Gnome Wayland porting – the endgame - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2015/01/19/gnome-wayland-porting-the-endgame/

<comment><USER2> Does Wayland have an input method story? Last I heard, GNOME was telling users that ibus was the only supported input method for their software; ibus doesn't have the same feature set or flexibility as my current setup, which involves switching between fcitx and XIM dynamically. Plus, what about being able to accessibly enter text into things other than ibus-bound GNOME applications?

I've heard talk of a Wayland port of fcitx, but I could never get it to do anything at all, and it sounds like GNOME might not support it even if it does work?

I'd love to hear how this all is supposed to work from someone who knows what's going on.

<comment><USER3> Apparently libinput is what is going to handle Wayland input and the X team is already moving to add it as an input option to x11 to ease the transition.

<comment><USER2> Libinput is a low-level library that handles and normalizes evdev (kernel) events. "Input methods" here refers to high-level ways of interpreting various devices' events to produce text input for programs that accept text: on-screen keyboards, predictive input, pinyin, and so on.

<comment><USER4> Also plain old keyboard input is an important part of this. Dealing with international keyboard layouts is anything but trivial. E.g. to write ñ on my keyboard layout (fi), I need to press AltGr+~ and then n. In X11, this is handled by the XIM library.

There's no shortage of applications that do this incorrectly.

Particularly annoying are some games which don't get this right. The key for ", ^ and ~ is a "dead" key (doesn't produce any character output, to write ~ you press AltGr+~ and then space) which is where the US keyboard has ]. Lots of games use [] for something important, and this completely fails to work on my key layout.

For game keyboard input, the game should use "raw" scan codes (which are keyboard specific) for all configurable keys. Ie. not "keysyms" and especially not character codes.

International keyboard handling is very difficult. I was talking about a mostly western key layout, I don't even want to know what it's like to deal with non-western keyboard layouts (russian, greek, chinese, japanese, etc).

<comment><USER5> One of my pains on the early GNU/Linux days (slackware 2.0 and beyond) was to configure the keyboard for Portuguese both on the console and on X.

Almost as fun as finding out the right modes not to burn the monitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We almost got the old thing half-working, time to switch to the new totally- not-working thing! I love you, free software.

Recently I switched from Ubuntu's awful default whatever they call it to plain X11 with every newfangled thing disabled, and fvwm2. My satisfaction with my computer's performance is almost back to where it was in 1998 when my computer had 1% of these resources and for some reason double the performance. I'm definitely not looking forward to the next next thing unless it has a really great performance story incorporating all the lessons that whoever works on this stuff should have learned in the last 20 years.

<comment><USER7> Like you I have removed almost everything "Desk Top Environment" recently and have been enjoying the increased resources I get. I similarly hate that everything is getting intertwined so much that it is hard to actually pick and choose applications without taking a huge amount of cruft with it.

Having said that, if you look at the list of people working on Wayland it is quite impressive. As it contains a good number of core X windows developers, you would be hard pressed to argue that they don't understand the trade-offs that they are introducing. And while I haven't had time to play with it in any real depth, I've looked at Mutter's API and it is quite nice. Finally, I've actually tried Wayland (with Gnome and on top of Mutter by itself) and while there were still some problems at the time (about 3 months ago), I was actually able to get a full day's work done without much complaint. In fact, it is snappy and responsive and it mostly works.

I like exporting my X displays through ssh, so I really don't know if I will use Wayland seriously any time soon, but I think it is a good prospect for people who aren't me. I like the fact that this update from the Gnome guys shows that they are thinking, "Hey maybe not everybody will dump X. Let's try to find a place where we can showcase Wayland with the least inconvenience to conservative people".

IMHO, this kind of development is nothing but good. The real question is if Red Hat will take a less heavy hand in deployment of this as opposed to other "Let's reinvent the world" projects. As an option, I'm extremely happy to have it. If it gets wrapped up in everything so that I can't use any popular software without it, then I will be unhappy. But so far I see no signs of that.

<comment><USER8> Exporting X via SSH is still ultimately a bad user experience, since it's not portable.

The thing we desperately need is a desktop-session (Mutter-level) VNC server that will operate _behind_ a lockscreen, so you can export a remote desktop locally or remotely and have it persist between logins.

<comment><USER9> As long as it supports root windowless mode, whatever works is fine for me. Also, it must work out of the box on most common distributions, without requiring extra software installation. Configuration is fine though, not even X11 forwarding is enabled on many platforms by default.

I have sadly seen nothing of value in Wayland that would be worth losing X11 over SSH forwarding. I really need some similar feature, and I am not aware of anything usable being available with Mir or Wayland. VNC doesn't cut it unless it can export single windows.

I am well aware that X11 tunneling is an aged piece of technology that is in serious need of facelift, but the new alternative to X11 should match the functionality. Before that happens, I will keep uninstalling Wayland and Mir, because the critical requirements (for me and my environments) have not been met.

<comment><USER10> > I am well aware that X11 tunneling is an aged piece of technology that is in > serious need of facelift, but the new alternative to X11 should match the > functionality

But many of the performance problems of X11 is rooted directly in features most of the user-base no longer uses (X11 as a network protocol being the prime example) and the work on a new protocol is being made specifically by eliminating the tradeoffs introduced by those features.

I welcome a newer, more performant option, but I guess it won't have anything to offer for your concerns.

<comment><USER11> Converting API calls into network messages is usually still a better option than something like VNC, which just tries to copy across images of the screen. Put VNC side by side with Windows RDP, and RDP's advantage is usually very clear. Unless many heavy assets need to be processed by the API before it can composite the screen, sending API calls ought to be better. Fancy 3D effects etc. in particular should be much smoother.

The bigger issue with X11 is its backwards server / client orientation. That optimizes for a rare scenario, and makes the more common situation - where you want to connect to an existing session with a bunch of running apps, and disconnect from it without blowing everything away - much more awkward to configure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For reference, Mir is _hoped_ to be ready for Ubuntu 16.04...

<comment><USER13> To be fair, Wayland seems similarly hopeful about shipping in Fedora 23, which is only 4 months before Ubuntu 16.04. Also, Canonical has a big incentive to ship Mir in 16.04, since it's a long term support release. If they don't make it, they'll be forced to support X for an extra 5 years.

I think both projects have equally "hopeful" (slim) chances of hitting their dates. If they do ship on time, I expect stability and features to suffer.

<comment><USER14> I'll take "Suffering Stability and Features" for $500, Alex. As long as I can bet everything on chance to get rid of X 5 years sooner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is great, congratulations and thanks to everyone who's been working on this stuff!

</comment><comment><USER16> > The login screen is pretty self-contained and we don't have to worry about > application compatibility or support for exotic devices. And we will get > Wayland to run on (almost) all systems this way, which should give a lot > more exposure and help shake out lingering bugs and hardware issues.

Let's test the exciting new technology by making it a dependency of ... being able to log in.

I. Um. This seems ... unwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is more thought out than it might appear. In various Fedora releases you can already test GNOME under Wayland. Due to Wayland, certain functionality is not available. The one case which is not resolved yet is the "color picker" from anywhere on the screen. This as security wise you don't want applications to determine the screen content of other applications.

So the switch is actually gradual:

      1. Now: Optional GNOME Wayland session (with slightly less functionality)
      2. Wayland login session in development distribution
      3. QA testing (Fedora has a big QA team)
      4. Go/no go decision
      5. GNOME Wayland login session in stable distribution
      6. Repeat 2-5 for Wayland as default session (for next distribution version)

The login session doesn't use the functionality that might be different between releases. That is why to proceed with testing Wayland, login session is a better test than knowingly reducing functionality.

I'm aiming to also have the Mageia development version switch to using Wayland for GDM. A lot of people use that and we (Mageia) often notice bugs quite quickly.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that the process is good for the software but it won't be good for the users in the early iterations.

I use Fedora at home and I love it, but sometimes it is a little bit too experimental and in this case I'm afraid it might not be usable (Fedora has shipped broken things in the past that I would qualify as "release blockers", but the release team have a different opinion).

Things settle in the sweet spot (eventually), but with every upgrade is like "what will be broken this time", and that's not a pleasant end-user experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How is XWayland doing these days? Last time I heard anything about it, it sounded like GLX programs didn't work yet, which would be a major impediment to switching fully to Wayland. Lots of older programs (especially games) won't ever be ported to use the new Wayland APIs, so compatibility is important.

</comment><comment><USER19> QT 5 supoorts Wayland. these "maybe" is false.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're reading too much into it. GTK+3.x has supported Wayland for various versions already. Fully supporting everything required changes (additions) to Wayland (the spec). There's still a few things missing in Wayland for GTK+ to support everything. Qt support, we're (=GNOME) not the ones to know.

Aside from that, this bit is probably about if we set environment variables to prefer/force Wayland backend, or leave it up to toolkits to discover. For GNOME to change behaviour of Qt might not be a good idea (or maybe it is :-P). As such, "maybe".</comment></comment>


The Truth About 'Growth Hacking' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theconversionwizards.com/the-truth-about-growth-hacking/

<comment><USER2> What's happening with scrolling on websites lately? Does this website really need some badly implemented custom scrolling?

</rant></comment>


This is the best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever see - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/

<comment><USER2> Hysteresis will solve this over time. This only works to a maximum extreme, then it snaps back and there is nothing the minority party can do to retain power other than a physical coup 'd e tat.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know, let's pass a law to make this illegal!

How many more examples do people need of government maleficence? Voting won't change the status quo, you've already been cut up and dealt with as pleases those in power.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget about the need for earmuffs:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional_district)

It is interesting that drawing a congressional district along ethnic and racial lines is somehow legal.</comment></comment>


My Experience With Outsourcing Web Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2008/03/02/my-experience-with-outsourcing-web-design/

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I checked out the template and... what? Do you think this is a nice one? Have you checked themeforest.net. They have some good templates. Look at them. Feel the sleekness and the brightness. Buy one or hire one of the good designers.

For the logo you'll need a separate designer, and that itself can cost $500.

Just my opinion. What the HN crowd think of it?

<comment><USER3> I'll second your recommendation of themeforest. I needed a template for my portfolio site (<http://aaronbrethorst.com/>) a couple months back, and found a pretty decent one for $22 (twicet: [http://themeforest.net/item/twicet- business-portfolio-templa...](http://themeforest.net/item/twicet-business- portfolio-template-5-in-1/47846))

I found the HTML and CSS to be pretty gruesome (no grids, px-specified font sizes, etc.), but for my requirements (looks good, can be plugged into a Rails app with minimal trouble, has a template page with a sidebar) it was more than sufficient.

I ended up redesigning my site's semantic structure last month (moving it onto Blueprint CSS), which necessitated re-writing all of the CSS, but it was still worth it as the theme gave me a solid look and feel to mimic.

<comment><USER4> Using CSS frameworks is much worse than using px for fonts (unless you care about really old versions of IE). Any CSS framework will litter your markup with purely presentational classes.

<comment><USER5> Who cares? This is a serious question.

Pixel font sizes are bad because they might not scale correctly, but why are presentational class names bad?

<comment><USER4> When one day you will find that your class="green" is displayed in red, you might now the part of the answer.

<comment><USER5> That is an argument against naming in general. 'When one day you will find that your class="product" contains contact information, you might now the part of the answer.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I keep meaning to blog this, but here it how I "outsource" my design. I found a quality designer who is $75 an hour, he does great work and all I ask for from him is a PSD. This is the easiest thing for a designer to create and keeps his time to a minimum. Then I pay a freelancer to turn that into HTML and CSS for about $100-$150 per site, there are lots of people who do this. I use madmarkup (<http://madmarkup.com/>) because, well, it's my sister. :)

So what do the results look like? Here you go:

<http://theloungenet.com> <http://rubyrow.net> <http://zerkmedia.com> <http://infozerk.com> <http://adzerk.com/>

Most of these sites took between 5-15 hours of my designers time, the logos were a separate expense. I am now using my designer to design the internals of my application, we do a couple pages at a time and it has gone really well. I think it's the next best option to having a designer on the staff full-time.

<comment><USER7> Who is your designer? I would certainly like to hire them for some work.

<comment><USER6> <http://atimcalledoak.com/> \- but he isn't taking any more work right now, I am keeping him busy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really respect Patrick, but in this case I think it's clear we differ in taste. To me, that design screams "templated design". Then again, I think Craigslist is ugly as sin, so what do I know?

My experience with outsourcing web design was to find someone I knew who was really good and charges between $50-$100 an hour. He never takes more than 4-5 hours to give me a quality, site-appropriate, custom design for any site I throw at him. One such site is my consultany's website, which cost a grand total of $300 (for the PSD) if I remember correctly.

<http://www.alfajango.com>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because I was curious what people thought of the Elance approach, as I am looking to get my homepage redesigned.

I made an Ask HN if anyone has recommendations for someone on a tight budget: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1552745>

</comment><comment><USER9> The design is not my taste, and looking at the designer's portfolio (<http://www.gursimran.com/>) it does all look a bit dated. (I think some of this is expected with out-sourced design where local tastes and aesthetics differ to 'western' current trends).

</comment><comment><USER10> as always, you get what you pay for.</comment>


Why today's tech boom isn't like the 1990s bubble - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/9/11/9306533/silicon-valley-bubble-no <comment><USER2> I've never quite understood why 1999 is the inevitable comparison. Perhaps because of the emotional reaction it gets (clicks) when you use it.

2005-2007 is the more accurate comparison. The acceleration of asset bubbles in both real estate and - to a much lesser degree - the stock market leading up to the great recession (and I'm not implying there will be a replay of the housing bubble). It involved a gradual but significant venture capital increase from the bottom years of 2002-2003, and public valuations expanded significantly.

From roughly Jan 2003 to Aug 2007, the Dow went up about 75% and finally surpassed the highs made during the dotcom bubble. Companies like Google IPO'd during that run. There was also a dramatic China bubble during that era.

Valuations were elevated by quite a bit, but not like 1999. Venture capital was flowing freely, but not like 1999. The stock market had gone on a huge run, but not like 1999.

The downside to the currently elevated financial environment, will be tightened liquidity, harsher terms, and lower public multiples. That means, conceptually, instead of Facebook having a 90 PE ratio, they'll have a 40 PE ratio.

<comment><USER3> of course, comparing today to 1999 does not work. but the basic issue remains: the state sold its right to create money to the banks and the banks went and still go haywire. it's all money out of air. look at fb, twitter, salesforce. their pe ratio alone tells you that things can't work out. they created money just by going public. no real value behind it.</comment></comment>


The Case for the PS4K - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidGalindo/20160422/271014/The_Case_for_the_PS4K.php <comment><USER2> The Case for the PS4K reads a lot like the case that consoles are so desperate they're going to caniablize everything that distinguished them from PC.

Consoles once represented predictability, stability and ease of use. Do they have much left beyond the set top form factor, 10 ft UI and a bit more flexibility on how often you're required to be online?

I don't see this evolution of the console market as positive for consumers. But according to the article people will complain online about anything good or bad, so fuck them, right? Using your adult brain to ask if something is in the interest of consumers is not necessary when children online irk you.

<comment><USER3> >> _Consoles once represented predictability, stability and ease of use. Do they have much left beyond the set top form factor, 10 ft UI and a bit more flexibility on how often you 're required to be online?_

I'd say console still have all of these properties. Also, some of these things like set-top form-factor should not be underestimated. Other important advantages are that the buying experience is much nicer (only 1 online store, or a disc), you can expect any game that runs to at least run well enough for a decent experience, every game is optimized for the control scheme that comes with the console, and initial cost of buying a console is a lower than a capable PC.

Really, the only downside is lower graphical fidelity, and lack of games that are not well suited for controller input.

I have a PS4 and a PC with Steam BPM hooked up to my TV, and while I enjoy both I still can't cease to be amazed by the abysmal experience playing some PC games, it really is hit & miss. Even though my PC far exceeds the system requirements of some games they still run like crap (screen tearing, framerate spikes/drops, crashes), they have poor to no controller support, tiny fonts that are unreadable from the couch, they like to pop up mouse-only launchers, popups, updaters, whatever.

PC gaming can be great but let's not pretend any of the advantages of consoles are suddenly lost because they will have mid-cycle HW upgrades (which I personally think are a great thing, if executed well).

<comment><USER4> Try a monitor with GSync or Freesync. They sync the refresh rate of the monitor to the framerate the GPU can actually deliver, so you don't get tearing and judder as the FPS drops below refresh rate. Dropping into the 40s or high-30 FPS range is no longer a big deal. It's a game changer, I can't wait for it to make its way into TVs.

Right now GSync is more expensive (custom electronics) and has a better experience (consistent, often wider sync ranges) but long-term FreeSync is going to win because it's a VESA standard (VESA Adaptive Sync) and cheaper. You can often get a FreeSync model for the same price as an old plain monitor, GSync is usually a $200 increase in price.

The points you raise are all true though, the PC experience is not optimized for a 10 ft UI, and the performance tuning is often not as good (although PC is usually pushing a lot more pixels - many consoles render at 720p and upscale, whereas 1080p is standard and 1440p/4K or supersampling are common on PC). The other thing that bothers me is that every PC game is tied to an account somehow, so you can't buy/sell used games.

<comment><USER3> I game on my flatscreen TV so GSync is not (yet) an option ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, Sony have two things in the pipeline, VR and PS4K so I assume that they are linked. The PS4 never felt like it was powerful enough to drive VR in an interesting way. Sure it just about works, but can you build interesting games with just the power of PS4?

<comment><USER6> There are games and experiences that people seems to think are interesting enough to play on the GearVR. The PS4 will be more powerful than the phones powering that. Obviously you have to adjust your expectations compared to the Rift but it seems like there can be value for VR platforms that are not as fast as the Rift/Vive minimum specifications.

<comment><USER7> And it's important to recall that VR works best with >=90fps which requires more horse power.

<comment><USER8> You do realize the PSVR is 120fps, the PS4 as-is will drive that if the game allows, otherwise is drops back to 90.

<comment><USER7> My comment was in reference to GearVR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I wanted an incrementally upgradable console with games as a service and backwards compatibility, I'd just plug a 360 controller into a computer running Steam. In fact, that's exactly what I do.

<comment><USER7> But in that case wouldn't it be better to just stream games, provided the connection is sufficiently low-latency?

<comment><USER10> How low latency are we talking about?

At 60Hz, a frame is 16ms, which is already tight.

<comment><USER7> Yep, so for VR it's practically impossible to stream over the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I disagree with his assessment of the console lifecycle.

I bought an XBox 360 and a PS 3 at dirt cheap prices around the time the 1 and the 4 came out and these are both great values, still going strong, etc. Today I am starting to want to play Yakuza 6 and the new Hyperdimension Neptunia game but I can save that for later.

The technological story is that (i) console APUs are in a state of technological improvement but that PCs are not (i.e. Intel is obsessed with making a notebook computer that can fit under the door at a hotel and not with improving any product attributes that matter) and (ii) no way Sony can Nintendo get ahead with a more powerful console.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does the new PS4K play games in actual 4k (not upscaled bullshit)? No. It won't have titles designed to run on 4k screens. It won't be able to have games run at 4k. Sony has already told us this.

This is simply an update for people without a PS4 or for people whose original PS4 breaks (I assume it's just a matter of time based on my and others' PS3 experience). It's a ploy to get more money for essentially the same product. Yes, you'll be able to watch 4k Netflix on it, something you can do with a ~ $100 box nowadays, but other than that the name is a misnomer and the upgrade certainly unappreciated in the gaming community. As others have said, if we wanted upgrades every year or two, we'd stick to PC gaming thank you very much.

</comment><comment><USER13> Being unfamiliar with the leaks, this article fails to mention what the PS4K's supposed features are.

</comment><comment><USER14> The thing that people need to realize about this 4K PS4, is that is just the up-converted output. There is NO WAY this new PS4 is rendering anything at a full 4K resolution. You need an extremely powerful desktop to handle such resolutions, even without post processing.

It's sad because Sony has made all the right moves this generation, completely crushing competitors, and now they attempt this incremental nonsense, which was the whole reason consoles were separate from PC's.

<comment><USER15> The thing you need to realize is that you haven't had a chance to play with the new PS4 or seen its documentation, so you don't know. Rendering at 4K is not difficult at all, the question of course, is how much fidelity you need to sacrifice to enable smooth gameplay in that resolution.

<comment><USER14> Yes, sure, if you want to render a 4K floating cube. However, a single $700 GTX 980 or even a $1000 Titan X , can't even handle 4K games. Unless you enjoy playing at sub 30FPS levels. PS4 surely isn't fitting either of those monsters in its form factor for $400.

<comment><USER16> This push of hardware may be for 4k videos and not necessarily 4k games. It may also be for better VR. 4k games are an absurd idea that probably no one even considers tbh.

Plus, it's not even talked about in the article. What motivated your comment?

<comment><USER14> 4K is the whole reasoning behind the "PS4.5" being a thing. It's been mentioned from the very beginning. Yes I agree, it's probably for the VR aspect, but the real issue is going to come when games actually run better on the 4.5 hardware. "Early" adopters get screwed, which defeats the purpose of console hardware.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you find reliable co-founders? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one that's faced this issue. I started writing code when I was 10 so we are looking at 20 years of coding. I went to unicersity to study software engineering and I've been working as a software engineer since I turned 18. Several years ago I was promoted to tech lead of the most profitable product that the company I work for makes. But truthfully my heart has been elsewhere for a long time. I truly wanted to build something from the ground up myself. And though I've been trying hard for several years, it seems that I'm very stuck. Though I am really good at Linux, networking, databases and I've been eating, breathing and dreaming all the populat ML and AI libraries in recent years, I figured I can't do it on my own. As Torvalds famously once said "If I were stranded on a deserted island and the only way to get out is to make a pretty UI, I'd die". And dealing with system administration, back end coding, database design and architecture, building any form of end-user interface is not a task for a single man. And while many people are more than happy to jump in and claim a piece of the pie, few people want to put in the effort. It would be fine if people had even minimal skills and willing to put in the effort and learn but I haven't met such people yet.
The startup culture in Europe is very VERY poor. I've tried several different options. Whether that's trying to get people from work or at meetups to join me or even as far as extending my search across the EU online, everything has failed.
Let's take one of the big projects that I've started, which involves a lot of NLP and speech synthesis. Whenever I show it off to someone, they are instantly interested and wanting to join but their enthusiasm lasts for a week tops and then they go back to meaningless swiping left and right on Tinder or scrolling infinetly on Facebook.
And that is my genuine question: How do you find reliable co-founders? <comment><USER2> I've been experiencing the same issue and going at it for 4 yrs so I know your pain. Originally from Canada but am now based in Europe so happy to talk things through.

Finding a co-founder is hard. Finding a good co-founder is even harder. It's less about the product and more about the motivations for wanting to build something on their own. I reckon you'll need to dig deeper into the whys of someone wanting to start a business.

</comment><comment><USER3> Money. And mission? Probably get some VC investment, build a good demo / website / get some customers and then sell the person on being an employee. For a co-founder, someone reliable from your social circles you met while working in software over the last decade?

<comment><AUTHOR> Money: at this point whatever I can personally invest. Nothing more, nothing less. And while my paycheck is good by most people's standards, it's nowhere nearly enough to hire anyone qualified.

Mission: there is one. Vision-same story. Despite the treacherous possibility of contributing to an "idiocracy" type of dystopia.

VC is definitely a goal but as I stated, it's too much work for a single man to handle. And most importantly the website is where I would definitely fail: I can write a tacotron 2 implementation from scratch in less than two days. Make any website that looks better than 1998 yahoo(due to my lack of design skills) - possibly months.

As for my social circles - they are all too comfortable in their own world to deal with anything other than their daily jobs. As I said, they would all much rather waste their time on Tinder and Facebook rather than work on something that could benefit them. And it was the same story when I looked for people outside, even when I threw cash at them(understand freelancers).

<comment><USER4> #1 - Well my first thought when reading this is you sound pompous, full of yourself, and hard to work with. This is a quick read but are you sure the problem is not you?

I ask that seriously and say it harshly to get your attention, have you taken a hard look at your vibe and yourself?

#2 - What skills are you specifically missing to build a product? Design? People? Customer development? If you could build the perfect co-founder what do they look like?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pompous and full of myself? Not at all. Having high expectations and expecting people to do things right - absolutely. Even if that means taking 3 times as much time. Which has worked marvelously for me and everyone around me. It took me a lot of fights with the top management but eventually they saw the results and are now more than willing to accept longer deadlines. But since I work in the same office as 200 other developers, most of which are presumably the cream of the crop, I am unable to justify the lack of motivation in either of them to engage with anything. I see tons of people who are more than happy to do a small task and waste away 4 or 5 hours a day on facebook. On a personal level that makes me absolutely furious. But a lot of them are happy with it since they get to do very little and get a few grand at the end of the month for it. And it appears to be common with everyone I've ever met.

Skills - at this point I'm definitely struggling with design and UI/UX. The only man besides me has similar experience as mine. As I said, I'm fine with hiring freelancers but my experience with them has been similar: Clear requirements, deadline and name your price and I've never questioned it. 4 people have taken the challenge so far(a single html page, no animations, or anything flashy-clean and simple), I didn't get a single question or feedback from them, 1 month later I go to the freelancer mediator to get my money back. As much as $3500. It's absolutely hopeless.

I agree with the statement that tech people are generally lazy but in recent years it has become worse. I honestly would take anyone that would put a minimal amount of his/her time at this stage. I'm that desperate.

<comment><USER4> I am not sure if you are hearing yourself :), you basically spit back exactly what I am warning you about. Your attitude sounds like "everyone is lazy and wastes their time and does low quality work... except for me..."

Have you ever dated someone who has that type of attitude? Someone will stick with you for a week and then leave because it is toxic. I don't know you but that is how your messages are coming off.

If all you need is a designer and UI this should be no problem. There are tons out there. Just go on [https://dribbble.com/](https://dribbble.com/) and find someone you like and hire them.

I am not sure what you are trying to build, but build something that doesn't need UI/UX is an option too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You are not alone. It is really difficult to find cofounders who are really interested. Most people lack the perseverance required to see a product shaping up.

Ping me on twitter and let's connect!

</comment><comment><USER6> There's no contact details in your profile, email me if you wanna grab a Skype call just for intros</comment>


Pentagon wins brief waiver from government's Huawei ban - <AUTHOR> https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/08/14/pentagon-wins-brief-waiver-from-governments-huawei-ban/ <comment> java-man "Citing U.S. national security interests, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe granted the Pentagon a temporary waiver to further assess a broader waiver request from DoD."

Wait, what? If the stated reason for the ban is "espionage threat", how is it possible to allow the said espionage in the Department of Defense, arguably one of the juciest targets?

It either means the real reason is different, and we are being misled, or the threat of espionage is low, and we are being misled. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER2> a) It's not for the DoD using Huawei equipment, but for doing business with companies that use Huawei equipment.

b) That there is an espionage threat doesn't mean that the DoD might not prefer accepting some of that threat in exchange for supply chain stability temporarily.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your biggest schlep? - <AUTHOR>

Following up on pg's essay - what's your biggest schlep?  What's the one annoyance you face, professionally or personally, that you most wish would just go away? <comment><USER2> Several years ago I went through a depressive episode that led to most of my life falling apart because I didn't feel invested enough in my own life to do things. It wasn't like I was preoccupied with more entertaining options, it was more like I had set fire to my life and wanted to watch it burn. I spent some time in a hospital, and the most useful thing I took from that experience was a talk with a social worker about getting things done before you were buried under shit to do. "Do it now" became my mantra and that got me back on my feet. The mindset isn't as vivid as it once was, but it's still very much ingrained - I've just gotten worse at listening to that voice in my head.

Since then, I have very limited tolerance for people who don't share that mindset. Unfortunately, that seems to describe most people I know. but even still I don't know many people I'd count on to take care of something important without nagging. I hate to feel like I have to follow up any time I ask someone to take care of something, but more than that I hate the disappointment I feel when someone doesn't and doesn't have a good reason.

<comment><USER3> I don't always have the energy to execute on my ideas. I'd rather be traveling. Or daydreaming about another new idea.

Which I guess makes me one of those people who need to be nagged when I'm doing stuff I don't like :)

<comment><USER4> "Or daydreaming about another new idea." I also share this past-time. Just the idea of planning to sit down and think of business ideas gets me excited. :|

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just formed an LLC in California, and the process and the associated hassles suck. It's a bootstrapped business that's profitable, but barely, so I didn't have a lot to spend. However, I needed to get the LLC in place relatively quickly (days, not weeks or months) to sign a contract. Here's some of the schleping involved:

\- Creating the LLC itself sucks/is expensive. I ended up using Legal Zoom to create the LLC because California's government is so understaffed that they're weeks and weeks behind on processing LLC paperwork, so the only way to get your stuff processed quickly is to have a courier walk it into the office by hand, in addition to paying all sorts of expediting feeds. I think I ended up paying Legal Zoom $900, in addition to the $800 franchise tax, etc.

\- Figuring out how taxes works sucks. I'm a sole founder, and have only offshore contractors, no employees. It should be really simple. But I honestly still don't have a solid idea how I should be paying myself, what paperwork I should be filing for taxes, and what witholding and estimate payments I should be doing.

\- Setting up proper accounting sucks. I used quickbooks to run a small freelance business 10 years ago, but I suspect there's something better out there that's web based. I'd really like to just be able to hand accounting and taxes off to someone who knows more about it than me, but I don't know where to go about finding someone, and am worried they'd cost more than I could afford.

\- Figuring out how to get healthcare as a bootstrapped small business sucks. I'm on COBRA right now, but once that runs out, I have no idea what my gameplan is. This is separate from the suckage that is healthcare in general once you have it.

These are all things that are necessary to start a business, but at least for me, none of them are fun, or really increase the value of my business. They only cause headaches if I screw them up.

For most if not all of these, I'd actually be willing to pay someone to just say "Here's a checklist of how to get through all this stuff. Here's the paperwork to fill out, here's who to talk to, here's the service worth paying for."

<comment><USER6> People still just use QuickBooks, and check out <http://www.ehealthinsurance.com>. It makes finding insurance simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bureaucracy, i know its rather generic and quite a large subject but i absolutely detest it and i feel its only purpose it to make everyones lives harder. Whether its doing the mandatory paperwork i need to do for running my company (which is always late cuz i procrastinate) or absolutely ridiculous requirements like the umpteen amount of papers and ID i have to provide to get something as simple as a Costco card.

I do recognise the government is getting gradually better at a very slow pace but it grates on me so much that i will refuse to participate in something unless i really really want it or have to do it by law.

</comment><comment><USER8> Licensing, compliance with endless laws and regs, and quarterly and annual reports for several departments of government. It's especially discouraging when you speak with a particular branch of government and they have no official interpretation of their new laws, as a result you may or may not be in compliance, they're still deciding.

<comment><USER4> true. consultants address this shlep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> False Emergencies. As an "IT Guy" my life consists of fixing false emergencies.

<comment><USER3> Like the show? Have you ever dared answering the phone "Have you tried turning it on and off again?"

<comment><USER9> That is so cliche it's hard to even say... worse so because it fixes everything, including "the internet".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All of the things below could be ideas for startups. I 'd pay for them:

\- Find a domain name (and a name) for your site

\- Recruit beta version users

\- Writing the documentation/help pages for your startup

\- Making those pretty screencast videos where a cute girl explains how (awesome|exciting|hippy) your site is

\- Brand advertising. For example while there are tons of ways with which you could advertise a brand in your website, there's no easy service for that.

</comment><comment><USER11> My biggest schlep is being involved in too many meaningless activities and meaningless interactions. Things that don't really contribute to my long-term goals, or purpose. Of course, we all have obligations, but it seems like my daily life is 99% filled with meaningless activities.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love for Outlook to magically identify events in emails and ask to add them to the calendar. copy & paste of date/times from email to calendar seems so 1990's. (this is where someone politely alerts me to a simple option I only have to enable)

</comment><comment><USER12> Error checking.</comment>


Spies and shadowy allies lurk in secret, thanks to firm's bag of tricks - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation-world/world/article70044452.html <comment><USER2> I wish I was a millionaire spy :(</comment>


The Great Stirrup Controversy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stirrup_Controversy <comment><USER2> > White believed that the stirrup enabled heavy cavalry and shock combat

or one can say that warming climate (which resulted in Roman Empire fall and led to the rise of the Franko/German territories to the north of it) allowed for heavy cavalry which would otherwise wouldn't get through the swampy forests which were there before. If you look at dry regions at other places/times you'd see pretty heavy cavalry there too.

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

"While they varied in design and appearance, cataphracts were universally the heavy assault force of most nations that deployed them, acting as "shock troops" to deliver the bulk of an offensive manoeuvre, ... While their roles in military history often seem to overlap with lancers or generic heavy cavalry, they should not be considered analogous to these forms of cavalry, and instead represent the separate evolution of a very distinct class of heavy cavalry in the Near East that had certain connotations of prestige, nobility, and esprit de corps attached to them. In many armies, this reflected upon social stratification or a caste system, as only the wealthiest men of noble birth could afford the panoply of the cataphract, not to mention the costs of supporting several war horses and ample amounts of weaponry and armor."

<comment><USER3> Informative about the Eastern heavy cavalry, thanks!

But it was 500+ years between the fall of the Roman empire and heavy cavalry owning the battle field in Western Europe?

<comment><USER2> that warming up took the whole first millennium, and the degree of the warming up that severely impacted grain production in Mediterranean (while at the same time enabling better agriculture and thus resulting in population growth north of Danube) wasn't necessary the same that made the German forests dry enough to make heavy cavalry use feasible. Before heavy cavalry, it made it dry just enough for the Goths/"barbarians" (and don't forget the Huns) tribes to move efficiently through starting in the 3rd-4th century. In many cases they had cavalry and since then it was down the hill toward the 7th-8th century emergence of the knights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. I have a theory that most historic shifts are mainly due to some technological advancement or invention, and not mainly due to politics. For example, Nazi Germany may have been the result of the invention or mass distribution of the radio as a method of influencing a nation. It is known that the Romans conquered Europe due to military strategy and superior iron weapons. The list goes on and on, however, history books tend to focus only on the sociological or political story.

<comment><USER5> Do note that this idea of technological determinism[0] is referenced directly in the parent article.

As for me, I'd like to think that a bit more nuanced approach is better. Yes, stirrups might enable men to use horses in new ways and to brace themselves on horseback. But this sort of expensive heavily armoured cavalry cannot exists in a vacuum. It needs a class of wealthy people who can buy armour and horses. The wealthy need some sort of motivation to train themselves as warriors and so on. If you are interested in the subject, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 by Robert Bartlett [1] is an excellent book on the subject.

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

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Making-Europe-Conquest- Colonization-C...](https://www.amazon.com/Making-Europe-Conquest-Colonization- Cultural/dp/0691037809)

<comment><USER6> > It needs a class of wealthy people who can buy armour and horses.

A chicken/egg cycle, initialized by temporary imbalances that created a stable system: an increased advantage of cavalry over infantry drives up the price for "protection", which in turn feeds the horses. With less advantage of cavalry over infantry, the class system would have been much less pronounced.

In the spirit of "strange women lying in ponds distributing swords": a fluent socio-economic power structure was converted into an intransparent class system self-stabilized by the barrier of entry imposed by the inherent cost of heavy cavalry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of being handed some Lyndon LaRouche documentation[1] that claimed that World War 2 was due directly to English machinations around the pound sterling in the 1920s. As in, something that may have had some minor peripheral add-on effect is being claimed by a fanatic to be the One True Cause.

[1] I hesitate to call it 'literature'...

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh wow - I read about this theory about 20 years ago and I've never been able to find anything about it since.

</comment><comment><USER9> Were academics calling it "Great" ironically (as a form of hyperbole) and the name stuck?</comment>


Twitter takes down China-linked accounts spreading disinformation on HK, COVID19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/12/twitter-takes-down-china-linked-accounts-spreading-disinformation.html <comment><AUTHOR> If China wants Chinese voices on Twitter, it could unblock Twitter. One way Twitter identified coordinated campaigns linked to Beijing was by looking at accounts signing on to Twitter from IP addresses within China that were not blocked by the Great Firewall.

<comment><USER2> They could just use vpns to circumvent the blocks if they really wanted to make their voices heard. Perhaps they're not interested in using Twitter or have a Chinese alternative.</comment></comment>


The Machine: A new kind of computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/systems-research/themachine/ <comment><USER2> I've been following The Machine for a while, a try to summarise:

The Machine is unique in that it can stack huge amounts of memory without communication issues with the CPU because it uses light instead of copper for transacting data internally. The memory is called Memristors and are persistent, just like a harddrive/SSD. They are also much faster since they stack in parallel and can be written/read in parallell, similar to a RAID setup but with better scaling.

These combinations enable extremely fast speeds to access and process data, but it also needs a better and faster back-end (Operating System) to handle the new way of thinking about memory and data processing.

I see a LOT of amazing changes if they manage to launch it.

Like enormous 3D worlds with no texture or model-popping with 4K textures all in real-time and in VR. Stuff of dreams!

<comment><USER3> One interesting thing: intel has been working for years on light communications between chips. Why is HP launching this first and not intel ?

<comment><USER2> My guess is that Intel will actually reach usability first by going the traditional route and have it "compatible" with current operating systems.

This way they will be first to market with a directly usable platform, while in the meantime work on a new OS or fork one of their existing platforms (Like Tizen) and adapt it for this new tech.

Though this will depend on a compatible Linux kernel and i see this as the part taking the longest time!

<comment><USER4> I'd expect "The Machine" to ship as a specialised coprocessor machine first.

There are users right now who'd pay $^7 for in-memory like performance over datasets too big for traditional memory (eg graph processing).

That will avoid the problem of low yield with the new technology which can be a problem for consumer products where a higher volume is needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Highest discussion thread, from 6 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7878949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7878949)

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Since these are really the same story with two different URLs, we're demoting this one as a dupe.

See the FAQ (linked to at the bottom of most pages) for the policy on dupes and reposts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a decent article on the architecture of this thing? All I can find is PR.

</comment><comment><USER8> If this doesn't work out, it's probably the last Big Idea to come out of HP for a long time.

Here's a blog post with some more detail about the project beyond just hype:

[http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Cloud-Source-Blog/The- Machine-a...](http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Cloud-Source-Blog/The-Machine-a- view-of-the-future-of-computing/ba-p/164568#.U8W9SfldU3I)

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't load the page, but read the Readability cached copy.

Not sure this says much. That said, a shakeup in the computer market is ok with me. Things are getting faster I suppose, but SSDs are the most revolutionary thing to happen in PCs for a long time (at least in terms of bang-for-buck performance).

Although I can't tell if this is for servers or PCs.

"embed security control points throughout the hardware and software stacks"

This is the only part that feels questionable - UEFI hasn't been met with much happiness in the community. So this would need to be pretty open to be happily accepted.

Edit: what's with the down-votes?

<comment><USER10> If I recall correctly, the "big idea" here was to eliminate the distinction between RAM and disk. That would be huge for both servers and PCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love this part :

"We're pushing the boundaries.., using electrons for computation, photons for communication, and ions for storage."

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if there is a release schedule? The last time I read about it, it was far from prototype.

</comment><comment><USER13> If the engineering effort is anything like the focus grouping effort, it should be amazing.

</comment><comment><USER14> tldr: 'The Machine' is a concept, to have servers with SSDs and more memory and CPU cache, connected by Fibre cables.

<comment><USER15> This is categorically false. The machine is a new computer architecture which merges storage and memory. It is a demonstration of memristors, hardware used to implement low-latency byte-addressable persistent memory.

SOURCE: I work at HP-Labs writing systems software for the machine.

<comment><USER14> I apologise for interpreting it incorrectly, but I do think the marketing is very misleading, mostly because of the excessive use of buzzwords, and lack of technical details.

Do you have any links to research papers or technical blog posts, etc?</comment></comment></comment>


How You Consist of Trillions of Tiny Machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jul/09/how-you-consist-trillions-tiny-machines/

<comment><USER2> A great design needs an amazing designer, with due respect the scientists should focus on finding patterns in nature to increase our knowledge of the universe, not on the philosophy of life. They did not witness creation, and moreover their theories keep changing with time, but in the process they mislead others.

<comment><USER3> Science will only look more and more foolish and they attempt to reduce all life to chemical interactions and deny they exist at all.

Such philosophical principals of atheism were dealt with thousands of years ago in philosophical debates between Hindus and Buddhists. Such dialogue and defense of the self lasted hundreds of years and objections by the new philosophies of the Buddhists were adequately answered by scholars. One can see how Buddhism withdrew from its birthplace as it failed to take hold.

<comment><USER4> Science and atheism are _not_ the same thing.

Science reveals the nature of the Universe, whether you believe it was designed/created by an almighty 'Creator', or came into existence through other means. Doing 'science' means following the evidence wherever it leads, even the result turns out to be unsettling or disagreeable.

Denying Science means that you deny the Universe, and thus the work of your Creator.

Lastly, many scientists hold deeply religious views.

<comment><USER3> Yes by science looking more foolish I meant a science which holds that the existence of a superior being is unscientific. The vedic/hindu modes of thought held there are more powerful beings than a Creator. In fact the almighty entity does not deal with creating a material manifestation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The electron "hole" thus formed in the manganese quartet is filled with electrons from a water molecule. This causes the water molecule to fall apart, creating free oxygen."

The only electrons (plural) from one water molecule would be from the two hydrogen atoms, right? That would liberate one or two electrons and leave one or two stray protons (or hydrogen cations)... which go _where_?

Or, am I missing something?</comment>


From Poverty to Prosperity: A conversation with Bill Gates [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event-transcript_082217994272.pdf <comment><USER3> To me, this sounds like a good case for a basic income guarantee or a negative income tax. If we don't need people to work, why should the government bend over backwards and "get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans over algorithms"?

The whole point of automation _is_ to make less work. But in the immediate past it hasn't meaningfully translated to less work for most people. We're even afraid of it! I think that's a structural issue with society, which we can only really fix with broad changes and a completely different attitude. The broad fetishization of work and the obsession that everyone _has_ to work is really standing in the way of progress.

We have more and more technology. It's time to start taking advantage of it. Unemployment should be a _goal_ , not a menace.

<comment><USER4> > To me, this sounds like a good case for a basic income guarantee

Where will the money come from? The math doesn't work.

> If we don't need people to work,

This is at the heart of the confusion. There is no "we". _Other people_ do not need the workers. Those workers? They need to work.

<comment><USER5> No money is going away. Say I have a factory today, and I have to pay x workers $7/hr. If my factory is big, that's a lot of money.

Now if I replace them all with robots, aside from the upfront and maintenance costs, I don't pay anybody anything. Now, a lot of people are going to say that the owner deserves to pocket the difference because he was innovative or reduced costs or whatever. But either way, notice the factory still makes the same amount of money. It just doesn't have to pay workers anymore.

So now we have a political debate, and you get all these people saying that those workers should just find a new job, and if they don't have the skills they're just lazy, don't deserve handouts, etc. I think it's sad that people think this way, but I'm not going to try to argue it because it's pointless. But if this side wins out, you'll find in the future that our country looks very 3rd world. A large wealth divide, lots of crime, little opportunity for advancement if you're not already wealthy.

So how do you stop that from happening? Well, the factory owner probably deserves something for being innovative, sure. But the people that lost their jobs do too. If we get to the point where the population is a lot larger than the job pool, you basically get to pick basic income or 3rd world. There's really no other option.

You can deny this all you want now - go ahead. If you want to do this, I'm not going to pretend I can convince you otherwise.

One more thing though - people have jobs today not because they inherently need them, it's because some entrepreneur needs to hire people to get things done. No business person wants to spend money to hire someone they don't have to, so if we get to the point where most jobs can be automated, then we have a mostly unemployed society. We can decide how we want to handle that, but we can't really stop it from happening.

<comment><USER6> >> No business person wants to spend money to hire someone they don't have to

This.

Every time I hear an organization brag about how many jobs they "create" I can't help but think about how much of an oxymoron that is. Any half-decent business owner wants to get a specific job done at the lowest cost possible -- if it can be done equally well themselves without paying anybody for anything, thats the best possible scenario. Bragging about creating jobs is basically bragging that your costs of production have gotten higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm an industrial automation engineer.

Everyone from middle-managers up to CEOs think that robots are these magical things that just take care of everything so you can fire all your line workers. Doesn't work that way. It's incremental, methodical and excruciatingly slow work. You cannot simply throw money at it. It's expensive because it requires many experienced automation engineers ($$$) to do all this automation, but first you have to find and train those engineers.

What is automation exactly? It's learning a process so well that you know every single possible thing that might go wrong with a machine and then have some other machine to fix all those things automatically on the fly. Building self-diagnosing and self-repairing machines is very complex. The end goal of all those machines is to produce and ship a product. If the product changes, now you have to build a machine that can automate the process of on-the-fly SKU changes which further complicates an already complex machine.

In other words, automation is basically the flying car that futurists of a century ago predicted we would have today. So, where is my flying car?

In a hundred years automation will definitely have made massive strides, yes. Some jobs can be automated today, some tomorrow, but the numbers we're talking about are not significant compared to the entire workforce of a nation and compared to the massive capital investment it takes to accomplish that automation. A century from now the CEO's of the world will still be asking, "Where are the autonomous robots I was promised that can automate my entire workforce?" It's not as simple as they think.

<comment><USER8> The thing about automation as it regards to economics is that it doesn't have to be anywhere near a complete solution to have a huge impact. You don't need factories full of fully self-sustained robots to cause massive underemployment.

If you can partially automate a task to the point where 1 person can do the work that 2 people used to do, you've potentially eliminated 50% of that job's market. People are somewhat adaptable, so some amount of this sort of change can be absorbed (and has historically been absorbed) as people retrain for other types of jobs, but we're quickly approaching a point where the changes brought upon by automation are going to outpace people's ability to adapt to the changes, IMO.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely true. I think when people say that robots are going to replace low- skilled workers only the uninformed are imagining an entirely self-sufficient factory that only has one door that the raw materials goes into, and another door that the product comes out of.

What we really should be imagining is a factory floor where instead of 50 people on an assembly line, or instead of 20 waitstaff at a restaurant, you only need one or two guys who know how to replace parts on the robots

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is a link to the actual video of the talk:

[http://www.aei.org/events/2014/03/13/from-poverty-to- prosper...](http://www.aei.org/events/2014/03/13/from-poverty-to-prosperity-a- conversation-with-bill-gates/)

And the transcript:

[http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event- transc...](http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event- transcript_082217994272.pdf)

I think this might be considerably more enriching than a link to yahoo news that got it from bgr that got it from businessinsider that reported on the talk.

<comment><USER11> Thank you for posting these!

Reading the transcript, Gates is really talking about a very similar concept to what the "helicopter" reference Ben Bernanke made talks about - <USER2> demand and levels of consumption.

The idea of a universal income has been widely discussed on HN in the past. Gates is simply proposing to start rolling this out via a larger earned income credit, while funding it via a progressive consumption tax.

It's less controversial than the universal income, but personally, I'm not sure that creating useless work just to make sure consumption is propped up makes sense. If we are reaching the end of scarcity in basic needs, it seems to be more efficient to provide a baseline and then let people truly compete for the extra-ordinary lifestyle.

<comment><USER12> "I'm not sure that creating useless work just to make sure consumption is propped up makes sense.".

That's not what was suggested. What Gates suggested is to move away from income tax, in order to encourage employment. The employment would still be useful, it would just be less costly due to reduced income tax. His mention of robots replacing jobs is part of that argument, to balance out areas where the economics of jobs vs automation may tip in the future.

He suggested a progressive consumption tax as a replacement, but I'm not sure how to make a consumption tax progressive in a practical way, except to exempt basic foods for example.

<comment><USER11> Interesting point. Not exactly how I read it, but this makes sense as well.

For the progressive consumption tax, to make it really meaningful and fair, you have to have very reliable data on what price range for given type of good is excessive. Alternatively, you could just tax classes of goods, such as luxury cars, etc.

The one problem with such a tax is that it enables people to save a lot more instead of spending it. If the money sits in the banking system, it at least does some work, but if the saving happens in the form of physical goods of perceived high value (such as gold or jewelry), it doesn't actually help the economy beyond the initial purchase.

That said, I would love to not have to pay income tax :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Business Insider reports that Gates gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, DC this week and said that both governments and businesses need to start preparing for a future where lots of people will be put out of work by software and robots."

We already have. It's called the 8.5h day where you're simply present in your office, paid to be off the street, employed by the state, browsing facebook and doing mundane jobs once in a while.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's funny that they pick out the part where Bill Gates says we shouldn't have a minimum wage, but skip the parts where he says we should have a basic income and a progressive consumption tax.

<comment><USER15> That sounds interesting. Do you have a source about him supporting basic income?

<comment><USER16> The closest I found in the transcript of the talk was this piece:

MR. BROOKS: So something like a guaranteed minimum income for people who are working full time through an expansion on the EITC or a wage subsidy seems like the right way to go.

MR. GATES: Yeah, one of my favorite AEI papers – I didn't get time to look it up last night

Source: [http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event- transc...](http://www.aei.org/files/2014/03/14/-bill-gates-event- transcript_082217994272.pdf)

Edit: after re-reading it, I think this has nothing to do with basic income since it's for people who are working full time.

<comment><USER17> Right, he seems to be saying that instead of a minimum wage that corporations have to pay, there should instead be something that looks like a minimum wage to employees, but where employers can pay _as little as they like_ and the government will make up the difference between that and the minimum, but if you don't have an "employer" or they don't certify that you've "worked" sufficient hours, you don't get the subsidy, either.

So, like a basic income, _except_ that you have to swear fealty to an employer to get it. I see one of two possibilities:

(1) Either the restrictions on qualifying employment are tight enough that it serves as a subsidy for select existing operations and a competitive disadvantage to new business with smaller scale (because of compliance costs) or new models (because of regulatory assumptions), or (2) The restrictions on qualifying employment are so loose that this is basically unconditional basic income with a whole lot more administrative costs and failure modes that exist just to satisfy the desire to create an illusion that it has something to do with "work".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looking forward to mass automation. Free up a lot of time and hopefully we'll create better things instead of doing mindless chores.

Predictions about mass automations are at opposite sides of the spectrum. Either most of the population is poor without a job, or it's a utopia where no one has to work (everything is provided) and concentrate on bettering ourselves.

<comment><USER19> It has the potential to be good for humanity. All the most dangerous/degrading jobs accomplished by robots. Allow people shorter work days and allow people to do "less essential" jobs. More artists, more psychotherapists, more people building affordable housing, more nannies and helpers, people working on just improving life for everyone else out there.

But then, unrestrained capitalism isn't compatible with this. The way it's been going in America for the past 40 years, productivity has gone up but salaries have gone down relative to inflation and work hours have stayed the same or gone up. Many people need 2-3 minimum wage jobs just to feed the kids and pay the rent, no free time. The rich, the corporations, are trying to milk the people for all that they're worth, to try and maintain the elite at absolutely insane levels of wealth.

The predictable outcome, in the next few decades, is that we'll get worse jobs, higher rents, smaller apartments, more cost increases on food and electricity, longer work hours. The middle class will keep getting squeezed until things reach some kind of breaking point. The rich will have to provide the rest of us with enough distraction and a minimum level of comfort required to prevent famine, disease, civil war, and revolution from happening.

We could have some kind of utopia, we have the technology, but the wealthiest capitalist are too near-sighted, it seems, to understand that it would be in everyone's best interest to make sure that _everyone_ is comfortable and safe. Rampant poverty, hunger and crime aren't going to make their lives better. Being some rich elite living in a world filled with miserable, diseased, violent and uneducated masses doesn't sound all that fun.

<comment><USER20> Assuming that we aren't living in a Culturesque post scarcity society how do you allocate stuff if economic output is no longer important? I don't think that there is an easy solution to this, but my gut feeling is that the world is going to get a whole lot uglier if we don't figure it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> His recommendations seem ridiculous. Why force employment when it offers no real return except keeping an anachronistic standard of 40 hr/week employment?

<comment><USER22> For the same reason we in America force people to buy private health insurance rather than having a national health service, which all the evidence suggests would be both more cost-effective and provide an overall better quality of service: it allows The System to adapt to changing times without anybody having to admit that anything has actually changed.

People fear change -- a _lot_. So proposals that start with "first, admit that sweeping change is necessary" tend to get less support than do those that let the old forms be preserved, even if they've become completely meaningless.

<comment><USER23> A centralized system could (on paper) be cheaper, but I don't trust the federal government not to screw it up. I'm not even saying I like the current system - or the pre-ACA system either - but I am not convinced that our government is corruption-free enough to be any good at handling that much money.

<comment><USER24> Is the US government so much worse than governments of other countries which have nationalized healthcare? Why would you trust them to run the biggest military in the world, including a large military healthcare system, if they are that incompetent?

<comment><USER23> If you haven't heard, the VA (Veterans Affairs) is in the middle of a huge scandal involving gross inefficiency and bad care. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7800979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7800979)

Do I trust them with the biggest military? All other issues aside, in terms of not wasting money, I think it's awful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If he thinks accountants and the like will be put out of jobs, he's not taking into account the power of unions and luddites.

Here in Uruguay we have a lot of jobs that could be replaced by today's tech, which will probably last for decades due to unions pushing for inefficiency (and they introduce incredible bureaucracy and friction).

For example, to buy and sell a car in my country, you need an "escribano" (closest US equivalent is notary), a specialized lawyer that has to "witness" and certify that you actually own the good being sold, with a staggering amount of paperwork, which is only legal if it's affixed with the proper amount of seals and signatures, and the paperwork itself costs more than an used car in the U.S. :P .

There are lots of incredibly useless paperwork, one of my former teachers was put in charge of the IT department of the Judiciary Branch, and he was thwarted at every corner by unions and obsolete laws, he was unable to automate anythign and ended up resigning.

The real estate agents' experience is also very bad, I've had some that actually removed value, I hope something puts them out of work soon.

Commercial pilots might be a concern, but I worry about truck and bus drivers... those have very powerful unions - see in Argentina where the most powerful lobby is the truck drivers' union led by Hugo Moyano, same here in Uruguay, some truck drivers make the same money as a software developer (at least the same or better than I do).

<comment><USER26> > _Here in Uruguay we have a lot of jobs that could be replaced by today 's > tech, which will probably last for decades due to unions pushing for > inefficiency (and they introduce incredible bureaucracy and friction)._

Yeah, same for those people wanting jobs to feed their families...

If you didn't understand the gist of what Jobs said, here it is: new jobs WONT replace the majority of the old automated jobs. People would literally have NO jobs.

<comment><USER27> *Gates

<comment><USER26> Damn, yes! I typo-ed it by focusing on "jobs"!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If we really do get to the point where society doesn't need low skilled workers we ought to start giving out a guaranteed minimum income. If we don't care about the potential disemployment effect the case for it becomes a lot stronger.

<comment><USER29> I saw a post in the past that suggested a minimum income where the amount of assistance reduce as you got paid more. So if the minimum was $40k a year and you made $20k working some job you'd get $20k in subsidies. This help give some incentive to people to get jobs. In some cases if you stay on welfare you'll make more money than if you get a minimum wage job. If you made $60k you'd get no subsidy. We're definitely going to have to change the model we have now once we get to a point where a large number of people don't need to work. I'd say we're close to that now. If everyone in the US wanted to work would we have enough jobs to support that?

<comment><USER17> > I saw a post in the past that suggested a minimum income where the amount of > assistance reduce as you got paid more. So if the minimum was $40k a year > and you made $20k working some job you'd get $20k in subsidies. This help > give some incentive to people to get jobs.

No, a dollar for dollar reduction in benefits for outside income does not "give some incentive to people to get jobs", its gives a _disincentive_ to people to get jobs. Working has a disutility -- otherwise everyone would do it for free -- so if you have a choice of $X from a minimum guarantee with no work or $Y from work and $min((X-Y),0) in subsidies with work -- you have a net disincentive to work for any Y not greater than X by an amount sufficient to account for the disutility of work.

Benefits that reduce with income are how a lot of current programs work (and have worked for some time), which is why various complicated measures to try to combat the disincentives that structure can create have also been built into them (which further increase the administrative costs), and one of the key motivations for unconditional basic income is eliminating the problems that that causes.

<comment><USER29> I don't think it was exactly dollar per dollar but it was some type of decrease as you made more and stop at a point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Actually I don't think low paying jobs will be replaced at all, they are actually often fairly difficult to replace.

All those middle class people working in offices though whose jobs in some way exist merely as a way to outsource tasks software isn't good at or can't really do? These jobs are going to be eliminated with better AI etc. pretty much entirely.

If anything software in the 21st century might reproduce the social effects of the industrial revolution. It won't necessarily harm the people who are already poor, it will simply create a lot more of them, shifting power to the people with the means to get a significant stake in the companies that will survive before that happens.

<comment><USER31> Do you have some examples of low paying jobs you think are hard to replace? There are definitely some service jobs that aren't paid a very high wage, but are in some intangible way preferred to be performed by a human, but they tend to just be the customer facing tip of a business that employs a lot of low wage people behind the scenes as well.

Ie. the person on the till at McD's might last longer than the person who listens for a beep and then raises the burger griller (they don't even flip burgers anymore, they just cook both sides at the same time in a contraption) and moves them to the warming tray, but that's only about 3 people in a 10 person shift.

<comment><USER32> Oh man, you couldn't be any more wrong. They are already moving kiosks and mobile purchasing into fast food restaurants.

[http://www.neowin.net/news/mcdonalds- orders-7000-touchscreen...](http://www.neowin.net/news/mcdonalds- orders-7000-touchscreen-kiosks-to-replace-cashiers)

This is from 2011, so it doesn't seem like it's going terribly well.

It's difficult to automate the remaining steps in food prep (though it's possible and they are working on it) for a host of reasons. Food prep involves insuring that the food is properly loaded, set at the right temperature. There is a visual inspection of the food itself by the line cooks that probably would still need to be done.

It's cooked on no less than 2 grills, and 3 vats (fries, fish, nuggets are all usually kept separate), an oven, a microwave, bun toaster and pancake grill. That doesn't get into the host of drink machines, salads and non-grill items being made. Now theoretically, you can get rid of the warmers as there won't be a need to queue things (even this is not certain as margins are tight to be wasting money on idle machines just to handle peak hours). Also all of this equipment must be completely cleaned top to bottom -- in particular between the switchover from breakfast to lunch and vice versa. Vats of oil and grease must be dealt with.

Right now, minimum wage employees are pretty cheap compared to design and implementation of machines that can handle the breadth of most fast food restaurants. Most of the work of automation of cooking has been to do the work prior to sending it to the restaurant (precooked fries is one example). Lots of that simply can't be done without seriously sacrificing quality. I realize people think that McDonalds doesn't care, but they know boundaries they can push, and things like precooking meats apparently hasn't taken off much because it makes a terrible product and they lose sales.

It will be a while until you say goodbye to the two (maybe three!) cooks working for 9 or 10 dollars an hour making food. It will happen, but it's more likely to happen first at restaurants that offer a much, much smaller menu than the big fast food restaurants have right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I agree with Bill Gates on what will happen.

I disagree very strongly with his solution. Governments begging corporations to employ people doing very little and paying the minimum wage (oh wait, minimum wage gets eliminated...so presumably paying them less than minimum wage)? When have corporations responded to begging? Why is this good for anyone?

Who is going to buy the stuff produced when people are bringing home less than minimum wage huh Bill? You? How many plastic spaghetti strainers do you need in all your many houses? Hmm?

No, the answer is not corporations in full control and paying whatever they wish. That will never work. The system will break down all together. It must stay balanced. The balance can be achieved by corporations and individuals paying their fair share. My opinion is that land/resource taxes are the way to achieve this. Not payroll or corporate taxes which serve to punish innovation and hard work.

</comment><comment><USER34> Am I the only one thinking that begging business to keep employing people will, if anything, only worsen the social issues caused by this change? Scraping the minimum wage? Cheap labour? Is that what we're developing machines for? Is that civilisational progress? What next?

I hope Bill Gates is as right about this as he was about the "famous"[1] 640KB, but can't we, as a civilisation, think of better solutions? Like e.g. not working and using automated means in order to provide a minimum of food/resources to everyone? Am I dreaming,does this idea seem as unreasonable as a self-driving car did a century ago?

[1]: and possibly apocryphal

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't think governments will have to beg for anything. The less people businesses employ, the less power they will have. So either they'll employ people or they'll have to put up with whatever solution governments come up with (higher taxes, guaranteed minimum income, etc.). Either way, they'll still need customers, right?

This reminds me of a story about a new Ford factory full of robots. The manager invites the union boss for a guided tour then asks him if he can convince the robots to join the union. The union guy then asks if the manager can get the robots to buy Fords.

<comment><USER36> Did the manager reply, "Does not compute." to the last question?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I personally enjoy work.

I wouldn't say that what I do from 9-5, M-F defines me as a person, but I enjoy solving problems and exerting myself.

If software 'eats' my job, I'm not going to simply stop working, I am going to learn how to be good at something else. I can't imagine my life without some challenges and struggles.

<comment><USER38> Quotin Calvin (the Bill Watterson one), work is what someone else makes you do.

<comment><USER37> And I think that is OK.

I have worked on (other people's) projects, and been pulled into learning/doing something I otherwise would have shied away from.

It doesn't always work out this way, but sometimes having someone else push you out of your comfort zone can be ultimately beneficial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think a little bit of wisdom from one of my favorite writers might be appreciated here:

"""We have created a lifestyle that makes injustice permanent and inescapable.

We have created a world where robots produce robots. Where capital breeds capital with very little need for the Eastenders of the world.

Tell me what will happen when the majority of mankind has become technologically superfluous.

At the same time rebellious with hunger and economically unimportant.

What will then stop a final solution of the world problem?

In People of the Abyss the Eastenders already saw it coming.

They are, Jack London wrote, "encumbrances", of no use to anyone, not even to themselves. "They clutter the earth with their presence and are better out of the way"."""

Taken from [http://www.svenlindqvist.net/text_only.asp?cat=1&lang=2&id=2...](http://www.svenlindqvist.net/text_only.asp?cat=1&lang=2&id=241)

<comment><USER40> I can't recommend People of the Abyss highly enough. Read it for free on Gutenberg: [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1688](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1688)

"The Day of Judgment! More than he want it. From all the land rises the hunger wail, from Ghetto and countryside, from prison and casual ward, from asylum and workhouse—the cry of the people who have not enough to eat. Millions of people, men, women, children, little babes, the blind, the deaf, the halt, the sick, vagabonds and toilers, prisoners and paupers, the people of Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, who have not enough to eat. And this, in face of the fact that five men can produce bread for a thousand; that one workman can produce cotton cloth for 250 people, woollens for 300, and boots and shoes for 1000."

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The need for employers in society overstated here. Anyone can buy and sell for a living without being employed, and now with the internet it's even easier to do that.

True, you may not be able to fulfill all of your needs by buying and selling. People who do that usually experience some level of poverty. But it is and always will be an option available to unemployed people.

How many stories are there of people starting at flea markets and yard sales and ending up with investments worth thousands of dollars?

Folks got along fine without corporations and 9 to 5 jobs for many centuries. Individuals and families still became as rich as Gates is, relatively speaking, or even richer. I'm confused that he doesn't seem to know this.

But I think he's mostly right in what he says about automation, and he of all people certainly would know.

</comment><comment><USER42> What does an economy that deprecates most of humanity look like? What happens when the economy doesn't demand people?

I do not see a future like Star Trek with its Utopian ideal of every person choosing to follow their dream pursuit. Large parts of society already receive no access to opportunity ensuring a lifetime sentence of poverty. When robots prepare meals, drive cars, pave roads, fix power lines, haul cargo, process paperwork, educate students, harvest crops, and enforce peace you may think you have a uniqueness to prosper. Perhaps, and good luck.

</comment><comment><USER43> > And it's not just "low-skilled" workers who will have to worry about > automation.

If it weren't for some political ideology, automation would be a blessing for every one and not something to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER44> People fear change. This revolution will require adaption and there will be pain involved, but mass automation will create vast wealth.

Prehistorically we spent our entire lives simply collecting enough food to survive. Since then we've gradually been able to devote a smaller and smaller portion of our lives to fulfilling the requirements of survival. Mass automation will continue to reduce this. There will be growing pains but the trend certainly continues in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER45> Who maintains the machines? Who produces the replacement parts and sources the materials for the machines? What happens when the power goes out? So many flaws in the plan of a completely or even almost robot/algorithm based job future I don't know if it'll really happen. We've had automation in the automotive industry for how long now and look at the amount of people required to ensure the process works along the way?

Having said that, I am all for automating things. As a developer, I've seen a dramatic shift in the last 5 years alone with tools for handling tasks and automating things are a dime a doze. Automation definitely has a place, but I think it's too far to suggest that robots will take everyone's jobs, just a few. You're not going to be served coffee from a Starbucks robot barista any time soon.

A future where everyone doesn't have to work sounds nice in theory, in practice it cannot and will not work.

<comment><USER46> Robots in the car industry have removed very many jobs! Sure, you need people to build, sell, deliver, install, program, operate and maintain those robots but those jobs are still fewer than the numbers of people who ised to be on the production lines.

You still find many people in electronics factories, but surface mount pick and place machines are throwing 30,000 components per hour onto PCBs. These machine shave replaced benches of people stuffing components onto PCBs with one or two people operating the machine.

Barista work is low pay low status. Social interaction is the reason we don't see barista robots in coffee shops, although we do see them beginning to enter supermarkets and roadside service stations. (Often with foul coffee).

And job descriptions change. "Baker" used to mean someone who used recipes to make breads. Now it appears to mean someone who takes presupplied gloop out of the tub, shapes it; and bales it for the time specified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> In another thread a user argued that "technology is what drives society to a more mature state". I wish that was true, but to me technology and society's advancement at social/human level are disconnected.

I really hope that the decline of the average working hours per week in the "western world" becomes a central point of discussion, the next decade. We don't need to work many hours to get the essentials to live a comfortable life.

We have all the technology we need to produce food and shelter at extremely LOW prices.

Of course if someone wants to be Elon Musk ( I wish I was), he should be free to pursue his interests, but average Joe who only wants to support his family and enjoy friends and baseball, should be working a lot less when we will have robots, not feel threatened by unemployment.

<comment><USER48> With the full risk of generalization, average Joe also want bigger car,bigger lawn and more bedrooms than average Bob, and that's where the problem arises.

<comment><USER47> Hm, there is Maslow's pyramid that could be seen as a general model[1] along with the human rights[2].

The problem is not the car. The problem (in the US and now in Europe too) is healthcare, food and shelter (own home). These things, given the tech, should come for almost free IMHO, for any individual who lives in a "civilized country".

Of course, there are many problems: illegal immigration[3], health care costs, etc. But technology should be used to do all these things cheaper for the masses, leading to a higher average standard of life.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> "If we don't need people to work, why should the government bend over backwards and "get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans over algorithms"?"

I respect Bill Gates' ideas but this one is totally wrong. His solution is neither practical nor logical. The same solution could have been presented 100 years ago when people were being laid off due to the industrial revolution. We would not have progressed this far if we had given people's employment priority over power and efficiency of machines. In many cases algorithms are simply better and faster over humans and they are just going to get even better and faster. They will not only get things done safely but also reduce human errors and reduce energy consumption.

</comment><comment><USER50> Oh look, more asshole libertarian scare tactics. The solution isn't to force people to work shitty jobs for even less pay.

If our productivity is high enough people don't need to work we should provide basic income, not artificially force people to work so they don't starve to death.

<comment><USER4> > If our productivity

The word "our" is misplaced in this sentence.

The companies that purchase the labor own the productivity of the labor. If _their_ productivity is high enough, they will simply buy less labor.

Do you have anything to sell other than labor?

> we should provide basic income

No matter how you slice it, there's not enough money. You end up being able to give each adult in the US a couple thousand a year. If you try for more, you strangle the economy so effectively that it can't afford the robots that are supposed to pay for everything.

<comment><USER38> How does giving money to people, no strings attached "strangles the economy"? What do they think they will do with basic income?

They will buy things, which by definition is an economic stimulus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Good. We need to get away from this notion that x hours per day at a job = value.

i say bring on the robots.

</comment><comment><USER52> I think a useful conversation to have is, "how quickly we can replace politicians with robots?" A political discourse addressing the topic would necessarily acknowledge the radical changes most technology enthousiasts expect to take place in our lifetimes.

The most common response to hearing that a machine can do your job is disbelief ([http://kk.org/thetechnium/2011/09/the-7-stages- of/](http://kk.org/thetechnium/2011/09/the-7-stages-of/)). Fertile ground for dismissing the imminently possible as science fiction.

</comment><comment><USER53> I wrote a short essay about this the other day -- Robots are taking our jobs, so what... [http://softwarebyjoe.com/essays/robots-are-taking-our- jobs-s...](http://softwarebyjoe.com/essays/robots-are-taking-our-jobs-so- what.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> The solution to this problem may be a massive increase in insurance salespeople and HR department employees. And lawyers. Stuff like that.

I can hardly wait.

</comment><comment><USER54> Pft, I'll get concerned when robots can act as surly, smarmy and as entitled as I can. Until then my job is safe.

</comment><comment><USER55> we are at least a second time through that - first being the Industrial Revolution - and still at loss what to do and with the same luddites and the same other cast of characters in the show... I guess 3rd time will be a charm... for the AI/robots that will completely replace our species.

</comment><comment><USER56> Chrome for a past few days was crashing I dunno why, but I know it's pdfs :(

</comment><comment><USER57> Yes robots have been gradually taking away jobs since the 1970s.</comment>


Hive: A BitTorrent-Enabled Unlimited Cloud Storage Sharing Network - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/hive-a-bittorrent-enabled-unlimited-cloud-storage-sharing-network-130824/

<comment><USER2> You can't signup using custom email ids, you have to link either yout fb account or twitter, gmail and linkedin. That's a big turn off. Otherwise the app is fine.</comment>