Hidden Fortunes of Chinese Leaders - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen-jiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Well I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm surprised that in a centrally-managed, state-controlled, corporatist economic system, the family of the most powerful individual in the nation would have managed to amass great personal wealth. That just runs counter to all of my instincts, and if these stories are true, it would really be the first time this sort of thing happened throughout history.

I'm shocked, really. I would have thought the People's Republic of China is above this sort of thing.

<comment><USER3> Why are you surprised? communist/socialists/welfare state nations have always tended more towards dynasty type dictatorships. Eg: North Korea, Gulf Countries etc.

Freebies, pocket change welfare schemes launched by the government is basically a token bribe given to the public to just shut up, while the leaders are busy in their corrupt practices.

<comment><USER4> Poe's law. [0]

I'm pretty sure he was being ironic.

[0] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law>

<comment><USER5> My contextual parser detected sarcasm, not irony.

<comment><USER6> Our word irony comes originally from the greek word 'eironeia', which was typically used of someone pretending to be naive or ignorant (e.g. Socrates).

More recently, it's split into a number of different meanings, including dramatic and situational, but it is commonly used in modern times to refer to a situation where the speaker means something other than what they say by their utterance.

In both this more recent meaning, and in the older greek sense of 'feigning of ignorance', the comment by acslater00 was ironic.

<comment><USER7> <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony?s=t> is informative:

> Irony, sarcasm, satire indicate mockery of something or someone. The > essential feature of irony is the indirect presentation of a contradiction > between an action or expression and the context in which it occurs. In the > figure of speech, emphasis is placed on the opposition between the literal > and intended meaning of a statement; one thing is said and its opposite > implied, as in the comment, "Beautiful weather, isn't it?" made when it is > raining or nasty. Ironic literature exploits, in addition to the rhetorical > figure, such devices as character development, situation, and plot to stress > the paradoxical nature of reality or the contrast between an ideal and > actual condition, set of circumstances, etc., frequently in such a way as to > stress the absurdity present in the contradiction between substance and > form.

> _Irony differs from sarcasm in greater subtlety and wit. In sarcasm ridicule > or mockery is used harshly, often crudely and contemptuously, for > destructive purposes._

> It may be used in an indirect manner, and have the form of irony, as in > "What a fine musician you turned out to be!" or it may be used in the form > of a direct statement, "You couldn't play one piece correctly if you had two > assistants." The distinctive quality of sarcasm is present in the spoken > word and manifested chiefly by vocal inflection, whereas satire and irony, > arising originally as literary and rhetorical forms, are exhibited in the > organization or structuring of either language or literary material. Satire > usually implies the use of irony or sarcasm for censorious or critical > purposes and is often directed at public figures or institutions, > conventional behavior, political situations, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Elizabethan courtiers hid many of their assets behind nominees. If Chinese leaders are also using nominees who aren't family members (I don't see why they wouldn't), the fortunes they control could be a lot bigger than the NYT can discover.

<comment><USER9> Indian leaders are known to hide their illegitimate wealth and other assets behind nominees or shell companies.

Recently, anti-corruption crusaders and media have unearthed some massive hidden fortunes.

[http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost- blogs/india/...](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost- blogs/india/india-corruption-bipartisan-gadkari)

<comment><USER3> What the anti corruption crusaders are likely to unearth might be a very tiny fraction of tiny fractions of illegitimate wealth. They can do nothing as activists themselves. The financial and other powers these people are too powerful to bring them down. The only other way is to go the political route which Arvind Kejriwal is doing now, but we already know to do anything big in politics you will likely not be able to do it, unless you are corrupt yourself and allow donations from other shady sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's rare to see successive and extensive news coverage of corruption among major Chinese Communist Party leaders, and there's been 3 this year already: Bo Xilai in March, Xi Jinping in June, and now Wen Jiabao.

This year's unusual because 7 major members of the Politburo Standing Committee are stepping down and their replacements will be selected at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is the reason the dueling political factions are aggressively ousting eachother, or else stories about corruption would never have made it to major media outlets.

The Congress was originally scheduled to commence November 4th (or sometime just before the US presidential elections) but was suddenly changed to November 8th. I don't think there's been official commentary on the last minute date change, but it's pretty obvious the Chinese party leaders want to know who's going to be the next US president first so they could "adjust" the makeup of of the Chinese political body accordingly.

I'm impressed by Bloomberg's and NYT's coverage. There's so much stuff that gets suppressed, even when tidbits of stories go viral on Weibo, the entire story almost never makes it over to this side of the Atlantic in one piece.

<comment><USER10> By Atlantic I meant Pacific, because I'm obviously a geography genius :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Related, from a little while ago, "Xi Jinping Millionaire Relations Reveal Fortunes of Elite": [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/xi-jinping- milliona...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/xi-jinping-millionaire- relations-reveal-fortunes-of-elite.html)

For that article, our sites were blocked in China. I'm curious whether NYT will get the block as well.

<comment><USER12> According to the NY Times, the parent article is now blocked in China ( [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/asia/china- blocks-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/asia/china-blocks-web- access-to-new-york-times.html) ).

<comment><USER13> I've always been amazed (until now) that the NYT hasn't been blocked (when YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook and a bunch of other news organizations are). I can only guess because it's primarily an english publication. During the 2008 Olympics (when I was in China), I was consistently amused that I could read about all the atrocities committed in the name of the Olympics in the NYT from behind the Great Firewall of China.

<comment><USER14> NYT has actually got blocked and unblocked back and forth several times. A funny case was that in an interview a reporter asked former president Jiang Zeming why NYT was blocked and Jiang said he would personally look into what was going on. Soon after that, it got unblocked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The common Chinese understanding of government is cyclical: each dynasty dispels the abuses of the past when it arrives, then becomes corrupt and is itself overthrown. The current regime is trying to base its legitimacy on "results" - ie growth - not clean government. It is also using nationalism to divert popular attention. This may work. If it doesn't, however, Chinese tradition makes it unlikely that the party leaders will be forgiven. A bloodless transition to democracy is sadly the least likely outcome.

<comment><USER16> If I'm not mistaken you're referring to this:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a theory.

Giant productive societies will be ruled by billionaires. If the society tries to choose otherwise -- whoever else they choose as leaders will become billionaires.

I'm not sure the theory is true, but we may want to prepare mechanisms that still work for checking leaders' power, and attaining an acceptable level of competent and just governance, if it does turn out to be true. I suspect that will require more transparency than China practices.

<comment><USER18> Angela Merkel isn't exactly rich (certainly no billionaire) and neither are many other European leaders. Even US presidents don't necessarily turn into billionaires.

<comment><USER17> I included enough qualifiers to prevent such simple falsification-by-trivial- example! Perhaps Germany isn't 'giant' enough. (It only has 80M people compared to China 1.3B, India 1.2B, USA 300M, Russia 141M.)

Or maybe its real behind-the-scenes rulers are still billionaires (despite the particular figurehead officeholders). Or maybe the time required for the 'will be'/'will become' prediction hasn't passed yet.

I realize this is a 'no-true-scotsman' dodge. It wasn't meant to be a rigorous theory, just a thought-provoker. In 'giant productive societies' those people/movements best at marshaling large numbers of workers/machinery/voters will have both political power, and billionaire-like financial assets. The same competencies can acquire both... and power and wealth can be converted both ways (via both corrupt and non-corrupt processes).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> While the natural response is to be disgusted by the corruption, there is also something else going on here. If startups are defined by growth, China is the land where tons companies are winning startups. For every 1992 dollar of income there are now 15 dollars to spread around.* An astonishing amount of wealth has been created in the last 20 years, and it has spilled on many people.

In the US, when tremendous amounts of value and wealth are created, it also lands in odd places. Think of the early Google chef, or the Facebook artist who are both extremely wealthy. They got the money because tons of value was created and it just landed on them because they were in the right place at the right time.

I am not really making a point other than saying that this is a story of corruption which is terrible, and a story of value creation.

* In the same period, the US has gone from $1 to $2 in real income per capita

</comment><comment><USER20> Animal farm. The pigs that led the revolution against the humans become the humans.

<comment><USER21> "All Animals Are Equal. But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others."

<comment><USER22> All numbers are equal to six, but not all sixes are equal to each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I saw some foreign policy gurus on Twitter saying that the names of central party leaders are permanently blocked on Weibo, so as to prevent online discussion of them. Which is really interesting.

<comment><USER24> If I was the Chinese - I'd just give him a codename like the CIA does with their assets.

Then just change it every so often.

<comment><USER25> There is a lot of that eg see <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What are the alternatives? Transferring from state-owned economy to privately owned one has to happen somehow. The experiment with straightforward privatisation, as done in Eastern European countries after 1989 was a disaster at least comparable to what's going on in China now.

<comment><USER27> In some more than others. Worked pretty well in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia & Poland.

<comment><USER4> > Worked pretty well in (...) Poland.

I don't know. Members of the generation of my mother and my grandmother tend to blame privatization for all the downfall of Polish economy. There is something to that if you look at how railoads are managed right now - it's a stinking pile of corruption and theft, and the surprising thing is that it works at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Single page view of the article: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family- of-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen- jiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER29> If only we could get this detailed reporting on Romney and Obama from the Times. :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Most of Governments are corrupt. It's not a inherently Asian thing.

What is an Asian thing is the fact that in most other countries, you can do something about it.

Good luck with that in Asia.

<comment><USER20> Not true. Look at Russia, Brazil, Mexico, most of the Middle East, etc.... In general, the only thing you can do about it is leave. Few exceptions are where there are enough opportunities that it pays for everyone to benefit or where a small group of people with no resources realize that they need to band together to prosper: Singapore, scandanavian countries, Japan. Notice some of these are in Asia too?

<comment><USER21> Freedom of the press & internet has a lot to do with this. Indonesia's corrupt president Suharto was toppled in the 1990s only when the press started going after him. When you look at Russia and China, one thing they have in common is restricted press/internet freedom - this keeps the status quo, no change.

<comment><USER31> I'm pretty sure that the history of Suharto's fall is wrapped up in fallings out with various powerful US interests, including those with large holdings in resource mining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> they have blocked NYT, making a confirmation in Chinese government way. In china , smart people call Wen a "king of actors".He appears in "CCTV news" everyday as a hard work leader , but we do not believe him .He is so like acting, nearly forgeting he is an asshole. But mass chinses people think, he is a good leader, who will never steal money using his power(because he is a so good an actor). I dont know how can we do as a chinese civalian . I do not believe the next government either.

</comment><comment><USER24> I assume this with any kind of nexus between politics and business - doesn't matter which country.

I've always found it funny that we pay those who control the budgets of trillion dollar economies so little as compared to their private sector counterparts. I mean - what would you pay the CEO of a trillion dollar corporation?

Paying public servants so little makes it relatively easy to either buy their favour or have their favor bestowed upon you with insignificant sums of money. Give ~1% of yearly profits to campaign finance - get a $10 billion dollar defense contract, or relaxed loans or a stronger monopoly.

It's just legalised bribery.

<comment><USER33> The most frequently cited example is that Singapore pays its government executives market wages, and they consistently rank in the top 5 least corrupt nations[0]

But so do Australia and New Zealand, and the salaries here in the government sector are much lower than they are in the private sector.

This is a well researched field[1]:

> In a bribery experiment, we test the hypothesis that distributive fairness > considerations make relatively well-paid public officials less corruptible. > Corrupt decisions impose damages to workers whose wage is varied in two > treatments. However, there is no apparent difference in behavior.

There is no link between wages and corruption - there are many, many other factors that make up corruption.

Punishment and likelihood of being caught also seems to not disuade corruption. China has a large and very well funded public prosecutors office that focuses solely on corruption cases, the onus of evidence is low, it is the #1 domestic issue with much political pressure and the usual sentence on conviction is death (frequently plea bargained down to life or less in return for implicating others, but many corrupt officials have been executed).

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Ra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Rankings)

[1] "Fair Salaries and the Moral Cost of Corruption" - [pdf] <http://220.127.116.11/cedex/documents/papers/2002-05.pdf>

<comment> daniel-cussen There is no link between wages and corruption - there are many, many other factors that make up corruption.

Yes there is. If public servants are grossly underpaid, or vulnerable, they'll turn to corruption for income or safety (think of a policeman looking the other way in countries like Argentina). In Argentina, for instance, policemen were very poorly paid after the 2001 crash, and at the same time, an incredible wave of crime washed over the country, much like in Greece today. Police started getting paid much less, for a much more dangerous job (the murder rate for policeman rose dramatically). So they simply demanded bribes (long list of ways how to do this) and stayed out of trouble when they could. To compensate for the danger imposed by their job, they started looking the other way more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Can someone put those numbers in context? Are they large or small compared to what you'd expect/other elites?

</comment><comment><USER35> Unheard of. Ever seen a western politician (or their family) go bankrupt while in office? This runs counter to odds, statistics, etc. The only difference is the methods and the scale.

<comment><USER36> Not that western politicians are squeaky clean, but there's a bit of a difference between not going bankrupt and amassing billion dollar fortunes while in office.

<comment><USER37> In the U.S., our politicians get rich(er) after they leave office. Same for appointed government officials. Still a degree of corruption, but not as bad.

<comment><USER35> A fun sample to the contrary: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_Illinois></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pricing algorithms can learn to collude with each other to raise prices - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612947/pricing-algorithms-can-learn-to-collude-with-each-other-to-raise-prices/ <comment><USER2> This result is not surprising. Having a rule that sets your prices, with your competitors' prices as the only variable input, creates a dynamic system that can easily converge on supracompetitive prices with the right parameters, and you are likely to change parameters when they result in a price collapse in the first few days of operation, overfitting your way into mutual agreement.

I would be interested to see if a pricing system that tries to estimate elasticity and seasonal demand (and product lifecycle), in effect using customer behaviour as an input, can also converge in this way in a reasonably short time.</comment>


How do I find the memory usage of an application on Android? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2298208/how-to-discover-memory-usage-of-my-application-in-android

<comment><USER2> This is a relatively old question on Stackoverflow, and Dianne Hackborn's answer is authoritative as usual.

To sum it up: Don't worry about global free memory. Your app can use up only a relatively small part. More accurately, each component (Activity, Service, etc.) of your app with the <process> attribute can only use up to 48MB. Usually, all your components are in one process.

Within your process, Android will "destroy" (null all references) to components in your process and recreate them to optimize memory use. At times, Android will destroy every component in a process and delete ane re-create whole processes from the saved state of each component. This explains why PIDs are not reliable for tracking android app resource use. Your tasks (the components on the back stack starting with the task root, which is the component that was launched by the Launcher) are not tied to one process, nor one PID, throughout their lifespan.</comment>


Avoiding Massive Fraud: A Good Reason to Teach Children Software Development - <AUTHOR> http://impressmyself.co/post/110732351644/avoiding-massive-fraud-a-good-reason-to-teach

<comment><USER2> The issues in this case are not so much coding but project management.

For instance there was that lady who ran Health and Human Services when there was the troubled Obamacare project, and when she testified before Congress she was like "What could I have done about it?"

At that level "getting it done" is about realistic planning, managing vendors and such.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point, but I think having a basic understanding of software development issues would provide a project manager with the insights needed to know that something should be done at all, at which point they would then need the ability to do something.</comment></comment>


Numeric keyboard for mobile browsers, support plain JavaScript, react and vue - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/viclm/numeric-keyboard <comment><AUTHOR> A numeric keyboard works in mobile browsers. It contains a pluggable keyboard component and a input box in replace of native input element.

The numeric keyboard have several versions: plain javascript class, React component and Vue component.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> demo [https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/f40gilnlxp](https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/f40gilnlxp)</comment>


Marc Benioff and Eric Schmidt Keynote, Dreamforce 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDl5hb0XbfY

<comment><AUTHOR> The bit about the Moto acquisition is here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDl5hb0XbfY#t=58m25s>

...it was very interesting to hear from Schmidt that the patent legislation currently pending in Congress will actually improve the Patent Office's ability to invalidate overly broad patents that have already been issued. I wasn't aware of that, but I imagine that this could significantly improve the patent litigation environment.</comment>


Show HN: I've built this promo to help people build their products - s-stude http://mvp.sstude.com <comment><AUTHOR> This is like [http://prostart.me](http://prostart.me) but without the long term partnership. Cool idea, but one-size-fits-all does not work.

<comment> s-stude You are right. The problem here is that it's hard to calculate a cost. That's why if we will chat / have a call and do some estimates we can see the total cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Cool idea, but the landing page needs some info about pricing. I assume you'll give people a quote based on the idea, but even just stating that up-front would be helpful.

<comment> s-stude Added some initial calculations based on the latest project estimates.

<comment><USER2> Cheers, looks good! I imagine you'll have a lot of takers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's really nice.</comment>


Where Are All the High-Resolution Desktop Displays? - <AUTHOR> http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0117208/where-are-all-the-high-resolution-desktop-displays

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been dying to get a high dpi display ever since I first saw iPhone 4's display but there just isn't anything modern available. There's some really old Viewsonic displays with high dpis but they are from early 2000 so you can guess how good those are from other aspects of display technology. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_displays_by_pixel_densi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_displays_by_pixel_density) has a good list of current "leaders" in dpi side.</comment>


Zahada: The Most Challenging Riddles Online - <AUTHOR> https://www.mcgov.co.uk/zahada.html <comment><USER2> I thought it was broken when it wouldn't accept an answer I gave for level 2. Turns out I was on the right track but had the wrong word. I somehow feel like my answer was also correct but they just didn't think of it...

Not trying spoil it for anyone else though so I won't give details. I will say if you think you are on to something and it just doesn't work as a correct answer, keep trying. You might be right but they thought of something else for an answer.

<comment><USER3> Warning: Spoilers about an incorrect solution below. rot13 at your own peril.

qvq lbh guvax bs gur jbeq gung zrnaf srznyr furrc?

(Though I guess it wouldn't have worked with the "double / single / black, blue, and grey" clues anyway...)

Edit: I'm an idiot :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm particularly dense, but I can only get to the Rules page. Is the Rules page in fact the first puzzle?

<comment><USER2> Yes. Don't want to spoil it but I got stuck in the same place for a bit. So, yes, you're on to something, just keep trying!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the simplicity of these puzzles.

Hint: look at the source code to solve many of these.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is so simple and fun. The author did a great job.

</comment><comment><USER7> Again thanks for bringing attention to Firefox!

"Please Note: Zahada is designed for Mozilla Firefox - some riddles may not work in other browsers"

<comment><USER8> So, a browser-specific website is OK as long as it's Firefox?

<comment><USER9> All browser-specific websites are okay when they're a hobby project you're making freely available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stuck on level 4 :(

<comment><USER11> have you read the tab name?

<comment><USER10> I was randomly guessing it, and somehow I managed to land on level 8 from level 4. This is hilarious :)</comment></comment></comment>


1-Euro Houses - <AUTHOR> https://1eurohouses.com/case-a-1-euro-houses/ <comment><USER2> Im +30 in Spain and I thought the demographic winter would land some great opportunities to buy a home. But looking into some deserted municipalities everything keeps being expensive, despite the extremely low demand (and I know this because I scrape the listings and track em). If I want to buy a shitty house that needs restoration I'm investing over 200k. Not to mention that the land registry holds values way above the market, so even if If I was able to buy for 1€ I would be paying taxes over 100k or whatever the value.

If you talk to some owners they seem to not care. Yeah they know that their property is falling apart but they won't sell under $value because they bought it at that price or similar reasonings.

So as an individual, what can I do? I don't want to be renting my whole life, I actually want to buy property but the market just doesn't adjust for some reasons. Remember we're talking about Spain, where the job market is shit, and the economy just can't keep up with the events.

<comment><USER3> This is the problem with a lack of land and property taxation. Elderly people will hold onto assets forever, until death essentially, whilst the building and society collapses around them. Meanwhile they demand a huge amount of welfare and healthcare services without paying into the system.

At least the land tax system in the USA encourages downsizing and efficient allocation of this resource.

<comment><USER4> And what would you'r solution be? Take from them the houses they worked their whole lives to acquire and put them in elderly homes? They have paid their share to society by providing the taxes for 65+ years that they have worked and brought us where we are today. Those homes are not vanished from the market. They will be inherited by their children and so on. Land taxation is by my opinion inherently bad for that specific reason ( if they have only one piece of land )

The problem is that we are pilling into cities where land is minimal and thus the market works in supply and demand.

Hopefully as years pass, where remote work is more and more accessible you can be owning your own 1 euro or whatever home in any area and not worry about limited land.

<comment><USER5> I really don't understand this argument. Land taxes are supposed to pay for the various services in the area (schools, roads, etc). You don't pay your fair share and be done, you pay every year because those services cost money every year. If, at some point, you can no longer afford those costs (excluding those situations where social welfare safety nets are supposed to help), you move somewhere else. You don't get to keep taking advantage those services without paying for them just because you've been there for a long time.

<comment><USER6> In Germany thats what income tax is for. The municipality receives the money and funds local infrastructure from it. I think the rest of Europe is at least similar in this regard.

One can argue about which system is better, but taxing elderly people out of their homes would never fly politically over here.

<comment><USER7> > In Germany thats what income tax is for.

No. The main funding for local communities are property tax ("Grundsteuer") and business tax ("Gewerbesteuer"), income tax share only accounts for about a third. The height of both are also set on the local level the community has a very direct way to change the available money.

<comment><USER8> And Grundsteuer is quite cheap compared to property taxes in North America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People on this thread rightly point out that this isn't a great deal b/c the costs to actually get it to livable condition, along with conservation constraints might be quite significant.

I think an interesting point of comparison is Japan's policies around abandoned houses, and efforts to try to prop up vanishing rural communities, where aside from repair/renovation and administration costs, the owner can also be obligated to actively farm agricultural land associated with the property.

[https://blog.gaijinpot.com/buy-abandoned-house-in- japan/](https://blog.gaijinpot.com/buy-abandoned-house-in-japan/)

<comment><USER10> A point in Japan is that property owner can't throw away own properties. So they need to sell unused properties to reduce property taxes.

<comment><USER11> Can you throw away owned real property elsewhere? The closest I can think of is not paying property taxes and hoping the state/municipality will seize the property and not come after you for the difference. If the actual value of the property is zero or negative it's difficult to come out ahead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If after a decade of reading about $500 houses in Detroit people haven't figured out what "cost of compliance" means then they probably never will at this point.

When you read the words "$<small_number> house" the words you should read in your mind are "dilapidated building in a municipality with crazy back-tax scheme that would make the California RMV proud and probably also regulatory capture by relevant trade(s) that inflates the cost of repairing the building"

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

You wanna know how much a house costs look at the average income of the working households in the neighborhood. What they can afford is about what it costs.

<comment><USER13> Or maybe "$<small_number> house" just means somewhere no one wants to live. You can get a reasonable house in rural Saskatchewan without any fine print for under USD$20K.

[https://www.point2homes.com/CA/Cheap-Homes-For- Sale/SK.html?...](https://www.point2homes.com/CA/Cheap-Homes-For- Sale/SK.html?location=Saskatchewan&PropertyType=House%2C+CondoApartment%2C+RowTownhouse%2C+DuplexTriplex%2C+Mobile%2C+Recreational&search_mode=location&RedirectToDirectory=on&page=1&sort_by=ASC_price&SelectedView=listings&LocationGeoId=205410&location_changed=&ajax=1)

<comment><USER14> Yeah I mean for $1 I expect a shed without running water but I expect most of the cheapness to be due to high fixed costs and low demand, e.g. because of a non-existent job market.

Now that tons of people with good tech jobs can work from almost anywhere, I expect some of these remote locations to become quite poopular. I wouldn't mind spending summers in a shed in a remote part of Italy, for example.

<comment><USER15> The problem these small towns rarely have adequate internet for remote work. I hope this will change with Starlink.

<comment><USER14> 4G is more than enough for what I need (I'm going to assume now that anywhere at all populated in these countries already have decent 4G or will have within the foreseeable future). This is the case already in e.g. Northern rural Sweden. It's far _far_ less densely populated than anywhere in Italy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This video [0] "The Truth Behind Italy's $1 Homes" by Business Insider, explains the concept, the motivation behind it and how these houses will cost you way more than 1$ in fees and restoration efforts.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP2vtDLTAgM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP2vtDLTAgM)

<comment><USER17> Transcript? Rather not watch a talking head.

<comment> w-m There's some listing of the expenses being done at [https://youtu.be/nP2vtDLTAgM?t=412](https://youtu.be/nP2vtDLTAgM?t=412)

      Listing $1
      Taxes $400
      Deposit $5,600
      Renovations $60,000
      Flights $10,000

Earlier they talk about taxes + fees totalling about $3,000. A few seconds after listing the expenses they cite a Forbes article, where one residents expects to spend $124,000 to renovate their place.

They talk about some of these homes requiring at least $17,000 of renovations to be done.

The houses are sometimes auctioned off, starting at $1, but they may be sold for more than $20,000.

The deposit is refundable if you start renovating within a year after buying the house.

<comment><USER17> Thank you kind sir or madam or alien!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I looked into this pretty extensively when Italy announced it and like most government initiatives there it's a borderline scam and was done for the PR not because it makes sense. Each of these houses requires extensive renovation work, usually of the type that can only be performed by an expensive specialized contractor.

Besides the expected costs for this work (Which will be at least 20k Euros up to 200k or more) you will be responsible for paying for many different permits to do this work which can also add up to 100s of Euros. Then you will find out that you get only one year from purchase to complete all renovations or you forfeit your investment.

After all this if you still aren't convinced you will find that the local governments will take months to issue each permit. The few specialized contractors licensed to perform the work will not show up for weeks at a time randomly whenever they feel like it. After one year you will have paid tens of thousands of Euros to local governments and contractors and your house will be worse than when you started.

Since you didn't meet the deadline the local government will take the house back and sell it for 1 Euro to the next sucker in line. This is a stimulus program for local governments and contractors in small Italian towns, and you are the source of funding if you decide to try to buy one of these houses.

<comment><USER19> In theory, could someone who wanted to spend a year in Italy buy one of these houses for 1 Euro and just not initiate any of that repair work?

<comment><USER18> No, you cannot live in the house until it is certified as habitable. Like many things in Italy this would no doubt be flexible with the right "permits" paid for to the right officials. But the houses would likely have no working electricity, heat, water or plumbing. So you wouldn't really want to live there anyway.

<comment><USER20> "Doctor, I'm not dead!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Detroit ten years ago was famous for $1000 houses. But these houses were gutted, without wiring or plumbing or furnaces. In other words a shell, stripped by scrappers.

Most of those houses have been torn down. But the city has a program that rebuilds the salvageable houses to better than new then sells them at a bargain. The deal is you must live there as your primary residence for five years. These houses begin at $50,000.

[https://buildingdetroit.org/rehabbed- ready/](https://buildingdetroit.org/rehabbed-ready/)

</comment><comment><USER22> This isn't really a 1 Euro house:

\- Envisage a restructuring and re-evaluation project within 365 days of purchase.

\- Support notarial fees for registration and volture.

\- Once all permits are granted, works must start within a maximum of 2 months.

\- To guarantee the faireness of the purchase by the buyer, the municipality asks to enter into a surety policy of 5 thousand euros lasting for three years that is then refunded.

<comment><USER14> So it's about the same as buying a plot of land (where you usally need to build something within a period of time). €1 for a plot of land isn't terrible either.

There used to be seaside plots for €1 in northern Sweden, with the caveat that you need to live there permanently for 5 years.

<comment><USER23> If I'm not mistaken there are still lots of 100$ plots on HemNet with the same requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Italy is anything like Germany in terms of conservation laws, you wouldn't want those buildings even if they were accompanied by a small to medium pile of cash. It will cost you more than building anew to restore usability while observing all the conservatory dos and don'ts.

<comment><USER24> and the results might be backward to live in, we used to live in a old cottage house that was renovated, split into a moltitude of small apartment units and sold separately; city council didn't allow to install shutters or to add balconies; with only blinds you get a ton of heat getting in on summer and without balconies we had to dry laundry in house, which was then often moist in winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me a bit of this: [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-9-cities- states-and-...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-9-cities-states-and- countries-will-pay-you-to-move-there-2018-10-26)

> While Topeka gets its program [to pay people to move there] underway, other > places in America and across the globe are already trying to entice new > residents with cash and other perks. Here's a look at some other spots that > would love to have you think about living there.

</comment><comment><USER26> This thread is from yesterday. The "ago" times are incorrect. What's going on?

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=1-euro+houses](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=1-euro+houses) says 19 hours ago, but as I write it says 12 hours ago on this page.

</comment><comment><USER27> Assuming plenty of time, not much luxury taste, wanting to ramp up tech skills, limited (but existing) funds

Buy one, establish a hacker space, hold regular events, show the awesome projects you do, try to have community-positive impacts. Do some remote gigs for funding.

At worse you get kicked out because people don't get technology, don't want you around, find out you're not going to be a source of income.

At best, people love what you do, help you renovate because plenty of materials and help can be had in some communities, and you go from homeless to remote tech worker.

Is this a crazy scenario?

<comment><USER28> If you ask me, not at all. That's precisely what I'm working on (or at least, it's a part of the project).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> During a similar initiative, friends of mine in Italy have been kicked out by the local community, jealous they could enjoy such benefit.

Maybe some of these repopulation projects don't consider enough the effect over the local rural communities, which are usually very conservative and suspicious toward "strangers".

</comment><comment><USER30> Most of those 1-Euro houses are in Sicily, Italy. This is connected to the fact, that "la famiglia" ("the family", mafia) is controlling everything in society. They will even give you presents worth more than 1 Euro, because they know they will get every cent back from you. If you stay long enough there, they will give you orders (like "you need to make this and this") and if you refuse to do it, they will - and I am not kidding or making it up - just kill your children (if you have them). So - no - I would not buy this 1-Euro house in Sicily, Italy. It is cheaper to go to the hotel there than to own anything... People are relocating from Sicily because of this problem...

<comment><USER31> > they will - and I am not kidding or making it up - just kill your children

Gonna need some form of source on that claim before I'll believe it.

This sounds like something that happened once, but not regularly.

<comment><USER30> This has been told by the people who relocated, because they were not willing to risk their children. Another example: if you start your business there, someone from "the family" will come after a while and tell you: "You need a secretary. And I have found one for you." Now if you reject them, they will go after you. This is why people are leaving. It would be a beautiful place to live, but because of this, people are living. Many Italian politicians tried to fight "the family", most of them were killed.

<comment><USER31> When I said _source_ I meant something other than more anecdotes.

<comment><USER30> People's personal experience is not an anecdote...

<comment><USER23> No offense, but from what I know that is exactly what an anecdote is. As for your claim about the mafia, I have no idea personally but good thing you mentioned it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> if this comes with land, i might be interested. but whats the point of a crumbling house? homes in europe dont come with extensive backyards or gardens.

building tiny homes surrounded by an edible landscape and reselling it could be my next hobby-career. its the stuff of day dreams.

having said that..it would depend on how it would be taxed. europe? i am going to go with steep.

</comment><comment><USER33> don't fall for it. The market says these aren't worth buying. Don't go against the market.

<comment><USER34> > There's an old joke that has two economists coming across a $20 bill on the > sidewalk, which goes:

> The young economist looks down and sees a $20 bill on the street and says, > "Hey, look a twenty-dollar bill!"

> Without even looking, his older and wiser colleague replies, "Nonsense. If > there had been a twenty-dollar lying on the street, someone would have > already picked it up by now."

<comment><USER31> I think that:

> If it looks to good to be true, it probably is.

Is more appropriate here.

Finding a $20 on the street falls within the realm of reason, and is not likely a scam. Finding a suitcase full of cash however, and picking it up probably has strings attached.

<comment><USER34> I you stop at the attention grabbing headline, sure it's too good to be true.

It's probably clear to everyone that the cost in the end is going to be bigger. If you watch Raed667's video, the municipalities involved are quite upfront about it and not really trying to scam anyone.

But basically you can see that as a subside or a promotion. The fact that there is going to be other costs associated doesn't means the market ruled it as a bad deal as bobwernstein claimed</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Breakthrough in the quantum transfer of information between matter and light - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/7696.html <comment><USER2> Strongly disagree.

We have a mathematical model of physics, which includes things like superpositions of wave-functions. We don't know how or even _if_ they map on to reality, we but do have a habit of talking equating "states" with wave- functions. Then when describing superpositions, we end up with paradoxes like your first sentence.

This goes beyond Einsteinian "the physical world is not what you thought it was" thinking, and starts challenging logic itself. If QM really did challenge logic like that, then we would have to start rebuilding every other field of thought, including even mathematics.

I think it is more reasonable to see if some lateral thinking in QM can make the seeming paradoxes go away.

</comment><comment><USER3> > By applying a magnetic field, this spin points up, down, _or simultaneously > points both up and down_ to form a qubit.

Is there any real physical evidence that an electron can be both states at the same time, _outside the mathematical framework of QM_?

<comment><USER4> Personally, I think "simultaneously points both up and down" is a terrible way to describe superpositions. So let me avoid that phrase, and see if I can rephrase your question. Would it be fair to say that you're asking this question?

> Is there any real physical evidence that an electron can be in a > superposition of two states, that can _only_ be explained using quantum > mechanics?

Surprisingly, the answer to this question is yes. The evidence is the Bell experiment[1].

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

<comment><USER3> Isn't there some serious issues with the original Bell's tests - such as performing a post-selection of events (from the data-set) to remove all events that did not match the expectations of the experiment (...95% of the data was thrown out)?

<comment><USER5> Afaik,it was later replicated.

<comment><USER6> Not only once, but in many independent experiments too.

<comment><USER5> Yup. No reason to doubt bell

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So what kind of things would this let me do?</comment>


How to Be Successful - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pAJPPjGrU7g

<comment><USER2> I think he's right when he says that you need to want it as much as you want to breathe to be successful. But I think he's setting his audience up for failure by not pointing out that "success" is defined by _that which you want as much as you want to breathe_. When you find something that you want that much, going after it with all your being will come naturally. If you actually prefer sleep to whatever he calls "success", then maybe you're better off spending your time sleeping. How else are you going to find a dream to follow?

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome speech. I created a shortened video with the best parts. Its easier to share and saves your friends some time.

<http://www.cule.tv/#pv=23001></comment>


A Classification of Fallacious Arguments and Interpretations, by IJ Good - <AUTHOR> http://www.amstat.org/misc/FallaciousArguments.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> The editors of Technometrics were kind enough to post this for us at Edward Tufte's forum a few years ago. Seemed relevant to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4125198> but merits its own submission.</comment>


Introducing the Startup Guild: A Community for Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://justinvincent.com/page/1464/introducing-the-startup-guild <comment><USER2> While overall this seemed quite cool, I had an issue somewhat with the idea of news.startupguild.net. It's described as "A reddit style link rating & comment system dedicated to articles related to 'no-investment, start small, get big'". To me, this is a pretty large subset of what Hacker News is already. If I was a part of this guild, I'd hate to go to yet another website that is probably duplicating a lot of the content from HN, in the same style of Hacker News [ie, upvotes, comments, etc].

I'd much rather have something along the lines of a discussion forum, where people can discuss problems they are having in the startup world (along with relevant links and discussions on them), not ranked by points.

<comment><USER3> I'd really like to have an alternative to news.yc, personally. As a bootstrapper-type that's not so interested in the YC program, news.yc rarely offers the type of community that I'd most want to be involved in.

I don't dislike news.yc, but there's definitely room for competition here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey Justin, I'm working on a site called Sparkmuse (in beta) which aligns with much of what you're describing. Here are some of the things we're working on right now:

tracker.startupguild.net – The fundamental building block of our current community is the "Spark", a description of the problem an entrepreneur wants to solve and the solution want to use. This is an area where people can get feedback and meetup with potential cofounders. Each Spark is divided into stages and will eventually track the progress from idea through execution.

news.startupguild.net- We're building an open discussion area for entrepreneurs to show off their work, ask questions, and have meaningful startup discussions. Somewhat different, but similar in concept I think. I don't want to trample on HN because this community is amazing in itself, but the audience expands beyond startups alone.

blog.startupguild.net – We've been communicating with accomplished entrepreneurs and investors to schedule times for them to come by and give direct feedback on our Sparks. Kind of a direct engagement guest blog post in a manner of speaking.

toolkit.startupguild.net – We're partnering up with a wide range of great tools and services that have agreed to make deals for entrepreneurs trying to build their ideas from the ground up. Another project we're developing is Matchmuse which is like an e-harmony for entrepreneurs, providing recommendations based on a person's expertise, the expertise they need, where they live, and the ideas and feedback they have discussed on the site.

I'd love to team up with you on some of these things. If you're interested, please hit me up, email is in my profile.

<comment><USER5> Awesome thanks very much. I can see the main difference is your taking a project driven approach and I'm thinking about an entrepreneur/company driven approach.

It sounds like people could potentially meet on The Startup Guild and move any projects they come up with into Sparkmuse after meeting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The real value that a community like this could provide is the creation of what Justin calls mastermind groups. It reminds me of Sprouter.com but on a much more personal level. The latter is very important in my opinion. Starting a business is something you experience on a very personal level and these groups could provide the help/advice (and possibly support) that a (new) entrepreneur needs to succeed. I do wonder what the "mentors" gain from this time investment.

I like most of the idea and am looking forward to how it grows and develops.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The Skype based mastermind group I joined made all the difference for me. I can almost pin-point the date I had my first discussion with them as the turnaround of my business.

There's members of my skype group who make a lot more money than me, but they still ask for my advice on other issues such as tech related stuff, asking me to proof read blog posts, strategy idea bouncing, and other things.

<comment><USER7> How does one join the Skype based mastermind group? Sounds intriguing.

<comment><USER8> You suggest it to 4-8 of your peers and then go out of your way to make it happen every 1 or 2 weeks in person or on email/skype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given your strong preference for bootstrapping – the first problem the Guild would try to solve is "How can I build a start-up with no investment?" – perhaps it should be called the Bootstrap Guild.

</comment><comment><USER10> The idea of an entrepreneur powered YC clone is excellent.

This could be even taken to the next level: to foster investment within the community itself; enabling a platform for established entrepreneurs to invest in up & coming entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER11> 'Entrepreneur powered YC clone'---an apt description! A possible interesting investment option would be instead of investing $$$, startup owner can swap 'shares' in their startups. E.g., I have a startup in security but I love somebody's music startup and vice versa, so share-swap can be done. Details that need to be ironed out include trust, valuation of shares, accountability (how do we know that the person we swapped shares would continue to work hard), etc.

<comment><USER10> Share swaps are a killer idea man. This is going on a bit of an extended tangent - but the vision hints at being a sort of micro-stock exchange for startup entrepreneurs. Neat concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sounds like an awesome idea. Would love to see how it will be implemented specifically.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hey everyone!

I think we solved this problem, at least in our community. Our first phase is in DFW. We are gathering incubators to start the funding process. We are looking to expand if anyone wants to implement elsewhere. We are very "open- source"

www.techfraternity.com</comment>


Glympse Brings Real-Time Location Sharing To Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/glympse-brings-real-time-location-sharing-to-facebook/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using it today and it's really polished. Three or four taps and you're broadcasting your location to your friend, or co-worker... no signs ups required for either party. It seems pretty safe to because you set a timer on the broadcast, specify who can receive it and even expire links early if you want to.

I can see this being really handy when you're meeting someone, they can see in real time how far away you are.

I've been using it on my iphone, and the only annoying part is that it stops broadcasting your location when you close the app (obviosuly) - but that should be fixed in OS 4.0 when they allowed background location services.</comment>


MIT OpenCourseWare Launches iPhone App for Video Lectures - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/02/04/mit-opencourseware-launches-iphone-app-for-video-lectures/

<comment><USER2> meh.

They could have used the time to publish the older videos with the good resolution of the new ones</comment>


Million Dollar iOS9 Bug Bounty - <AUTHOR> https://zerodium.com/ios9.html <comment><USER2> I for one actually feel much more secure knowing that iOS is so secure that $1 million is considered the public value of an exploit. Vupen bought flash zero days for $30,000 in the past so knowing that iOS exploits are now valued enough to attract this kind of bounty makes me much more confident script kiddies and scammers will not be able afford to attack me. And lets face it, we were never secure from the NSA in the first place...

<comment><USER3> This is purely market value. If iOS simply had less users, the price would be lower. So I think your conclusion of it being more secure because of this is incorrect.

About less people being able to afford it - this again depends on what ZERODIUM intends to do with it. They may sell it for cheap and count on a large number of sales because, again, iOS is so popular.

<comment><USER4> Did you read the announcement?

> Apple iOS, like all operating system, is often affected by critical security > vulnerabilities, however due to the increasing number of security > improvements and the effectiveness of exploit mitigations in place, Apple's > iOS is currently the most secure mobile OS. But don't be fooled, secure does > not mean unbreakable, it just means that iOS has currently the highest cost > and complexity of vulnerability exploitation and here's where the Million > Dollar iOS 9 Bug Bounty comes into play.

BTW, I guess Flash is as popular as iOS9 (the Steam hardware survey used to show that 99.9% of the Steam users had Flash installed), yet, as stirlo says, they only paid up to $30k for Flash exploits.

<comment><USER3> I was replying to stirlo's deduction, which I felt was wrong, not the original announcement.

You do make a great point with that Flash comparison, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I might be missing something, but has there ever been _any_ exploit (or string of simultaneous exploits) for iOS or android which meets all the criteria?

It must be through a text message or web page, it must be remote, reliable, silent, require no interaction, must be entirely comprised of 0-day exploits throughout the whole chain, must affect multiple architectures and all supported devices, and must bypass all security checks to allow full root access.

<comment><USER6> You used to be able to jailbreak one of the first iPhones and install Cydia just by visiting some page in Safari and clicking on a button, IIRC. I never did this myself, so my memories might be inaccurate though.

<comment><USER7> You're correct. jailbreak.me I think it was called

<comment><USER8> It was always amusing to visit the Apple store and see a jailbroken iPhone on display when this vulnerability worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And all you have to do is sell your unicorn vulnerability to this company:

 _ZERODIUM customers are major corporations in defense, technology, and finance, in need of advanced zero-day protection, as well as government organizations in need of specific and tailored cybersecurity capabilities_

The offer to buy RCE in PHPBB/vBulletin is a nice touch.

<comment><USER10> So, let me get this straight, this company is in the business of buying zero- day exploits and selling them to corporations and government organizations. How does this even exist? Is it legal? Can anyone buy and sell zero day exploits with total impunity?

<comment><USER9> Yes, they can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A million bucks for a iOS 9 vulnerability sounds nice. But is that worth having the death, imprisonment, or torture of possibly innocent people on your conscience? If a government is buying these vulns, there is no telling what they will do with them.

<comment><USER12> If you live in the US or Canada and voted for a recent government, this is already on your conscience.

The realization that there's a dirty, dirty underside to our standard of living seems to polarize people. Some dedicate themselves to helping. Some conclude that the world is run by gangsters, so they might as well pick a gang and profit. Most, either never realize or just decide that the problem is too big and they should focus on their own little islands of comfort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this a Zerodium ad masquing the politically incorrect PR of "zerodium has 0day exploits available for sale"? I mean how else would anyone advertise availability of 0day without compromising their credibility? $1M per exploit would sure get you lots of press.

<comment><USER14> Considering the strictness of the requirements, I can think of two options:

\- this is just a PR stunt, nobody will realistically deliver such a piece of code before oct. 31st.

\- they know that someone in the jailbreak community is cooking something big like that and they're trying to tempt them and acquire a very interesting exploit before anybody else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The whole exploitation/jailbreak process should be achievable remotely, reliably, silently, and without requiring any user interaction except visiting a web page or reading a SMS/MMS (attack vectors such as physical access, bluetooth, NFC, or baseband are not eligible for the Million Dollar iOS 9 Bug Bounty. ZERODIUM may, at its sole discretion, make a distinct offer to acquire such attack vectors.)."

Can someone explain this part? Jailbreak from a website, sms, or mms seems ... impossible. Has this even been possible with older jailbreaks?

<comment><USER16> Stagefright (Remote Android code execution) does exactly that [http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/07/950-million- android-...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/07/950-million-android- phones-can-be-hijacked-by-malicious-text-messages/)

<comment><USER17> Stagefright was not a rootable exploit.

<comment><USER18> Not alone, but as part of a chain of exploits (which is what most jailbreaks are, and which is what this document expressly asks for), certainly it is: it allows you to get arbitrary code execution on the device, which can be paired with a kernel exploit (something that has been comparatively quite common) to get root. I mean, this same argument can be said about the individual components of JailbreakMe 2.0 and 3.0: the initial exploit in FreeType only just barely got you the ability to run code as Safari within its even-at-the- time relatively restricted sandbox: it was then paired with a kernel exploit to finish the jailbreak. Zimperium actually did a demo on stage at BlackHat of using Stagefright as the vector to push a privilege escalation (probably some old kernel exploit; I think they said, but I don't remember) to the device, and they have also posted a video of that process.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxQc5gOHnKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxQc5gOHnKs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have to wonder: what stops someone from selling the "exclusive" rights to an exploit, waiting for the check to clear, and then disclosing it privately to the vendor to get fixed?

<comment><USER20> Trust. That sounds funny, given that it's a grey market, but there were excerpts from the Hacking Team email dump where they talked extensively about which exploit providers were high quality, reliable, etc.

Someone absolutely can try and play games, but the people they sell to will do their best to determine whether that's happening and penalize them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _The exploit /jailbreak must support and work reliably on the following devices (32-bit and 64-bit when applicable): \- iPhone 6s / iPhone 6s Plus / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus \- iPhone 5 / iPhone 5c / iPhone 5s \- iPad Air 2 / iPad Air / iPad (4rd generation) / iPad (3th generation) / iPad mini 4 / iPad mini 2_

So did i read this correct and the exploit must be backwards compatible in order to get the full bounty?

<comment><USER2> Seems to just be a list of iOS 9 supported devices...

<comment><USER21> Thanks. Make sense. I was confused as it not list devices that also support iOS9 like the iPad mini 3.

<comment><USER22> Nor the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s.

<comment><USER23> How well does ios9 run on a 1ghz dual-core/512mb device like the 4s?

<comment><USER22> Worse than iOS 6/7, better than iOS 8.0

iOS 9 has the same performance as iOS 8.4

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> off topic, but wow it's really annoying that the site overrides your scroll- speed settings.

<comment><USER25> It's terribly annoying. It also hijacks my ability to move forward/backward in the browser by swiping my trackpad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has anyone tried a really long password ;-)

<comment><USER26> _______

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sounds like ios8 will be the last jailbreakable version. Shame.

<comment><USER28> If the last 8 versions were jailbreakable I think this one will be too - eventually - but it is certainly the case that devices are becoming more secure both for and against their owners. The tension between freedom and security is definitely increasing.

<comment><USER29> But who's going to release one publically when they can get $1 million for not doing so?

<comment><USER30> You can only get a million for a really impressive jailbreak. If it involves plugging the phone into your computer and downloading something, or even just pushing a button, it doesn't qualify for this bounty.

<comment><USER29> Fair enough; but if you're a hacker looking for exploits, what do you search for first?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Saurik, you can do it ;)

</comment><comment><USER32> What they're not telling you is finding this exploit entails NP=P. It sure has the same bounty value on its head. jk</comment>


Coding Sucks: Why a Job in Programming Is Absolute Hell - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/programming-sucks-why-a-job-in-coding-is-absolute-hell-1570227192?rev=1398942156 <comment><USER3> Here's the actual article: [http://stilldrinking.org/programming- sucks](http://stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks)

And here are previous submissions of this story:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7687354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7687354)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7684773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7684773)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7681621](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7681621)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679814)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679132)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679055)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673054)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673047)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667825) <\- Comments

</comment><comment><USER4> I've concluded programming is the mental equivalent of manual labor. Good clean work that makes one stronger but generally at the bottom of the food chain and therefore exploited, and it wears on a person before long.

I still love it though. It beats politicking for a living.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know he was exaggerating for effect but it seems a bit extreme - <USER2> everything is breaking all the time you're doing something wrong.</comment>


Psychedelic mushrooms put your brain in a "waking dream," study finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/07/03/psychedelic-drugs-put-your-brain-in-a-waking-dream-study-finds/?tid=sm_fb <comment><USER2> "It's still not clear why such effects can have more profound long-term effects on the brain than our nightly dreams."

maybe because it's not really like dreaming at all?

calling a psychedelic trip a "waking dream" really undermines the way your consciousness is altered during a trip. as a matter of fact, your consciousness is one of the few things that seems consistent through the real world and dream world.

calling it a "waking dream" also kind of undermines how insane dreaming actually is and how little we know about it.

<comment><USER3> I like the way calling it a "waking dream" hints that, during a trip, the subconscious (whatever it is concretely) expands its connection with the conscious mind.

The fact that lucid dreaming is a way to explore your mind ("psychonaut" is a name that both psychedelic users and lucid dreamers use) is more evidence of that, for me.

<comment><USER2> good point. i'm just hesitant to throw lucid dreaming, meditation, and LSD into the same bucket. it's like comparing a hammer to a paintbrush to a belt sander.

i mean, they may very well all belong in exactly the same bucket. i am just hesitant to jump to that conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am looking forward to a time where the existance of these psychoactive drugs becomes more widely accepted for scientific studies and medical treatment without any of the current demonisation. There seems to be too much to learn about the function of the self that it almost seems irresponsible to wash this aside and criminalise it with a last centuries mindset.

<comment><USER5> There is a ton of psychoactive drugs proscribed every year, so I am not really sure what your suggesting?

People also use alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine vary frequently.

If you mean Hallucinogens, they have been studied extensively and don't seem to be that medically useful. There where a few appetite suppressants which where discontinued and Nitrous oxide still sees some use but it's risky.

<comment><USER6> > If you mean Hallucinogens, they have been studied extensively and don't seem > to be medically useful.

Eh? Studied extensively? Last time I checked they're all schedule I and haven't really been studied since the 70s. On top of that, in the few recent studies that have focused on them, hallucinogens _do_ seem to be medically useful. MDMA for PTSD, psilocybin for terminally ill patients, etc.

<comment><USER7> MDMA's most infamous use that I am aware of, and which you didn't mention, is for the temporary but complete relief of the symptoms of Parkinsons. In addition I'm sure it would also be ideal for fostering empathy and discussion to come to terms with the imminent loss of terminally ill loved ones. I believe the Swiss have looked in to it for marriage counseling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is a link to the actual research article, "Enhanced repertoire of brain dynamical states during the psychedelic experience."

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/hbm.2256...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/hbm.22562/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Pretty sure those are morels, not psilocybin. Delicious, but not psychoactive.

<comment><USER10> Yeah the caption is "a man displays dried mushrooms", as if that had anything to do with anything. Their file-photo folks really mailed it in on this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For what it's worth, this article was written by a mycologist, not a drug expert. That's why some of the explanations sound a little off. I also don't know anyone who would describe psilocybin as being like a waking dream.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like how this guy explains it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrYl9krZksk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrYl9krZksk)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've taken them a few times, and all have been positive experiences that let you explore existence. I remember at the time I was reading Flow the psychology of experience. And while I was under the influence at work, I started thinking about how that book applied to what I was doing, and was seeing it happen all around me ( auto assembly), no loss in motor skills because my skill level of that job was higher than the amount of thought actually needed, so my unused thought energy seperated from my actions, I started looking at things differently, mainly myself and that point of response to stimuli for action or whatever. The point where if you notice it can lead you towards or away certain goals with some sort of common thread.

words cant explain, because it will help each individual upgrade their mental operating system differently.

there was a two week span where I took a small dosage each day, and i felt better than any anti anxiety or anti depressant I've taken previously. Have never taken another "mental" rx medication since, that as about 4 years ago. marijuana excluded ca-legal

<comment><USER14> That is incredibly dangerous. It is very likely that you were underestimating how impaired you were.

<comment><USER15> It's far more likely than you are unaware of how much our daily tasks are unconsciously automatic and how little credit you give the brain.

<comment><USER14> Auto assembly, though? That is the kind of thing that requires full attention to prevent injury.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I often hear that these types of drugs can change the way you see the world. As someone who has never taken a psychedelic I wonder if my highly scientific/atheist view of the world will shift after taking a shroom? Can anyone relate?

<comment><USER17> The first time I took mushrooms (over 20 years ago) I was walking home when they kicked in at 2 am on a winter night. Looking around me, I saw the snow, trees, grass, buildings very differently than normal; they were all exactly alike. When looking at grass, it looked, literally, like the same texture pasted all over the field. Same for snow, trees, houses. So I sat down with my friend and started talking how the world must be built up of a much lower resolution substance than we think and our minds add randomness to make it seem as if it's more diverse. Shrooms are great in that you remember everything of the trip and it is like you are awake and dreaming; I apparently am more susceptible to it than others; I actually see things which are not there which is more common with LSD. My friends usually saw only some vibrations on the wall and felt funny (and after that paranoid) while I was seeing the armada falling from the sky while hearing orchestra's play. I would recommend anyone at least trying a few times; it changes things long term, but like others said, I don't think you'll move to religious or something like that; if you're scientific, it is more likely to explain things to totally eradicate that last sliver of paranormal stuff in the world. As in; then you actually know what they ate before they saw the holy spirit descend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> what if some of the lasting effects are really just the powerful insight gained from the temporary perspective shift?

<comment><USER19> Hasn't that always been "known" to be the case among the sane rational users?

<comment><USER14> Sure, "known" in the sense of "highly suspected", but of course that doesn't absolve the need for real science on the issue.

<comment><USER19> I completely agree. The way the_cat_kittles phrased it though made it seem like he thought it was a new concept.

<comment><USER13> new here and somehow I separated this comment from my comment he responded to, thought the upvote was like a thanks button. But I think it was a rhetorical question, because it was true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Except for some naïve users who go looking for a good time…which, by the way, is not how it plays out,"

Shrooms and LSD is not a party drug. I repeat. not a party drug.

<comment><USER21> Really depends.

Absolutely not for a first time, you're right. For me though, as I became more comfortable with the altered psychedelic state of mind, being around people became much easier. I wouldn't want to be trapped at a party, but I've stopped in at them for 30-40 minutes, had fun, and then left to move onto the next thing.

The important part for me is to have options, whether that's a ride back home, a nearby park, someone to take a walk, an Ipod and some headphones, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Psychedelic mushrooms put your brain in a "waking dream," study finds"

This sounds like an Onion headline, heh. They needed a study to figure that out? Just take 1/4 oz and call me in the morning.

<comment><USER23> That's basically what Vice did:

[http://www.vice.com/hamiltons-pharmacopeia/hamilton-and- the-...](http://www.vice.com/hamiltons-pharmacopeia/hamilton-and-the- philosophers-stone-part-1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't know why, but I suddenly feel like watching Altered States. (1980 flick starring William Hurt).

<comment><USER25> Almost positive that movie is based on John C. Lilly ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly)) If you're remotely interested, I highly recommend reading his books. 'Programming the Human Biocomputer' and 'The Scientist' were great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> now we just have to figure out what a dream is

<comment><USER27> I don't even think that there is such a thing. A dream is what you think just happened when you wake up with your brain in an inconsistent state, and it rationalizes how it arrived there. People's subjective experience of their own dreams changes based on cultural expectations:

 _Why Did We Think We Dreamed in Black and White?_

[http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DreamB&W.htm](http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DreamB&W.htm)

edit: "In the 1950s, dream researchers commonly thought that dreams were predominantly a black and white phenomenon, although both earlier and later treatments of dreaming assume or assert that dreams have color. The first half of the twentieth century saw the rise of black and white film media, and it is likely that the emergence of the view that dreams are black and white was connected to this change in film technology. If our opinions about basic features of our dreams can change with changes in technology, it seems to follow that our knowledge of the experience of dreaming is much less secure than we might at first have thought it to be."

<comment><USER27> I've never been downvoted for my lack of belief in dreams before. It's a strange experience:)

<comment><USER28> There's an odd mix of people in possession of downvote powers, and not all of them are particularly discerning in their use of the downvote button. I think a lot of people past the 500 point mark got their because of one lucky submission (or a small handful of decent picks), and not necessarily because of the quality of their character.

Anyway, I think, at a cursory glance, people (or maybe just one narrow-minded person) are assuming that you intend to dismiss the significance of the interpretation of dreams.

I think your concept is pretty insightful though. Considering the distortion of time we experience during sleep, where dreams can seem to span decades, or seconds, yet transpire within hours or fractions of an hour, that aspect holds up well with the premise that we reconstruct the context of the dream based on the state we're confronted with when awakening.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Local News Business Model - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2017/the-local-news-business-model/ <comment><USER2> Any examples out there of someone actually following this model? I'd love to see it in action.

<comment><USER3> I read that Deseret News is doing something like this, but since they target a faith-based audience, they can transcend local borders.

Front page does look very local: [http://www.deseretnews.com/](http://www.deseretnews.com/)</comment></comment>


The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Guarantee - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/04/matt-zwolinski/pragmatic-libertarian-case-basic-income-guarantee <comment><USER2> I've come around to generally agree with the basic income guarantee. Both in premise of the problem and how it tackles the.

What I don't believe is that the problem is tenable in the United States. At least, I can't see it happening today. For starters there is a whole portion of the population that will see this as people free loading. This a sizable part of the population that believes all "hand-outs" are bad even if it ends up saving us money in the long run.

Second, the government being the largest employer (second largest I believe if we elude the military.) I have a hard time seeing this happen due to political pressure since a sizable number of jobs would be cut... since they are no longer needed to administer these complex programs. That's not a winning election proposition. Next, take into account local impact of places where government is close to the only employer. Look how much people fight to prevent military base closing in their district; doesn't matter where on the political/fiscal ideology they stand. Finally, there's the impact to the private sector which has cropped up to administer, provide or execute some of these programs.

In a perfect world states would be better able to deal some of the local welfare issues. That brings an interesting opportunity for the federal government to vastly simplify welfare programs in something along the lines of BIG (and it self in the process). And then leaving local issues to the states. Poverty can look very different in NYC compared to Tennessee. Other types of welfare issues only are a major concern in some states and not others. It's could be a very... American solution to the problem.

The downside is that some states can't be counted on doing the right thing (simple example: Civil Rights).

Side node: I am not a libertarian, or anything official for that matter.

<comment><USER3> > For starters there is a whole portion of the population that will see this > as people free loading. This a sizable part of the population that believes > all "hand-outs" are bad even if it ends up saving us money in the long run.

I suspect another problem is that a significant portion of welfare recipients get _way_ more than a feasible basic income system would provide. I bet this wouldn't get much traction for progressives or conservatives.

<comment><USER4> That's almost by definition. If you take all the money currently being spent by programs targeted at the poor/needy and redistribute it among the entire population, the average amount that a poor person would receive will decrease.

Attempting to do that would be political suicide. "You're taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich!" The only realistic way something like a GBI would be implemented were if there were means testing involved.

<comment><USER3> > If you take all the money currently being spent by programs targeted at the > poor/needy and redistribute it among the entire population, the average > amount that a poor person would receive will decrease.

I think the assumption is that the money you save by reducing the complexity of the welfare bureaucracy would be passed into the income itself. But I was assuming that the basic income system would give the same amount of total money to people currently receiving welfare benefits. My point was that _among people currently receiving benefits_ , some portion of them would receive a lot less on basic income, even though the money received would be the same on average.

<comment><USER5> Obviously you would want to design this in such a way that you do not decrease the average support to the poor, and while you would distribute it amongst the entire population, those of us with comfy incomes would have it recovered via taxes, by design.

I would also expect it's possible to design a system that doesn't substantially reduce the income of existing welfare recipients. Most government programs seem to exclude people from other programs and it's a very complicated game to even know how to sign up for things.

In fact, this is why my mother became a social worker, because she found it so difficult to get things like AFDC (replacement child support for families with deadbeat parents) and food stamps, even though we had a lot of advantages over other people who likely needed those things even more than we did.

And sure, those jobs will disappear but in fact the turnover in a lot of these programs is very high, it's very tough to do this type of work for very long, few people spend an entire life working for a social service program, and those who do are often committing fraud - not to say there aren't certainly _some_ who do who work very hard and are honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like this idea, but one issue I see is that, while 95% of people could use an extra 10k, the real cost of welfare comes from those few who have major medical needs, and that 10k would do nothing for them, at least as currently outlined here. There are always going to a portion of society who will need a disproportionate amount of financial assistance, and this doesn't seem to take that in to account. It seems likely that after problems arise, we would implement some other form of welfare on top of this program, and wouldn't have really gained anything.

That's my quick assumption anyway.

<comment><USER3> > the real cost of welfare comes from those few who have major medical needs

Are large per-person medical expenses a significant portion of total US welfare spending? Do you have a link to that data?

<comment><USER7> This isn't the metric you are looking for, but I believe the basis of this argument hinges on the proposition that financial need for medical expenses varies from demographic to demographic. I believe this is trivially demonstrated (statistically and from a common-sense standpoint) by looking at different age segments. Older people (baby boomers come to mind now) certainly do need more healthcare than younger people as a product of aging. Citation from 2008: [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/why-does-us- hea...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/why-does-us-health-care- cost-so-much-part-iii-an-aging-population-isnt-the-reason/)

Does that mean they would deserve a greater financial allowance? That is for the person designing the policy to decide; the article suggests no. I offer no opinion on this.

My main question is ... having read the article, I don't actually see the libertarian argument here at all. It seems to say it is simply "more libertarian" than what we currently have (with supporting arguments like "smaller government", "cheaper overhead", etc.) - but ultimately, the spirit of this proposal doesn't seem to be in line with these values at all.

<comment><USER8> _It seems to say it is simply "more libertarian" than what we currently have ..._

How is making something more libertarian not in line with libertarian values? Basically half the article seemed dedicated to explaining why this is a change in the direction libertarians would want.

<comment><USER7> It really isn't with respect to libertarian values in particular; all I am saying is that in a given scenario regardless of Ideology A, a watered down form of Ideology B that is closer to Ideology A does not necessarily represent the values of Ideology A - it is just closer on the spectrum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From a libertarian perspective, I've always thought that the best aspect of a basic income guarantee is that it allows monetary expansion to occur broadly, eliminating the banking sector's advantage as an early receiver of monetary inflation.

That, by itself, is a huge step forward and a rare place where both libertarians and keynesians can find common ground.

On the other hand, it goes right at the heart of both the banking system and centralized political power. Which is why, sadly, it will never happen.

<comment><USER10> You are quite right that the basic income would help monetarists and Keynsians increase the money supply more evenly, with less distributive problems, but I would not say that this is good from a purely libertarian perspective. Many libertarians believe that free banking is a much better system than our current system, and they would criticize the points you make as being of little benefit, and mostly being a distraction.

I think you make some good points, but I would have to think about this for a while before I could come to a firm opinion (because this is the first time I have heard your very interesting reasoning).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have many objections to basic income proposals such as this, but I would be very interested to see some states implement this sort of policy, so that we might observe the result. Unfortunately, I cannot imagine the federal government eliminating any of the existing Social Security or other wealth transfer programs, and they would likely obscure the findings of the basic income test program.

The best test I could imagine (to compare existing programs to the basic income,) would be for the federal government to grant waivers for all social welfare programs to some states, give them the equivalent amount of money, and have them each implement their own basic income program (at a level they see fit, with the state paying for any cost difference).

<comment><USER11> 40 some odd countries have, and it's working.

<comment><USER12> Yet as a counterexample socialized medicine works better than the USA system in every country on the planet, but we're still stuck with the USA system here.

Even if a B.I. is implemented in every country on the planet, we'll still be the last holdout.

<comment><USER13> When you get all hyperbolic and say stuff like "every country on the planet" or the other favorite, "the rest of the world" you make it simple for people who disagree to seize upon the lie and ignore your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If one problem is that subsidized people have a disincentive to work more, that can be solved by writing _everyone_ a check, regardless of their income level. This way, even if you have the check, any amount of work you do will supplement that check, rather than make you ineligible for part of all of the check.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to a simple flat per capita rate"

<comment><USER3> > that can be solved by writing everyone a check, regardless of their income > level.

I believe that is an explicit part of the definition of "basic income." One proposal I've read is that it must be applied for or opted into somehow, so wealthier people can simply refrain from accepting if they choose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One problem: Corrupt financialization. The types that financialize everything to make the poor poorer and rich richer will end up making contracts abusing the downtrodden along the lines of "sign over rights to your B.I. for the rest of your life and we'll give your child a kidney transplant, otherwise too bad for your kid, or maybe we'll give you a subprime used car this one time or maybe enough cash to pay off that legal bill"

It'll be quite a feeding frenzy for both the legal and illegal crooks for a little while.

(edited to add I think you'll also on the other side need some level of bankruptcy reform... lets say the cost to me of doing business while in bankruptcy is less than $10K annually... so you'd have to be an idiot to give me a mortgage loan because I could structure things quite carefully to get it for free. Or if not normal expenses like that, the usual medical industrial complex scam of huge bills for things not covered (entirely) by insurance.)

<comment><USER5> isn't it typical in bankruptcy where your debt is forgiven completely that you can't hold onto any asset like a home?

this seems like something people could already do, and which is already protected against.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Every discussion that doesn't confront the actual math of how it would work is silly.

300M * 10k = 3 Trillion Dollars

This is greater than the total revenue of the Federal government in 2013.

</comment><comment><USER16> I could get behind a program like that. Especially, if coupled with a flat tax on all income after the BIG.

<comment><USER17> This is the key. As the author describes eliminating things like the mortgage deduction - but if you implement a BIG while still leaving legislators the ability to levy taxes against certain constituents over others, we remain at exactly the same place we are now.

The Fairtax proposal at [http://www.fairtax.org](http://www.fairtax.org) has long advocated a lesser sort of BIG (called the 'prebate,' which would give everyone a check for their standard deduction each month to avoid people paying taxes on essential goods). After that, all would pay a flat sales tax on goods. Prices of goods would only increase minimally, given the absence of tax compliance costs for businesses. One could conceivably expand this type of BIG and do away with the welfare programs altogether.

But without doing away with the IRS, the system remains corrupt.

Sadly, neither of these proposals will ever happen, because both would require the federal government give up its ability to pick and choose to which constituents and special interests they dole out favors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like some of the arguments being made here. I would just have a few questions:

If the program involves no strings attached grants, and it is meant to replace existing welfare systems, what happens to people who blow their money on nonessentials? Is there a secondary net for them, or are they allowed to starve? What about bad parents who take the cash without providing for their children?

I understand that these questions are just as valid with our current system, but is there a way to address them within this new framework?

<comment><USER19> Personally, I'd pay it out on a regular basis, so people who blow one week can still get it the next.

<comment><USER20> Another key point is making loans offered on the basis of future basic income allowances unenforceable.

<comment><USER21> I don't think you need to consider how the loans were offered at all, the legal system should just not enforce debt collection of basic income.

<comment><USER22> I think this fits well in our existing bankruptcy system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot of administrators and paper pushers are not going to be happy.

Maybe one way to fix it is daily direct deposit. That would keep the paper shufflers quite busy and cut back on scams and foolishness.

I would be moderately amused at an idea of modification of the IRS tax code WRT gifts and being able to delegate my income. I am doing really well financially right now, so just give my $10K to my mom as a tax free gift. If you don't make it tax free lets be realistic I'll just avoid tax codes anyway. $10K would mean a heck of a lot more to her than to me. I suspect when my kids enter college if the whole scam hasn't collapsed by then, they'd find my share plus my wife's share plus maybe auntie's share to be quite handy. Currently you could run into IRS issues WRT taxable income if many family members start gifting one college student.

(edited to add, I just thought of one problem with delegation: What boils down to extortion, and probably blackmail. You'll know everyone will be vulnerable.)

</comment><comment><USER23> He forgot to mention that ideally minimum wage should go away under a strong BIG. Since people are getting a basic living wage from the BIG, there is no need to force employers to pay one.

I think that would help make the idea compelling to libertarians. And it should address some of the concerns of a big causing less employment.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Excellent article. One of the things that throws me off libertarianism is the lack of social welfare. I come from the land of free health care and education so minimal social welfare is a strange concept to me and, I say this without exaggeration, seems almost evil. However a BIG is something I would definitely go for. The reduced bureaucracy, better flexibility for people to use the money as they wish, potential economical benefits etc. are all great. I still think I'd take a reduced BIG in exchange for some sort of free health care (if we got rid of that we'd just be shifting the bureaucracy from government to insurance companies) but something where consumers have more choice and we have a more competitive market.

</comment><comment><USER24> It occurs to me that single-payer socialized medicine is basically a smaller, more specific version of Basic Income. Instead of trying to figure out how to get health care to people who can't afford it, just provide it to _everyone_ , problem solved. It seems to have worked well there, which implies good things about Basic Income. Better, I'd say, since many of the problems people see with socialized medicine, real or imagined, don't apply to a plain cash grant.

<comment><USER10> Single payer healthcare systems lack two critical aspects of the basic income: freedom of choice, and customer feedback.

Freedom of choice allows consumers to select the services and packages which would most benefit them, and single payer healthcare does not allow this.

Customer feedback (through selection of providers of goods and services) is critical, as it allows bad firms to fail, and good ones to continue. The basic income does not interfere with this type of signal, but the single payer system completely destroys it.

<comment><USER25> But on the positive side for single-payer healthcare, there's no upper bound on how much you get to consume, subject to medical necessity.

The problem is that medical problems are financially bimodal: they tend to be pretty cheap (take some antibiotics) or incredibly expensive (you need dialysis or you have a brain tumour).

So unless you have some sort of useful insurance plan that covers people and minor dependents for less than what you're getting in basic income you'll end up with the problem of people who are unable to get serious medical conditions treated. And making medical treatments universally accessible is part of the point of most single-payer healthcare systems.

<comment><USER10> You are right that single payer has a number of theoretical advantages, and I never meant to imply that single payer healthcare was prima facie 'bad'. I was only attempting to point out some major differences between single payer healthcare systems and the basic income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i'm in favor of something like a basic income, and my reasoning in part comes down to something very much like that in the article - we are already subsidizing people, and we're doing it badly with political overtones, so let's just get rid of the crap and make the system work.

I'd like it to go hand-in-hand with other sanity measures, like eliminating the gov't agency habit of foolishly spending their "leftover" money at the end of the fiscal year to avoid budget reductions the next year. It's a clear demonstration that the money isn't needed, and I'd rather see an ordinary citizen get to decide how that money is spent, because the gov't is just throwing it to well-heeled contractors who don't really need it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but what countries currently do some sort of basic income? A quick search on Google/Wikipedia turns up no actual implementations

</comment><comment><USER5> This is shockingly sane for a libertarian think tank.</comment>