Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3273111 <comment><USER2> The only counter-measure that works against polluting the polity with influence operations is earnestly educating people to be critical consumers of information. Why? Because one cannot empower government to counter-message influence operations without risking an abuse of power.

My son's middle school appears to be tackling this problem to some degree by teaching students to: (a) not accept 'facts' without multiple sources of information; (b) consider the perspective/bias of the story-teller in the sources you consume; and (c) understand that most messages are persuasion.

<comment><USER3> For the reasons you gave: as a litmus test for whether a politician is a statesman or a shill, I look at whether he/she supports public education or not.

<comment><USER4> Which do you think is more likely to develop students into citizens capable of independent thought:

a) Sitting at a desk. Not allowed to talk unless called upon. Exactly following a schedule determined by authority figures.

b) Being free to move about the room. Able to choose your activity with your peers.A constructivist or "discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction.

The first describes the typical public school. The second describes a Montessori school [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education)

Given the inertia of the system, it is unlikely that the public education system can be reformed from what it is. Why not support parents choosing a school based on what they consider best for their children as long as the schooling meets minimum standards? However, when politicians support this options, there are people that paint them as villains for "not supporting public education". Someone can support "public education" the concept of educating the public, and not support "public education" the system which is often driven by various special interest groups.

<comment><USER5> Allocate the same teacher/student ratio and randomize the students in a public school and at a private Montessori and get back to me with the data.

Most private schools do better only because they weed out the expensive problems and force them back to the public system. The moment you randomize the students, the private schools drop back to the mean (or, generally, worse).

I find this unfortunate, because education is in _dire_ need of some real, evidence-based, advances. We have a lot of new data about achievement and learning.

However, putting it to practice requires money, time and a _LOT_ of effort. And you will have to fight the parents, too.

<comment><USER6> > Most private schools do better only because they weed out the expensive > problems and force them back to the public system.

The single biggest factor is that private schools, as non-default choices, automatically filter for parental engagement in education, even before considering the filters they put in place in terms of admissions criteria.

Students with parents engaged in their education do better.

<comment><USER7> > Students with parents engaged in their education do better

IMHO this is the crucial thing. And it is one of the aspects of Montessori that some parents who are simply aspirational-consumers are a bit thrown by initially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad that someone of Schneier's reputation and ability is taking this issue seriously enough to at least co-author a paper on it. I know that the focus of this forum is technology news and whatever hackers find interesting, and I know (and have seen here) that the more political a particular post is, the more inevitable it becomes for the discourse to devolve into something non-constructive and toxic. At the same time, I strongly feel that as part of the community people who have designed and implemented the technologies that have had such an major impact on civil discourse and politics today, I find the reluctance to discuss and own up to the fact disappointing. Even the scientists behind the Manhattan Project felt and expressed some responsibility and remorse for the nuclear weapons that came about from their work.

<comment><USER9> I fear you will be disappointed...

Large parts of the tech community seem to not just be blind to the consequences of their work, but to openly embrace and nurture the destruction of the fabric of society.

This used to find voice in utopian visions of a sort of libertarian, meritocratic revival of democracy: bloggers replacing journalists, "makers", liquid democracy, etc.

There are two successful examples of this spirit I can think of: Wikipedia, and OSS.

Unfortunately, this movement also had/has a destructive streak. Partly because these new ideas had existing competitors that needed to be cut down to make room, and partly because they experienced opposition from existing players (sometimes only tangentially related) that quickly became branded as enemies.

Two sides of the same philosophy. Guess which one had more staying power? Just look at the fate of The Pirate Bay vs The Pirate Party to get an idea. Or take this quiz: (a) Name a website distributing scientific papers with no concern for copyright. (b) Name an Open Access journal.

With regard to the specific topic of the paper, namely _information_ (and political news specifically) those ideas of the citizen-blogger have actually disappeared so thoroughly, you are likely to have no idea what I'm referencing if you are under 30 years of age. And while those ideas were initially coupled with a disdain for established institutions and the press because it was a storyline in need of a villain, the ideas died yet the rot feasting on our sources of shared truth survived.

The target of all this destructive energy is, as a first approximation, the very concept of _trust_. Trust cannot be trusted is a sort-of mantra, that not only gives sense to what would otherwise just be existential dread aimlessly seeking escape in vandalism (4chan). It also makes you appear cool & in the know: "I wonder who paid for this article", "everybody knows a study with n=20000 is underpowered", "<X> wouldn't do <Y> unless <convoluted way to reduce all human activity to a profit motive>".

On rare occasions, this destructive mindset still has the spark of creativity: Bitcoin, for all its flaws, is (was?) somewhat impressive. Yet it was always rooted in this sort of cynicism that distrusts institutions and the power of humans to have any positive impact with anything but the tools of physics and math: to wit, the endless conspiracy theories around the FED, the infatuation with Gold and land, etc.

In the realm of politics, the destruction is just about total. Nothing of value was created. Meanwhile, the community gleefully watches the destruction of the free press, fine-tuning their adblockers because "information wants to be free", or because that newspaper whose articles they desperately want to read nonetheless made the fateful error of using the wrong JS framework, or something, but in any case, it's their fault if they can't survive. Plus they are just part of Soros' campaign anyway. Everybody knows that.

<comment><USER10> As a Bitcoin guy, I'm going to chime in there.

> Yet it was always rooted in this sort of cynicism that distrusts > institutions and the power of humans to have any positive impact with > anything but the tools of physics and math: to wit, the endless conspiracy > theories around the FED, the infatuation with Gold and land, etc.

Realism, not cynicism. The historical record shows that anyone with a printing press will abuse it to his own benefit. All central banks do this. Plenty of private banks prior to the Fed did it, albeit with government help via legal tender laws, sanctioned suspension of specie payments (breach of contract), and par laws.

Thus Bitcoin separates money and state and seeks to be a sound digital commodity.

<comment><USER11> Saying that trust can be abused and thus it should be eradicated entirely from social systems _is_ cynicism, not realism.

There's a spectrum of social system development with regards to trust that has yet to be fully explored - centralized/federated "trusted" authorities in the middle, Bitcoin and most blockchains/tokens to the left (i.e. no trust at all) and some other form of p2p money or credit to the right (i.e. p2p, completely decentralized trust).

That the Bitcoin community doesn't even recognize that an entire half of space for innovation exists is what makes this mindset "destructive."

edit: grammar

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There was one idea that came to mind when I read _The Second Half of Watergate Was Bigger, Worse, and Forgotten by the Public_ posted here 8 days ago [0][1]. The first part of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) requires corporations to keep accurate financial records in order to not be able to hide bribes [2]. If a corporation can be compelled to be truthful in their financial records, then why can't a news organization be compelled to be truthful when proclaiming to disseminate news? If the news organization still wanted to publish something inaccurate, then they could label it as satire, but at least they would have surrender the appearance of being truthful. I understand that there would be freedom-of-speech / first amendment implications, but isn't a public financial record a kind of speech and corporations are effectively being told how to say (be truthful) what they want to say (their finances)?

My idea definitely sounds a little far-fetched even to me, but I'd appreciate any input, additions, or criticism that anyone might have.

[0] [https://longreads.com/2018/11/20/the-second-half-of- watergat...](https://longreads.com/2018/11/20/the-second-half-of-watergate- was-bigger-worse-and-forgotten-by-the-public/)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18498796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18498796)

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

<comment><USER9> Among other things, this would open the door to the government demand access to the identity of whistleblowers.

It also doesn't actually address the problem. The news media, when properly defined, doesn't actually lie.

Now that statement needs some qualifications: by "news media" I'm referring to Fox News and everything better. Fox, being the worst case here, actually takes great care to label their primetime 360-minutes-hate as opinion. It's just very easy to rephrase a lie: "Is Obama a muslim, or even a vegetarian? These are questions many people are asking!".

It's infowars and the like where actual lying happens. But those programs could just as easily add such caveats. And the sort of campaign this paper mentions simply happens on anonymously registered domains with no business (or any) presence in the US, or entirely on social media.

Ultimately, the problem is people that want to indulge their fantasies, and want to be lied to. No sane person would watch a red-faced lunatic alternatively sell herbal remedies for athlete's foot and accuse Hillary Clinton of running a ring of pedophiles from a pizza place and consider it a quality news source.

<comment><USER12> Isn't the issue that sometimes Fox (and even the current Press secretary) will actually take Infowars content and rebadge it as news?

Just saying they can spout it as "opinion" is like allowing usurious click- wrap agreements - everyone will just click through because it's "all opinion all the time".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ya, i've been saying something like this for a while. China, for instance, is uniquely _in_ vulnerable to this sort of attack. Because the state is already in charge of censoring information, it is much more difficult to flood them with misinformation. It's one of the many reasons i'm concerned that models like Chinas will actually flourish more than they otherwise would in the coming years.

<comment><USER14> They may be less vulnerable to attacks from outsiders, but they are much more vulnerable to attacks from their own government. It's similar to totalitarian governments; they might keep organized crime low, but they expose people to far more crime from the government itself.

I would expect people in China and in the Chinese government to also be more vulnerable to misleading and suboptimal information, because there is a lack of competing ideas.

<comment><USER15> >They may be less vulnerable to attacks from outsiders, but they are much more vulnerable to attacks from their own government. It's similar to totalitarian governments

Interesting that you say that about China, because that was exactly Bruce Schneier's conclusion about the United States:

>Our research implies that insider attacks from within American politics can be more pernicious than attacks from other countries.

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/11/propaganda_an...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/11/propaganda_and_.html)

<comment><USER16> > Without any evidence whatsoever, he said that Democrats were trying to steal > the election through "FRAUD."

Well, wait a minute - both of those races had already been called in favor of the Republican candidate on the night of the election until boxes and boxes of mysteriously Democrat-leaning ballots were suddenly found the following day... I think that constitutes evidence, even if it's not conclusive.

<comment><USER14> For any set of boxes, there is a 50-50 chance that they will favor one or the other party. Given the geographic polarization of the parties, the boxes seem likely to heavily favor one or the other party. We can't distinguish the event from random chance, afaik, and therefore it's not evidence.

> mysteriously

Is there a basis for this word?

<comment><USER15> Seems the basis would be, that the new votes were highly un-representative of all the other votes previously tallied (majority Republican)

The parent comment probably disagrees with your assessment of 50/50.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Link to discussion on Bruce Schneier's blog: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/11/propaganda_an...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/11/propaganda_and_.html)

<comment><USER18> The comments on that blog post are examples of the problem. They're diving straight into disagreements about matters of fact (like whether a party cheated in a particular election, and whether both sides cheat).

The point is that we're not (no longer) disagreeing about values, but about the _facts,_ and that authoritarians are deliberately attempting to muddy the waters here. They're clearly succeeding, and the commenters seem to be distracted from that.

<comment><USER16> > examples of the problem

on the other hand, they both seem to come to the same conclusion: that we need our election machinery to be verifiably tamper-proof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I respect Schneier but this is basically 10x-ing the word count on Terry Tao's 2016 blog post:

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/06/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/it- ought-to-be-common-knowledge-that-donald-trump-is-not-fit-for-the-presidency- of-the-united-states-of-america/amp/)

Unacceptable to me that it wasn't referenced as it certainly made the rounds in security circles.

<comment><USER12> When I click through I get commentary about the 2016 election. Please update your link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It'd be interesting to see a formal threat model of a Democracy like we write such documents for our applications and protocols.

<comment><USER21> If you have a lot of know-how about these threat models, I'd highly encourage you to write one for democracy as an idea. I'd love to read it!

<comment><USER20> [https://github.com/mimoo/democracy_threat_model](https://github.com/mimoo/democracy_threat_model)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a huge flaw that this paper keeps referring to the "US" and its intentions, even explicitly distinguished from the FCC or its president in the blog entry linking the paper[1]. Baked into the examples used to illustrate its premise is a United States that is never specifically located or identified; it just makes appearances as "some Arizona Republicans" and "national security officials" and only intends to spread its "liberal and democratic values" with its "pro-freedom" bias.

The idea that Americans are now soaked in more or more vulnerable to intentional misdirection due to ideas flooding the internet from twitter and facebook is completely ahistorical. If anything, American "consensus" beliefs have always been dictated and enforced from above, and have never been a consensus.

I hope that he reads some Walter Lippmann before he continues to treat politics like a computer program. We are and have always been constantly under attacks from people who want to define the facts that we base our decisions on, including all parts of government. Additionally, those attackers do not always have bad intentions, and may be using deceptive simplifications in order to trick us into doing what they think is best _for us._

The evaluation of a flood of information coming from actors with a full range of motivations to manipulate that information is the basic dilemma of democracy. This paper itself is soaked in and re-enforces a bunch of questionable common knowledge, especially as it seems to be addressed to an American flag when only people are available to read it.

[1] [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/11/propaganda_an...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/11/propaganda_and_.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> We are strongly concerned with accuracy (correctness, completeness, consistency) on the network layers but I've been thinking that we need to apply the same emphasis to accuracy on the data layer. We'd never accept the data layer's error rate on the network layer.

Another way of looking at it: We do emphasize accuracy in data in business databases - again, we'd never accept the error rate common in 'general' information. Why don't we put the same emphasis on data elsewhere?

<comment><USER23> I think it depends on which "we" you're talking about! In many cases, "we" do value accurate information. I'm thinking not just of high-quality news organizations, but fact-checking sites like Snopes or Politifact -- both real treasures, in my opinion. However, if you cite either On The Internet, you'll often receive the response: "Pshh please. [Fact-checking site] is totally biased." This response is, in my opinion, (a) wrong, and (b) very often offered in bad faith -- an example of the very tactic discussed in the paper linked above -- but those features don't prevent it from short-circuiting the "error correction" you're seeking.

So, if enterprises like Snopes and Politifact don't work... how DO you establish some kind of shared understanding of the world for a very broad "we"? It's really frustrating!

<comment><USER24> > how DO you establish some kind of shared understanding of the world for a > very broad "we"?

I think one can't undo decades of living in a completely separate social millieu, even in the same city in the same generation, by pointing at a website. How much less so when people come from different parts of the country, or even neighbouring countries, or even are from different continents. It takes time, and patience, and a lot of getting it wrong and still not giving up.

It also helps to not drift apart in the first place. How many people are ignored or even mocked for being not so intelligent or other issues -- until they "become a problem", or rant at people on the bus, and then the other people can't figure out why they have no way to reach them, a person who they didn't even see until they became a problem. At that point it may or may not be possible anymore, but it didn't _begin_ at the point where it became too problematic for us to ignore.

Heck, how often do "stupid" people get gleefully blamed for being gullible and getting exploited? A lot of things that are shrugged off with "makes business sense" do hurt real people, pile on real bitterness onto a life that may already be hard enough. The bitterness doesn't disappear just because it's ignored or even censored, to the contrary.

I would say that we didn't lose goodwill and solidarity towards each other because of language, differing sets of agreed on facts, but we somehow shed our goodwill and solidarity, and then used language to try and cover it up. Now language is losing its power, facts cease to matter, wise or knowledgeable people command no respect -- but that may be more a symptom than a cause.

To put a sharper point on it: when clever slogans were still useful to get people in line and to exploit them systematically, the intelligentsia didn't exactly scream bloody murder and went on strike, it for the most part went along. So now factuality doesn't matter anymore, tribes and slogans do. Predictably, understandably so. This cannot be repaired without acknowledging intellectual dishonesty, and misdeeds against "the common man", something neither government or corporate or intellectual elites seem to be prepared to do in earnest.

> They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness.

\-- John Milton

Yet I can talk with a person and not be able to follow their argument at all, or flat out disagree with that they consider to be fact, but still know from their body language and past interactions that they have goodwill towards me. If I also feel goodwill towards them and they know that, we may not "learn" something from each other that day, but even then that conversations can be a pleasant experience that increases our familiarity and sympathy. If I just act standoff-ish until I'm convinced the other person is thinking all the right things, I'll never get anywhere.

Think how even animals of different species sometimes can form friendships and arrangements without exchanging a single abstract concept. Or how small kids that don't speak the same language might still play and build together just fine (the awkwardness and getting hung up on pointless stuff seems to come later in life), and how we learn language in the first place just based on some basic trust and being allowed to experiment. If you have the mutual goodwill, it's not complex, it happens "by itself". Without it, it gets complicated or even impossible. And I think it stands to reason that the stronger, wealthtier, more knowledgeable etc. party should always be expected to be more generous and more patient, and offer goodwill by default, even when its not reciprocated yet.

My 2 cents, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great model! Simple enough to understand, fits a lot of recent phenomena. Scary implications, but we should be able to respond effectively.

Unexpected but good to see Schneier doing this kind of work.

</comment><comment><USER26> I disagree, but I see the problems totally different. That is because I don't see the US as a democracy but as an oligarchy.

The whole problem with US implementation of democracy is that the actors are centralized around a system that encourages corruption. The corruption is due to the power and money that is governing politics.

And this again causes secrecy to hide the differences between the advertised politics and real practices. And to hide problems and responsibility within the political decisions.

The corruption and secrecy again causes the media to publish on actors in a very biased way. It is even seen as bad to be positive or unbiased on the policies or events. If something goes wrong it is always the other's fault.

The media earns now money by presenting the stories to support certain opinions and ideas. Not by presenting the complex and multifaceted reality. This is emphasized by the two party system. And sometimes also by the CIA propaganda system that is still active.

This goes so far that there is a lot of staging of the presentation of events. Which makes the news far more dramatic. But it also makes it fake, whether the story really happened or not. The media also tends to emphasize minor problems, just to trigger emotional reactions.

And then there is the problem of the over-militarization of the US government and its foreign policies. This is visible in the excessive amount of money going into this. And the huge amount of money lost in it. This gives the problem that the military and their corrupt sponsors rule the politics, instead of the people that are part of the democracy. It is also the reason why the military (&CIA) controls the media narrative on foreign politics so strongly.

The first step would be to get the money out of the politics. [http://represent.us](http://represent.us) has a good way of doing that.

The media circus can be stopped by allowing more factions/parties and different viewpoints simultaneously. But that means stepping away from the two-party idea. That way different opinions become less hostile against each other. Separate military propaganda from the news. Now it is completely mixed up, because the military don't want to be unmasked.

That is opposite of what the paper seems to be stating.

"Stable autocracies will have common knowledge over who is in charge and their associated ideological or policy goals". In Europe the democratic parties have clear ideologies and goals. In the US this is not so much.

In the US it is clear that democrats or republicans are in charge, but neither represent the people. Both represent the companies and organizations that pay them.

If you want people to get more informed and involved with democracy, you need to decentralize the democracy. Make local people's votes count. And give people more autocracy/ self responsibility. That works in countries like Switzerland. In the US there is also a lot corruption on local levels. Give the people power and knowledge to stop that! That is democracy.

A major problem in the US is that many want to control how others live. They want to control what drugs they use, or how they reproduce (or not). Who pays for who. Often mixed with people paying money to certain companies and monopolies. This is politics directly against self-responsibility. Instead the politics should be directed towards cooperation and build-up in a way that encourages self-responsibility.

This is also represented in the information. Spread information that is self- responsible and cooperative, instead of information that is controlling, biased and/or emotional. For example: Wikipedia (even with its errors) helps the people around the world understand most of the world. But certain biased information sources also give information of how other people may be thinking. That way we understand each other, by learning more.

This is also complex and multifaceted. But it is something that people are very much interested in dealing with themselves.

I do not have a good idea, how the excessive military expenses and its influences can be reduced.

<comment><USER27> Manufactured consent and money in politics are more like symptoms of a deeper problem of centralized wealth. As long as megacorps are allowed to exist and dominate markets and getting super rich in general is allowed, could there be enough competition and interest to pursue fairer distribution of power and wealth through democratic means? Probably not, everyone with some wealth and power would be against it. But this does happen. In some countries certain industries are very competitive and cause people to organize and lobby to protect competition and defend the industry from power grabs, not letting centralization of wealth to take its course.

So it's more like unrestricted predatory capitalism is what destroys all those democratic ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Are words like "epistemology" (or "philosophy") scary for American students (or teachers?). French and German kids have _philosophie_ or _Ethik_ from an early age.

</comment><comment><USER29> The confidence attack has a patch: drop electronic voting.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know why nbp234's comment with the link to Bruce Schneier's blog is dead, but I think it is pretty valuable, so I'll post it again: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/11/propaganda_an...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/11/propaganda_and_.html)

<comment><USER30> Meta: if a post is dead due to flagging / banning, but you find it valuable, you can "vouch" for it. With several (perhaps one?) users vouching, the post is back from dead.

Click on the "30 minutes ago" link next to a dead post's author name to view this individual post, and now a "vouch" link should be available. Click it to perform _vouching_ , done.

This function not available for some users, depending on karma threshold and perhaps other factors.

<comment><USER31> I've never vouched for a post and had it not come back so I think when the account is shadow-banned at least it only takes one vote. I also very rarely vouch for it's possible there are additional factors at play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ironic considering SSRN is owned by Elsevier, which is renown for trying to limit/control information for profit.

It even published fake journals to spread "fake news" ( aka ads ) for the pharmaceutical industry.

"The company has fought legislation designed to open up academic research, offered scholars money to file positive reviews, sued libraries for oversharing, and allegedly published fake journals on behalf of the pharmaceuticals industry."

[https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/when- the...](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/when-the-rebel- alliance-sells-out)

</comment><comment><USER33> Democracy is doomed, but not because of advanced attacks. Autocracy/nationalism/monarchy/etc are just the natural order of human societies. We've had a good run, but so did the Greeks and Romans.

<comment><USER34> Isn't nationalism orthogonal to democracy? How are they opposed?

<comment><USER35> It's sort of like gimbal lock: when a particular social movement becomes so pervasive and powerful the mechanisms of government become dangerously aligned and you lose the ability of the political system to perform an important function, namely defend itself and minorities from the tyranny of the majority. Remember, part of the design of separation of powers is that institutions must retain the ability _and_ motivation to compete for power. If the motivation is gone the ability becomes at risk--either by atrophy or by one institution making power grabs that go unchallenged by others institutions or by the people. Discord is, to an extent, a feature, not a bug.

Hugo Chavez was a nationalist that was popularly and fairly elected multiple times until, eventually, the elections weren't actually fair anymore and the institutions of government were irreparably corrupt.

Nationalist movements aren't the only the way this can naturally occur, but it's perhaps the most common in the past two centuries.

<comment><USER36> Your comment reminds me of Machiavelli's work "Discourses on Livy" in which he writes, among other things, that discord (between the nobility and the common people) produced the liberty enjoyed by the Roman Republic. Machiavelli's views on republicanism are very insightful, in my opinion, and offer an understanding of democratic government that may be more prospective of being actualized than what appears to be proposed in much of today's discourse on democracy.

By the way, I came across one of your HN comments in the past ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18127353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18127353)) and immediately was impressed by your thinking. Ever since, I look forward to seeing your comments on HN. If you are interested, I would be greatly interested in hearing more of your thoughts expressed in the aforementioned comment of yours. My email is njrc900[at]gmail[dot]com</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Test if your site runs on HTTP/2 - <AUTHOR> http://http2check.me <comment><USER2> Cool! Would love to see the source. Would you be willing to post it to GitHub or somewhere else?</comment>


SEYMOUR CRAY, FATHER OF THE SUPERCOMPUTER - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2019/01/15/seymour-cray-father-of-the-supercomputer/ <comment><USER2> GOOD ARTICLE, THANK YOU FOR POSTING IT.</comment>


Resources for monitoring the swine flu epidemic - <AUTHOR> http://tedchris.posterous.com/insightful-resources-for-monitoring-the-swine

<comment><USER2> Is it really a mystery as to why the flu is more deadly in Mexico than in the US? Have factors such as quality of medical care been taken into account yet?

<comment><USER3> In Mexico you can buy antibiotics over the counter without any prescription. I suspect the victims just tried to cure themselves without seeing a physician.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Balance between discovering and producing - <AUTHOR>

I'm having problems finding a reasonable balance between discovering and learning new things in the areas of programming, and just producing code now on my projects. I feel this is a problem with a lot of people that I meet as they tend to fall into either category but not both.
What are some techniques you use to fit both of these things into your life?
Background: I have a full-time job as a developer as well, but my background is in science and engineering so I'm constantly starving to learn and play around with new things.
TL;DR: Stuck between wanting to learn and wanting to produce. Halp! <comment><USER2> It _might_ mean you're not working at a high enough level of abstraction. If a task takes, say, 5 minutes, then it's pretty easy to get it done without distraction. If it takes considerably longer (and it's not very novel) then you're more likely to succumb. So, one thing you can do is try to develop better abstractions (either by learning to use or build better tools).

In short, you want to put an upper bound on the amount of time you spend discovering and a lower bound on the amount of time you spend producing. So I suggest using your science dalliance to learn how to make your engineering efforts take less time. When the engineering time is suitably bounded, then you can use you broaden the scientific exploration a bit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Decide what seems like a reasonable ratio for your given situation, and budget time for each appropriately. Use the Pomodoro as a unit, if that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I feel guilty when I'm not producing code and simply learning for the sake of it. There is no good ratio if I'm not sure what I'm studying can be applied to what I'm producing.

Also looking into Pomodoro (<http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/>)

<comment><USER3> I'm a firm believer in the value of learning for learning's sake, so I don't worry if the things I am learning can be directly applied to what I am producing at the moment-- as long as I am producing at the moment.

What's your general situation? Self-employed? In control of your schedule? If so, why not start with 7.5 hours a day on production, and half an hour a day of research/playing. Give that a couple weeks, and adjust if necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> I work at beyond full time at a start-up cranking out code and putting out fires (~10am-7pm+). Then I come home and crank out more code on a project I'm working on (~7pm-1am+).

There are just a ton of things to research/play nowadays. I feel like I'm constantly playing catch-up with things I need and want to know.

Do people get to play with new tech at work? Should I be pushing for more hours to try something new at work?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any good service for document management? - <AUTHOR>

My new project needs document management, to allow customers to create documents and have the changes to those documents registered with an audit trail, and then have them shareable (but uneditable)
Obviously solutions like Google Docs & Dropbox exist, but this will be a service site with lots of users who each need there own 'workspace' so I need it to all be contained within our interface.
Do any good services, ideally with a REST type API exist for DMS? <comment><USER2> SharePoint from Microsoft offers all that features. They have also cloud services like OneSpacePro, Office365 for business. You can access the data via WebDAV ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV) ) and API.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would look into Box.com which has been working to differentiate itself as being able to have audit logs, be things like HIPAA compliant, etc. They also had robust APIs last time I looked. There's also always AWS S3+AMI if you're willing to do more of the heavy lifting in terms of interface.</comment>


Obama to Help Push for Open Market for Cable Set-Top Boxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/us/politics/obama-set-top-boxes.html <comment><USER2> When was the last time openness as a technical issue was addressed at the level of the President?</comment>


I Am Bradley Manning - <AUTHOR> http://iam.bradleymanning.org/

<comment><USER3> 1\. I like how they attack the strawman with their "aiding the enemy" means "the public is the enemy?!?" claim. They were suspiciously quiet about the news OBL (presumably an enemy) had information leaked by Pfc. Manning.

But I suppose propaganda techniques are only wrong when it's the government or McDonald's, eh?

2\. Manning has _explicitly_ been removed from death penalty consideration earlier in the trial process. The prosecutor had to make that declaration already, so it's not something they can back out of. But I guess lies are only wrong when said by the government?

3\. I'm not so sure that they would _want_ him to take credit for the tens of thousands of persons killed in the aggregate from Arab Spring uprisings. Even if we consider the formation of democracies a benefit worth the price, that same exact logic would also justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq...

3a. "There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information...". Contrast with "The information that Bradley gave to the public has been a catalyst for pro-democracy movements in the Arab world...".

Alright guys, either have the cake, or eat the cake. If he truly catalyzed the Arab Spring then some number of persons died as a result of the leaked information. If no one died because of information he leaked then why try to claim credit for those uprisings?

<comment><USER4> 800 people died in Egypt, 300 in Tunisia, 8 in Algeria, 120 in Bahrain

To put this into context, over 2000 people died in Iraq _in only the last month_. This is years after the war being 'over' and many more years after mission accomplished, and the monthly death total is still greater than the net total of the Arab Spring revolutions

You _can 't compare_ Iraq to the Arab spring nations that democratized peacefully. You can't even compre Iraq to the Arab Spring countries that democratized via conflict - 25,000 in Lybia, 90,000 in Syria so far.

 _Over six hundred thousand people_ died in Iraq and the war completely destabilized the region. We are only beginning to understand the effects of the Shi'a awakening in the Middle East. Iran was essentially handed an enlarged sphere of influence courtesy of the USA. The rest of the Arab world will achieve a much better end result at a scale that is an order of magnitude lower in deaths.

There is also the fact that the people who die in handovers in Algiers, Tunis or Cairo are giving their lives to a cause they believe in. 90% of the people who died in Iraq didn't get that choice - they were shot at and blown up as they went to the market, dropped their kids of at school and attempted to make a life for themselves.

The Arab spring countries were stuck and they were only getting out of their situation in a tough way. That is why there has been a status quo in the region for so long - the cold war put a lid on it but it was always simmering. If you ask them which prescription they prefer - the American invasion or the America document leak, I know which way 100% of them are going to go.

The treatment of Manning was so poor[1], that Obama's own white house checked with the Pentagon to make sure what they were doing was legal (keeping him in solitary, naked for months). See what Amnesty and others had to say:

[http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/us-accused- inhuma...](http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/us-accused-inhumane- treatment-over-wikileaks-soldier-case-2011-01-24)

see also 'What did Bradely Manning experience':

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/05/extreme- sol...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/05/extreme-solitary- confinement-what-did-bradley-manning-experience.html)

I know the reason why they put him through that - it is because Manning was expecting life in prison or to be executed for what he did. He was smiling as he was picked up at his FOB in Iraq, and that must have frustrated the military to know this guy had the balls to stand up to them and not cower when caught.

All of the fear mongering about the damage caused by Mannings leaks (the government knew what would leak before Wikileaks released it since WL had sat on it for a while) turned out to be completely false. The USA is still a superpower, diplomats are still diplomats and it didn't result in a terrorist attack, or worse. The same playbook is being used against Snowden - attack the personal character of the leaker to distract from the information (this has happen with Assange, Manning and now Snowden) and label him a traitor who is aiding the enemy (the charge of aiding the enemy against Manning is completely ludicrous and surreal. UBL also had copies of the NY Times, he also had pornography).

IMO 'aiding the enemy' is one of those bullshit catch-all laws that is widely interpreted just like 'money laundering' and 'tax evasion' \- to be used when you want to jail someone but don't have much else. Or even better, an extra few charges and 20 year in sentencing guideline that can be plead down and avoid a trial (since that is what happens in 90% of federal trials - <USER2> don't even make the court, the prosecutors stack the charges and overwhelm the defense, having them plead down to what appears as a good deal). 'Aiding the enemy' doesn't actually require any actual evidence of direct aid to the enemy or the enemy receiving a benefit.

[1] I don't know how you don't mention the treatment of Manning. It was a major international news item for months, with most official government press conferences being tied up around questions of his treatment, a lot of international bodies lobbying the US government to do something about it, other foreign leaders speaking up about it, etc.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad you think the war in Iraq was bad, because so do I.

But why would it be OK for someone to have a hand in 116,000+ deaths for democracy but not be OK to have a hand in 600,000+? There's no good answer to this question, which is why I don't see why Manning would want to be known as the instigator of it all.

The rest of your points, even if we simply specify them as true, don't really explain why Manning's own supporters engage in lies and propaganda. So while it's nice to see them again after so long, we pretty much do already know about those claims.

E.g. the maltreatment; the trial judge agrees with you and Amnesty International, so why was that not put on the website? At least that would have been truthful. I would think it would also further the cause of the site in getting the "aiding the enemy" charge dropped, if that's really what they were about.

> I know the reason why they put him through that - it is because Manning was > expecting life in prison or to be executed for what he did.

If what you say is true, then the military would also have mistreated Sgt. Bales, but they didn't. Murder is a capital offense too, in the military.

On the other hand, Manning's own lawyer said that Manning "joked" about killing himself, which is typically a fairly solid plan for landing yourself on Prevention of Suicide Watch status in a military prison. Doesn't excuse keeping him in that status after his military psychiatrist deemed him not a suicide risk, which is why the judge reduced his sentence, but nor does it require some massive conspiracy to explain his treatment.

So, if _I_ were a supporter of Manning I wouldn't even worry a bit about the charge of "aiding the enemy", which is almost trivially proven by the prosecution given the way the UCMJ is written. All they really have to prove is that there exists at least one classified document that Manning felt would be posted to the Internet by WikiLeaks, and that there exists at least one enemy of the U.S. with direct or indirect access to WikiLeaks.

Instead his supporters should focus on getting his eventual sentence reduced (though Manning himself is doing far better to help his cause than his supporters are, IMHO).

<comment><USER5> _But why would it be OK for someone to have a hand in 116,000+ deaths for democracy but not be OK to have a hand in 600,000+? There 's no good answer to this question, which is why I don't see why Manning would want to be known as the instigator of it all._

"have a hand" is a little too ambiguous don't you think? There is a significant moral difference between "providing information" (what Manning did), and "invading a sovereign state using fairly indiscriminate bombing after a propaganda campaign about WMDs" (what the coalition forces did)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i hope he gets the prize, he will be the first winner jailed by another peace prize winner, fucking hilarious.

<comment><USER7> probably the last Peace prize awarded under an a priori illusion.

<comment><USER8> How delightfully optimistic!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> imho, great video, but please change the initial video screenshot.

The pre-play screenshot seems a bit angry, and Im note sure how it ties in? In contrast, the content of the video I think was on-target, and thought provoking.

A shot of manning being 'escorted' to trial, or just his face would be more suitable I think.

or you could lead with the text slide "Is truth the Enemy? ..".. which is impactful.

Thanks for doing this!

</comment><comment><USER10> FWIW I do believe Bradley Manning deserves moral and legal support. But this video is both propagandistic and vague. Like, except for 3 or 4 Hollywood celebrities, who are these people? And are they doing more than making a video?

</comment><comment><USER11> These people clearly missed the point of Manning's leaks.

Its like how Christians worship Jesus instead of God. The point of the leaks was to shed light on the atrocities committed by the government not so that Manning is glorified into some sort of saint. I mean, I'm all for doing that- but wtf is the point when the same atrocities will happen again on some other day. You can argue that so that future leakers will get protection- well let me remind you there won't be any future leakers present anyway. The government will certainly start to smarten up about who they choose that pulls the trigger.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nobel Peace Prize nominee? Citation? Nobel Laureates are expressly prohibited from talking about the nomination process until 50 years after the fact.

<comment><USER13> [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57572488/bradley- manning...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57572488/bradley-manning- malala-among-nobel-peace-prize-nominees/)

<comment><USER12> Ah ok. That's very misleading. This is a pretty open call for nominations from the public. The actual people selected from that group that Laureates vote on is kept secret.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This issue is unifying a lot of people

</comment><comment><USER15> Click bait title -1

<comment><USER16> It's the name of the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The site features another falsehood: "There is no evidence that anyone died as a result of the leaked information"

Not true. The cables contained the actual names of Afghans who helped us fight the Taliban. Once their names were exposed, unredacted, via the Wikileaks calbes, "punishment" and death -- courtesy of the ascendant Taliban leaders -- came quickly.

[http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/28/murphy- rides-...](http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/28/murphy-rides-again/)

Wretchard continues his story:

"Yet the dead are the lucky ones. The more unfortunate may wind up in a torture chamber similar to one found by Coldstream Guards. It features such amenities as chains to hang prisoners from walls. Not that the inmates would want to walk on the floor: that features broken glass. And there is limb amputation, kneecapping with an electric drill, eye gouging, bone-breaking or ritual rape to smash the will. Where the offender is not himself available punishment will be visited on his relatives."

No, the antics of Manning and Assange were not without bad consequences.

<comment><USER18> This is a troll. I like to look at contrarian evidence, so I read the article. It contains zero evidence and is just a creepy piece of fantasy writing.

Perhaps evidence does exist, but odds are we'd have heard about it by now, given how hard it's been sought (presumably by people who don't lack for media access).

<comment><USER19> "Perhaps evidence does exist, but odds are we'd have heard about it by now"

But that depends on how you -- and others -- filter your news sources. Many on one side of the political spectrum have no clue how far the IRS over-reached when investigating political enemies ... and they won't know, because they trust their sources of news and unfortunately don't look for contrarian viewpoints like you do.

(btw: I'm not blaming you of the above; you've proven you seek diverse sources of information)</comment></comment></comment>


Ancient Greek Scroll's Hidden Contents Revealed Through Infrared Imaging - how-about-this https://www.npr.org/2019/10/04/767309531/ancient-greek-scrolls-hidden-contents-revealed-through-infrared-imaging <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if IR imaging can be used to read the books burned in 1944 by the German army at the Krasiński Library in Warsaw [1].

Many manuscripts among them were never reproduced. A random example: Jan Ostroróg's chess primer written between 1602 and 1610, where he supposedly invented the algebraic notation (a-h 1-8) over a hundred years before Philipp Stamma, to whom it is usually credited [2, in Polish].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_book_urn.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_book_urn.jpg) [2] [https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Encyklopedia_staropolska/Szac...](https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Encyklopedia_staropolska/Szachy)

<comment><USER2> Magically read the pile of dust with IR? Doubt that.

<comment><USER3> The danger of these things happening (could just be a regular fire) are why _today_ every library with unique works should immediately copy them. Just take pictures of every page, put them on the internet.

Before today maybe you could take pictures. But they want to control them, or they have too many to get around to it. There's no excuse for not taking pics today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wasn't this the premise of a Gene Wolf novel?</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, http://conweets.com - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> First, lose the ornamental display font you've set all your copy in. I almost gave up reading. Setting type in apps like this is a solved problem. Google [font stack], pick a conservative one, and use it. If you want to play with fonts, do it in your headers.

Second, you should know that this has been done before, most notably probably by Bettween, which ultimately failed. Do people really have the problem of tracking conversations on Twitter?

Note that Bettween had a pretty effective marketing tactic that you could steal: finding really interesting conversations and promoting them, so that their site functioned both as a sort of Twitter aggregator (key function of an aggregator that you don't have: most interesting stuff bubbles to front page) _and_ as a vector for sharing conversations in places like HN, which spread the Bettween app around.

Your super-effective caching engine, described with words like "query" and "request" and "server" and "cache", is not relevant to your users. Like, at all. Try to develop an allergy to describing technology. If the benefit of some technical feature you build is "speed", then just say your site is super- fast. Don't waste time justifying it. Does that turn a whole paragraph into a 5 word sentence? GOOD. Users don't like reading your marketing copy.

<comment><USER3> > Your super-effective caching engine, described with words like "query" and > "request" and "server" and "cache", is not relevant to your users. Like, at > all.

I agree totally. In my marketing copy on LinkPeek I attempted really hard to stay away from the term API even though that is what the service is. Basically you must describe the product like your real customers would describe it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The front page should really tell me something about your startup. I can not figure out what you do until I click on about-us.

Please if you are going to have a home page, put something there other than "connect with twitter". Explain to me what you do in a sentence or two. Not a paragraph. This can be the difference between me (not clicking) and someone else (clicking) who end up (not) using your service.

<comment><USER5> I very much second this. I also found it difficult to understand what Contweets are doing - unfortunately reading the About page didn't make me much wiser either. Without knowing what to expect, I'd guess that most people wouldn't sign up.

I think a simple tagline would help a lot. Something like "Who tweets who?" or "Look who's tweeting now".

One of the sentences from the About page would actually make a pretty good headline: "a single conversation doesn't always tell the entire story".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not a startup, this is a tool. Maybe you can make a bit of side-income from ads, but don't expect this to become a company on its own.

Problems:

\- Don't use buttons that look so 'bubbly'

\- Bad colour scheme

\- There are two different Facebook share buttons

\- The copy on the about page is terribly written

\- On the conversation page, I have to click 'track new conversation' to start fresh; big problem when there aren't any results, I'm essentially stranded with no 'obvious' action

\- If I track @blah and @bleh, don't put me there under 'You', it's totally irrelevant to the conversation

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, more of tool than a startup. Working on other suggestions. Thanks a ton.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your purpose is not clearly stated, or I am an idiot for not understanding.

I would use the following:

conweets

Track twitter conversations.

 a short (3 sentences or less) story on how or why to use this service. blah blah ect. If you are interested click the link below to continue: twitter oath here.

BTW how are you planning on monetizing this? Making money and becoming sustainable is my first goal when building new startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sorry for terming at as a startup, I think its more of a tool. Although, we are looking to increase its scope by adding more features like tracking all the conversation of a single user.

I am working on making "what it does" more clear. Its certainly not stated clearly. Thanks for the advice

If you have a plan or suggestion about other features, do let me know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> the ad placements really take away from the experience you're creating. build a great product people come to use, then figure out how to incorporate advertising.

extra thought: you have the luxury of any monetization approach you'd like -- don't feel trapped by typical display units.

<comment><AUTHOR> We really don't have any other way of monetizing this right now and need to cover up initial costs, hence the ads. We have tried to keep the ads to a minimum apart from that one big banner ad.

<comment><USER7> Understandable, my advice is just to be mindful about the trade-offs between the degradation of the user experience and short-term revenues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clickable: <http://conweets.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you try it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The nice feature would be when I choose one friend and then the app will show me longest conversations with somebody.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice idea. Lets see if we can work out something interesting out of this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have no clue what this does.

On the other hand, I don't think this is a startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. More of a tool than a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> very neat, haven't seen it done this way before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

<comment><USER11> what's the setup btw.? Ruby on rails, php?

<comment><AUTHOR> PHP with MongoDB as the dbms

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> comic sans? srsly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, where did you see the use of comic sans?

<comment><USER12> that weird font on the frontpage tweets

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't comic sans. It was Calibri. I changed it to Helvetica now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Chrome for Mac gets Canary build - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2011/05/adding-more-yellow-to-mac-color-scheme.html

<comment><USER2> Feels like they're providing canary builds in a backwards order. First Windows, now Mac, and hopefully Linux soon. Seems like Linux users would be the most tolerant of failures and most likely to report issues accurately. Maybe Chrome has some awesome auto-error-reporting that I'm not aware of and they're just targeting market share?

<comment><USER3> I would say that their metrics are more likely to show the majority of dev- channel users are on Windows, purely because of volume.

Might be a smaller fraction than Linux users, but the actual figure would be larger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now I'm running Chrome 13. Google lets you run the Canary build along with another version of Chrome, just in case you find yourself with a bad update. Firefox sorely needs this feature.

<comment><USER5> Firefox nightly updates pretty much never hurt your data and very rarely are broken significantly enough that you can't use them for your daily work. I haven't had to revert more than two or three times in the last 5 years because of nightly bustage.

If you're really that concerned, just create a second profile and shortcut to Firefox with the -P "profilename" option and you're all set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great--they should fix Linux Chrome's full-screen address-bar issue now.</comment>


Going Dutch - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Some of the symbolism is a bit extreme but overall it's a pretty good overview of life in the Netherlands. There is a level of comfort here that I haven't experienced anywhere else however that comfort has both positive and negative consequences. This is the only article I've read that touches on that aspect of life here. And I'm glad he mentioned the lack of anything open 24h a day and rarely past 6 (some grocery stores are open until 10). It's madness!

By the way, if you're interested in the history of the Netherlands, there's a dutch movie coming out later this year about the flood of 1953: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230194/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953>

<comment><USER3> I lived in rural Japan last year, and had similar experiences with stores being open or lack thereof. There were three restaurants and two bars. One restaurant never opened for dinner, another was run by a family, was closed at 8PM and was closed on Sundays, the third was run by one woman and was closed for dinner on weekends and also tuesdays. One of the bars' closing schedule involved being closed on the third Sunday of each month. Grocery stores closed by 8.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how things must have been to live 50 years ago, and how much we've come to take (this very limited sense of) openness for granted.

<comment><USER4> That's how it is in rural America (Midwest, the South) also.

You need a large population to support 24 hour consumerism.

<comment><USER5> In the Netherlands it's not a matter of population -- shops are not allowed to be open outside the regulated hours. I believe the law was introduced a few decades ago in order to protect the mom and pop stores (a misguided attempt to put mom and pop stores on equal footing with larger businesses. If the mom and pop store can't afford to stay open at night then nobody is allowed to. Because that's "fair".)

Since gas stations have permission to stay open around the clock they're used to get emergency food. You can also get food delivered on Sundays and in the middle of the night, so it's not so bad.

<comment><USER6> >If the mom and pop store can't afford to stay open at night then nobody is allowed to. Because that's "fair".

Any time I finding appealing stories of the allegedly comfortable northwest European life, I just remind myself of things like this.

<comment><USER7> ... On the other hand, a lot of the appeal in such a life is in the fact there are still lots of unique mom and pop stores, often with generations of history, still in existence...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ironically The Netherlands was meant to be the model for the USA, with all power local to the states and a stadhouder in Washington to manage things. Somehow the English model of land holding lords and a king in his white castle won out.

</comment><comment><USER9> Speaking only for myself as a US citizen, I'm proud of the fact that the US has led the world in per capita income the last few decades. For a country our size to consistently be number 1 or near the top (depending on who's doing the analysis) is pretty amazing. I think there's room in the world for a country with an ethic that favors aggregate production. Why does everyone have to be the same?

People are free to move to a country with a value system that's more closely aligned with their own, e.g., one that seeks to flatten wealth disparities. But that's not what people want, it seems. A lot of people feel a strong impulse to convince others that their value system is the best.

<comment><USER10> > I'm proud of the fact that the US has led the world in per capita income the > last few decades

Huh? Aren't they on par with countries like the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, etc?

<comment><USER11> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\)_per_capita)

actually quite a few spots behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A Dutchman replies:

[http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=8a80f624-92a7-...](http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=8a80f624-92a7-4022-acbe-3912b5be0d09)

The NYT article doesn't make any mention of the fact that emigration from the Netherlands in 2004 was the highest since 1954. This makes me wonder if things are really as wonderful there as the article claims, although it does a pretty good job of pointing out the pros and cons.

<comment><USER13> "Dissident voices are ruled out of order and successfully demonized (Pim Fortuyn), killed (Theo van Gogh) or face such severe threats to their security that they are forced to emigrate, as in the case of Somali-born politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who violated the Dutch norms of "consensus" by insisting on publicly discussing female genital mutilation; honor violence; honor killings; and forced marriages."

The author conflates many issues here. Most people disagreed with Fortuyn because he was a right-wing populist who managed to form a fringe party that consisted of sorry losers. The guy himself was intelligent, witty and utterly narcissistic. He was like a character in Oscar Wilde's plays who had a bon mot for everything and solutions for nothing. Not the kind of person who should have political power.

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

<comment><USER14> No, the author doesn't conflate anything. Yes, the people mentioned differ in many ways: gender, political views, popular image... But they do have something in common: they vocally attacked Islamic practices and were punished.

<comment><USER15> Yes, because the idiotic actions of crazy individuals are totally the responsibility of all people in a society.

Have you repented for the murder of JFK, Lincoln and some school personnel in San Diego (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Ann_Spencer>) yet?

<comment><USER14> I don't know exactly why people downvoted you (I didn't), but guess it's because you attacked factual statements with emotional statements.

<comment><USER15> My tone was a bit overly confrontational I think, for which I apologize.

But I do think the analogy holds. Theo van Gogh was indeed killed for his anti-Islam statements, but by a disturbed individual who had hoped to solve the situation that way. It only made it worse, of course.

The murder of Pim Fortuyn follows more or less the same pattern. Killed by a disturbed individual that figured that was the only way to stop him.

Fortuyn especially had a relatively large following among the Dutch. I don't think "punished" is the right word for it, since it implies that there is any legitimacy to their murders, or even sanctioned by the populace, which is simply not the case.

<comment><USER14> If in a certain country vocal criticism of a certain ideology is frequently met with punishment, this fact seems informative to me regardless of whether the punishment was democratically sanctioned by the majority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To think that the social welfare state is a natural outgrowth of churches setting up schools and hospitals is completely ridiculous. The two things couldn't be more opposite. Social welfare emerges as a result of the collapse of Christianity in a society. The Dutch will talk about how they don't think anyone should be without health care, but if they saw someone in need they wouldn't help them. I don't know which comes first, but people who believe in social welfare seem to believe they have no personal responsibility to help those in need. Look at the average giving of the Dutch or someone like Joe Biden who while talking constantly about compassion gave an average of $369 per year for the last decade. Social welfare leads to an almost complete lack of the personal compassion that is at the heart of Christianity.

<comment><USER17> To believe in social welfare _is_ to acknowledge that everyone has a responsibility to help those in need, and that the state should enforce that responsibility.

<comment><USER18> That's true only if you believe that what the state does is necessarily and only helpful. (There are other requirements as well, but I'm limiting myself to two of the more obvious problems.)

Govt help programs, at least in the US, are aimed more at benefitting middle class providers than the poor who are supposedly the beneficiaries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the sort of thing that people can argue endlessly, and ultimately, unproductively about.

<comment><USER20> It's true that these arguments do seem to go on forever and very rarely does someone change their viewpoint based on these discussions. But debates on the value of incentives, the role of government and charity, and efficient resource allocation are important topics citizens would be wise not to avoid.

<comment><USER19> Avoiding them here doesn't mean avoiding them entirely.

<comment><USER2> Where best to have them then?

<comment><USER19> That's yours to figure out. The internet is full of places for people to talk about politics and economics, and has a relative paucity of places with good conversations about hacking and startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ezra Klein points out that even though the author of "Going Dutch" describes "a cultural tendency not to stand out or excel...the very antithesis of the American ideal of upward mobility", if you compare actual statistics, the US has less economic mobility (as measured by the relationship between parents' and childrens' income) than many other industrialized nations.

[http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=0...](http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=05&year=2009&base_name=is_europe_really_have_less_upw)</comment>


So you want to write a package manager (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sdboyer/so-you-want-to-write-a-package-manager-4ae9c17d9527 <comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion from 2 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11088125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11088125) (108 comments)</comment>