The Outer Limits of Reason: A look at paradoxes in language - <AUTHOR> http://mitp.nautil.us/feature/148/the-outer-limits-of-reason <comment><USER2> Before you even get to self-reference there are the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxes_of_material_implicat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxes_of_material_implication) : ~(A & ~B) is a very poor approximation of 'if A then B' once you leave the world of statements about mathematics. Graham Priest's /Introduction to Non- Classical Logic/ [http://www.cambridge.org/ie/academic/subjects/philosophy/phi...](http://www.cambridge.org/ie/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy- science/introduction-non-classical-logic-if-2nd-edition) is great (as is his lecturing on the subject: Priest really ought to do a MOOC...)

<comment><USER3> These paradoxes seem to be tied to not distinguishing between correlation and causation? True statements are perfectly correlated with all other true statements, and material implication doesn't distinguish between them even if they have different causes.

When reasoning informally we do try to distinguish between correlation and causation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good article. I would just like to add that this whole question of linguistic paradoxes is important for a fundamental debate in Western philosophy.

This has to do with the basic relation between language and reality. In one view, reality is such that it can be perfectly described by an appropriate set of precise philosophical concepts. In the other view, this is impossible, and language is just a tool that the human mind has developed that can only imperfectly describe reality.

Russell was the twentieth century's leading advocate of the perfect language view. His student Wittgenstein started out there, but later changed to the latter view. And in fact, most of the major philosophers of the last hundred years or so have held the language-as-imperfect-tool view.

I am interested in this question partly because if you start with the perfect language view, then for political philosophy you end up with something like Plato's philosopher-king. On the other hand, the imperfect tool view leads to something more like liberal democracy. And indeed, I think it is not an accident that Pragmatism, an imperfect-tool philosophy, developed in the United States.

<comment><USER5> Good points.

I may have misunderstood the article, but I'm a little surprised the author didn't write about Russell's inability to accept Gödel's Incompleteness proof. This made _mathematics_ not fit in the "[it] is such that it can be perfectly described by an appropriate set of precise philosophical concepts". So I guess, if he held that philosophical opinion about reality, it would be hard to accept it about math.

<comment><USER4> Haha, I wasn't aware of that story, and yes, it fits right in with what I'm saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have always liked, "We have to believe in free will -- we have no other choice."

</comment><comment><USER6> one of my favorite paradoxes is Buridan's Bridge [1]

"Socrates wants to cross a river and comes to a bridge guarded by Plato.

Plato: Socrates, if in the first proposition which you utter, you speak the truth, I will permit you to cross. But surely, if you speak falsely, I shall throw you into the water.

Socrates: You will throw me into the water."

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_bridge)

<comment><USER7> A "solution" to this paradox: Truth and falsehood only apply to past or on- going situations. No one can foretell he future, so the truth value of predictions is undefined</comment></comment>


WyzeCart – Full Price Is for Fools - <AUTHOR> http://www.wyzecart.com <comment><USER2> this seems to be spam. at the very least it should link to [http://wyzecart.com/](http://wyzecart.com/) which has a little bit more information (but still doesn't provide anything about the company).

The permissions requested by their extension is also worrisome (access to data on all websites??). :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, this is a legit company ([https://www.wyzecart.com](https://www.wyzecart.com)) that provides guaranteed cashback to its users - it has quite a few hundred users too. It also gives you a coupon that actually works. And the extension is just like any other extension - it asks for permission to be able to find the best coupon/give cash-back.</comment></comment>


NexPhone: One device to rule them all - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/nexphone

<comment><USER2> Do _not_ sink your money into this vaporware (it's a flexible funding campaign, so he gets _any_ money that is pledged, even if he doesn't hit the goal). There's a reason why the Apples / Samsungs / Motorolas / Sonys of the world have hundreds of people working on new phones. This single dude doesn't have a prayer in the world of pulling this off.

The two red flags:

        1. No functional device. Just some renders and a physical block of aluminum with glass over it.
        2. No "here's my team of 50 people with loads of experience"

<comment><USER3> 3\. Motorola tried this EXACT play with the Atrix, and it was a disaster.

<comment><USER4> It's too say that this _concept_ is flawed, because the Atrix execution was messed up on so many levels.

Personally, I think that any "problem" this tries to solve will be better handled in software. With iCloud, you can already work with (some) data seamlessly on multiple devices, that experience will only get better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every time I see a project like this I'm inspired to create a Kickstarter to bring cold fusion to the world.

Seriously guys, I'm an experienced software engineer with "a strong team in various backgrounds", this totally means I can pull off cold fusion, right?

My experience in the software services space certainly increases my credibility in the massive-power-generation-hardware space.

Sigh.

I think there should be a new de facto rule: at least half of your Kickstarter/Indiegogo/whatever page needs to be about you, your team, and why you think you can pull this off, and why we should regard you as anything other than ambitious, clueless, inexperienced, and tackling someone _way_ above your level.

<comment><USER2> OR -- have an actual working prototype where you just need money for production tooling

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sooo... basically the Asus Padfone but without the comfort of being made by a renowned hardware manufacturer and the nice feeling you have knowing it actually exists and you can buy it.

I see a bright future for this product[idea] indeed!... /s

</comment><comment><USER7> This has all the trappings of something that sounds like a good idea in theory but will most likely falter in the marketplace.

Considering how cheap you can get a laptop or tablet these days with a much faster CPU, more memory etc than a smartphone.

Also considering that it's going to be a pain in the ass to go around hooking/unhooking your phone from every device that you want to use. The software for each device is likely to need to be different too or provide a farily sub-par experience, leading to a lot of confusion.

Also , if you lose your phone you're not just losing your phone but also the brains behind all your other devices.

<comment><USER4> It reminds me of the Amphicar. It was both a car and a boat! What a great idea! Only it wasn't a very good car, and it wasn't a very good boat.

This project seems to want to be a car + boat + airplane + truck.

<comment><USER7> It's probably worse than that. It's more like saying "hey, you have a motorcycle, here's a trailer that adds a row of seats so you can use it as a car. And here's another trailer that you can add to turn it into a haulage vehicle."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This will never work well because of a very simple fact, the phone experience, still one of the main aspect considered nowadays when purchasing a phone, would be seriously diminished when the phone is docked because you would have to use a bluetooth headset to answer the calls and it would be impossible to see who is calling you if you move away from the docked phone for a minute, because you won't probably carry a laptop around or because you probably won't take the time to remove the phone from the dock to light up a cigarette.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure if this will be the best solution for the problem. But I do belive that in some point we'll have a sort of device like this one.

Must of us (pragmatic programmers, hackers, entrepreneurs) are always looking for resource efficiency, we're always looking for DRY. The way we manage our devices is broken, why do I need to install 4 times every single app in my ipad, android phone, PC and laptop? Why do I need 4 different processors, why do I need RAM distributed through all my devices?

I think this is a great idea, and we hackers would love it. But this solution may have some downsides though. I think there must be a single OS for both PC and Mobile, it just should change its interface, and I'm not sure if the power of my phone would be enough for a PC experience yet, anyways I hope this idea come to reality soon!

</comment><comment><USER10> Even if this guy was legit and the product worked as advertised, I still think it is a terrible idea.

Having multiple devices is useful. If they need to shared data, do it wireslessly, or through the cloud.

Otherwise I have these empty husks lying around my house that are useless without my phone.

The motorola atrix "lapdock" is a similar product idea. It is 78% on sale on amazon. I hated it the moment I saw it.

[http://www.amazon.com/AT-Laptop-Dock-Motorola- ATRIX/dp/B004M...](http://www.amazon.com/AT-Laptop-Dock-Motorola- ATRIX/dp/B004M17D62)

</comment><comment><USER11> The only thing interesting about this to me is that they are going to finally try and force Canonical's hand at making Ubuntu for Android a reality. It's already tempting to leave the laptop at home when traveling for business, but there are always a couple of times when I'd be dead in the water if all I had was Android itself. Theoretically I could RDC/SSH into a remote PC, but that's a pita when all you need to do is make a couple of edits on a document or perform a similarly minor function.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm concerned about the laptop mounting design. If you were using the laptop in a public place, what's to stop someone swiping the phone from the back of the screen and running?

<comment><USER13> When you prop up an ipad on it's corrugated cover-case thing and use a bluetooth keyboard with it, what's to stop the same?

(Not hating on ipads, just saying this is not a problem that's been "figured out")

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Have all the specs been left out or am I missing something? .. Anyway - ignoring that!

Interestingly the Perks/Rewards for this are a departure from what other KickStarter and Indiegogo campaigns have offered... Even the highest level ($10,000) doesn't seem to "buy" you a phone..

<comment><USER15> Agreed. I also didn't see any planned release date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think they should ditch the idea of docking devices and just focus on making good low power / inexpensive computers. If you're already paying for the screen, battery, enclosure, etc why not just throw in the cheap SoC and make it a standalone device?

<comment><USER17> I would like to see it taken a step further. While devices could have SoC to act standalone, Operating Systems should be able to utilize both the SoCs (the one on host Device and one on the docked device) to expand its computing power, besides sharing state and data

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't imagine it costs less than $1 million to bring this concept to reality with all these options. How much did Apple spend on development of the first iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER19> The wrong edges are rounded :(

<comment><USER20> Also the screen sticks out of the front of the phone in a design that looks ready to snag everything: the inside of your pocket, the corner of your ear, the webbing between your fingers. That looks seriously painful, and I can see the screen getting hit from the side and shattering/chipping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What if you get a phone call while you're on the computer?

<comment><USER4> Presumably you answer it via speakerphone? I would expect (in a real product, not this) that the laptop and monitor shells would have speakers and microphones so the whole setup could be a phone.

It's not that different from your iPhone ringing during a game of Plants vs. Zombies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have no issues with syncing my stuff across devices. Works quite well, actually.

And "NexPhone"? Really? Nexus + iPhone. Quite original.

<comment><USER23> It's still not original, but one might assume that a native English speaker elected to combine "Next" and "Phone" - two somewhat common-place terms that appropriately define his concept.

But you are right, Apple would probably sue him for use of their term "[i]Phone".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is not a terrible idea, but it feels like a hugely niche product. Motorola has tried this already with the Atrix and it has yet to take off. Maybe Ubuntu will fix that, but I am not so sure. If this is a good phone experience and a crappy PC experience, nobody is going to care. This needs to be both a great phone and a great PC. Otherwise it's just a phone.

Also, why is this not using Kickstarter? It seems like Kickstarter is "the place" to raise money for something like this, so it's likely that it won't raise as much money as it could just because of the site they're using.

<comment><USER25>
      Flexible Funding campaign
      This campaign will receive all of the funds contributed by Sat Nov 10 at 11:59PM PT.

Also, Kickstarter seems to work best when you offer the actual product as a perk.

I don't believe that there is even a remote possibility of this being more than a vaporware. Even if they get to their goal. The amount of money isn't enough for producing a smartphone in today's situation(patents & all that jazz).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What makes a good Case Study? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the process of trying to re-think what a case study is. Everything I read is just boring. There's no unifying themes between the case studies, it's just marketing speak, and there's no fun. You never go "oh, I wanna read case studies about this company."<p>Do you have any suggestions on what would make a fun case study? Would love to hear 'em. <comment><USER2> Interestingly enough, I was thinking about how I would do a case study this morning and here's what I came up with:

* Tell a story. This would be in the form of an interview. Basic questions from my company and let the business do most of the talking. Get to the heart of how the person uses my product.

* Use basic data and charts.

      - Show how the bottom line increased

      - Show how productivity increased with the use of my product

      - Show how my product improved conversion

* Let the person pitch themselves a little bit.

The best case studies are done by 37signals. I actually enjoy reading them and peeking into how other companies work. For example: [http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2010/05/make- sport...](http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2010/05/make-sport-fun- uses-basecamp-todo-list-templates-to-assign-tasks-to-freelancers.html)</comment>


And Then You Have No Taste - <AUTHOR> http://zedshaw.com/2015/04/05/and-then-you-have-no-taste/ <comment><USER2> Why all this hate specifically towards Pixar? Most of his arguments reflect his pessimistic views about Pixar's internals.

1\. Build the initial prototype on your own, apply no criticism. 2. Be realistic and objective, run a checklist over your prototype. 3. Repeat this cycle until your idea is refined. Key is to throw work out.

Does seem like a pretty decent workflow however.</comment>


What's Wrong with the Web? - <AUTHOR> http://developer.telerik.com/featured/whats-wrong-with-the-web/

<comment><USER2> I can't display articles of big news media on my iPad 1 anymore. It crashes Safary because of out of memory.

I suspect that things will get worse with HTTP/2 and its push functionality. Ad blockers won't be able to prevent the server to push the ads through the network. Adblockers will eventually prevent the display of the data, not save bandwidth anymore.</comment>


Legalese: This Is How All User Agreements Should Be Displayed - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/5170410/this-is-how-all-user-agreements-should-be-displayed <comment><USER2> I suspect this is actually a legal nightmare. What happens when the informal summary actually fails to capture some legal subtlety embodied in the legalese? Which have I agreed to? What happens when a company (deliberately, perhaps) musrepresents the meaning of the legalese in the summary.

The real solution is to write simpler clearer User Agreements, rather than attempting to skin them.

<comment><USER3> "Which have I agreed to?"

Exactly. If the plain English is in fact the same as the legalese, then the legalese can be dropped. But it isn't, because there are (presumably) important subtleties.

You still have to read both, and understand the legalese.

"The real solution is to write simpler clearer User Agreements"

Quite true.

<comment><USER4> It isn't so much that legalese is a separate language with its own subtleties; it is just that it is language with predictable effects in courts. Think of contract language as code, except the only time you get to run it through a debugger is when someone sues. Only then do you get to find out whether your code runs as intended, i.e. whether a judge interprets it to have the effect you intended. Once language is proven to have a certain effect, lawyers like to re-use that language in the sometimes naive belief that it will always be given that meaning. The tradeoff here is that the language can be difficult for laypeople to understand, especially as usages change. Some of the most notorious legalisms are redundancies, like "free and clear," that according to some scholars date back to the Norman conquest, when contracts were written simultaneously in two languages (free being Germanic, clear being Latinate).

There is another comparison here: recall how Joel Spolsky criticized the Netscape team for throwing out their old code and starting over? Lawyers can make the exact same criticism about people who want to disregard legalese.

(I should really start blogging about this).

<comment><USER5> I like your comparison! But justice should protect us, while everything here has no bound checks... Instead of having it in a high level language, we have some old cobol (it works!) here and we must pay specialists for $$ to decipher it...

<comment><USER6> Great comparison with cobol. I love it.

There is a burgeoning "agile" movement amongst some (albeit very few) lawyers to improve things.

I wrote this rant about it a while back about how lawyers really should learn a bit from the agile movement that has so revolutionized the startup world:

[http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/11/12/is-the-time- rig...](http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/11/12/is-the-time-right-for- agile-lawyers)

<comment><USER4> You might be referring to the "plain language" movement, virtually headquartered at plainlanguage.gov. Take a look at their examples ([http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/wordiness...](http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/wordiness.cfm) ):

Before

Under 25 CFR §1.4(b), the Secretary of the Interior may in specific cases or in specific geographic areas, adopt or make applicable to off-reservation Indian lands all or any part of such laws, ordinances, codes, resolutions, rules or other regulations of the State and political subdivisions in which the land is located as the Secretary shall determine to be in the best interest of the Indian owner or owners in achieving the highest and best use of such property.

After

Section 1.4(b) of 25 CFR allows us to make State or local laws or regulations apply to your off-reservation lands. We will do this only if we find that it will help you to achieve the highest and best use of your lands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure I like this. Let's suppose that this does become standard practice.

Now we could end up in a situation where users and corporations disagree on the wording in the terms of service, or about definitions of terms.

As a simple example, let's use Apple's Itunes "software updates" that attempts to push safari onto my machine.

Now lets suppose they add into the terms of service that if you use itunes, they can use this updater to add safari without your permission.

In legalese it might read something like "add or update installed or new programs onto your device" while in english it may read "Installs software updates automatically."

I'm not saying Apple would do something like this, or that this article and company it uses as an example has such intentions - but this is how _I_ would abuse the system if it became widespread, and if I wanted to abuse it.

I do think it would be better to have terms of service that users actually read - and in fact, I would assume many terms of service _do_ start of being readable and understandable. However, in the end its about CYA (covering your ass) and for that reason I think it's best to have everything spelled out. Perhaps the summaries would be useful though to draw attention to what is discussed in each section ,as it it in the example provided, so that I know exactly where the privacy information is, I can quickly see where the SLA is, etc.

<comment><USER8> Violates the DRY principle too and can cause confusion when things need to be updated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, I think he's refering to the Don't Repeat Yourself principle.

<comment><USER8> Yep. I wasn't sure whether it was DNRY or DRY but Wikipedia has it as DRY so I stuck with that. Wikipedia failed me once again.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've seen this type of thing a couple of times before. Sometimes it works better than others. The best example I've seen is just little italicized blurbs marked (intent) before each barrage of law-speak. There was, of course, a sizable disclaimer about how the italicized parts were not legally binding yadda-yadda. It was on a car rental contract of all places.

Its kind of like comments on code, so that if the legal code doesn't run correctly on the courthouse hardware, everyone can at least tell what the programmer was trying to do.

The _right_ solution is to go back and clean up 400 years of worthless cruft that's built up in the legal system that makes law documents quite literally another language, with the added confusion that it borrows words from a familiar one but assigns them new meanings and connotations. I was always of the opinion that if I should be required to follow an agreement, then I should be reasonably expected to be able to read it _myself_.

<comment><USER10> I read somewhere that Steve Jobs tore up a long contract and demanded a new one that was one page long if the other party wanted to do business with Apple. Lots of people demanding such contracts are the only way things will change.

I can't imagine this happening, though, as lawyers would need to write these contracts and greatly simplifying contracts would probably put many of them out of a job.

In addition, many people with their shorter contracts would be shocked when a judge rules against their interpretation of the contract, and others will complicate their contracts to prevent the same thing happening to them. This is likely the process that led to the contracts we have now. Legalese is not intended to be clear and expressive, but as a kind of adversarial form of communication.

<comment><USER11> IANAL, but I think many of them write complicated contracts mostly in an effort to protect their clients. Simple contracts may not include verbiage that has survived court challenges.

I'm not trying to defend the system, just pointing out that lawyers aren't necessarily trying to do anything but make the system work for their clients -- which is what they got hired to do. If we want simpler language, we need legal decisions that will back it up.

<comment><USER6> This is a myth. Most contracts are not even written down and are perfectly legal.

For example if you're in a restaurant and order food you have accepted a contract to pay for that food once you finish. The contract does not include any legalese it isn't even written down, yet is just as valid if not more so as any 100 page document filled with legalese.

If this is so you can also write it in plain English. Anything that can be written in legalese can almost always be rewritten in more concise plain readable English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> old-gregg I just don't understand how come legalese can't be replaced with some kind of mathematical formal system? A few lawyers I shared this view with laughed at me, but after some digging I realized that was because they lacked a proper training and believed that English was more expressive than Math. Wrong: math is the language that describes the world around us, surely it can be used to describe their stupid laws, which can't even approach the laws of nature in complexity.

Sure such language won't be readable by regular folks, but that's not the point. Such "mathematized legalese" would be made readable by computers and translated into all sorts of usable applications: for instance you can do almost automatic "legislation simulation" without even going to a court room: given two theorems (legal agreements) and variable bindings (facts) a computer (judge) could estimate your chances of winning without wasting a single dollar on lawyers.

Am I an idiot because I see nothing wrong with this?

<comment><USER4> Laws have varying degrees of clarity. Laws about what side of the road you must drive your car on are clear. Others aren't. Consider the FTC Act: "Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful." Turning that into mathematical language would not be useful, because all the work is being done by one, largely undefined, word: "unfair." Courts have, over time, given a rich and complex meaning to that word. In English.

Some law is already formalized, enough so that it can be, and has been, translated into software code. TurboTax is a good example of this; it doesn't capture the entire tax code, and it apparently doesn't get everything right (ask Timothy Geithner), but it does dramatically illustrate the extent to which the tax code is determinate. (Self-plug: the U.S. federal sentencing guidelines are also highly determinate, although actual sentences are not, and a web site I run lets lawyers calculate these sentences).

If you are interested in this area, take a look at XBRL, an XML dialect used by financial institutions to make some legally required reports in a highly formalized manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As many of the commenters pointed out the summary becomes a part of the agreement. I think it would even trump the legalese if there is some inconsistency between them.

What people fail to understand is that the contract/agreement itself is not the written text. Rather it is a legally binding relationship between 2 or more parties.

The better each party understands the terms and duties the less likely disputes are going to happen.

Legalese is a kind of legal FUD, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Unfortunately most people are still scared of changing it.

All those legalese clauses you see in most agreements can be trumped by plain English or actually even common sense. The common law contract system allows judges to invalidate extremely unfair terms based on common sense and common practice as it requires both parties to perform some sort of equal exchange for a contract to be valid.

I believe that a well written plain language contract is a lot less likely to have disputes. I also believe that judges like the rest of us are perfectly able to read English as well, so I can only conclude that legalese is FUD.

See these two posts to learn more about how contracts work:

[http://stakeventures.com/articles/2006/08/17/pragmatic- contr...](http://stakeventures.com/articles/2006/08/17/pragmatic-contract-law- for-entrepreneurs)

[http://blog.extraeagle.com/2007/10/09/contracts-are- relation...](http://blog.extraeagle.com/2007/10/09/contracts-are- relationships-with-strings-attached/)

If you are interested in the history of legalese I warmly recommend the book <http://www.partyofthefirstpart.com/> which is probably the funniest legal book I have ever read.

I'm on a bit of a crusade against legalese myself and at <http://agree2.com> we've tried to write our user agreement in plain english. We had it for public review last year ([http://blog.extraeagle.com/2008/05/20/public-review-of- agree...](http://blog.extraeagle.com/2008/05/20/public-review-of-agree2-user- agreement/)) during a major rewrite and even allow you to propose changes to it during your signup.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's a problem with providing two sets of an agreement.. For a (150 year old) real world example - see here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi>

The gist of it - What the Maori's thought they signed - and what the English thought they signed - were two different documents.

"The English and Māori versions differ. This has made it difficult to interpret the Treaty and continues to undermine its effect. The most critical difference revolves around the interpretation of three Māori words: kāwanatanga (governorship), which is ceded to the Queen in the first article; rangatiratanga (chieftainship) which is retained by the chiefs in the second; and taonga (property or valued possessions), which the chiefs are guaranteed ownership and control of, also in the second article. Few Māori had good understanding of either sovereignty or "governorship", as understood by 19th century Europeans, and so some academics, such as Moana Jackson, question whether Māori fully understood that they were ceding sovereignty to the British Crown."

</comment><comment><USER13> Both summary and legalese become the contract. Courts look within the four corners of the document for the terms, wherever they may be. Other terms are implied by statute and case law. Still more terms are implied by 1) custom and usage in the industry, and 2) course of past dealing between the parties.

And the mathematical version of the law brings up many issues. The law is actually pretty mathematical. Non-lawyers may not know this, but legal standards follow strict standards whenever possible.

Here is an example: Plaintiff brings discrimination suit based on US Constitutional equal protection claims. Is the Defendant the Federal Government? If yes, you sue under the 5th Amendment. Is the Defendant a State? If yes, you sue under the 14th Amendment. Is the Defendant neither, and this case doesn't fit into a limited exception that I haven't listed here for clarity? If yes to both, then you can't sue based on the US Constitution. It is that simple.

Continuing the example (assuming you are suing the Feds or a State. Also, I am leaving out corner cases): Is the suit based on Race, Alienage, or National Orgin? If so, strict scrutiny applies. Is the suit based on gender? If so, then intermediate scrutiny applies. All other claims are analyzed based on rational basis. Now there are some terms of art that need to be defined there. But they are pretty easy to understand.

Perhaps the main reason the mathematical legal system won't happen is that courts only decide the issue at hand. The math system will require a programmer to enter an outcome based on the applicable laws and facts ahead of time. But every case is an example where the court hasn't yet ruled on these unique facts applied to the laws. That is why the case is heard and not dismissed, tossed via summary judgment or a directed verdict. If the exact same facts and exact same law is applied, the verdict is mechanical. Trial lawyers make their money when that isn't the case.

</comment><comment><USER14> <http://aviary.com/terms>

actual term of service link.

</comment><comment><USER15> This might make a contract more expensive to develop but if courts started holding these sorts of contracts in higher regard, perhaps it would justify the cost. I'm not a lawyer but intuitively it seems that if a contract has a big summary that says "we're allowed to eat your baby", it will more likely withstand a challenge than one that hides that clause in page 30. No one could claim they weren't aware of that clause.

</comment><comment><USER16> The second I saw the title I knew which site it must be referring to.

Such a great strategy for a site catering to artists and people who care a _lot_ about terms but don't want to read legal text.

</comment><comment><USER17> Google does something similar to this:

[http://www.google.com/accounts/tos/highlights/utos-us- en-h.h...](http://www.google.com/accounts/tos/highlights/utos-us-en-h.html)

<comment><USER18> An even better implementation of this, on the Google Maps API site:

<http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why have the legalese version?

And really, why have either version? What do we need these agreements for?</comment>


Remote Image Upload Leads to RCE (Inject Malicious Code to PHP-GD Image) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@asdqwedev/remote-image-upload-leads-to-rce-inject-malicious-code-to-php-gd-image-90e1e8b2aada <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/avis/CERTFR-2020-AVI-164/](https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/avis/CERTFR-2020-AVI-164/)

[https://libgd.github.io/](https://libgd.github.io/)</comment>


Grab Premium Versions of Your Favorite Productivity Webapps for Cheap - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5566130/grab-premium-versions-of-your-favorite-productivity-webapps-for-cheap-with-appsumo <comment><USER2> I've said it elsewhere, and I'll say it here:

EverNote is impressive and pretty well-designed, but for all its' creator's claiming to support portable data, it has _horrible_ importing, _very little_ exporting at all, and _no_ bulk exporting (when I used it a few months ago). It couldn't even spit out a text-only note as txt, rtf, html, _anything_. It's a lock-in product. If you're happy with the lock-in, it could be a nice little world, but beware that criteria.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great idea, for both these companies and consumers.

Kind of odd though to have 4 products that last an entire year, 1 for 6 months, and 1 for 2 months.

<comment><USER4> Definitely! A bit hard to get all these companies and a low price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do it work if we have existing account on those webapp ?

Ex : My Mindmeister account is expiring in about a month.

<comment><USER4> Yea, for most you should be able to extend them. Let me know if you have any issues and I'll help get it resolved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is basically groupon for software. Surprised no one else has done this before...

<comment><USER6> Ahem.

<http://www.flickr.com/people/noahkagan/> <http://twitter.com/ramit/status/16404714989>

Conclusion: this is your site. Probably worth mentioning.

<comment><USER4> Yea, I'm not hiding that I am involved. And yes, I'm still surprised no on has done it (:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> this is more like macheist. but a groupon system could work too.

<comment><USER4> Yea, good point. Could merge both those things together...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a very happy evernote user. Lock-in or otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice! I hope they get Freshbooks signed up sometime!</comment>


Show HN: Automatically create a rest API for Rails - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/miquelbarba/instant-api

<comment><AUTHOR> A gem that automatically generates a rest API from the models and the routes of a Rails project. Please, give me your feedback!</comment>


Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to do about it - <AUTHOR> http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2016/03/25-make-elites-compete-why-one-percent-earn-so-much-rothwell <comment><USER3> The analysis is broken by the focus on the top 1%. They should be looking at the top 0.1%, or smaller.

It's absurd to put together hedge fund managers making $30 million a year with the established doctor who works two blocks from your house making $250k. These are entirely different phenomena.

You can see it by the section where they realize, shockingly, that the most common workplace among the 1% is the doctor's office. Well, duh. That's what makes it so clear that the 1% is much too broad of a target.

When people (innumerately) rage against the 1%, they're not thinking of real estate agents and local doctors and lawyers and dentists and university or hospital administrators. But that's who the 1% is.

<comment><USER4> You have to be worth something like $8 million to be in the top 1% in the U.S. by net worth. I don't think that includes most dentists.

<comment><USER5> This report is about top 1% of income, not wealth.

To be in the top 1% nationally, you had to have earned $383,000 in 2015.

In some cities that number is as low as $175K, very doable for a doctor or dentist.

<comment><USER6> That $383K is very likely a household income (or tax return AGI, which is a close proxy for household) figure, not an individual income figure.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's household income, not individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Instead of complaing about what others have and I don't, I like to remember that my dogs eat better food than the majority of the world and I poop into cleaner water than the rest of the world drinks.

I give my money away to the Ronald McDonald house and my time free to the Lords Dinner, a local organization the provides free meals to anyone.

Im not better than anyone else, theres a lot more I could do. But I realized a long time ago its not the .1% thats the problem, its the 99.9% of us that do nothing. That starbucks you have in the morning would go a long way overseas towards education.

<comment><USER8> > my dogs eat better food than the majority of the world

This immediately reminded me of Viktor Belenko [1] who flew his MiG-25 to Japan and defected. He wrote (I think, in his autobiography, it could have been an interview) of the amazement that dawned upon him when he entered a Western supermarket for the first time.

edit: found it.

"Once I bought a can which said "dinner." I cooked it with potatoes, onions, and garlic-it was delicious. Next morning my friends ask me, "Viktor, did you buy a cat?" It was a can of chicken-based cat food. But it was delicious! It was better than canned food for people in Russia today. And I did test it. Last year I brought four people from Russia for commercial project, and I set them up. I bought nibble sized human food. I installed a pâté, and it was cat food. I put it on crackers. And they did consume it, and they liked it. So the taste has not changed." [2]

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

[2] [http://www.videofact.com/english/defectors2_4en.html](http://www.videofact.com/english/defectors2_4en.html)

<comment><USER9> I grew up in and have lived mostly in USA, but I've never understood canned pet food. Pets will eat anything you feed them, eventually. Why _choose_ to feed them something expensive and wasteful?

<comment><USER10> why not just eat your pet, then everyone wins

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is essentially what's known as "rentier capitalism", but the Brookings paper unsurprisingly limits its scope mainly to the medical and legal fields.

The much deeper problem is the degree to which much of "the system" itself is captured by these sorts of dynamics. Look at the amount many large companies and wealthy individuals spend on political lobbying of myriad forms. We're talking countless billions of dollars.

Money, power and connections are used at every level of government, from local to state to federal to subtly and not-so-subtly tilt the pinball machine in far too many and complex ways to attempt to enumerate, but anyone who has been in or near the workings of power understands intimately how this works.

One salient point for me is witnessing similar phenomena in other countries to a varying degree, down to e.g. official government border guards, law enforcement and civil service officials in some countries who openly shake people down for bribes to perform their normal duties, either expeditiously or at all.

So my takeaway is, this sort of subtle corruption is endemic and impossible to completely end in any human society, but nonetheless the _degree_ and _character_ of the corruption vary hugely from country to country, and the US seems relatively unique in the "first world" in allowing this corruption to grossly undermine basic foundations of modern western democracy to the point people are getting ready to grab the pitchforks.

One of the main things elites and intellectuals took away from the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s/cold war period was the need for democracy, no matter how corrupt and sold out, to provide some sort of floor beneath which it would not allow its citizens to fall, and some sense of forward progress and shared success, even if not equally shared ... a sense of we're- all-in-this-togetherness. This is the principle that both political parties in the US have now effectively abandoned, rhetoric aside, and the consequences are unfolding before our eyes.

<comment><USER12> _> this sort of subtle corruption is endemic and impossible to completely end in any human society_

You're correct that democracy will always be captured by money. In a very real sense, our political system isn't democracy. It is capitalism.

The only way to prevent this is to stop trying to enforce so many rules with centralized democracies and move to a decentralized enforcement mechanism instead. Individuals act in their own perceived interests, so if individuals enforced our rules instead, you'd have to pay _everyone_ to look the other way, which is a perfectly acceptable outcome.

So what is a decentralized enforcement mechanism? Trade. When people spend money, they're trading access to everyone's work. You and I give that money its value, and as individuals, we can take that value away from people who break the rules. We can stop accepting money that was traded by people who broke our rules.

You and I have the power to restore democracy by punishing the people who use their wealth to manipulate our democracy.

<comment><USER13> This works great until someone who comes in with a lot of money hires a bunch of these individuals to enforce their will on others.

<comment><USER12> If money is used in ways you find harmful, don't accept that money. People trade access to your work to wield power, and you can withdraw consent for them to do so by rejecting that money. If people think money is being used for bad, they can stop it. Free people control the influence of money on their world.

<comment><USER13> _Free people control the influence of money on their world._

Those free people will last all of about five minutes against an organized armed force raised up by someone who doesn't care about idealism but does come in at the beginning of your system with plenty of resources.

Sitting around the campfire singing songs about the dignity of trading labor for money is incompatible with reality.

<comment><USER12> Resources are an illusion that requires your consent to maintain. That armed force is getting paid with money that people have to agree to accept for it to be worth anything. Alternatively, that armed force could enslave the people at gunpoint, but that's pretty hard to sustain in the vast majority of the world.

This might sound crazy, but we just haven't had the technology to implement this sort of system until recently. It requires a decentralized ledger of all payments, which is a pretty new thing. Now that we have it, you can decide to only accept money that has been traded by people who follow your rules. If the people choose to do so, they can make it impossible to be subjugated by money.

My email's in my profile. Open to talking about this any time. I know it sounds crazy, but I truly believe that this new capability we have can be used to liberate people.

<comment><USER13> If you could wipe out all of human history up till now and start over fresh with a completely clean slate, then _maybe_. The problem is that there's already an unbalanced system in which there are people who control vast resources and are able to use that control to bribe or coerce others into doing what they prefer, which causes your scheme to be dead on arrival.

<comment><USER12> The people overthrew kings, and they were up against the same imbalance of power. I think it's going to be even easier this time. Potential loyalists will be able to see those who would bribe them lose buying power as the people declare that they won't accept any money they've touched. The playing field is actually lopsided in the people's favor. They just need to be told and given the tools to use their power.

Wealth is a social construct, and we now have the technology to modify that social construct without anyone's permission. If we wield it carefully, we might be able to build a better society with this power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Taxing capital is about the worst, most destructive tax policy you can have.

1- Capital is the main driver of productivity, and productivity is the only long-term way to increase the standard of living.

2- Capital is very mobile. Static analysis of taxation doesn't just fail, it fails miserably. It can move offshore. It can be structured so that its gains are realized in years or ways that avoid taxes.

3- Taxes on capital affect everybody, not just who they are intended to affect. If you want to tax those with very high incomes, directly tax those with very high incomes. Remember, ALL taxes are paid for by people by definition. A corporation doesn't really pay taxes, but shareholders take a hit in the form of a lower stock price and lower dividends, employees take a hit in lower pay, the jobless who would have worked there aren't hired, the suppliers take a hit in less production, and the customers take a hit in higher prices. Most people hurt are those that aren't the 1%.

The US has one of the highest marginal tax rates on capital, and it has only exasperated the problem because capital is what improves the lives of those at the bottom. Tax it, and the wealthy will find ways to shield themselves, but those who can't afford sophisticated tax strategies will be hurt the most.

STOP TAXING CAPITAL. The single best thing the US could do to raise the standard of living for everybody is to entirely eliminate all corporate and capital gains taxes. They collect so little money for the damage they do, and when you count in the cost of enforcement, they barely pull in their cost.

<comment><USER15> How do you then prevent a regressive tax policy, given capital is almost the exclusive form of wealth accretion for the 1%?

<comment><USER14> Let's say you could double the wealth of everybody in the country in 20 years, but the top 1% (or 0.1% or choose your most hated percentile) would have their wealth in crease 10x. I don't really see wealth accretion as a problem.

If that incredibly wealthy person goes and spends his money ostentatiously -- basically why we generally hate the rich in the first place because of the social stratification caused by them have bigger and better things -- then a sales tax with luxury tax or high profile items would quickly bring them back into the category of those most taxed.

If that incredibly wealth person didn't spend a lot of money and lived well below his means, then why do we care? He is basically producing for free for the rest of use to consume. If he invests his money or just puts it in a bank account, he is helping to increase capital formation and drive society forward. Even if he just burns his money or buries it, he is basically giving everybody else in the world more purchasing power -- and in this case he literally is working for free. I never understood this who argument about the rich sitting on their money: it means they are working without consuming and that means they really aren't being paid.

Income taxes are okay to an extent too. But they are just so much more difficult to get right. Defining income is difficult, and some people have very volatile income streams earning $200k one year and $50k the next. Should they really be taxes more (and a great deal more) than the guy who make $125 in two years? A sales tax or VAT is just easier from an implementation point of view. And there is nothing stopping you from excluding items like food and medical bills and nothing stopping luxury taxes either.

<comment><USER16> > If that incredibly wealthy person didn't spend a lot of money and lived well > below his means, then why do we care?

Because wealth is many different things. Too the poor, wealth is food. This can be increased, within reasonable limits. Too the middle class, wealth is access to inherently limited resources, like properties with a non-atrocious commute. Too the rich, wealth is power and that, by nature, happens at the expense of others. Capital accretion is power accretion, even more so when the rich lives like a monk. And the power you give one person is freedom you take from another. Once they have used their power to own all nice spots of land and use the food to run their boats and jets on "green" fuel, it turns out that all the supposed wealth you have given the lower classes was just money.

Taxing capital suddenly looks dead easy when you compare it to taxing power.

<comment><USER17> Dollars are just green pieces of paper.... If you don't actually use those green pieces of paper for anything then they remain green pieces of paper. There is no shortage of dollars. The government can create more of them whenever it wants, if it feels like the wealthy are hoarding them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Part of the argument here is that the top 1% has access to investment classes that have high yields and and which are not available to the remaining 99%.

There is one obvious, government mandated reason that the 99% don't have access to high-yielding investments such as hedge funds: Investors in these funds are required to be accredited investors. This means they must be already wealthy _by law_. For example, while researching I've found a hedge fund that makes small business loans and yields 11% with no risk to capital. But in order to invest, one must be accredited, which means they have $1,000,000 of net worth outside of their home equity, or, have earned at least $200,000 household income in each of the last 2 years, or, have earned at least $300,000 last year. So by law, the 99% (I am using that term somewhat loosely here) is not legally permitted to take advantage of high-yielding opportunities.

Thanks to the Web and Internet tech in general, opportunities are becoming available. For a $2,500 minimum, any investor can put money into peer lending and earn >10%.

But I believe what really separates the 1% from the 99% is financial knowledge more than anything else. It's actually a pretty involved effort for the majority of the population to become wealthy. Involved in that there is a lot that needs to be understood about earning, budgeting, saving and investing. That knowledge then needs to be applied for the long term (decades), and then one must hope that there is no divorce, illness or major college bills that can derail a well-run effort.

<comment><USER19> " I've found a hedge fund that makes small business loans and yields 11% with no risk to capital. "

A down market will show you what kind of losses make that kind of return possible in an up market.

<comment><USER20> BTW if you could really earn 11% with no risk of principal loss ... Just borrow as much as you can and collect the interest spread ...

<comment><USER21> To get that loan, you actually need the money that would make you an "accredited investor"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is worth considering the source: Brookings.

When looking on the increasing difference between the 0.1% and the rest the author makes the observation that the latter can't participate as accredited investors in some schemes. Everyone laughed about Bernakes helicopter money idea. However right now helicopters are circling the casinos where only the 0.1% have access. The solution is not to let everyone in. Maybe also the copters are running out of fuel. It is worth noting that a lot of hedge funds are getting clobbered these days and it is tempting to look for retail investors to take and hold the bag.

Lots of data in the article showing the differences between different branches of labor. Then an argument that unions increase pay differences. All correct. But ignoring the elephant in the room the "pay" difference between labor and capital. Regulation (like blanket leveling of price/labor in WWII), unions, merit based access to education and hard limits like death/estate tax are forces that help to restore a level playing field between labor and capital where everyone competes.

Capital enables investment and we need capital accumulation and probably on broader scale. Part of that capital needs to be accumulated from labor through saving and ingenuity. Inequality between jobs, industries and maybe even tax can be healthy. It provides signals collected by many looking to better themselves and others. Capital breeding capital and being increasingly the only source for investment means one sided and less effective steering of investments. It is not surprising growth slows when the Gini index becomes larger.

<comment><USER23> > It is not surprising growth slows when the Gini index becomes larger.

Are you sure you are not mistaking correlation for causation here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is an analysis of top 1% wage earners, not top 1% capital owners; and besides, it's not really the top 1% where it gets egregious; more like the top 0.1%. The analysis of returns to capital doesn't seem to include capital appreciation itself, and how it is taxed much more favourably than labour.

<comment><USER25> > capital appreciation itself, and how it is taxed much more favourably than > labour.

This is very much on purpose. Capital is extremely mobile and not part of a market transaction, while most labor is immobile and constrained as a market transaction.

It is easy to take tax from a labor market transaction, and this tax is borne just as much by the capital employing the labor as by the labor itself. Taking tax from capital appreciation is far more difficult - if you put your capital tax too high, the capital just moves to a different market with better dynamics.

Of course if you go overboard with your labor regulation and tax, then other labor markets are able to out compete your own labor market, and that is even worse.

Basically: you don't have free reign to decide on these labor and capital taxes and regulations. Any policy change you make is going to have consequences. You can't just say "OK, we will just double capital tax! Money for all!" and not face extreme changes in your entire base.

I'm in South Africa and watching this unfold as the socialist government continues to raise capital taxes each year, and now faces enormous foreign capital flight and lack of investment in the economy, destroying GDP growth and pushing the more vulnerable parts of the population out of jobs and into extreme debt and poverty. Believe me, you don't want that in USA just to get rid of some mythical '1% problem' that hurts your sensitivities.

<comment><USER26> <i>Capital is extremely mobile and not part of a market transaction, while most labor is immobile and constrained as a market transaction.</i>

It does not have to be. The neo-feudalists have relentlessly advanced an agenda of removing capital controls since the early 1970s. If you look at modern, rich, mixed industrial economies that have emerged since WW2, they did it with very strict capital controls in place during the period they nurtured their infant industries. At one time in South Korea the highest penalty for violating capital controls was the death penalty!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's an interesting article, but how exactly is "skill" measured for things like [1]? I couldn't find a description of this in the article or the linked paper (that I skimmed).

Furthermore, how does this account for personal preference for less dangerous jobs for example? I'd much rather be a waiter than a coal miner, even though you could say both require the same/no skill.

Pay is only one of many different aspects of compensation (a more dangerous/stressful job will likely pay more even if it requires the same skill; many teaching jobs have a lot of vacation which you might value more than a pay increase, and so on).

[1]: [http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Blogs/social-mobility- memos...](http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Blogs/social-mobility- memos/2016/03/25-make-elites-compete-why-one-percent-earn-so-much- rothwell/Rothwell-32516002.png?la=en)

</comment><comment><USER28> The article basically has two points:

Point 1) If we loosen regulations on mutual funds to allow them to behave like hedge funds (borrow more aggressively against their capital) then more of the 99% will get higher returns on their investments.

2) If we loosen regulations on medical and law professions to allow people with less training to offer more services, then more people will have better paying jobs and people will save money.

Let's address Point 1 first; most of the 99% don't have investment accounts of any kind. Most of those that do have only retirement accounts. This deregulation isn't likely to create much increase in wealth for the 99%, but it does present a great increase in risk. Allowing mutual funds to borrow more against their capital can lead to another 2008-esque meltdown, only this time instead of mortgages it will be retirement accounts that collapse. Lovely.

Now for Point 2; again it's about risk versus reward. There may indeed be services that nurse practitioners could offer, or legal technicians instead of actual lawyers, that they currently cannot offer. But it's a matter of where you draw the line, who do you trust to draw that line? And are we sure that that this isn't just a short term gain?

A large reason nurse practitioners are cheaper than doctors is that they don't need the same extremely expensive malpractice insurance that doctors do. But if they start providing more services, then they might and your cost savings go away.

And in both of these fields in particular, there's a reason you have doctors go through such thorough training before they start providing medical advice, or a lawyer does before providing legal advice; because the cost of fuck ups can be enormous. If nurse practitioners start writing prescriptions and their lack of training leads to bad mixes of medication the malpractice suit would come immediately.

Regardless, both of these suggestions are mere drops in the bucket compared to the vast gap in increased earnings between the 99% and the top 1% (or worse 0.1%), and in no way would create meaningful impacts on people's lives. Let alone addressing the root issues that really lead to the monstrous differences between worker and executive pay levels at many/most companies.

</comment><comment><USER29> I really don't like the 1% designation. According to [1], if you have an annual income of $55,000 or above (after tax) in the U.S. you are among the 1% globally.

I like the idea of equality and all, but it feels like, when people talk about inequality, they mostly want to be richer.

[1]: [https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/how-rich- am-i/?...](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/how-rich- am-i/?country=USA&income=55000&adults=1&children=0)

<comment><USER30> That seems far too low to count as 1%. ($55k is 75th percentile in the US, a country of 300 million -- 25% of the US is 1% of the world.). As far as I can tell, they are considering all people, not just those with incomes, which really distorts the data.

<comment><USER31> When peoplw talk about solving equality, it usually involves taking away from the wealthy and giving to the poor.

Rather than the more difficult task of educating the poor to create their own wealth.

We should be striving for equality of opoortunities, not outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > The real cause of elite inequality is the lack of open access and market > competition in elite investment and labor markets..

I stopped reading after that, because that's not the _real_ reason. The _real_ reason is the way these people _think_.

(then I went back and read the article anyway and still think it misses the _real_ reason)

Most solutions to the "1% problem" are based on building these legal cages of rules, regulations and taxes, where the "wild, untamed, mad" entrepreneurs are allowed to work.

But here's the catch - _they_ are the ones who are supposed to build the cages for themselves !

\--

We need a new 1%. We need a third option besides Karl Marx and Adam Smith.

Both those theories are based on incomplete understanding of human psychology, sociology, information technology and so on. In simple words - <USER2> "capitalism" and "socialism" are old and wrong.

For example, nowhere will you see a mention of "advertising" in the theory of supply and demand. Not a single mention ! Check it out on wikipedia.

But advertising is a demand producing engine, which in turn generates supply and with some more advertising produces more demand and so on. There is no "economic equilibrium", there are marketing and PR budget limits !

We call it "economic theory" or even science, when in fact it's always been economic ideology with math added on top of it.

And any ideology is a consequence of learning and regurgitating the same half- truths until everyone deeply believes it to be the only truth.

\--

We also need a new Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill. The whole "achieve your full potential" idea. If achieving means earning and hoarding things, then this leads to a whole bunch of heartless, selfish assholes - what we have today. "But I've worked hard for it, so I deserve it!"

\--

So how do we do it ? I don't know, but I know that we _have_ to do something about it if we are to survive as a species - the state of the biosphere is another manifestation of the same problem - the 1% god so rich _at the same time_ as the planet got polluted, mined and abused.

<comment><USER33> I've been working on this problem for quite some time now, and I've distilled a basis for solving the problem of advertising - connecting sellers with buyers - into three "laws":

Law 1: Individuals must digitize their own behavior in prediction-friendly form.

Law 2: Individuals retain the exclusive right to share or sell their information.

Law 3: Sellers or middlemen who connect with buyers must compete openly for all information.

The idea is that as we adhere more and more to these laws (which we don't at all right now), we gradually solve the problems of online advertising. Many other problems too.

Blog post here: [https://haxel.ca/three-laws-to-fix-online- advertising.html](https://haxel.ca/three-laws-to-fix-online-advertising.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Another person's gain is not my loss. We should not care about inequality. Steve Jobs was 1000s of times more "unequal" than me. Wonderful. I'm thankful that he existed. It didn't cost me anything. I'd like to recommend this book to this thread: "Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality" [http://www.amazon.com/Equal-Is-Unfair-Misguided- Inequality-e...](http://www.amazon.com/Equal-Is-Unfair-Misguided-Inequality- ebook/dp/B015CKO1DY)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm usually not a fan of Brookings articles. They are okay, but this one is actually pretty good. In the end the author calls for a couple things.

His goal is to increase competition in ALL aspects of the economy, not just the low end, and he rightfully points out some of the paternalism of current laws have helped create this economic gap.

1- Open up all investment opportunities for everybody. Get rid of the wealth and income requirements to invest in certain vehicles. The one he points to is hedge funds where by law you need to be an accredited investor: $200k income in last two years and expect the same this year ($300k if married) and a net wealth (excluding your home) of at least $1mm. This law was made because the government literally thinks that poor people are too stupid to invest and gauge risk.

2- Slim down the need for professional associations. While many like to decry the necessity for a hair braiding license and see the stupidity in that, fewer are willing to see the same issues with, for example, the onerous and unnecessary qualification needed to be a nurse or home care provider. These associations create artificial barriers to entry that artificially boost wages.

These are the true rent seekers. Oddly enough, a couple of the groups he decides to call out, such as the financial services industry are the most egalitarian. Anybody can be a trader, even high school and college drops outs. My industry has no cap on the number of traders that work on the floor. We have no special club. Sure you need to get your Series exams if you work for a broker/dealer, and that can be a pain, but that the government making you do it. Most non B/D firms encourage you not to take the exams if you don't need to.

For all the crap people give working in finance, it really is based a lot of hard work and skill.

<comment><USER16> > it really is based a lot of hard work and skill.

And the total lack of desire to apply that hard work and skill to something more productive than applying even more lubrication to a market that is already too fast for it's own good. But please allow me to take the sting off of that attack: over here in advertisement, things are not much different.

About those barrier of entry laws for risky investments, that we seem to both consider the true target of the Brookingns article: they are not about poor people being stupid, they are about poor people being poor. Too poor to not be completely ruined by a failed investment.

"Rich people benefit from barriers of entry" and "Poor people will suffer hard when they are fully exposed to commission-driven investment salespersons pitching them risky stuff" can (and are) both be true at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Excellent article detailing the anti-free market practices that the 1% lobby for allowing them to increase their financial advantage.

I do wonder if there aren't other factors contributing to the issue. The ready dismissal of corporate taxes (read loopholes) seems slightly premature.

<comment><USER16> It's an excellent article when you are upset that you can't use other people's money to profit risk-free from risky investments unless those people happen to be rich. A stab at accredited investor laws, that hinder the financial services industry far more than they hinder actual small-time investors.

The rest of the article seems to be mostly distraction based on the uncertainty caused by looking at income where most people instinctly expect a look at accumulated wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> One thing that I think gets lost in all of this is just how little money the richest people actually have, in the big scheme of things. According to [1], "The combined net worth of the 2013 class of the 400 richest Americans is $2 trillion".

Certainly $2tn is a lot of money, but if the US Government were to "take" all of that (assuming, of course, no massive stock market crash when it's flooded with all of their holdings), it wouldn't even cover 2013's US government spending for one year ($3.45tn [2]). To cover the US 2013 full-year budget, it'd take _roughly_ the combined net worth of the 800 richest Americans.

Edited to add: This is just _federal_ spending, it completely ignores state taxes, of course.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Forbes_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Forbes_400)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_bud...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budget)

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone who "earns" is technically not a part of the 1% (which should not be taken literally [as a mathematical forumula]).

The mythical 1% are the long standing families, and confederations of interests that _control_ the global economy.

So, to take the fictional character of the Dr. from Eyes Wide Shut, the _servants_ of the 1% may live in upper east side, have successful social position, and generally assumed to be "1%" people by the unwashed (and literal-minded) but are themselves entirely captive members of the economic regime.

</comment><comment><USER38> In a word: Privileges.

In the US lawyers and physicians are rich, but in the rest of the world it is not so. In the US those professions have privileges.

The main disruption to wealth has been central banks redirecting the wealth to themselves, by printing money and giving it to themselves at near zero interest rates. With free money privilege people(savers) loss, they win.

Eternal Copyrights and software and business patents are privileges enacted recently in order to preserve the status quo forever.

More taxes? that only creates bigger central planning, more resources in the hands of a few, the politicians.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't think there's anything morally wrong with a wealth gap if opportunities for upward mobility exist. Which is why the following line from the piece struck a chord with me:

 _A hedge fund is a loose term referring to an investment portfolio that is less regulated than other funds, because only very rich individuals or approved institutions (accredited investors or qualified purchasers) can participate in it._

The accredited and qualified investor rules, when paired with stricter securities regulations keeping young companies from going public, are almost certainly one of the biggest barriers to upward mobility.

How many middle class individuals could have enjoyed returns based on the growth of Yahoo, Amazon and Apple? All companies that achieved most of their current market cap after they had gone public.

Now how many middle class individuals could have enjoyed returns based on the growth of Facebook, Twitter, and Uber? Almost none. All of the wealth created in the most recent technology investment cycle went to wealthy and institutional investors - with middle class individuals having almost no access.

Economically, there's an argument to be made that lower concentrations of wealth lead to more consumption which leads to more economic growth, and I tend to agree with that. But I, personally, am more interested in solving the moral problem of inequality and creating more upward mobility than I am in solving the economic problems of inequality.

</comment><comment><USER40> This article raises some great points. When I read about a dental hygienist opening their own practice, my first reaction was - well of course not, they're not a dentist? But then I thought, why not?? 90% of my dentist visits have just been cleanings, which is 99% with dental hygenist. I suppose that look over from dentist at the end is supposed to catch anything early, but I've never had a dentist actually find something dental hygenist missed.

</comment><comment><USER41> I look at these articles about the "1%" and always come away with a different interpretation. "That looks pretty achievable", I think. With a bit of effort, I bet I could crack that income threshold one of these days. It's a little bit inspirational, actually, especially considering that I started out near the other end of the spectrum, income-wise.

I don't really get the desire everybody else has to drag those people down. It's not a zero sum game, so having rich people in existence doesn't really harm me. It's kinda cool that people can get rich. Certainly much more fun than a world where nobody could get rich.

If one wanted to get rich, this article does a good job of laying out how to do that. Pick a career path from that chart of "unfairly high paid professions" and establish one's self as a good one o' those.

Choices include Doctor, Lawyer, Investment Banker, and Software guy. The first three require full time doctoring, lawyering or banking, upward of 80 hour weeks, forever, to pull off. The last one requires only sane weeks working for the Googles of the world, or a bit of entrepreneurial work building something that brings in that 1% income and can then be stepped away from.

Seems pretty achievable.

<comment><USER42> 1% is just a nice number. Really I think most people have an issue with the top 0.1% or higher. Doctors and lawyers do not fall in that category, but multi-millionaires.

Anyway of course people don't want to drag them down just for the sake of it. They want to raise everyone else up. Which requires taxing capital.

Even just among the 99.9%, the world is pretty unfair. Not everyone can be doctors or lawyers or computer programmers. But at least the majority of people have been able to do unskilled work and make a living. But soon, the majority of unskilled will be replaced by machines. And eventually doctors and lawyers will be too. That leaves only capital owners with the majority of the income, and everyone else with nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is a refreshing perspective on inequality. FWIW, I think one additional thing that would help with tilting the scales away from the 1% is the fact that most laws and contracts are written to put financial creditors first in line for any sort of liquidation of assets in a company. The VC industry oftentimes includes at a minimum 1x liquidation preferences in a liquidity event of any company. Banks also often get paid first in bankruptcy filings before suppliers are compensated for goods and services provided on credit. This may only make a small difference in the global economy, I'm not sure. However, it seems like someone investing their time into a company, whether as an entrepreneur or as a supplier providing goods and services, deserves to be compensated first, given they can't get their time back, before financial providers are compensated for their contributions. Furthermore, their are many more suppliers and entrepreneurs than exist financial creditors in the economy today. Ensuring these individuals are compensated first when things go poorly tilts the scales a little more towards the 99% vs the 1%. Anyways, that's just my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER44> "These regulatory advantages have allowed hedge funds to consistently outperform stocks and other assets by roughly 2 percentage points each year"

Ummm... what? hedgefunds vs the S&P is a terrible investment

[http://www.businessinsider.com/hedge-fund-relative-fund- perf...](http://www.businessinsider.com/hedge-fund-relative-fund- performance-2015-2)

</comment><comment><USER45> It should be about wealth not income. Income is based on active participation in the economy and is something which we should be doing everything to keep our hands of. This includes many of the people who work hard and play hard on wall street.

Read somewhere that one banker alone would keep 4 waiters jobs alive.

Wealth on the other hand is lazy money that's what should be in competition.

</comment><comment><USER46> It actually would be better if the 1% earned even more. They are the only group that really has any motivation to fix the environment.

The rest of us spend and try to claw our way ahead. How many of you are worried about CO2 production? Yet I very much doubt you have done much at all to fix the problem, besides some symbolic gesture like buying a fuel efficient car.

The 1% could fix it. And if they became rich enough, they will. If you had so much money you had everything you wanted in the current environment, the only way to improve your life further and those of your descendents would be to improve the environment itself.

<comment><USER47> I think many people besides the 1% have the motivation to fix the environment. On the other hand, most of us have priorities that are more immediate, like being able to put food on the table. I don't see any other reason people besides the 1% worry any less about the environment..

<comment><USER46> The difference is the ability to act. If you want to fix the environment, you need the cooperation of many other people to have any kind of dent.

A person which a huge amount of money and power doesn't need the coordination of anyone; he can act alone, and make a meaningful impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This article has some valid observations, but it also says that "There is no evidence to support the idea that the top 1 percent consists mostly of people of "exceptional talent.""

Actually, there is some evidence for this. A while ago, I read the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen. It mentions a few studies looking at the correlation between IQ and income. If I remember correctly, the correlation was 0.3 to 0.4 in all of the studies.

<comment><USER49> Not all of the elite are self-made or have a high direct income. I also don't see why the talent of _all_ of them would be "exceptional". Higher than average, sure, if they are self-made they probably had to be smarter than others to some extent and if they are not they were in the best schools and had the best support imaginable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Main point is such individuals and corporations act like unregulated States within regulated States. They reap all they can without having to worry providing welfare and managing affairs in the manner regulated Stases do. They are in the very fact pirates or mafias that seize ridiculous amount of monies out of regulated economies, shield that monies in fiscal havens and starve regulated economies.

</comment><comment><USER51> My limited view on the subject, any inequality that does not include land / property value and it's game of monopoly is incomplete.

</comment><comment><USER52> Many of the 1% (not all) are that wealthy because they are willing to do things that are unsavory and/or immoral if not outright illegal.

Remember that Steve Jobs and Woz would not have Apple unless they were willing to ignore how very illegal it was to make phone hacking devices first and how it might easily have resulted in prison time if they weren't white privileged kids.

<comment><USER53> Feels like a red herring. If anything, the immoral/illegal/unsavory approach would be more of an equalizer in terms of joining the 1% club...there's no scarcity or exclusivity there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Tax windfall profits at cashectomy rates. Doesn't judge, continues to reward merit and effort while keeping the money moving. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER55> tl'dr: The game is rigged for the top 1% so it can face less competition and not allow some of the money it gains to flow downwards.

<comment><USER56> How exactly is the game rigged for Paul Graham, Mark Zuckerberg, Drew Houston, Evan Spiegel, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and the millions of other entrepreneurs?

<comment><USER57> He pretty much gives entrepreneurs and high tech workers a pass, by saying that they have earned the right to be in the 1%.

The concern is more that their children, and their children's children, are likely to be in the 1% as well, no matter what they do, or don't do.

<comment><USER58> Wealth does not pass a generation.

[http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose- wealth/](http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/)

It is a very known fact, but I couldn't find better sources quickly, so this article has to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> yeh 1 in 100 is not what were talking about by a long shot. it's catchy though

</comment><comment><USER60> There is nothing to be done about what other people are earning in my opinion.</comment>


The team that powers VLC - <AUTHOR> https://increment.com/teams/the-team-that-powers-vlc/ <comment><USER2> (disclaimer: president of VideoLAN here and old VLC dev)

What's interesting in this article (quite accurate, for once) is the focus on the size of the team, which is quite small; and on the development process. And how the team are now friends more than co-developers...

In fact, VLC is ported - and maintained - in a very large number of platforms (probably more than Firefox, Chrome, Office or Libreoffice) with Android (+TV), ChromeOS, iOS/iPadOS, AppleTV, WinRT&Xbox, Windows (XP+), macOS (10.7+), Linux, Unixes, BSD, OS/2\. While the core team has always been around 5 persons, and always less than 10. And most developers have been working on their free time...

The VideoLAN non-profit needs also to maintain quite a bit of infra (updater, crash reporter, bugtracker, forum, wiki, ml, gitlab, git) for a lot of projects (not only VLC, but things like x264 and dav1d) and do support, appstores, PR, translations and partnerships (the only way to get support from MS, Google or Apple).

Sure, VLC is probably not always the best for your usecase, and there are probably better solutions for each platform, but we are consistent, completely open source and open process, therefore people can trust the project and the brand: VLC will be around in 5 years, and we will do our best to port on all platforms, in an open way. A lot of players come and go, but the project is structured so it can last.

Since HN is a technical crowd, we're currently working on 2 fun projects: VLC.js and integrating sandboxing inside VLC :)

<comment><USER3> > Sure, VLC is probably not always the best for your usecase

VLC is both consistent and almost always the best media player for the platform. I especially love your Android UI/UX.

It has been my go-to player for ~14 years now, installed it on my high school desktop windows, my university linux and now work MBP and personal Android never disappointed me. Thanks for keeping up the quality work, I give you as example of good quality open-source project when the topic comes up.

Do you have any "need" for a fullstack/infra kind of person? Or any place we can see what know-how needs you have at the moment?

Would love to get involved with my limited capacity.

Also thanks for staying open source and privacy conscious.

<comment><USER2> > Do you have any "need" for a fullstack/infra kind of person?

Yes, we do. Both web (JS for VLC and for our website), backend (Go) and infra are needed.

And currently, people who are able to write Ruby to improve gitlab upstream.

<comment><USER4> > people who are able to write Ruby to improve gitlab upstream.

This I am able to do. How can I help?

I've contributed in very small ways previously (getting libdav1d into Handbrake[1], designing the dav1d logo[2]). Would love to be able to offer my time in a domain I'm skilled in.

[1]: [https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/pull/1864](https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/pull/1864)

[2]: [https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/merge_requests/681](https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/merge_requests/681)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Here are some reasons I donate money to videolan.org (the non-profit behind VLC player)._ VLC is versatile and available on multiple platforms for free. It's probably the easiest to recommend to anyone who wants to play many formats (including those that are not or won't be supported natively by some proprietary platforms). VLC may probably not be the most performant of players (depending on the platform and one's needs), but it's feature rich to cover most needs.

Software like this needs to exist and continue to exist even in the era of YouTube and streaming services (which, honestly, are becoming more user hostile with time even when you're paying them with your information and habits or directly with money).

</comment><comment><USER6> I've got immense respect for VLC. Not only because it shows how a relatively small core team can shoulder a large software project but also because they've never compromised on doing any shady business to make a quick buck.

</comment><comment><USER7> A fun trivia about an early VLC developer, Sam Hocevar [0]: Afaik, they were the _first-ever_ to blog about the idea of blocking ads with DNS blackholes back in _2002_ [1].

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

[1] [http://sam.zoy.org/writings/internet/doubleclick.html](http://sam.zoy.org/writings/internet/doubleclick.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> i wish new grads don't get attracted to the free lunches of faang and have more of the pirate like ethos of the old hacker days. vlc reminds me of that so much.

<comment><USER9> Nothing wrong with getting play real $ from FAANG and still enjoy learning diff deep tech stack and contributing to VLC in one's spare time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> VLC has served me well for many years on many platforms. I can't thank its devs enough.

For Mac though I've moved to IINA: [https://github.com/iina/iina](https://github.com/iina/iina)

It's much more "idiomatic" on macOS.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing this. I like VLC a lot, but the UX/UI always leaves a lot to be desired on macOS. So, I'll try IINA out and hopefully it works as well as VLC, with the added benefit of a beautiful UX/UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a ton of goodwill and appreciation for the VLC team.

That said, my experience with the VLC app has never been very positive. It seems to be universally loved by everybody, yet every time I've used it in the past 10 years I've some issues with it, including but not limited to:

\- Stuttering 720p video on Windows 10, 10 core CPU, GTX 1080

\- Opening network streams is a bit of a hit and miss

\- I could never make sense of the default "playlist" view when you start the app

\- Settings menu is a nightmare of options and UI layout

I've always used SMPlayer on Windows and Linux and IINA/mpv on macOS instead and always had a better experience.

Am I the only one that really doesn't grok VLC at all?

<comment><USER13> Mpv previously did a lot better job using video acceleration particularly nvidia at least on Linux.

I believe this has been improved a while back but I now use Mpv for all my laptop/desktop needs.

Network steams provided as in a url for a video often is no such thing.

You might notice that Mpv uses YouTube-dl which has a variety of recipes that are updated to actually figure out how to get at a video.

That this works a lot is pretty good work.

The web is a mess and developer are presumably disincentivized to ensure that people can watch contents outside the officially sanctioned ad ladden experience.</comment></comment>


With Loudcrowd, Nabeel Hyatt Sees Mult-Billion-Dollar Opportunity in Music Gaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/03/18/loudcrowd-is-conduit-labs-nabeel-hyatt-sees-mult-billion-dollar-opportunity-says-this-thing-is-ours-to-screw-up/

<comment><USER2> Nabeel is:

a. The real thing.

b. A regular at OpenCoffee Cambridge: <http://www.opencoffeeclub.org/profile/nabeelo></comment>


Ask HN: Participating in Facebook's Beta Program for Instant Articles - <AUTHOR> I would like to turn on support of facebook Instant Articles (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instant-articles/guides/articlecreate) on my publishing platform (dirty.ru) , but it looks like it is available only for members of Facebook's beta program. I really spend much time to find out how to become a member and tried to write to facebook directly, but they are keep silence and no one gave me an answer. Maybe someone know how to do that? <comment><USER2> How have you tried to contact Facebook about joining the beta program?

Sharing that information might help other people avoid unproductive paths, even if there are no good answers here.</comment>


Corporations: Just Reptiles - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmink.net/2009/10/reptiles.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Since there are two 'why I left' in a row:

        http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3702253
        http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3700277

I'd like to share this essay from Simon Phipps that has enlightened me from time to time on such matters.</comment>


Blekko Partners With Stack Overflow To Improve Search Results - mkr-hn http://searchengineland.com/blekko-partners-with-stack-overflow-64795

<comment><AUTHOR> Good move by both companies.

In South Korea, Naver dominated the search market with a combination of algorithmic search and Q&A. Back in 2006 when I was doing web strategy at Microsoft we proposed a similar plan ... instead they killed the Q&A product. Oh well. Still, the idea's a sound one, so it's great to see it moving forward.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn Blekko has become my go-to engine when I'm looking for something in a specific category.

Google (currently) does best when I'm doing a text search to find the original source of an article or trying to look up an error message, but I'm sure that gap will disappear as Blekko indexes more pages and improves its algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER2> The full list of programming related slashtags that are being co-edited is here: [http://www.skrenta.com/2011/02/blekko_stackoverflow_better_p...](http://www.skrenta.com/2011/02/blekko_stackoverflow_better_pr.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting partnership that brings human experts to search curation and will surely kill more spam!</comment>


Pay with Loop: mobile payments for unmodified point-of-sale systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects//loop/pay-with-loop/

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting take on mobile payments. There are a few questions that aren't answered on this project page though.

1\. Does a 'recorded' card count as a card-not-present sale?

2\. What about card skimming? I would think this sort of broadcast would be easier to pick up with a less-conspicuous skimmer device. Also, if this technique gains popularity we might see people using skimmed cards through this or similar hardware.</comment>


Mail in 2012 from an admin's perspective - <AUTHOR> http://blog.phusion.nl/2012/09/10/mail-in-2012-from-an-admins-perspective

<comment><USER3> This is a great overview for people looking to run their own servers, with one of the clearest explanations of DKIM and SPF I've seen. Awesome. As a counterpoint, I'd like to add that from the point of view of an email sender (our company PostageApp is a transactional email service), individual Postfix (Exim, qmail, Exchange...) setups receiving email for small organizations are one of the largest headaches we face.

Large ISPs - Gmail, Hotmail, even Yahoo and AOL to an extent, are predictable. If you play nicely, tick the technical boxes and listen to feedback (SMTP return codes, FBLs, bounces etc) you get great deliverability. Even mid-size ISPs and larger companies usually have some reasonable visibility - <USER2> to postmaster@, internal blacklist checkers, etc.

There are, though, still a nontrivial percentage of organizations and individuals who run their own setups using anything from 1998 'standards' through to modern configurations, combined with other filters like custom SpamAssassin rules, an out-of-date Barracuda appliance, or quirky ASSP installs. They often exhibit some unpredictable behaviours - sending permanent hard-bounce codes for simple inbox-full errors; marking completely innocuous email as spam; requiring three attempts for every email to block spambots (delaying delivery by hours); publishing broken MX records...

Dealing with these can be tricky - even finding the correct admin to contact is often an exercise in futility, all the while, the users are not receiving their critical emails. I guess my message is, when running your own email setup, Caveat Hack0r; if you're not in it for the long-haul, including updates, testing and responding to inquiries, you should really consider going with third-party providers.

<comment><USER4> How weird is it that something as basic as email still needs mad hacker skills to set up and dedication to maintain?

Why can't I plug a Linux box to the Internet, have a wizard auto-configure most of it (including DNS stuff, etc), let me toggle some "auto-update" thingy and be on my merry way?

<comment><USER3> There's an interesting disconnect between the public perception of email transmission and the reality, even from technically savvy observers.

The view you're espousing of the 'basic' nature of email can usually be summed up as : "It's just sending a bunch of ascii from machineA to machineB"

The reality of the complexity of email transmission is that it's an ad-hoc communications network built around an evolution of RFC standards, amended to accommodate i18n, combined with myriad third-party solutions and walled-garden 'standards' to combat a combination of real and perceived threats such as SPAM, DDoS, backscatter, spoofing, joe-jobbing, image encoding...

The main question around your proposed Auto-Updated system is what combination of these solutions are you using, how much are you paying for someone to maintain this, and do you care about the ability to customize for the inevitable false-positives caused by the necessary filters in place.

For large organizations there are solutions - Exchange being one - but they still require large amounts of custom work. The reality of Business A's needs still differ greatly from Business B, even though we're essentially just talking about sending 150Kb of ascii from machineA to machineB.

<comment><USER4> Basically, I want to see the Google Chrome of email servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> SRS was the missing piece for me when I tried setting up SPF the last time. I'll talk to my ISP about this.</comment>


Known criminal currently driving for Uber in Australia - <AUTHOR> http://www.timeslive.co.za/businesstimes/2015/02/08/barry-tannenbaum-from-uber-trickster-to-uber-taxi-driver

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Scam-Tannenbaum-Business- ebo...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Scam-Tannenbaum-Business- ebook/dp/B00GSLCM3I)

"From 2005 to 2009, the heir to one of South Africa's blue-blood families, Barry Tannenbaum, methodically constructed the largest-ever con in South African history. ... Barry Tannenbaum, the grandson of the founder of one of the country's biggest pharmaceutical firms, Adcock Ingram, offered investors stratospheric returns of more than 200 per cent a year by investing in the components used to make AIDS drugs. It was nothing more than a lie, which suckered the country's business elite, including the former CEO of Pick n Pay, the one-time head of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the ex-boss of OK Bazaars.

After the bubble popped in June 2009, finance minister Pravin Gordhan announced that hundreds of investors in South Africa, Australia and Europe had ploughed more than R12.5 billion into Tannenbaum's scheme, based on the empty promise of immense riches. Dwarfing the Brett Kebble rip-off, Fidentia and the Krion pyramid scheme, it proved to be the most embarrassing financial disaster in the country's history, and it exposed holes in a banking and financial system billed as one of the safest in the world.

For Tannenbaum's victims, the nightmare continued after the scheme collapsed, as liquidators, tax officials and criminal investigators demanded their pound of flesh. But Tannenbaum, now at large on Australia's Gold Coast, continues to live as if nothing happened"</comment>


Gizmochimp, Hacker News clone for gadgets - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmochimp.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm getting a 502 Bad Gateway at the moment, you may want to try and fix that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Error 502!

<comment><AUTHOR> I restarted the server. It's working now.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for Calendaring? - <AUTHOR> I am looking for a provider for calendaring, preferably with caldav.  I don't use google products other than basic android without google services.  I don't own any iDevices either.  I use fastmail for email but don't use email on phone and don't want access to email to be on phone and fastmail provides no way to differentiate access.<p>Are there any other providers you could recommend or think are great even if they don't meet my requirements. <comment><USER2> 2 common alternatives not mentioned are Outlook and Mozillas Lightning Calendar.

Mail.com have a calendar function. I dont use it so not sure the quality.

Or could you set up a second Fastmail account for your calendar only? That way you don't get emails on the phone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Microsoft Outlook

Rainlendar (All Platforms)

Thunderbird with Lightning (All Platforms)

Fastmail is okay.

</comment><comment><USER4> 30boxes.com seems nice?</comment>