taxes.

<comment><USER12> What about VAT fraud? A couple of shell companies and not only have you evaded the tax, you've now profited from it.

<comment><USER11> It's certainly possible, but still much harder to evade than a sales tax or an income tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So is USA of course, as shown on The Daily Show. 15 second clip: [https://youtu.be/pm_a58S1NjU?t=27](https://youtu.be/pm_a58S1NjU?t=27)

</comment><comment><USER14> UK is also a haven for fugitives [http://www.economist.com/news/business/21697271-after- good-t...](http://www.economist.com/news/business/21697271-after-good-times- comes-reckoning-vijay-mallya-hangover)

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Для многонационалов.

If you understand what I'm getting at.

<comment><USER15> That translates to "for multinational". I don't understand what you're getting at though.

<comment> guard-of-terra A person who fits a profile:

\- Born in Russia

\- Speaks Russian

\- Holds or used to be holding Russian passport

\- Does not really consider oneself Russian or answers "I'm Russian, but"

\- Does not respect Russians, not really, but knows what's better for them

\- Probably has ancestors who were important Soviet officials, often in some now-independent Republics

\- Liberal political outlook but ends up backing Putinism when acting

\- Probably owns something in London, Miami, Nice

\- Family members living in aforementioned locations

\- Probably sits in government or duma or connected to such officials

\- In a position for which it's hard to reason if they are competent and how their life trajectory landed them there

That's the people who run & own Russia for all its sorry state.

<comment><USER15> Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tangentially - if there's no tax rate competition which seems to be the desired goal of many, there's nothing to stop politicians continuing to bribe their electorate with bread and circuses paid for by that electorate's money. The gigantic debt mountains in the US and the EU demonstrate the degree to which they do that. And when it's all over, out of office, out of responsibility! Companies have of course to keep prudent accounts or go out of business.

<comment><USER17> " if there's no tax rate competition"

The point is, these executives are not living in Ireland or Panama but in the valley or some highly developed country in Europe. So while the enjoy the benefits of those countries, the want to avoid paying taxes.

No one has anything against people who want to enjoy Irish tax laws who move to Ireland. Or people who want to have a company in Panama to move to Panama.

<comment><USER18> That's a novel position. So US companies, whose executives presumably live in the US, shouldn't open an EU subsidiary, and vice-versa? Is it wrong for Toyota to open a subsidiary in the US?

Not to mention that executives don't "have" companies, shareholders do.

<comment><USER17> Yes, if the executives at Apple decide that they want to pay corporate taxes in Ireland instead of the US to reduce their taxes and increase their income, they should move Apple to Ireland from the valley.

You can twist my words to "Is it wrong for Toyota to open a subsidiary in the US?" as you like, it doesn't change the point.

Some people bring arguments, some play word games "Not to mention that executives don't "have" companies"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Speaks volumes why Obama wants the UK to remain in the EU. His corporate handlers know that it is inevitable that taxes will increase if there is a Brexit.

<comment><USER19> That makes no sense. The EU countries with higher tax levels are constantly pushing to reign in the EU "tax havens", whereas outside the EU, the UK will be free to use even lower tax rates and more tax breaks as a means of retaining and attracting international business, and may need to, in order to prevent an exodus from the City etc.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, exiting EU would put the UK at disadvantage as EU tax heaven / headquarters beachhead. Common customs and VAT space goes out of the window, as well as hundreds other compliance regulations tying the EU together. Luxembourg and Cyprus will certainly get a lot of new business.

But I really doubt Obama rationales have anything to do with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Obama by himself, no. But the executives from which he raised money will make him do and say anything they want.

<comment><USER21> No one can make a US president in his last year in office say anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> TPP and the manner with which it was discussed proves otherwise... Obama is a moderate Republican, really.

[https://theintercept.com/2015/05/12/cant-read-tpp-heres- huge...](https://theintercept.com/2015/05/12/cant-read-tpp-heres-huge- corporations-can/)

[http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/24/barack- obama-...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/24/barack-obama-fast- track-trade-deal-tpp-senate)

[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations- paid-us-senators-fast-track-tpp)

<comment><USER21> Please explain to me how this proves or even just suggests that Obama was forced to say anything.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A little secret that will make the world fall apart - <AUTHOR> http://alumnit.ca/~apenwarr/log/?m=200901#14 <comment><USER2> The dollar is backed by taxing power of the US government - there are 300 million people who _must_ pay taxes to US gov and the latter only accepts dollars. These 300m people will do anything to stay out of jail so they will trade whatever they have for dollars, thus insuring continuous demand year after year.

Money is not worthless.

<comment><USER3> What you just said means absolutely nothing: "backed by the taxing power of the US government". First and far most, when everybody comes running to the US government to cash in on their dollars, there is no taxing power between heaven and earth powerful enough to satisfy all the creditors. And what do you imagine the government paying them with?

For regular folks your statement is even more airy; when they start to figure out that their precious greenback has nowhere to go but down; are they gonna call their local representatives and ask them to change the dollars into gold (oops, no can't do, no more gold standard!) or euros/yen/whatever?

Face it; the dollar is backed by NOTHING! And thank god most people don't realize this because we would be in a much deeper hole then we are now.

<comment><USER4> Is gold really any less arbitrary than paper money?

Couldn't advances in technology create cheap alternatives to gold that would destroy its value?

<comment><USER5> Indeed. This is the point that gold-standard people don't seem to get. Gold is just as arbitrary as anything else. More so, even, because it is absolutely /useless/ in any aspect except as a valuable. It's too soft to do anything with. Furthermore, it has issues with being a finite supply that is occasionally moved around (no control over the monetary supply).

Steel. Now /that's/ what we should back our money with. Everybody needs steel. At least until carbon nanotubes get popular...

<comment><USER6> Actually, the real bottom line is work transfer, which can be measured in energy. Energy can produce material goods. If I give you 1MJ in exchange for work, you could do something with it.

      The only law money needs to follow is conservation, which energy fits. OTOH, the US government does screw around with the conservation law a lot, but it does apply to normal people.

<comment><USER7> I know this is off-topic, but every time I see a post like this, I feel like I'm back on /. during the 90's, why does this site feel the need to make the page wider than screen whenever pre-formatted text has long lines. (Other sites solve this by inserting scroll bars or forcing line wraps, but not this one.)

<comment><USER8> Depends on your browser. From what I remember, the pre's do properly size and have scrollbars in FF2, but not in FF3. The problem has to do with td cells expanding to fit their content I think.

There is a GM script that fixes this in FF3: <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I believed this when I was younger, but now I've amended my position. Paper money isn't worthless - it has no _inherent_ value, which is true. But if we all agree upon it as a means of exchange and set fair rules on how it's made and spread, then we're good.

The issue isn't with paper money, it's with making the rules excessively complicated or unfair, or just outright breaking the money rules. Paper money is conducive to that though - any currency specialists have an idea for creating a better way?

I've always wondered about a private (non-government) diversified commodities- backed currency floating against international currencies, with liquid electronic and paper notes - and simple yet rigid rules and governance on how to absorb new purchases into the system and buy assets with it, and what reserves to keep for people cashing out. This is one of those things I sit and think about, but I reckon it'd be hard to do. Thoughts?

<comment><USER10> You would need to back up the currency with commodities that have 1) minuscule storage costs and 2) a very high stocks to flow ratio. Also, all commodities used must have identical stocks to flow ratio, or the pricing between the commodities will be very unstable. As a result, using a single commodity is ideal.

As luck has it, such a currency exists. Simply log into your brokerage account and buy the GLD ETF. It's only been around for four years, it will be very interesting to see how it does versus the dollar in the long term. If I was a Fed chairman, I would be worried.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I entirely agree with the author's main point:

      there may simply be not enough important things to
      do to keep everyone busy

If people only bought what's truly needed then only a tiny fraction of the world population would be employed. I for one am very glad that people keep inventing iPods and other stuff to keep everyone productively occupied.

<comment><USER11> Making useless clutter is not productive.

<comment><USER12> Who decides what is useless? If I compare the enjoyment that I receive from having an iPod and being able to listen to any song I own at pretty much any time I feel like it against the amount of labor that I performed in order to acquire it, I feel like I came away with a pretty good deal. I expect that there is an item or an experience that you value which could only be purchased with labor via money that I would consider useless. That is the whole point of having markets, so that people can make their own decisions about what is and isn't useful to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mencius Moldbug describes it best:

"Money is the bubble that doesn't need to pop. As long as there is demand for indirect exchange, at least one asset will be stockpiled by hoarders, hence experience demand that is not a consequence of any direct utility, hence be overvalued. As long as the storage cost for this asset is zero and the supply in existence is fixed, you have a perfect Nash equilibrium - using any other asset as a medium of indirect exchange provides no advantage, and runs the risk of buying into a bubble which will subsequently pop as punters revert back to the stable standard." (source: <http://www.interfluidity.com/posts/1233118501.shtml>)

The story of the past ten years is that people started trading dollars for substitute stores of value ( houses, stocks, oil futures, etc). But those substitutes were not stable Nash equilibriums. In the long run, supply of housing is elastic and bubble prices cannot be sustained. Prices crashed, and people rushed back to using dollars as a store of value. When demand for dollars increases, it becomes harder to trade goods and labor for dollars, so the price of goods and labor in dollars decreases ( deflation). However, employment contracts and debts are denominated assuming a higher price level. Thus businesses are unable to meet payroll and pay creditors. Businesses fire workers or go out of business. That's the stage we are at now. The solution is to simply renominate the currency by mailing everyone checks, in order to restore/maintain the 2007 price level. This eliminates the frictional problem without creating massive transfers of resources from the private sector to the government.

<comment><USER13> Nice theory. Though the existence of other currencies complicates the picture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "[T]here may simply be not enough important things to do to keep everyone busy."

More and more these past few years I think of a favorite old science fiction story by Frederik Pohl called "The Midas Plague."

All production is done by robots. Production has become so, uh, productive that humans spend all their effort just wearing out everything made by the robots. "Poor" people must live in giant mansions with several robots and wear out more stuff than "well-to-do" people, who live in small cottages with few to no robots and enjoy leisurely, intellectual and social pursuits. Comically (or tragically), it's illegal to get a robot to wear something out for you.

I think I'll reread it today.

<comment><USER14> Addendum (since I can no longer edit): I reread the story. Never mind the above reference to illegality.

<comment><USER15> Totally OT but I'll try. You don't also happen to know the name of a SF novel about some project Australia. Somewhat resemblant to what you describe. Physical work unneeded, robots doing everything, energy problem solved, people VR'ing with some spinal implants. Whole thing started as a corp. venture witch sold stocks at a dollar the unit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I usually don't think of it in such terms, I've found a good litmus test for me is whether, if I was Phil Connors, something would be of any use to me. Anything that Phil would lose at night, it's possible for anyone to lose, and thus I probably will lose it at some point. My activities tend towards acquiring knowledge, universal skills, and doing things that scare me.

A couple of businesspeople have explained to me that every part of building a business is about reducing risk. They talk about diversification, but then only apply it to money. As personal investments go, money (in any form) looks like one of the riskiest! It's much harder to forget a foreign language, or how to play a musical instrument, than it is to lose money. I'm trying to reduce risk by diversifying my assets to the point where money is a relatively small portion. After all, the happiest people I know don't tend to be those with the most money.

</comment><comment><USER17> There are two kinds of goods: consumable and capital.

There are two kinds of capital: direct and indirect.

Money is indirect capital, but it is still capital, as long as the financial infrastructure exists.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm almost done reading "The Creature from Jekyll Island", by Griffin. Having had little background in finance or economics, much of what's been happening in the financial markets the past several years was just a mystery to me, and about a year ago I decided I wanted to understand how it worked. CFJI has helped quite a bit. It's not an easy read, even though it's well written, simply due to the subject matter (I had to read ch. 10 three times). It nevertheless does a great job of explaining how modern fiat currency systems work, and the mechanisms used by nations' central banks today.

</comment><comment><USER19> _But oh no! My job was producing those useless goods and services! And if people don't buy my useless goods and services, I won't be able to make money, which means I won't be able to buy food, which means I'll starve! PLEASE, SOMEONE, STIMULATE THE ECONOMY SO I DON'T STARVE!

The depressing thing about the great depression of the 1930s, as well as the current potential one, is that there may simply be not enough important things to do to keep everyone busy._

This seems to be the entire premise of the society present in "A Brave New World".

</comment><comment><USER20> Great synopsis. Who grows food anyhow? Most people have lost this skill, and it's pushed over to "specialists (farmers)". Have you ever tried eating money for lunch? It tastes horrible.

</comment><comment><USER21> Larry Smith is amazing guy, he is a legend in UW. Although he is an economist, he is particularly fond of computer science nerds :) and encourages them to be bold and creative. See one of his lectures called "Creating Killer Applications" [http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/Larry%20Smith:%20Creating%2...](http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/Larry%20Smith:%20Creating%20Killer%20Applications)

</comment><comment><USER22> Despite this being sort of a doomer rant, I really got a chuckle from the snarky bit at the end:

"I mean, we can't just give people food _for free_.

That would be ridiculous."

</comment><comment><USER23> I petitioned govt to give rice freely to people Below Poverty Line (BPL), an economic indicator of standard of living, used in India.

Since rice is Indians staple food, I assumed that it will have a cascading effect on remaining food items and will help in reducing their prices and inflation.

But to my surprise BPL people started buying exotic products and services with the money saved because of free rice.

<comment><USER24> > But to my surprise BPL people started buying exotic products and services > with the money saved because of free rice.

Did this experience teach you that you really don't know much about human behavior and should stay away from activities where such knowledge is important?

Or, did you double down and keep at it, perhaps with "I'm a good person so what I want is good."?

<comment><USER23> I'd say both wrt <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you liked this post, you'd enjoy Terry Pratchett's Making Money.

</comment><comment><USER26> The US dollar gets some of its value from the awesome US military. Worse comes to worse, we can take stuff from others regardless of how poor we are. Its a self-destructive mode of operation and would be used as a means of last resort. (North Korea is an extreme example - the world pays them not to go crazy with their nukes)

A more positive source of the dollar's strength is the US economy and its resourcefulness and innovation (ie hackers:)

</comment><comment><USER23> 3 years back I realized that I am also directly are indirectly responsible for poverty in the world.

<comment><USER27> you bastard

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Man, Hacker News is full of UW students, eh? I see people reading it in class all the time, this article is just more evidence...

</comment><comment><USER29> money is not useless, simply it's more comfortable to carry and trade with a set of coins/papers than a cow.

</comment><comment><USER30> Everyone in this forum is stupider for having read this. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any VCs that fund ideas or MVPs - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
  Most VCs pick funding on existing products which are already bringing in some traction or has some users at least. Are there any VCs that supports a Business plan or an idea which is not a finished product yet or at best is a MVP? I am asking this because I have talked to quite a few VCs and none of them even go beyond the question of # of users or traction.<p>Thoughts? <comment><USER2> 1) Smaller accelerators (especially university-based ones) will accept ideas — for example, Xavier University is accepting applications right now [http://www.xavier.edu/williams/xlab/](http://www.xavier.edu/williams/xlab/)

2) Angel investors will sometimes put money in on an untested idea.

If you can go get pre-orders from real clients, the odds of getting money will go up a lot.

</comment><comment><USER3> Plenty of VCs have funded pre-product startups, but generally such investments are based on factors such as the team, track-record, expertise, strong customer demand, etc. rather than just an idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> Im not an expert in VCs matters but what i think is that many VC's would fund a MVP if it is showing some sort of potential .Team also matters alot.</comment>


Cloudflare, Mozilla, Fastly, and Apple Working on Encrypted SNI - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/grittygrease/status/1018566026320019457 <comment><USER2> Just in case you're as confused as I was, the project is to encrypt the Server Name Indication. Here's the Wikipedia page:

"Server Name Indication (SNI) is an extension to the TLS computer networking protocol by which a client indicates which hostname it is attempting to connect to at the start of the handshaking process. This allows a server to present multiple certificates on the same IP address and TCP port number and hence allows multiple secure (HTTPS) websites (or any other service over TLS) to be served by the same IP address without requiring all those sites to use the same certificate. It is the conceptual equivalent to HTTP/1.1 name-based virtual hosting, but for HTTPS. The desired hostname is not encrypted, so an eavesdropper can see which site is being requested."

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

<comment><USER3> Or, more importantly, and in the case of the Government of Pakistan when dealing with sites like Telegram.org, an ISP can simply drop the connection.</comment></comment>


Why I Don't Teach SOLID - <AUTHOR> http://qualityisspeed.blogspot.com/2014/08/why-i-dont-teach-solid.html <comment><USER2> I've been rather skeptical of the Java community's rush toward inversion of control and dependency inversion, myself. It spawns a mass of interfaces, the vast majority of which have only one implementation. So you are usually adding a layer of abstraction without accomplishing anything.

The approach I favor is to identify seams and abstraction boundaries at a higher level, corresponding to larger units of functionality. Then carefully define interfaces between these larger units, and build mocks for them for testability. But having defined interfaces for every class, or even close to every class, is overkill.

</comment><comment><USER3> Too me this sounds he came back from over-using the "hammer".

However, I really like his article because he applies some prioritisation which of the concepts are more important. (i.e. reducing dependencies and SRP ).

However, the other concepts of SOLID are still good to know and to apply. You should just not apply them as a only resolution to your problem.

And you will get into deep trouble if you violate LSP. Please don't.

I think in general you should not use depth-first to search for a tool to solve a problem. \- Mix in some reasonable breadth first search (i.e. try a few other tools that could fit the problem. ). \- Then look at the space, pick the best solution found so far, apply it, reevaluate. \- If necessary refactor after learning more.

Also, i believe one of the most important problem resolution strategies that is missing: is to reformulate the problem into a problem that is easier to handle.

<comment><USER4> LSP: two users: an admin, and a common user. _CLEARLY_ we can see these two _should not_ have the same functionality, thus a GOOD design pattern. Yet clearly in violation of LSP. Esplain please.

<comment><USER5> The admin user don't necessarily have to inherit from the common user. They can extend the same base class or implement the same interface. Afaik LSP doesn't say anything about the abstract methods(it doesn't make sense to call them on the base class anyway). So you put the common methods(e.g. getName) in the base class, you won't break those in the different roles, and make the role dependent methods abstract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting post, and I think he is on to something.

But I really wish we got an alternative with the crap-fest. Otherwise you are just left with a 'ugh now what'.

Personally, I still like the guidelines in "Growing Object Oriented Systems". The focus on the caller of your code helps you reduce complexity in your API. It helps you build components from the viewpoint of the caller (aka user).

The biggest thing missing in software engineering right now is empathy for the user. Let's fix it.</comment>


Show HN: React component using CSS Grids for dynamic layouts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jessekorzan/layout-switcher-react <comment><USER2> I was thinking to myself, can't this just be done by switching the top level class, looking into the code, that's what this code is doing.

Not sure why someone would go for a component to do this, when it can easily be done more flexibly with your own code.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm struggling to understand why this is on the home page.

The code is terrible, the demo is terrible, the documentation is terrible, and the purpose is unclear.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's cut out from something bigger... I just thought the css grid part was interesting. Wanted to share if anyone else found it helpful (similar problem, idea starter, etc). It's not meant to be anything more than what it is.

I am new to react, so if you had any pointers to make my code less terrible, I'd honestly appreciate the pro-tips.

Thanks (to everyone) for checking out the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It doesn't seem to work on iOS 11. The buttons are hidden behind the layout.

</comment><comment><USER5> Should put documentation on how to use the component in the readme.

<comment><USER6> It is not a component. It's just a demo for CSS Grid layout built with React. Being built with React is completely ininfluent with the project.</comment></comment>


An insurance company's API exposed customers' car location histories - <AUTHOR> https://www.andreascarpino.it/posts/how-my-car-insurance-exposed-my-position.html <comment><USER2> Having worked in the connected car/telematics industry for a while as a contractor, I can very well relate to this and can confirm that the security systems in place inside the car's telematics unit is not good enough. For example, in one of the oauth process of authenticating a car with the cloud, the VIN was passed around as a client secret and MDN of the modem as the username ! We recommended to immediately stop this practice, but the "IT" dept of the automotive maker said, " You know we sell cars, not security software." There is no budget to rewrite the mechanism, and the telematics unit cannot be updated OTA. The upgrade requires customers bringing the car to a dealer and USB stick updates etc.

I believe the frequent bursts of data from the car was given to insurance companies. Or they were trying to package insurance deal along with the car sale or something.

</comment><comment><USER3> No mention of the irony of someone who doesn't use Google Play Services because he only uses open source software being willing to attach a device to his car, running closed source software, that tracks everything he does in his car?

<comment><USER4> I think I have a similar attitude. I have Google's location tracking on, but search history, YouTube history, etc turned off. I'm much more sensitive to digital privacy because it has complex, wide-ranging implications, whereas my location is a limited set of data that I'm more comfortable sharing with a semi-trusted company.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't want to know a company when, how often and which doctors I consult for one. If you don't want to share your search history you may not want to share your location data either. I would see these as equivalent.

<comment><USER6> > I wouldn't want to know a company when, how often and which doctors I > consult for one.

Depends. A lot of doctor's offices are in "medical parks," so it's entirely possible they don't know _which_ doctor you are seeing or why. They have easier access to that information via your calendar (if you use it) than your location.

<comment><USER7> Also, even if you did go to a doctor's office in the middle of nowhere with nothing else around and only one doctor working there, that doesn't mean _you_ are there to see the doctor.

For that matter, your location data couldn't be proven to be _yours_ on merit alone. Anyone can be using my car, and anyone can have my phone, at any given time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Until there is some kind of law in place that makes companies financially responsible for this kind of blunder, it will proliferate. In the current state of affairs it's simply not economically justified to implement proper security.

<comment><USER9> I have a feeling it's a subtly different problem: the people they've contracted to build this just don't understand security. They've evidently attempted to secure this, just in completely the wrong manner!

<comment><USER10> Here's an interesting thought: what with the money there is to be made in security these days programmers that actually know everything there is to know about security will leave applications development.

There is a good chance that the lure of security consultancy $ is resulting in a degradation of the quality of the applications.

<comment><USER11> Are you saying developers in general are subconsciously making low security products to raise the $ in security jobs globally, because they _might_ some day switch career?

<comment><USER12> No, they're saying that if the money is in security, developers that know about security will go to security, and whoever remains as a developer will not be good at security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So they had this vulnerability live for 3 years, didn't even pay a bounty, and they _still_ don't get named or shamed? What incentive is there to do a better job if they can just do a shitty job and nobody finds out?

Name and shame, please!

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't believe that anyone would voluntarily sign up for this. Frankly, insurance isn't that expensive.

Having a little third party controlled snitch hooked to your car is a security issue, period. The fact that the implementation is a shitshow is just icing on the cake.

<comment><USER15> at £1400 last year my insurance is expensive. Partly due to living in a city and using on street parking but mostly due to my age (<25). My mother, who had the same model, paid £250.

The 15% discount for taking a black box still isn't worth it for me however.

<comment><USER14> Wow!

Being part of a late 30s couple with pretty boring driving history in a small city pays I guess. I pay like $700-850 (depending on how you break out umbrella liability cost) for maxed out coverage in an above average cost US state. I think I paid around $1200 when I was a dumb kid with tickets. :)

Even if there were siginifciant savings, it wouldn't be worth it to me to have that kind of telemetry being gathered. It can only be used against you in a accident situation.

<comment><USER16> Over here there's no choice in the limit of cover - EU mandates that every car insurance _has_ to cover 5 million Euro in personal damages and 3 million in property damage. The only "optional" thing is whether you want to get comprehensive insurance which covers your own car for the damage caused by yourself - but 3rd party liability is always set to that 5 and 3 million by law.

I guess you could buy some specialist insurance which would cover more but unless you are planning on crashing into multiple Bugatti Veyrons, it's pretty much impossible to hit that limit.

<comment><USER17> Interesting, that's nowhere near the level of insurance (it's significantly higher) than what even non-cut-rate insurers will recommend for most drivers in the states. After changing providers, we pay $1400 for two cars with $100,000/$300,000 (individual/total) injury and $100,000 in property coverage.

<comment><USER14> I think a big difference in the US is that there's usually no fault for personal injury, so the liability is pooled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Terrible, but they did fix it rather quickly once the flaws were disclosed. Given many other such stories, the almost expected outcome would be to deny the problem, have the discloser prosecuted or sued, and put out a fix six months later that made things worse.

</comment><comment><USER19> What's the point of hiding the identity of the company here? The issue has apparently been fixed and I'd rather know which company had it so that I can avoid them.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's a shame he can't name the telematics company. I have a suspicion it's one I interviewed at a few years ago.

<comment><USER10> Funny, you don't name it either.

<comment><USER21> Naming it on a suspicion alone would be irresponsible.

<comment><USER10> That's a qualified statement, there is nothing irresponsible about that. Telematics companies bear close watching anyway. Right now it is as far as I'm concerned a content free statement.

<comment><USER21> It's absolutely irresponsible, even with qualifications, given what we now know about how people use that information. Witch hunts happen even with qualified statements, and down the road people who read qualified statements tend to forget the qualification and give the negativity more weight than it deserves.

<comment><USER20> Thank you.

Knowing like most industries, the layers of ODMs and OEMs etc, it's hard to pin down who exactly is responsible for a security cockup. And, funnily enough, having an interview there I wasn't inclined to do a recce on their infrastructure. Also, not having a device, I didn't have endpoints or traffic to test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Post-GDPR this would have resulted in a 20 million euro fine.....

<comment><USER23> Could have, not "would" have - the fine is variable. I doubt it'll get enforced regularly.

<comment><USER22> The GDPR is vague but the description details shockingly vulnerable APIs that do not come close to "industry best practices". They would have been made an example of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The EU and its member countries are still interested in personal privacy. Do they regulate insurance providers? Could EU, or Italy, exact a penalty against this provider for failing to do the most elementary of penetration tests on this system? Perhaps some of the penalty should be a return of premium payments to customers whose information was potentially exposed.

The point is to make the business-risk managers in other provider companies say to their executives: "We cannot take the risk of skipping cybersecurity hardening. If we do skip it and we get caught, our business will be forced into bankruptcy."

</comment><comment><USER25> Note that with the latest changes to Android, using mitmproxy to analyse the behaviour of apps has become impossible: apps refuse to accept personally- installed certificates.

In the future, we'll see less revelations about this sort of thing, not because it has become rarer but because Google have chosen a course of action which obscures it.

(it also breaks things like personal or corporate CAs, but that's a different problem)

<comment><USER6> It's also hardening against malware basically doing the same thing that mitmproxy does though.

<comment><USER26> For Android < N, if you install a custom CA, you'll get a permanent "Network may be monitored by an unknown third party" notification that cannot be dismissed and stays across reboots. Android wasn't really "insecure" in that regard beforehand.

Your point is valid, but I think it's a negligible improvement that comes in hand with severe implications for privacy research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When my insurance company offered a discount to use one of these devices a few years back, I smelled a rat. I figured they would use it to observe how fast I drive vs the speed limit so they can decide how "safe" of a driver I am or whatever. But also my insurance is very inexpensive so discounts on it are not a big motivator.

I guess location tracking would make sense too, so they can bust you if the car stays in a place other than where it's insured for. Or god knows what else. All of this shit is only going to get worse, a lot worse.

</comment><comment><USER28> it's really sad how young online political activists have adopted privacy issues instead of adopting issues like workers rights, vacation time, pay, a strong welfare state, universal healthcare etc...

<comment><USER29> Generally they _have_ adopted a lot of those, but privacy is kind of our specialisation as tech people. Often we see it as a necessary prerequisite to the others. Especially worker's rights: mass surveillance is used against worker organisation.

Dismissing people focusing on "X" instead of "Y" is useless and disruptive.</comment></comment>


Show HN: TxBatch, My Failed Blockchain Startup - <AUTHOR> https://app.txbatch.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Back in 2018, I quit my cryptocurrency exchange job to build TxBatch, a bulk search blockchain explorer. It worked... kind of. We made the product, partnered with the right people, got the help we needed - but we couldn't sell it.

We did, at least, get in touch with the top cryptocurrency exchanges and hear directly from them that they didn't need it.

As for failure reasons, I think it's:

1\. A blockchain bulk search engine simply isn't as sorely needed as I predicted. Should have pre-sold it (even if I wasn't sure if it was possible to make)

2\. It was built to scratch an itch I _remembered_ at my old job, but that same company I worked for was likely an outlier (they've now gone bankrupt). Should have met a specific user and designed it exactly for them.

3\. I focused on development far too much over the rest of the business (and as the only full-time member of the startup, that had a big effect...). Should have focused more on partnerships, marketing, and sales.

We're now creating SatSearch, which is a universal blockchain search engine. If you're interested in the concept check out [https://t[dot]me/joinchat/HtUYlBZcLI8xW5DjdoPEPw](https://t\[dot\]me/joinchat/HtUYlBZcLI8xW5DjdoPEPw) or our newsletter signup (no bs) at [https://txbatch.com/](https://txbatch.com/).</comment>


Climate Predictions: Worst-Case May Be Most Accurate, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/121108-climate-change-clouds-science-model-relative-humidity/

<comment><USER2> I feel like when we see estimates of 2-5C warmer global temperatures, people fail to appreciate how monumentally dramatic the difference is.

For reference, during the last ice age, global temperatures were 5C colder than today. At that time, Chicago was under two miles of ice.

<comment><USER3> At some point, if this becomes clearly inevitable, I'm hoping large-scale geoengineering happens. It would be awesome to be able to personally finance it, and from what I've seen, it would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, so a bunch of families could individually, or even a kickstarter circa 2025.

<comment><USER4> In The Vanishing Face of Gaia James Lovelock theorizes that geoengineering would trigger a cascading effect of problems, much like a a sick patient on an ever increasing regimen of prescription medications, each solving one problem while causing three. While other portions of the book are questionable, I tend to agree with this analogy.

The best case would be for the environment to re-balance itself -- of course, human cause or not, our environment is not static and is destined to continual change.

Unfortunately James Lovelock's worst case scenario is an earth which is capable of producing enough food to support single digit percentages of the world's current population. That is a pretty brutal death sentence for the current state of human civilization.

<comment><USER3> There are changes humans make to the environment which do make it better (at least for humans) -- building dams on rivers which otherwise flood periodically, culling wood and undergrowth to keep large-scale forest fires from happening, etc. There are environmental costs to each of those, but the benefits (direct and economic) far outweigh them, and stuff like salmon ladders, helicopter transport, etc. can deal with some of the harm.

The best long-term outcome for humanity is to use capitalism and science/technology to generate as much wealth as possible AND do as little damage to the environment as possible, but I think the "have a much lighter footprint and generate less wealth" option is off the table -- it's not going to be acceptable to generate less wealth than we have now, so really the most favorable outcome is to try to scale the wealth generation up faster than the harm done, and then use some wealth to ameliorate specific severe problems.

<comment><USER5> I agree that "generate less wealth" is a non-starter. Any political efforts down that road are wasting time, in my opinion. And if you think this is an important issue, why waste time on something that's not going to happen?

It does seem likely we can have a somewhat lighter footprint, or at least a more efficient one. The problem that lurks down that path is that if energy became more efficient it's possible people will just use more to do more, and the end result stays the same or even increases.

So I do think things like geoengineering and adapting to the changes have to be on the table. It's getting to a point where it seems irresponsible to not be exploring those options more fully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We were told back in the late 1980s and early 1990s that huge computer models were written, that ran on supercomputers, to model and predict climate change.

The fastest Cray in 1990 could do (I think) 60 GFlops when loaded with 32 processors, which is roughly the sustained GFlops as a high end i7.

So clearly it is not a case of "just need a faster supercomputer and we will have an accurate prediction".

Reality is, from what I can tell, is that _we don't have an accurate mathematical model of all the pieces that go into global climate_ to run on a supercomputer, no matter how powerful.

<comment><USER7> We don't even have a particularly good data model. If you're interested in the water cycle, you'll have to construct that data from dozens of agencies in hundreds of governments.

If the data was collected, linked together and published in an accessible form, more people could experiment with statistics, machine learning and visualization. Right now the data is in labyrinthine web forms, SOAP services, XLS files, GIS systems, etc. The barrier to entry needs to be lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm always cautious of the models as you get to the more extreme cases. To me it seems likely that as you get further and further from the current state that there are unknown factors lurking somewhere.

Those factors may represent positive feedback, they may be negative feedback, or they may not exist at all.

But to me the further into the unknown we go, the further into the unknown we are, if that makes sense.

To be absolutely clear, I think the models probably work well enough for the near range. It's the far ranges I wonder about.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the part where they say that actual observed data is unreliable so they'll use a made up model instead to prove their claims.

> "Satellite observations of clouds are sketchy, and contain errors."

<comment><USER9> You mean the part where they built their model off the accurately measurable water vapor content instead of building it off of the ambiguous reflectivity?

[Edit: ok, let's not all pile on.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I swear there is a common denominator between the dissonance that allows people to find any tiny thing they can to confirm their beliefs even the in the face of growing and yet already insurmountable evidence. For years climate change skeptics held on to one or two prominent scientists who disagreed. They've both recanted and apologized and urged a reexamination of the science, yet doubters just latched onto something else. Or, in the case of droithomme, find some half-invented ad hominem attack to use to dismiss the ENTIRE body of science on the issue.

It's the same people that swore to me, up and down, bet me and made foolish statements that Romney was going to have some magic emotional boost and that Nate Silver was the devil working for the liberals and that his numbers were "wrong".

That you don't like the facts or that they don't fit with your world view does nothing to make them any less true.

<comment><USER11> You seem to be fond of exaggeration.

<comment><USER10> Oh! No wonder you're trolling me. After a glance at your comments, I accidentally nailed you spot on for both global warming and Nate Silver without even realizing your last page of comments is denial of both!

I don't know why you're calling me names. I made a single comment that had to do with the actual issue of global warming and now that's grounds for me being a climate change zealot? I'll ask you again, do you realize that dismissing science as zealotry with no actual evidence or argument makes your position look less legitimate?

<comment><USER11> You're also a zealot.

I care a lot about science - it distills reason by holding it accountable to observed reality. I dismiss your offensive reaction to alternative viewpoints. That should be obvious.

<comment><USER10> _You haven't offered an alternative viewpoint._ You've literally been nothing but dismissive and insulting.

I'm tiring of repeating myself and I feel like I'm spamming. This is all I'll say unless you are interested in articulating yourself.

<comment><USER11> It's very simple: I don't like how you react to this study as if it is irrefutable evidence that the most dire projections will be accurate. I don't like how you dismiss the minority as if the consensus has never been wrong before. I'm not going to go through the litany of hockey stick criticism with yet another alarmist, but read this book if you want details about my viewpoint: <http://www.bishop-hill.net/hiding-the-decline/>

I doubt you respect this debate enough to bother, but then I won't be reading the next IPCC report either.

<comment><USER10> I never claimed it was fact. What is this, "evolution is not a fact!!!!11111"?

My point was not that consensus = correct. As someone who got to count many firsts for fellow LGBT people on Tuesday, I know that the majority is not always right. My point is very different. There are people who think that they have an opinion and that their opinion is as good as a hypothesis that is the result of data, research and people that are frankly smarter than them.

I'll again ask you, but this time in a more pointed manner. Do you have an alternative _viewpoint_ about global warming and this article... or do you have alternative _SCIENCE_ about global warming and this article?

You must have different data or analysis given your vehement denial of global warming... but I would have assumed you would have offered it before your 5th post in this thread. That's literally all I've been asking for from you. WHY do you not believe this article? Is that so much to ask?

edit: I see that you finally offered a single scratch of something that I can go look into. About the laziest way of engaging in a conversation, but at least it's something. I don't know why you're again insulting and dismissing me with that last sentence, I've literally been asking for this from the get- go and you're the one that held out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't trust this study, because I don't trust National Geographic with regard to this issue. Go ahead and shame the disbeliever, I'm used to it.

<comment><USER10> You know, when you come by, write a controversial one-line dismissal of an article, mock anyone who might disagree or even just wonder why you feel that way, and offer NO explanation or reasoning.... that is called trolling. The name-calling and accusations elsewhere are just further evidence.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Analysing Obama Speeches Since 2004 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/analysing-obama-speeches-since-2004-7f08797f7078 <comment><USER2> An interesting blog post, but with nothing for people to try out or play with, it doesn't really meet the spirit of the "Show HN" guidelines.</comment>


Redundancy vs. dependencies: which is worse? (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://yosefk.com/blog/redundancy-vs-dependencies-which-is-worse.html <comment><USER2> My personal view is that redundancy on stupid things is okay. That is, things that are very simple, you should be okay with doing over and over in multiple modules if you need it.

The experience that lead me to this was a particular team I was on where a previous developer had said "aha! All of these pieces of code relate to the same domain model, so we should build a common package of domain model objects and have all the modules share those objects! That way, we don't have to write them all over and over again!"

These weren't just model objects for data passing, but actual business logic inside these models. Usually very simple stuff, but occasionally a particular module would need some special logic on those objects, so in it went.

The problem was that over time, there modules started drifting. Their domains became different ever so slightly and the owners of those modules became different teams. Now if you wanted to modify the domain object, you had to check it wouldn't break code the other teams were developing.

It became a real mess. And all to avoid writing the same simple pojo classes more than once.

<comment><USER3> I think I've come to a different conclusion reading your run down of this. The key paragraph is this:

 _The problem was that over time, there modules started drifting. Their domains became different ever so slightly and the owners of those modules became different teams. Now if you wanted to modify the domain object, you had to check it wouldn 't break code the other teams were developing._

Isn't the real issue here that the architecture didn't keep pace with reality? It sounds like the dev who made the package had the right ideal. The real issue was subsequent devs introducing their domain specific stuff into a common package, instead of extending it or composing it with their own domain specific code.

<comment><USER4> The point of the article is that separating the common code into two different pieces is often better than "extending or composing" the shared code. Merging code together is fine if you're willing to separate it again, but lots of devs aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This guy definitely codes, I was nodding nearly every paragraph.

Redundancy vs dependencies is a constant battle, even internally or inside your own head.

Many times it depends on the project, team size and ability of libraries to be maintained whether budget, time or goal of the project and its lifeline.

For instance in gaming, you might have common libs for product purchasing, profile systems, networking, data, serialization, and platform libs to abstract calls. But systems like game objects, physics, gameplay and ui aren't as lib-able unless it is a series of the same type of game or system.

It is better sometimes to just get it out, prototype it and iterate to ship, then harvest and integrate useful/obvious items into dependencies/libraries for the next one. If you are always organizing to dependencies first, you will end up doing lots of unnecessary optimization and sometimes impact shipping speed.

The balance on this is a tough one to learn and changes as you grow more experienced.

</comment><comment><USER6> Neither, they both can be good or bad. Part of being a professional is learning that there are no hard lines in software development. Being able to tell when something is good and when something is bad.

When I start developing I encourage redundancy. Premature abstraction is a very dangerous thing that can pin you into a tight corner.

Dependency is also fine, I keep things coupled together a bit close when they are still in development and malleable and decouple once they start to solidify.

It's my personal style of development when working alone. When working in a team, I follow whatever convention that works best for the team.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am often of the impression that it is ok to start with many dependencies to get an application into an experimental state quickly, but ultimately this is extremely immature. As the application becomes polished over time and as there are refinements to increase performance, reduce complexity, and trim some fat many of the dependencies will go away. The reason why many dependencies peel off a maturing application is that as the programmers become more involved and aware of their knowledge domain they have to ask themselves if they can simply "do it better and faster on their own", which is likely.

Unfortunately many applications, or their programmers, never reach maturity. Also there is greater security and dependability in managing certain critical functionality more directly instead of relying upon support from a third party that may not exist with the same level of compatibility in the future.

<comment><USER8> _As the application becomes polished over time and as there are refinements to increase performance, reduce complexity, and trim some fat many of the dependencies will go away._

Do you find that many teams have the discipline to do this? The cynic in me says that software far more often gets slower, more complicated, fat and dependency ridden over time.

More constructively I could ask: what is it that gives a team or project the discipline to do this work of improvement. How could I encourage such a virtue in my own environment?

<comment><USER7> > Do you find that many teams have the discipline to do this?

It depends on the motivation. Ultimately it comes down to discipline.

As applications get popular over time their code base starts to age and get filled with chaotic cobwebs as new features are added or requirements shift. If you don't really care you will do the minimum required to complete your assigned task and await the next assigned task. This is what it is like when the people who do the actual work have no skin in the game. There is no sense of failure so long as you ship unbroken code, and so everything is very mediocre. If you completely suck as a developer then mediocre is your personal resounded success, and so what is just another layer of abstraction if it makes your job easier.

In startups, personal projects, or ambitious open source initiatives failure and pressure are constant reminders of reality. Everything is highly visible and it is always your fault until you ship something amazingly awesome. You need to ship quality code and make changes in the shortest time possible without dicking up the application. You don't want to get caught with your pants down updating a very simple bug only to discover a larger series of bugs in code you don't own that prevents you from shipping your little tiny code fix.

Also keep in mind that nobody (well... very rarely) is going to look into your code to see if you have a million dependencies, but they know when applications are slow heavy pieces of crap. If an application constantly breaks because the dependencies don't play well together and your developers lack the confidence to solve elementary problems your brittle house of cards pisses people off. I am a web guy and many major companies ignore these problems by doubling down on their branding, instead of training their people to write better code, which really pisses me off.

> what is it that gives a team or project the discipline to do this work of > improvement.

Ownership of success/failure. When your job or equity are directly impacted (the more directly the better) the emotional connection to quality drastically changes. I apply this level of thinking to my big open source project even though I lose money on it, because I know people depend upon me and I own it. I can be more successful than I am now if I continue to improve what I own or I can be a disappointing failure.

This is harder than it sounds because metrics of product quality the confidence to attain such a level of quality differ by experience. Not everybody has years and years of experience. In that case you need somebody who can supply some technical leadership and not be afraid to hurt people's feelings when things get tough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You depend on code that is more abstract than yours. You replicate code that is at the same abstraction level of yours. You shouldn't even be touching any code that is less abstract than yours.

There is something to be said about libraries quality and trivial pieces of code. But I feel that this is just a rant about some environment that lacks a good command line parsing library.

</comment><comment><USER10> On my last project since I was a one-man team, I erred way over on the side of dependencies. Thought I was being clever and organized for the first time, by encapsulating related things in related places and being a stickler about it. But in the quest to do that, I ended up with a large group of tightly-coupled trash cans!

</comment><comment><USER11> In Go, "a little copying is better than a little dependency"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAAkCSZUG1c&t=9m28s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAAkCSZUG1c&t=9m28s)

<comment><USER12> A lovely story about dependencies: [https://www.dotconferences.com/2014/10/blake-mizerany- three-...](https://www.dotconferences.com/2014/10/blake-mizerany-three- fallacies-of-dependencies)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the long run, dependencies are more expensive to work with, though programmers usually don't see it nor admit it, as language package managers hide the initial portion of the cost (the smaller one, but much better visible).

</comment><comment><USER14> The main problem with redundancy is that every time you refactor you need to look for all the occurrences, and sooner or later you'll forget to update the change in one of the places. So in my book redundancy is bad almost always. On the other hand if it's only a few lines without extra dependences, it's often more readable to just repeat them, especially (and it's quite common) when you would need to add extra logic and conditions just to make that little abstraction work.

<comment><USER15> Let's talk about risk of regression.

Ok I forgot to update some code in one place because I was doing duplicated code. If it is often used place it will be found out quick by QA or users. I kind of have more control over what can break.

On the other hand I made something that is abstract and used in many places in code. I might not be able to tell what will break maybe it will be 5 places maybe none.

In the end you should be able to find similar code in all project files with the tooling. The same with references to abstract code, but abstractions are behind interfaces or are subtypes and it is harder to find in my opinion than doing CTRL-F on all files. Specially with OOP code until you run the program you might not know which method is going to be called.

<comment><USER14> For me it's a lot about the stress of refactoring: if I know the code is all in one place, I can make sure that I don't break the contract and be fairly relaxed about making my changes. Searching through files, making sure that you've found all the occurrences, reading each of those blocks of code and trying to understand them enough to be sure you're not breaking something is a lot more work, but more importantly it makes me feel very uneasy about refactoring. It's much more stressful because there's more moving parts, you need to be concentrated about a lot more things at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The command line example is a bit odd since any POSIX environment has getopt (GNU has getopt_long too) and most languages out there have well-developed command line parsing in their standard libraries (eg. Python's excellent argparse).</comment>


A girl who gets gifts from birds - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026?fb_ref=Default <comment><USER2> When I was quite young I lived in a low-end apartment complex, not quite "the projects" but home to lots of new immigrants working multiple jobs, lots of latchkey kids, that sort of thing.

From time to time birds would fly into the building and those that survived usually needed some place to recuperate a bit. I became well known in the neighborhood as "the bird boy" for my seemingly miraculous ability to nurse stunned birds back to health...several of the other kids in the neighborhood tried it as well, but they ended up killing all their birds.

For a while I had a pet robin, too young to fly. He had fallen from his nest and was abandoned after that. I took him in and fed and raised him till eventually turning him over to a local animal sanctuary. While I had him, for all that time, I had a friend on my shoulder or head pretty much wherever I went. He knew who my family was and who my friends were, and would stay away from people he didn't know. He knew where I kept his food and the process I had to go through the make it ready for him to eat.

I don't recall ever being pooped on by him, not even once. He'd hold it till I put him in his house, or up on a branch while out playing with my friends. He never bit me, or did anything aggressive towards me. But he'd misbehave with other people he didn't know.

One day, in a well meaning attempt to set him free, my mother dropped me off from school and then dropped my bird off in the woods. I came home and couldn't find him, my mother lied and said that he had flown away (which I knew was patently false). Finally, out of guilt, my mother fessed up and I ran out to the woods where she had dropped him off.

He had waited patiently all day for me and vigorously hopped towards me when he saw me coming, chirping his head off in angry protest. He was shivering and starving and getting him back home, warm and fed was the guiltiest I ever felt.

Not a crow, but definitely a cool experience with wild birds.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a pet crow when I was about 6 years old - he was a fledgeling who'd left his nest on the hottest day of the year and was dehydrated. My brother and I were squirting eachother with water and he cawed at us until we squirted him. He decided this was the best thing ever, and basically adopted us from then onwards.

He was the terror of the local cats and dogs, but left our two siamese alone because he knew they were part of the family. He'd regularly steal visitor's keys, and hide them in the bush alongside our house purely so he could watch my dad or mum have to hunt for them. He'd play in the sprinkler, and knew the sound of my dad's motorcycle - when he heard my dad coming home in the evenings he would fly down the street and perch on my dad's shoulder for the ride home.

Crows are awesome.

<comment><USER4> Similar story, ~10 years ago a friend's dad (a hunter) found this crow alone and starving (he was probably 1 month old). He gave it to me. I feed him for 1/2 months and instead to leave him in a cage I decided to let him living outside... free.

He was super smart, he was able to recognize me he was playful but the thing that most surprised me was that he was really lovable he really liked to be petted and every time I was on my way home from school he would fly down on my shoulder and start to rub my cheeks happy to see me like a dog would.

Like a dog every time I called him within a minute or so he would fly down on my shoulder or arm everywhere from my small town. It was a powerful sensation!

One day that didn't happen. Indeed I was deeply sad. I thought he died ceasing cats or rats.

Around a month later I was driving home while from the windows of my car I started to see several crows flying very close to my car.

I stopped the car when suddenly something like 15/20 crows landed in front of me.

I'm not good in recognize crows especially at night but I suspect my crow found his crew and wanted to let me know he was fine. Maybe a proper goodbye?

I went home with a huge smile, I was a lover of birds, I had several of them, within years I totally stopped to buy them because I think a bird should be free to fly.

Crows are awesome.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, crows are super awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's an old 4Chan thread where a user starts 'World War Crow' by favoring a certain group of crows over another.

Allegedly, after some time, the two groups of crows have an all out battle over which group gets french fries.

[http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an- anonymous-4chan-...](http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an- anonymous-4chan-user-really-started-world-war)

<comment><USER7> True or not, this story is amazing.

<comment><USER8> Reminds me of [http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=59](http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=59)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Crows are real smart. On an episode of Roderick on the Line, John Roderick recalled a story he read where a researcher was trying to round up crows for tests. He went into a parking lot and tossed a net, capturing some. The next day, he went to a different parking lot across town and the crows immediately flew away when he pulled in, because they recognized him. He went back to the same second parking lot in a different vehicle and was able to capture some, but then that vehicle didn't work. He started wearing masks and trying all sorts of tricks, but as far as he could tell, the crows were communicating through town.

<comment><USER10> Regularly, I'd walk in a park near my workplace to work out problems and I began too often to play games and tricks with the magpies (another type of Corvid like the crow). I'd do things like throwing twigs on either side of them to see how they would react (no magpies ever injured!). After a while I'm certain the magpies had a particular warning call any one would call out when I arrived in the park that would set them all of making that cawking sound until I left. After a while I needed to avoid the park for a bit and I think I was forgiven when I slowly started integrating myself in by leaving bits of food like nuts.

I was amazed too at how observant they were, keeping a different distance if they noticed I had am umbrella or something in my hand or if I was walking funny.

The magpie is the only bird to pass the mirror test: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_magpie#Intelligence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_magpie#Intelligence)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There already exists an automated exploit for this behavior:

Joshua Klein's Crow Machine: [https://www.josh.is/crow- machine/](https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/)

see also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840)

<comment><USER12> I think there is a big difference between gift and payment.

Your article is on skinnerian conditioning to train crows to pay for peanuts.

In this article the crows got peanuts whether they gave gifts or not. They just decided to give gifts. No training occured.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps in the mind of the crows, they are giving gifts as a reward. In effect, training the human (in the article).

<comment><USER14> That is mind-blowing, and makes me want to reevaluate the concept of gift giving.

<comment><USER15> There's a famous quote attributed to the Inuit that Marcel Mauss mentions in The Gift: "Gifts make slaves like whips make dogs." Both halves of that statement are provocative.

<comment><USER16> So can we consider our paychecks to be gifts then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for.

Also, how do you explain this? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc)

<comment><USER18> I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

<comment><USER17> Conversely, I think Christians (for one) _do not_ like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology, which says that God created man in His image. If animals also started showing human traits, then Man isn't so special anymore, is he?

Edited: I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian; and it seemed to make sense. I'm agnostic, btw.

<comment><USER19> Counter-argument: The popularity of the Narnia books.

<comment><USER20> That's not a counter argument

<comment><USER19> Of course it is. It is evidence that many if not most Christians are perfectly happy with the notion of animals with souls, free will etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> On one of David Attenborough's recent shows, he said that crows can store up 30,000 pieces of food in various locations in the ground. They not only know where each piece of food is, but they know which ones are perishable and to get the food before it spoils. Pretty remarkable if you ask me.

<comment><USER22> More here:

[http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/](http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/)

The particular bird matching that number, Clark's Nutcracker, looks well studied. This paper discusses them caching 30,000 seeds, but not in 30,000 separate locations, it concludes that they locate at least 1,000 locations by memory:

[http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/7560/folkerts/hu...](http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/7560/folkerts/hutchinsnutcracker.pdf)

(that author seems to have done much field work studying the bird)

Another paper estimates that they might cache 90,000 seeds.

<comment><USER23> The paper you linked to mentions them caching seeds in all manner of different locations. I wonder if they have some form of algorithm unknown to us to determine a good location, rather than choosing randomly. That would aid a lot in 'remembering' locations of the caches.

<comment><USER21> On that same program the showed an experiment with 2 crows in side by side cages. When the crows could see each other, they put the food in the soil without making any noise. When they blocked the view of the other bird they put the food into the rocks, which makes quite a bit of noise. So theres more going into where they hide their food then first glance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I pissed off crows and they punished me for 2 weeks.

My uncivilized hooligan former neighbors had a young tree in their yard which they purposely allowed to grow for years right in the foundation of our brick wall. It started casting a shadow in our garden as well. There were no nests in the 20 foot young tree and the property was abandoned and now owned by the bank. So I ran over and cut it down. It was big enough to start cracking the foundation.

Big mistake, I should have worn a disguise. The crows who live in the tree above the one I cut took saw this as vandalism (well it technically was). For 2 weeks they would poop on my car non-stop. Only my car. They knew the PT Cruiser was mine, they shat all over that car. They specifically aimed for the door handle on the driver's side. I have never seen such vengeful birds and such nasty bird crap. It was discussing. They'd carpet bomb it all day, every day, for 2 weeks. I would have about 14 bird crap splatters on the car on any given day. They finally stopped after about 2 weeks.

I should have had a neighbor do it or worn a disguise.

<comment><USER25> Looks like the crows' intelligence can go both ways! I suspect that your disguise would not have fooled them though. I've watched some amazing feats of Crow problem solving (thanks Sir David Attenborough!) so they probably would have just watched which house you went into and carpet bombed ALL the cars in the driveway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whenever someone asserts that mammalian-equivalent intelligence is incredibly unlikely to arise twice, I like to point towards very intelligent and social birds, like crows - who are capable of performing advanced mental feats _without a neocortex_.

<comment><USER27> nature rarely does anything just once. if it can happen once it can almost certainly happen more than once, and almost certainly does happen more than once.

<comment><USER26> In case it wasn't clear from my comment: that was my point. I agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here's a more scientific look at the behavior:

John Marzluff & Tony Angell: Gifts of the Crow (2012)

Video: [https://archive.org/details/scm-67314-johnmarzlufftonyangell...](https://archive.org/details/scm-67314-johnmarzlufftonyangellgiftsoft)

Book: [http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gifts-of-the-Crow/John- Mar...](http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gifts-of-the-Crow/John- Marzluff/9781439198742)

</comment><comment><USER29> Konrad Lorez, one of the founders of the field of animal behavior and a Nobel laurete, did a lot of his research on jackdaws, which are a close relative of the crow. His book King Solomon's Ring is a really enjoyable read into his insights about their intelligence and social life.

<comment><USER30> For anyone interested in psychology in general, his text "On Aggression" is an amazingly well developed read on the habits of aggression starting with fish, then birds, then eventually mammals (concluding of course with humans).

The final explanation of why a loving father of four can firebomb a city filled with innocent people blew my mind as a younger man and shaped my worldview.

I think I'll add King Solomon's Ring to my amazon cart now.

Cheers for reminding me of him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > _Lisa logged on to her computer and pulled up their bird-cam. There was the > crow she suspected. "You can see it bringing it into the yard. Walks it to > the birdbath and actually spends time rinsing this lens cap."_

Why wouldn't they put this video in the BBC article?

<comment><USER32> They may not have kept it. The camera system may keep a certain amount of prior footage that is automatically flushed at a certain age, or that the users clean out when it gets large. This is recounting a story from a few weeks ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> You know what? After spending hours reading comments here, then watching videos and a talk about crows, it's decided. Screw drones. I don't want a quadcopter. I want to befriend a few crows and see if I can convince some to do cool stuff.

<comment><USER34> As someone who has worked a LOT with drones of all form factors (quad copters, propeller drones, battery and dead dinosaur-fueled), when drones can do this, drones will be cool:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY)

Context:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon#Ecology_and_be...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon#Ecology_and_behavior)

<comment><USER33> I remember that video. It was featured in a TED talk I very like [0]. Murmuration is one of the most amazing things I ever saw on YouTube. Thanks for reminding me of it.

[0] - [http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_th...](http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_the_open_world_1?language=en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Crows are incredibly smart: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8)

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_DuZ8WuMM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_DuZ8WuMM) Saw this video a while back and was really quite amazed the process adopted to crack walnuts. After watching that video I definitely had a higher level of "respect" for animals and their intellect.

</comment><comment><USER37> David Suzuki did an interesting show about crows but of course due to annoying geoIP copyright can't find an American version to link.

[http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m/episodes/a-murder-of- crow...](http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m/episodes/a-murder-of-crows)

There's signs up at some Indian public markets forbidding vendors taking payment from monkeys as they watched humans exchange cash for fruit and became pickpockets. No gifts though except a huge tip when handing over piles of notes for one bunch of bananas.

</comment><comment><USER38> Url should be simplified to [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026)

</comment><comment><USER39> I was disappointed that this article didn't include a definite scientific opinion on whether the crows saw this as an exchange for food, or if for some reason they bring objects to a feeding area.

<comment><USER40> crows leave gifts for one another. This may be some variant of that, triggered by the food?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Give and receive. This is some support for the idea that the law of reciprocity is ingrained fundamentally in us, even to lower form species like birds.

</comment><comment><USER41> Give and receive. This is support that the law of reciprocity might be ingrained in us--evident even in lower form species like birds.

</comment><comment><USER42> At what point do we start calling them "people"?

</comment><comment><USER43> Anyone else experiencing difficulties with the bbc site?

</comment><comment><USER44> This is cool, but isn't _that_ surprising, if you think about the behaviours of other species, and that corvids as a whole are highly intelligent and use tools in a fashion akin to primates.

I mean, primates give gifts to each other and humans, and my cat loves nothing more than to leave the most succulent bits of viscera of whatever her prey was for me on Persian rugs, for me to enjoy, by which I mean tread on while heading to the shower in the morning.

<comment><USER45> I think it is very surprising even given findings about corvid intelligence. I know of studies showing crows can count, but that kind of intelligence does not at all imply that a creature will spontaneously give gifts in exchange for food. This requires either some kind of ethics including reciprocity, or it requires that the crows reason that giving gifts will make someone more likely to give more food. The latter reasoning requires that the crows are able to model the behavior of an intelligent agent under hypothetical circumstances.

Bird brains are very different from mammal brains; they don't have a neocortex. So it's very interesting that they have developed similar gift- giving behavior to mammals and primates.

<comment><USER46> Crow flies with thing in its beak. Sees food, drops thing, grabs food. Comes back later, sees more food! Assumes food came from dropping thing (See "Superstition in the pigeon" [0]). Meme spreads among the crows.

No ethics or deep reasoning required. Random rewards lead to irrational behavior.

[0] [http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/](http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/)

<comment><USER47> The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking. We know that Crows recognize human faces and expressions, and communicate these facts amongst each other.

Crows / Ravens are the only creature aside from Humans who perform meta-tool use. They can use tools to grab tools to accomplish a goal. In many ways, they're smarter than (non-human) primates, and are probably the 2nd smartest animals on earth.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Meta- tool_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Meta-tool_use)

Birds in general are pretty smart (see Pidgeons, Parrots, etc. etc.) However crows / ravens are on a _completely_ different intelligence level. Crows break nuts by dropping them on the asphalt... timing their drops during red lights so that traffic doesn't hit them.

Besides, gift-giving is seen in far dumber animals than crows. Dogs, Cats, Penguins... they don't have the intelligence of Crows but they understand gifts and social situations.

<comment><USER48> > _The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the > family requires some pretty advanced thinking._

I think the article (and probably the podcast? haven't listened yet) make too big a deal of this. We don't know that the crows realized that the lens cap belonged to those people. Perhaps they just saw it as another neat thing to gift. Perhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it to a place that smelled similarly.

<comment><USER19> _Perhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it to a place that smelled similarly._

Can _you_ do that?

<comment><USER49> Most people never try. Feynman found he could, to some extend.

[https://books.google.de/books?id=Z7g-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&lpg=P...](https://books.google.de/books?id=Z7g-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=feynman+smell+books&source=bl&ots=WQZhRfi_oQ&sig=Jy-2xoqbc4IMwiE17_zOipToGBY&hl=de&sa=X&ei=OV_vVLLSEszaOJncgcgB&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=feynman%20smell%20books&f=false)

<comment><USER50> That story makes me suspect that Feynman was also a genius at flirting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Hoaxes involving children and/or their magical gifts: [http://tempr.org/54ef57337b951.html](http://tempr.org/54ef57337b951.html)

<comment><USER52> None of those seem relevant or even related to this story, except inasmuch as they involve a child.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Thought it read 'get lifts from birds' \- disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER54> I had a gift this morning, from a pigeon, onto my shoulder whilst waiting for the train to pull into the platform for work.

Supposed to be lucky - not sure for me or the pigeon though!</comment>