George Gilder: Capitalism is based on information and knowledge, not greed - <AUTHOR> http://www.adrianscott.org/george-gilder-capitalism-is-based-on-informat <comment><USER2> Sure, whatever. It doesn't matter what "Capitalism" is. Evolution has made human-nature greedy. And all these systems (capitalism, consumerism, socialism, communism, anarchy, have one overriding commonality; they're implementors, regulators, and constituent parts are all human. Whom, in the aggregate, follow human-nature (by definition).

No matter what system you think we have (or should), what system they tell us we have, or what system people actually try to enact, human-nature morphs it towards greed.

And if you're irrationally alienated by the word "greed", feel free to replace it with the comfortable alternatives we've rationalized; "saving money", "efficiency", "winning", "being successful". They and others are all rooted in "getting the most for me" aka greed.

<comment><USER3> Instincts are all well and good. The problems arise when they get out of control: whether it's the instinct for food, the instinct for sex, the instinct for more, the instinct for curiosity. When you are in control of your instincts, things work. When your instincts run you, you're headed for trouble.

Greed, under control, can be valuable. Greed uber alles, leads to parasites like Romney getting filthily richer by doing things like bankrupting KP Toys.

<comment><USER4> > parasites like Romney getting filthily richer by doing things like > bankrupting KP Toys.

If you're a major league batter, sometimes you strike out, but at the end of the day you still get paid.

If you're a Senator, sometimes your bill gets defeated because your party simply doesn't have the votes, but at the end of the day you still get credit for fighting for it.

Beating up on Romney for not being able to bat 1000 as a consultant has always seemed a little harsh to me. Sometimes in life, you're simply dealt a losing hand, and nothing you can do will lead to the outcome you wish for. Without knowing more details of the circumstances, I'm willing to give Romney the benefit of the doubt on this one.

<comment><USER3> I'm not beating up on him for not batting 1000, I'm beating up on him for being a looter. KP was a solid, profitable company. Bain bought it, saddled it with debt (shame on the bankters, too), paid themselves massive management fees and "dividend". They made lots of "profit" from this exercise, but left a lot of people much worse off.

I have no problem whatsoever with people making a lot of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a very tough time rationalizing this guy's futurism with the rest of his opinions. Of course, I guess compartmentalization and contradiction are common elements of the human condition.

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

<comment><USER6> In particular, [excerpts from Wikipedia] Gilder is a founder of the Discovery Institute, the leading think tank of the intelligent design movement. Gilder has written many articles in favor of ID and opposing the theory of evolution.

<comment><USER5> A lot of engineers don't get evolution because engineers tend to think there is one best way to do something. How could evolution ever discover the "answer," they think? This is endlessly reinforced in school. You get right answers and wrong answers on tests, but that's because school tests are toy problems not real problems. In reality there are better answers and worse answers and worse-is-better answers and ugly-hack-to-ship answers.

But think about the Church-Turing thesis a bit, and universal computation, and it becomes obvious that there are infinitely many ways of solving any arbitrary problem. They aren't all created equal, but there are also paths between them. Evolution works by discovering _one_ answer and then following pathways through the fitness landscape to converge on better and better answers. Sometimes it actually does discover global optimums, or sometimes it just settles on something that works well enough given all the trade-offs. (In some problem spaces there is no clear global optimum.)

But I see something more here. His opinions on gender are just batty. There is evidence for gender dimorphism in humans, but he takes that evidence and does a Forrest Gump run with it all the way off the field and into the bleachers. He also ignores huge numbers of counter-examples to his thesis and mistakes statistical means for universal laws.

<comment><USER7> Also; engineers should be aware of genetic algorithms which work so well they are used by NASA ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna> ). Anyone who doesn't understand evolution is a fact is basically being willfully ignorant at this point.

<comment><USER8> OT, but: "[they] work so well they are used by NASA" is hardly an argument.

NASA can also use piss poor technology. Remember that Challenger disaster?

Plus, wasn't NASA that did the BS publicity stunt of the supposed discovery of "life based on arsenic"?

<comment><USER5> They've also been used to design analog-to-digital converters that work better than hand-designed A/D converters. The kicker is that we don't know exactly how they work, nor have we proven that they are "correct." But we've tested them enough that we're confident enough to ship them in products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure this random collection of quotes is a great starting point for a discussion as broad as what "capitalism is". Especially quotes that come in an election year from a non-economist mainly famous for his GOP activism.

If you do want an argument in favor of the information-aggregation view of markets, and what is required for them to work in practice, F.A. Hayek provides a better analysis.

<comment><USER10> Some places to start:

The Use of Knowledge in Society: <http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html>

Economics and Knowledge: <http://www.econlib.org/library/NPDBooks/Thirlby/bcthLS3.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I disagree. Capitalism in its current state is heavily based on securing advantages, meaning it's only fair in areas which are new and not saturated by established players.

<comment><USER4> Three beautiful words to a capitalist: "Sustainable competitive advantage."

> it's only fair in areas which are new and not saturated by established > players.

What is your definition of "fairness," and why should we care whether it is a property of capitalism?

I think you're saying something like "capitalism encourages incumbents to build fences to keep newcomers out."

That's true. Antitrust law exists to discourage certain types of fences that we find undesirable.

But other types of fences are perfectly OK -- for example, AMD and Intel spend hundreds of millions, if not billions, every year on R&D to keep raising their technology head-start fence, to keep competing chip vendors out of their markets. The result from the consumer's point of view is a virtuous cycle of continually improving products at the same price point from these industry leaders, with a "long tail" starting with successively older generations of obsolete processors on the secondary market, down to much cheaper ARM's which have much lower performance but are perfectly adequate for many applications.

If incumbents can always build fences so strong that they are invulnerable:

How did Google win against Yahoo?

How did cable providers win against over-the-air TV networks?

How did Netflix kill Blockbuster?

How did Microsoft triumph over IBM?

When incumbents fence themselves in, times are good for them for a little while -- but usually the incumbents end up as slow, fat targets for fast- moving, lean startups.

This is especially true once the management team that established the incumbents has moved on or retired, and their replacements listen when the accountants tell them how much money they can make if they raise prices, cut costs, or reduce their investment in fences.

<comment><USER11> Yes, there is no right for resting on your past achievements, there is arguably a fair way of getting advantages secured for a limited amount of time: innovation, adding to others innovations, combining others works, opening new markets. And the other "unfair" way: patent-abuse, monopolies, cartels, copycats with no added value, lobbying for the gains of a few who are already better off. Some of that has been made illegal some of it just feels morally wrong. Basically it comes down to moral norms, which society can turn into laws if considered important enough by a majority. Its all comes down to finding a balance, economics will never be perfect or fair for all, but I consider it the goal of politics to be getting it closer to that ideal state which should be beneficial to all in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He gives the game away in the second sentence:

> But greed, in fact, prompts capitalists to seek government guarantees and > subsidies that denature and stultify the works of entrepreneurs.

Yes, that is how real, as opposed to theoretical, capitalism works. And communism is all about selfless cooperation in theory, but in practice works out to something quite different.

Speaking of communism and information, I can't recommend too highly the book Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, which is about the efforts by very early cyberneticians in the USSR to create an economy which was managed by information without greed.

</comment><comment><USER13> It sure is. Sometimes this information is in the form of insider knowledge shared within the old boys network, or misinformation spread to the masses to pump and dump a stock (hello facebook), or tell everyone to buy a house with a white picket fence (take on that mortgage, it's the best investment evah), or market "derivatives" that are "too complex even for the sellers to fully understand". We also have the knowledge on how to patent stuff so the hoi polloi don't get their grubby little fingers on it...

It's all about the CONTROL of information, making use of it to enrich oneself at the expense of others.

Let's not kid ourselves, it's not about sharing sh*t. It's about doling it out piecemeal and selectively, or obsessively, to control opinion and/or maximize profit.

Perhaps not zero-sum, but there are lots of bags held by the partially informed and the less-informed.

</comment><comment><USER14> "In capitalism, the winners do not eat the losers but teach them how to win through the spread of information."

This certainly casts patents in an anti-capitalist light...

<comment><USER15> I don't actually agree with that. Capitalism is ruthless. The winners _do_ put the losers out of business. That's the moral justification for IP: without regulatory intervention, the winners are often not the generators of the IP. That has become more true in the age of the Internet, where a lot of natural monopolies are emerging, but it was probably always true. Size begets growth, coalition-building is inevitable (leading to conglomerates) and those who can't make nice with the big players often get crushed.

The problem with capitalism is that it's not stable. People who become rich and powerful (and their generally useless heirs, friends, and hired-gun managers) don't actually want to live in a capitalist world, so they use their social connections to build a private safety net, which hampers innovation. Corporate bureaucracies have more in common with the Kremlin than a Silicon Valley startup, and even Silicon Valley isn't _that_ innovative, because it's increasingly controlled by a well-connected VC/media social elite. Most people wouldn't want to live in pure capitalism, and the corporate elite especially doesn't want it. They want to keep what they've got.

The problem with the problem with capitalism (or the problem with not- capitalism) is that every alternative to an at least mostly capitalistic economy is terrible. Command economies are not desirable.

Most thinking people are essentially (small-l) libertarian. My use of this word has nothing to do with the current usage (conservative who likes pot). By libertarian, I mean the opposite of authoritarian: belief that people should, all else being equal, be free to do as they wish rather than controlled by a governmental or corporate authority. (Authoritarians believe it's intrinsically impossible for most people to do anything good unless told to do so by a central authority.) The problem is that libertarianism begets capitalism begets conglomeration begets corporatism. It's the Iron Law of Oligarchy. The only solution I can see is the Western European social democracy (i.e. a socialist infrastructure to provide a safety net, but a capitalist engine for innovation and to maintain individual freedom). You need enough of a welfare state to keep people from being exploited by emergent corporate power, but enough capitalism (economic freedom) to keep innovation alive.

<comment><USER16> Michael, I live in Silicon Valley and grew up most of my life in Israel and Europe (France). All I can say is honestly Americans don't even know how good they have it. France is doing so bad I don't even know where to start. They barely have any innovation and whatever they have comes from companies that have been in power for decades. France made it so easy to get welfare and taxes so high (40-50%) that it's better to collect welfare then actually do any work (I have friends there in their 20s actually doing this). What I love about Capitalism is NEW wealth and power is created every 10 years. Where was Facebook, Google, Salesforce and Twitter 10 years ago? (this is a short list there are many smaller multi million dollars companies created in the past 10 years in the US). I know you see this as something normal or not such a big deal, but in other countries this never happens, the same companies stay in power. What I am trying to say is that Capitalism WORKS very well, the wealth in America changes hands very rapidly and there are endless opportunities to create more wealth. Did you ever think of the impact that Facebook/twitter/reddit had on the world? Helping the Arab spring, flowing information freely etc. I am sure you will find holes in what I said, all I can say is that I am a huge fan of what this country represents (capitalism) and if you stray away from this system that has made the US what it is trust me we will fall hard. What I think is happening in the US is a bunch of lazy people who want something for nothing are rising up. They hate the 1% (which created a lot of jobs and innovation) for no good reason. I hope Capitalism gets more "sexy" and gets great new representatives who defend it not retards like Paul Ryan and Romney. I think it will make everything a lot better :)

<comment><USER4> > They hate the 1% (which created a lot of jobs and innovation) for no good > reason.

Envy and covetousness aren't "good" reasons, but they are certainly reasons humans have used to hate each other throughout history.

> France made it so easy to get welfare and taxes so high (40-50%) that it's > better to collect welfare then actually do any work

Romney's ad criticizing Obama's rollback of the requirement established under President Clinton, that welfare recipients must actively look for work, speaks to exactly this point.

I wonder if technology will ever make this model sustainable -- if we have most of our farms, factories and mines run by robots and computers with minimal human intervention, could we produce enough food, clothing, shelter, and basic necessities for everyone if the only people who work are those who wish to do so?

The reason Republicans have produced mediocre candidates for a while is that the party has too many constituencies: You have the religious right (mainly concerned about moral decay and social issues, think Huckabee), the neocon faction (pro-big-government and foreign policy hawks, think GWB), and the libertarians (Tea Party, Ron Paul -- mainly in favor of smaller government and lower taxes).

Their traditional base is dwindling; a near-majority of people don't pay any federal taxes, so can't be bribed by tax cuts and are very uncomfortable with social-program cuts. Religion is on the decline. We haven't suffered any major terrorist attacks lately, and GWB's wars have left many interventionists with a sour taste in their mouths. So they're trying to reach out to new constituencies; in this election cycle, it's immigrants and women, judging by the convention speeches.

We need a strong candidate who can fix the mess before we become locked circling the drain that France has gone down. It's hard to see this candidate coming from either party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Far from a system of greed, capitalism depends on a golden rule of enterprise: The good fortune of others is also your own."

So... when competition puts your company out of business, that's a good thing?

It was beneficial to local grocers when their businesses were bankrupted after being undercut by Walmart?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it gave them an impulse to find areas where they could do something that people judged valuable enough to part with their money. (e.g. learn how to design web pages and make bad flash animations ;)

It also did help people who buy groceries, including poor people.

<comment><USER17> But now the people who worked at the small town grocer are out of a job, so you are left with _more_ poor people.

<comment><USER18> It's all good ... they can retrain in Ruby On Rails or Objective-C and become app entrepreneurs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't Capitalism based on... capital? Investing in production in such a way that you increase your profit rate -- with the inevitable result being consolidation of capital, and therefore power over the means of production -- or in other words the consolidation of power?

With globalization this becomes an even more serious problem, because the entities that control the capital are extra-national. So from the joyful history of the East Inda Company to the merry state of British Petroleum today -- you have entities that cannot on the whole be held accountable to one set of laws, because no (functional) jurisdiction exist that cover their entire area of operations.

Even when regulation seemingly works, as with Microsoft, Netscape and the browser wars -- they fail. Microsoft won that one, despite loosing.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Microsoft won that one, despite loosing." (sic)

please explain?

<comment><USER20> I read it as: "By bundling IE with Windows, abusing (illegal) the Windows monopoly (legal) MS managed to basically kill Netscape... Despite losing the legal battle and being --forever-- regarded as a company that did abuse its monopoly to drive out a competitor".

It's not about IE vs Chrome, it's not about IE vs Safari. It's not about whatever-MS-mobile-OS vs Android vs iOS.

It's about IE vs Netscape and MS (illegally) "winning" that war despite losing in court.

<comment><USER19> Yes, that sums up what I meant.

Also, if you look at browser stats even today, arguably IE has an "unfair" share of the market -- but such things are hard to be certain of ("What is a 'fair' market share for the now much, much improved IE browser?").

The biggest thing MS did was probably to give away the browser for free, subsidizing the development of the browser, with profits from windows licences. That dumping effort effectively killed the market for (paid for) browsers -- eventually even Opera gave up charging end users for its browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not much content in this blog piece. Couple of isolated quotes from a Forbes article from a with no tl;dr on offer.

Instead of "Capitalism is...beautiful" ideology it would be worth focussing on when it works and when it doesn't. Seems that there is strong evidence that capitalism harness human nature, property rights, and incentives to enable production. That's great. There is a lot less discussion about what it takes for markets to allocate resources efficiently. Two of the bigger prerequisites are "no externalities" and "symmetric information". Capitalism has no built-in mechanism to establish these conditions. A lot of our problems today go right to those factors. We could do something about it if our politicians would stop playing to the cheap seats. Sorry capitalism, you're ok but not that beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER22> Flagged for being overly partisan political, and bringing little value as a launching point for discussion.

</comment><comment><USER23> Data Points:

Since 1970, global population increased by 91% Since 1970, global aggregate GDP increased by 540% (in constant $)

I think that means that 540/1.91 = ~2.8x increase in per-person productivity on a global basis over the last 40 years. I would contend that capitalism drives productivity increases to a greater degree than communism or socialism, simply based on the fact that 8 of the top 10 economies in the world are arguably capitalist. (counting France as socialist and China as something else, not sure what at this point).

A better statistician than I can weigh in with wealth distribution, and I am betting that the average world citizen is better off today than 40 years ago, primarily due to capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER24> Capitalism is based on there being a customer. All the capital in the world doesn't do any good if there's not a buyer on the other end. Another argument for a strong middle class.

<comment><USER25> Capitalism is not based on the existence of a customer. It's based in freedom, in the right of every individual to do what he or she wants to do with his or her own life and property.

Of course, if there is no customer, there can be no sale. However, the sale itself isn't always the point. Sometimes people do things just for the fun of it -- and that's capitalism, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Capitalism as described is yes, but humans are based among other things on greed and they are part of the system.

Please don't make the mistake of confusing the system with the agents in the system.

</comment><comment><USER27> Capitalism is only possible where knowledge is shared unequally. For example, if many people knew how to obtain the proper license or whatever and where to go to buy wholesale, then they would bypass retailers entirely. Similarly, if many people had knowledge about how to start a business and knew several friendly venture capitalists or bank officers, many of them would start their own businesses and there would be few people to do the actual work.

Having said that, I think its important to emphasize some of the things that capitalism gets right: it is still a relatively open and distributed system that is able to evolve more freely than systems that are less so. Open in that many people can actually apply for loans etc. and start their own businesses. Distributed in that there are numerous options and usually no single point of failure.

I don't think that greed is necessarily fundamental to human nature. That's an oversimplification. Humans do need to compete sexually, but I don't think that extreme hierarchies are necessarily a requirement for that. Much of what is considered human nature is just the current state of our culture.

I think its hard to create a system that operates consistently and soundly as a whole but at the same time is robust, distributed and free to develop in different directions.

However, I believe sure that we can improve our current situation by injecting a more egalitarian belief system as well as more science and technology into the power structure and its operating principles, which means the financial system. For example, "economics" is now mainly gaming strategies for maintaining point (monetary) counts and the power that goes with them. But because economics is so critical to human decision making, it must at some point incorporate human needs, social science, and physical science such as ecology. There is a false belief that somehow these monetary gaming strategies and point/goods exchange systems (the economy) incorporate scientific knowledge, measurement, and technological knowledge automatically. That is not the case currently.

One of the problems with all of the systems, capitalistic or anti- capitalistic, is the tendency to move, either quickly or more slowly, towards centralization. When wealth/power as well as goods and services production concentrates it leads to vast inequality, poor distribution, stagnation, inability to cope with local conditions, etc.

I think we need to do a better job of centralizing information schemas and holistic knowledge but do that in a way that does not compromise the ability to evolve those knowledgebases and distribute production or lead towards centralization of power, etc. Its not easy, but I think its a technological problem we can solve.

<comment><USER4> > Capitalism is only possible where knowledge is shared unequally.

Not true! If everyone had access to a magical worldwide pool of all the economically relevant information that exists in the mind of any member of the human race (along with a search engine or something to let us index and query the data for effective use), there would probably be more trade, not less -- it would be easier to identify opportunities and connect buyers and sellers. The Internet did this, to a first approximation -- there are all kinds of niche products you can buy on the Internet.

> For example, if many people knew how to obtain the proper license or > whatever and where to go to buy wholesale, then they would bypass retailers > entirely.

Sam's Club, eBay, Newegg, overstock.com -- there are lots of ways for ordinary people to avoid paying retail. Many people do frequent these websites; retail is dying.

> Similarly, if many people had knowledge about how to start a business and > knew several friendly venture capitalists or bank officers, many of them > would start their own businesses and there would be few people to do the > actual work.

For the first 100+ years of America's existence as an independent country, most Americans were small businesspeople -- farmers, mostly. The notion that working for someone else is the norm, and having your own business is the exception, only happened with the Industrial Revolution, when new technology shifted the economy toward businesses that required lots of workers and capital.

Since the Internet/software world is one of the major growth areas of the economy, and doesn't require any capital investment beyond a computer, an Internet connection, and (rather optional) formal training in the field, we're seeing that many people are choosing to start small businesses as individuals or small teams with minimal capital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Capitalism is based on information, knowledge, greed for money, greed for ownership, desire for accomplishment, and a lot of other things. Information is one of these things. Information is a means to a lot of other ends as well.

I look dimly on people who say "Capitalism is driven by X" where X is some narrowly defined band of things. From Rand to Marx, theories that look like invariably turn out wrong, sometimes disastrously so. In economic speak, an incentive is anything that a person in question might want. The desire to acquire information and the rewards of using it are one kind of incentive. It's common for random econ pundits to try to redefine "incentive" as "greed", and this should be the first clue that they either don't know or don't care what economists actually think.

</comment><comment><USER29> huh? Capitalism is about risk and reward. Capitalists look to government for a number of things:

a) Infrastructure b) Political stability c) Market Regulation (e.g. fair competition, orderly markets, currency,etc) d) and risk reduction

Capitalists are free to asks for any other thing that decreases risk, it doesn't mean the government has to respond in all cases. I disagree with George, there is not direct path between incentives and socialism.

</comment><comment><USER30> _The competitive pursuit of knowledge is not a dog-eat-dog Darwinian struggle._

This is demonstrably not true in the presence of _Firms_. _Agents_ in the markets are hierarchies, and the internal competition in a hierarchy is very much darwinian. This second tier of this two-tiered chess game is not without consequence.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow - this is so close to the FLOSS ideology! I'll need to read that book.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's based on individual property rights, trade and reinvestment of capital accumulated due to said rights.

</comment><comment><USER33> So, the claims are that capitalism is based on information and knowledge and not greed and that greed leads to socialism?

Is certainly an interesting opinion.

My first thoughts were that he seems to be confusing motives and methods. Information and knowledge certainly flow through a capitalist system and are definitely required in order to do well, but they are not the motive for most capitalists, In fact I can think of very few millionaires who are in business for the learning and philosophy, whereas the desire to own more stuff or money often is a driving force.

As for saying that socialism is the end product of greed, and that it is greed that leads to a socialist welfare state, well. Someone should definitely tell this to some of the various murderous dictators that have been propped up by capitalists in the name of stability, security and favourable trading positions. They'd have a pretty good laugh about it while checking their numbered accounts.

Also, if greed leads to the creation of welfare for the poor, presumably this means that the problem is the greedy poor. Which given that by definition they cannot be very good at being greedy as they have no stuff, makes me doubt that it was their greed that led to the creation of welfare, and that maybe having less than 100% employment might have more to do with the massive mechanisation and export of labour.

</comment><comment><USER15> Capitalism has its problems, but its critical selling point is that, if it works well, you don't need official approval to do business. In the USSR, it was a crime to compete with the one established business: the state. Fusions of state and business power (whether from the left, as in communism, or from the right, as in fascism) are almost always bad. The major win (practical and moral) in capitalism is the right of the individual to interact with the market without official approval.

If you look at corporate hierarchies, however, you see that they're run internally like command economies. Headcounts and projects are written up and assigned by gloomy, bureaucratic committees detached from the actual heartbeat of the business. You're assigned a role, and if you try to "compete" by seeking a different role or starting a skunk-works project, most companies will fire you or otherwise work to shut you down. Companies are statist in the extreme.

Corporatism is a system designed to give the best of both systems (capitalism and socialism) for a well-connected, parasitic social elite (called "the 1 percent", but really they're about 0.2%) and the worst of both for everyone else. You see this, for example, in commercial air travel, where you get Soviet quality of service but the bizarre, unpredictable pricing you'd expect from a runaway market (that is actually not so much a "market" as an algorithm designed to fuck you over).

<comment><USER34> _...or from the right, as in fascism..._

Fascism was (by modern US standards) a center-left ideology. It emphasizes collectivism/corporatism, authoritarianism and nationalism.

You are also using the term "corporatism" incorrectly. Corporatism is a political system which elevates the rights of privileged corporates (a better modern term would be "special interest groups") above the rights of individuals. A good example of modern corporatism would be disparate impact- based policies - e.g., "we shouldn't allow this neighborhood to gentrify because a privileged corporate might disproportionately move out of this neighborhood."

I think what you meant by "corporatism" is actually "cronyism".

<comment><USER9> On purely economic grounds, I could see that characterization, but fascism's principal features don't have a lot of support among centrists or leftists. It emphasizes a unified ethnic culture (which includes opposition to multiculturalism and a general xenophobia), a military-first policy, and national-greatness/exceptionalism, all of which are typically associated with the right.

In a U.S. context, rural conservatives share many more of those features than either urban conservatives or liberals: they combine a mild economic populism with opposition to multiculturalism, strong support for American exceptionalism, suppression of "deviant" individual behavior (porn, profanity, blasphemy, homosexuality, etc.), support for a strong military, etc. A closer but now largely defunct analog might be the old Dixiecrats.

In Europe you commonly find descended ideologies in the far-right parties. In Denmark, for example, the Dansk Folkeparti combines support for a social welfare system— _for Danes_ —with strong opposition to allowing non-Danes to enter the country, exclusion of immigrants from social-welfare benefits, legislation in favor of protecting Danish culture and combatting the importation of foreign cultural elements, banning mosque construction, and a strong military to fight Islamism worldwide.

<comment><USER34> Sad fact - fascism and virtually every other ideology of 30's incorporated racism. Racism was just an easy way to garner support. It's also a sideshow to the intellectual basis for fascism, which is collectivism and authoritarianism. (The name is derived from the word "fasces", which is Italian for a bundle of sticks.)

That said, fascism isn't all that accurately classified as left wing either. While modern left wingers do embrace the collectivism that fascism is based on, fascism doesn't care much about "social justice", "inequality", or any of the other big left wing buzzwords.

Similarly, fascism cares very little about various other right wing values, e.g. traditional protestant values or whatever. They are a convenient way to convince particular corporates to join your syndicate (making it stronger), but that's all.

This is why I characterize it as "center left" - it doesn't fit easily with any mainstream ideology, but collectivism does point more left than right.

Racism is also irrelevant when attempting to determine where fascism lives. Racism is split pretty evenly across American political parties, and it is not a significant part of any major American ideology: [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/08/rac...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/08/racism- by-political-party.html)

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's so much _racism_ per se as a militant nationalism and national-exceptionalist view, as the key defining feature (we are the best nation and will build a glory that will shine for the ages).

Before Hitler forced him to pass anti-Jewish laws, Mussolini wasn't particularly racist, just nationalist. His thing was the eternal greatness of Italy, the connection to ancient Roman glory, the new legions of Italy rebuilding the Roman empire, reorienting society on martial and patriotic lines, etc., etc. The collectivism basically stems from that: the Nation above all. To me, that's a very right-wing sort of collectivism, whereas both the left and liberals have more of an internationalist and multicultural orientation.

It's true that it's not libertarian (either right-libertarian or left- libertarian). But I don't think it's too alien from cultural conservatism and "national greatness conservatism", which also places a high emphasis on patriotism and the nation, and is highly critical of individuals who deviate from what they see as the good of the community (hence the traditional conservative support for censorship of blasphemous, prurient, and seditious literature, as they believe it's the government's job to prevent this kind of deviance). As one litmus test, we might look at which parts of the political spectrum support mandatory Pledge of Allegiance recitation, in order to train the youth to put their Nation first.

<comment><USER34> I also don't think it's too alien from modern American liberalism, which similarly places a high emphasis on patriotism and national greatness. Remember when we used to be the greatest manufacturing power, with a glorious middle class? The state can bring our next golden age.

Similarly, "Nation Above All" sounds a lot like "Ask not how the State can serve you, ask how you can serve the State" (JFK's verbiage tweaked only slightly). "All within the state" sounds like it describes the "Life of Julia".

I'd really like to know what modern conservatives you feel embody the "Nation/State Above All". Isn't Romney's slogan these days "we [individuals] built it, not the state?"

As for punishing those who deviate from what they see as the good of the community, most major ideologies favor that. It's nothing unusual, which is why there is also traditional liberal support for censorship (of slightly different topics).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Capitalism is based on information and knowledge, not greed"

Really? Then someone please inform the capitalists.

So when, for example, a large multinational executes workers demanding better pay and conditions in third world country factories, it's all about information and knowledge.

Mainly, the knowledge that killing those guys will send a message to the rest of the workers, and keep the factory costs down.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Coke-Machine-Behind- Favorite/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Coke-Machine-Behind- Favorite/dp/1583334068)

Just an example. There are million others, from lobbying and having special laws made for them in western countries, to setting up governments of people they approve and taking down governments they don't like in so called "Banana republics".

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Coke-Machine-Behind- Favorite/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Coke-Machine-Behind- Favorite/dp/1583334068)</comment>


Show HN: 6PAQ – where manly men and geeks shop for gear - <AUTHOR> https://6paq.com <comment><AUTHOR> looking for some feedback on branding / concept / domain name etc.</comment>


Fearful Parents Buying Bulletproof Backpacks - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/fearful-parents-buying-bulletproof-backpacks <comment><USER2> We can't do anything for Billy, but his laptop will be safe...</comment>


How Will We Live in 2015? The future is now for sustainable cities.  - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2008/oct/08-how-and-where-will-we-live-in-2015 <comment><USER2> I really can't stand the way the word "sustainable" is used. On a sufficiently short timescale, everything is sustainable. On a sufficiently long timescale, nothing is sustainable.

More importantly, talking about sustainability only makes sense if we're not planning on any technological improvements. For instance, burning fossil fuels for energy obviously is only sustainable on a decades-to-centuries timescale, but that doesn't mean we need to stop; the question is whether it will keep us going for long enough to develop good alternatives.

Cars, on the other hand, aren't intrinsically unsustainable on a thousands-of- years timescale provided that they're powered sensibly.

<comment><USER3> That's true to some degree. However, much of our infrastructure are designed for 1000 year timescales but rely on technologies with far shorter timescales.

There are plenty of alternatives to powering our cars, but none currently (and none on the horizon either) that are as good (cost effective) as petroleum. The cost-benefit analysis will be changing, but we won't be able to adapt because our communities rely on cheap fuel. People will have the unenviable choice of paying an arm and a leg commuting, or letting their exurban communities (and the massive investment they represent) fall back into farm land.

<comment><USER4> Y'know, suburban and exurban communities are a conundrum: They bear a lot of the blame for the incipient energy crash, but they may be one of the average joe's best assets in surviving it. It's similar to the systemic inefficiencies in the Soviet system allowed an industrial buffer during their collapse (ref. Dmitri Orlov's essays). This inefficiency will let people convert that half acre of useless lawn into a garden bearing a good percentage of the food a family needs, the same way durable goods piled up in warehouses because of the Soviets' command-directed economy could be used and traded by those with access. Turn the local park into less-intensively-improved land growing staple cereals, and you've gone most of the way converting a suburb to a village that can at least subsist at a 17th century level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In six years .... not terribly different. Though we can look at current technology thats up and coming and place bets that by this time such will be popular.

Look at Facebook, it has been around since 04 and four years later we are now just seeing the early majority hop on board. Adoption takes time and bureaucracies slow new and better tech down. i.e. alternative energy and telecommunications

</comment><comment><USER6> 2015 is too soon for us.

May be you mean: "How will Dubai be in 2015?"</comment>


Ask HN: How many angels read HN? - <AUTHOR>

I'm mostly a product guy, but I'm an occasional angel too.<p>So, out of curiosity: reveal yourselves and talk a bit about what you look for in a startup. <comment><AUTHOR> I look for a team I like and a product that is what I think of as "market- shaped" - a meetingplace for transactions, either financial or otherwise.

I also generally don't consider a company I wouldn't work at (are the founders someone I would work for?) or a product I wouldn't work on.

</comment><comment><USER2> I could imagine that a lot of angels wouldn't want to reveal themselves here in fear of being overrun by wannabe entrepreneurs. I'm sure there are quite a few though. If I was an angel this is a place I would definitely watch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm more interested in this place because of the methods exposed, the technologies used, etc.

One thing I've learned about being an angel is you get to say No a whole lot. So I'm not really afraid of being overrun.

<comment><USER2> Out of curiosity, have you ever invested or do you know someone that invested in a company from initial contact here on HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. A lot of stuff here isn't really fundable. Some is too meh, some is too bootstrappy (which is awesome, mind you) and some is too conflicty.

I'm in three YC companies so far, but I found them at YC, not here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Myth Revealed: Not all gamers white teenage boys - Logic-Shop http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/19/sexism-racism-gaming

<comment><AUTHOR> What are the rules for voting something down? I don't like this, and I disagree with her argument. It feels too weak to fit in here.

There is still a lot more racism than I would like to admit, but creating another forum to run in circles about it isn't going to help. Discouraging the behaviour will over time. Women in games isn't a problem, they just don't seem to be into them as hard core as some men, thats all. Between halo and smash bros they'll go mostly for smash bros. (Though I realize how competitive smash bros is, or was?) No one cares, there just aren't as many of them on live, or presumably the psn.

<comment><USER2> If you have enough points, you can flag a post and the admins will take a look and maybe remove it.

Or just wait for it to die on its own accord.</comment></comment>


Falcor – A JavaScript library for efficient data fetching - <AUTHOR> https://netflix.github.io/falcor/ <comment><USER2> In my company, we recently had a discussion about falcor and graphql. There were benefits to both sides, but at the end of it, Graphql won out.

Here are some of the reasons why:

\- Falcor is not a standard or a language, its a large javascript library with conventions for manipulating data.

\- GraphQL on the other hand, is a full blown query language, that is _standardized_. This means, that implementations in other languages (other than JS) will have to follow standards

\- GraphQL has a very high rate of adoption, and has many libraries in other languages.

\- GraphQL is backed by FB, which has a track record of releasing only things that have been tried and tested.

<comment><USER3> I think your use of the term "standardization" is slightly out of place here. When you say "standard", I think of something like IEEE 802.3 or FIPS 202.

But what do you really mean by "standardized" in this context? Is there a known consortium of companies that provides its stamp of approval on correct implementations of GraphQL? If not, what prevents me from implementing GraphQL incorrectly in, say, OCaml?

<comment><USER4> By standard he means there is a formal document you can point to and say "this is GraphQL"[[https://facebook.github.io/graphql/](https://facebook.github.io/graphql/)]

<comment><USER3> Wait, so Facebook hasn't even released a reference implementation?

<comment><USER4> They have, but specs are a more authoritative standard than a reference implementation.

<comment><USER3> Definitely, but a spec without an implementation is even worse. It's like saying "we're not invested in this idea enough to implement it". Huge red flag in my view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Falcor is a very interesting approach, and as others have mentioned GraphQL is very similar. I can't go into any details, but we have been using Falcor on my team as the basis for our own work. We are gradually moving away from it though as it has become clear it is great for Netflix's use-case but less so for a more generalised solution. Particularly when you throw in streaming data.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the open sourced version of Falcor also isn't the version used internally. This is certainly true of their Prana (a sidecar used to allow a node app to talk to the rest of the Netflix stack). And the repo has had a massive slowdown and basically ground to a halt in the past year - [https://github.com/Netflix/falcor/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/Netflix/falcor/graphs/contributors).

So saying that, I'd have reservations about recommending it for other developers to use. The concepts are great, but GraphQL is more widely supported and discussed. Also the Falcor docs could use some serious work for clarity.

Though I also believe there are better ways to declaratively describe your data requirements against a graph than either Falcor or GraphQL.

<comment><USER6> > I have a sneaking suspicion that the open sourced version of Falcor also > isn't the version used internally.

The JS Falcor Client is used at Netflix. We're not yet using the JS Falcor Router in production.

<comment><USER5> Ah that's good to hear. I hope I didn't come off harsh :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Over at Graphistry, we've been contributing to a lot of core Falcor development over the last year, e.g., Falcor+React integration and, quite recently, streaming data support. It brought a lot of sanity to our single page app workflow, and as a GPU<->GPU client/cloud visual analytics company, it has been one of our trusted tools for letting our small team deliver technology experiences that even the big companies cannot. Examples below :) At this point, we believe we've gone firmly past what we could have done with Falcor alternatives. We have not been vocal about it, but it's been unlocking a lot for us, and we've been in turn making sure it helps build out enterprise-level features (e.g., api-first) while still delivering our beyond- native experiences.

If any of this sounds cool, and especially if you are in the bay area, we have ~3 immediate developer openings -- firstname.lastname@example.com :) Come work with one of the Falcor and Rx leads, one of the original reactive web framework developers, and more :)

==

Client+cloud GPU acceleration of visual analytics -- [https://giphy.com/gifs/26gsjaFVRGMwO4Yp2](https://giphy.com/gifs/26gsjaFVRGMwO4Yp2)

Visual investigation workflow programming -- [https://giphy.com/gifs/l0ExittUyY3hjugso](https://giphy.com/gifs/l0ExittUyY3hjugso)

graphistry.com

</comment><comment><USER8> I've watched Jafar talk about Falcor. Didn't know about it before since GraphQL is so dominant in the space.

If you're just getting into these, the major difference is the verbosity and the learning curve.

With GraphQL you need to know a lot about the schema and the types (which can be a good thing as well), with Falcor you don't and there's no easy way to code types (at least that I know of).

Whatever you choose though, I do encourage you to choose one. I have seen many APIs fail on performance because they send too much data down the wire just because one of the consumer needs it.

<comment><USER9> Sending redundant data feels wrong but responses can (sometimes) be cached and messages compressed. I thought that the main advantages to Falcor or GraphQL was around reducing network calls and querying multiple data sources from one endpoint.

If the same type and structure of data is requested with only variations in which fields consumers are actually using, isn't traditional REST still a good/better fit?

<comment><USER10> To me, the biggest benefit of adopting GraphQL was its strong-type system, which made communicating API specs between the client and server much more transparent

The reduction in network calls is an incidental bonus - most of the time you won't see it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's being in developer preview forever issues seat there with no response for long time. Unlike FB Netflix is dedicating 0 resources to help with its adoption. I think majority of people who originally wrote the thing left too.

<comment><USER12> > I think majority of people who originally wrote the thing left too.

Jafar Husain was the primary creator and developer of Falcor and, as far as I know, he's still at Netflix.

<comment><USER11> Yes it looks like only Paul Taylor left Netflix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Falcor, conceptually, is a really great and exciting idea. However it seems either too disconnected from existing tooling / too theoretical. Meanwhile, I've been working on an Open Source Firebase alternative for a few years now, and I decided to go ahead and implement (what, in obviously IMHO) is a better version of the idea.

Recently somebody combined it with webcomponents/polymer, which is pretty awesome. Here is an example they use for realtime IoT temperature data viz, you drop in `<gun-ui-lcd parent="livingroom" prop="temperature"></gun-ui-lib>` and it automatically tells the system to ONLY load `temperature` from the `livingroom` database. More info, along with a cool animated gif showing the example off in action, is here: [https://github.com/Stefdv/gun-ui- lcd#syncing](https://github.com/Stefdv/gun-ui-lcd#syncing) .

More generally, the way it works is this:

Imagine we have some document, like

``` { name: "Alice", age: 27, pet: { name: "Fluffy", age: 4 } } ```

all we have to do is

``` Gun(serverURL).get('alice').path('pet.name').on(age => ui.show('#pet-age', age)) ```

This makes it easy to bind with React, or Angular, or VueJS, or others. The important thing to note is, like Falcor, it __only __loads the 1 property, not the full document. If you want to show another item, it is trivial to just add `...get( 'alice').path('age').on(age => ui.show('#age', age))`.

I've already made a prototype which automatically generates the loading the properties based off of a plain HTML template. Hopefully I'll have it published in the next couple months. Meaning all you have to do is add a property to your HTML, and it automatically binds realtime updates of data to that view! (No writing JS).

<comment><USER7> Fragment queries load exactly what you want, with automatic smart caching etc. out-of-the-box, and give you robust controls when you want to get deeper into cache control, API generation, middleware, etc. I suggest taking a closer look.

For the above example, we'd write React+Falcor along the lines of

      //vanilla react
      const myReactComponent =
        props => <h1>`Hello, ${props.name} and ${props.petName}`</h1>;

      //falcor live query + binding to react component
      const myView = Container(
        myReactComponent,
        `{users['alice']: {name, pet: {name, age}}}`);

Whenever any individual field in the server model updates, we get the update, and Falcor+React takes care of batching, incremental renders, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wrote a pretty big app in falcor, using react-redux-falcor for the client. Overall its was a good experience.

I haven't really gone back to check out graphql thoroughly, although I will say since I started my falcor project the community around graphql has grown a good deal faster than the falcor community.

I haven't worked on my falcor backed app in a couple months but last I worked there were still some rough edges and small bugs with falcor and it hadn't made it to a 0.1.0 release yet and there wasn't a lot of info from netflix about when it would get there.

If I was going to start a new app right now I'd take a longer look at graphql, despite really liking the development experience of falcor because of the community / long term outlook.

</comment><comment><USER15> For those wondering:

Falcor is not another "new" JS framework. It has been released in 2015.

[http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/08/falcor-developer- preview...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/08/falcor-developer-preview.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> The GraphQL site is way better in terms of getting across what it is and how you'd use it. The only reason I finally realized that Falcor was a parallel tech was I had recently implemented a GraphQL service and ran through the tutorials.

</comment><comment><USER17> I spun up a Falcor system at my last startup. We had this legacy REST API where the payloads had gotten quite large. A user contains a follower list, which in turn contains other users, which in turn contain other entities, etc. It was a mess, and quite slow.

The plan was to have a new REST API without these nested entities. Yes, that means you have to make lots of little calls to the REST API, but since a payload now represented one thing only, server-side caching was vastly simplified. And, we had a Falcor router which essentially batched these calls between the client and server.

So the the client hits the Falcor router, which in turns calls the REST API over localhost, in parallel, several times. As the front-end evolved, the REST API no longer had to try to restructure its responses to cater to the new views. The incoming batch calls would just change. This in my view was the true win of the whole deal.

It worked beautifully! The fly in the ointment was that there were/are no Java or Swift clients for Falcor, so while our Angular app was humming along happily in Falcor La-La land, our mobile clients were still talking to the legacy REST endpoints. We tried standing up some clever Falcor-like batching endpoints for the mobile folks, but they understandably wanted to stick to their fat endpoints.

Meanwhile, Netflix has repeatedly stated that iOS and Android client software is not on the horizon. They've actually gotten really quiet on the Falcor front in the last year. I think the team is under-resourced at the moment, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER18> I notice sometimes that interestingly-connected, yet tangential topics can appear on the front page of Hacker News at the same time from time-to-time - often right next to one another at my viewing. In this case, I see Falcor and Microsoft's Graph Engine next to one another at this point in time. Is there serendipity there?

I've been enamored with Falcor since it was introduced, but I couldn't fathom how the server side would work to produce the JSON Graphs without a lot of painful data reshaping of relational data. It always seemed to me that a graph database would best serve as the backing store for Falcor.

Does anyone have experience backing a Falcor-driven app with a graph database? What was that like? Would Microsoft Graph Engine pair nicely with Falcor for building a user-facing web app? I'm scared of graph databases because I fear they'd necessarily be slow or not scale horizontally compared with NoSQL.

</comment><comment><USER19> What about fine grain permissions such as a certain user can only see public fields of other users or you can only change your vote after 10 minutes? Opening up the data model may work in many cases but seems like it just brings up other paradigms in its place.

<comment><USER20> > such as a certain user can only see public fields of other users

In Graphql, the solution is usually to return `null` for restricted field. This is arguably better security than raising unauthorized exception, since attacker can't differentiate having no permission to having no data.

> You can only change your vote after 10 minutes

This in done in mutable action, which can have permission check inside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Falcor lets you represent all your remote data sources as a single domain > model [...] You code the same way no matter where the data is, whether in > memory on the client or over the network on the server.

Wasn't this the basic premise of URLs?

</comment><comment><USER22> I guess someone has to write a data compression algorithm now called Atreyu.

<comment><USER23> And a really fast transfer protocol that unfortunately drops its packets when it goes through the Swamps of Sadness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So does Netflix not actually use GraphQL?

<comment><USER25> Nope. Netflix has been using Falcor for a couple of years now, I believe. GraphQL and Falcor are a case of convergent evolution, as it were.

Some past Falcor HN submissions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Falcor&sort=byDate&dateRange=a...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Falcor&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

Kinda surprised there hasn't been much associated discussion given the number of submissions, but I know GraphQL has had a much higher profile. My personal limited exposure to Falcor has been via David Nolen when discussing influences on Om.

<comment><USER12> GraphQL's higher profile comes primarily from it's association with React which has tremendous mindshare at the moment.

What's interesting is that, as a lead UI Engineer at Netflix while Falcor was being developed, much of what we were prototyping towards our new UI framework bore a lot of similarities to React. We were definitely behind them on implementation (and I don't really think we would have done as well) and I was happy when Netflix went down the React path.

Still, it's very interesting that a lot of similar ideas were coming out of both places.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the inside dope. Have you had a chance to look at Om's approach?

<comment><USER12> I have and I very much enjoyed it. For me, it was also a journey of learning ClojureScript which I've had a lot of fun with. That said, I don't do full- time development anymore so my hands on programming chops are probably waning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> this is neat</comment>


Robert Hooke's Books Database - <AUTHOR> http://www.hookesbooks.com/hookes-books-database/

<comment><USER2> Hooke owned a number of books on cryptography, a topic in which he had a special interest. Given the limitations of this database, you'd need to search for 'crypto', 'stegano', 'trithem', etc. to see which ones. In a lecture he gave in 1690, he suggested that John Dee's conversations with angels may have been steganographical messages enciphered according to the methods of Johann Trithemius ('Of Dr. Dee's Book of Spirits' in the Posthumous Works, 1705) -- always wondered whether he was right!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Despite the SN, I don't have any affiliation with this project. Just a fan of Hooke. For those not familiar with him, his Wikipedia bio is a pretty good start:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke)</comment>


Show HN: Fashion Sale Foraging Messenger Bot - <AUTHOR> http://www.tryforager.com <comment><AUTHOR> Would love to hear what resonates or doesn't and why :)</comment>


Ask HN: iPhone released: discouraged as I am? - <AUTHOR> My first response: wow, this is an amazing device -- geo-location services are finally here! -- can't wait to pick one up.
But now I'm just depressed.
I'm depressed because people I know who have been working on great products are going to have an impossible time competing with Cupertino - every ajax desktop, data backup/sync, ???.
I'm depressed because apple apparently hates open-anything. Jobs smirks "oh hey we're going to let you push icon updates to the phone" -- WTF? Oh thank you great benevolent one. Then they proudly announce they had approved 4,000 developers. Nevermind the 21,000 we arbitrarily dicked over.
For developers it seems like the only upside is that someone is finally kicking mobile carriers in the teeth --  long since overdue.
In five years will we be missing Microsoft?  :-/ <comment><USER2> "But now I'm just depressed."

Why? Because the landscape has changed?

People affected by this will just have to adapt and find their place in the new landscape. That's all.

The pie is so big there's room for everybody. And if you still don't think so, there are plenty of other pies no one has noticed yet. You just gotta find them.

Nothing to be "depressed" about. Happens all the time.

OTOH, this is an excellent example of the advantages of being small and nimble - you can adapt quickly while the big boys are stuck struggling.

<comment><USER3> Apple is fascist. The iPhone specifically.

Microsoft in comparison looks like a beautiful tour de force of openness. Free (arguably) open CIL, languages, document format, IDE, documentation. No one DECIDES who can develop on windows mobile. Or for that matter most other SDKs. As for the cost, absolute worst case for an individual - about $1k a year to get an MSDN subscription.

Meanwhile 4000 devs are going to make ALL the applications that the masses could ever want on an iPhone. Why not just open it up for $100/$300? Heck, why isn't it free to push open source projects? Why isn't it free to push to your own iPhone? Why hasn't anyone asked Apple these questions? This is insane. If Microsoft tried something this crazy everyone would be in an uproar. This will give a huge advantage to large or "in the know" tech companies. I don't see the advantage to the consumer. The iPhone SDK is already relatively locked down so I don't want to hear security.

This being said I have an iPhone and Macbook. They are beautiful elegant machines. They work great. The interface is excellent. FreeBSD is $$$$. They've replaced my linux boxes at home. My iPhone completely pwns my old samsung blackjack. I actually use the internet on my iPhone and I enjoy using it.

I am frustrated that I can't push my iPhone apps from my macbook to my actual iPhone. I'm frustrated that I can't get some of my linux apps to work in OS X. It seems like they have it out for open source / small business / hackers. I could jail break my iPhone, but I shouldn't have to. I could install Xen and Linux, but I shouldn't have to. Sadly, I would be happy if Apple gave us the same choices as Microsoft. That should not be too much to ask.

EDITED: Syntax and a sentence or two.

<comment><USER4> _No one DECIDES who can develop on windows mobile._

which might have something to do with why it's an ugly, unpleasant mess.

great technical products are not produced via democracy. they're almost always the vision of just a few people.

 _Meanwhile 4000 devs are going to make ALL the applications that the masses could ever want on an iPhone._

that's patently absurd. apple randomly picked 4000 iphone devs to let into the beta program. that's all. they will let in more later, once they've gotten feedback from the first crop, and understand better how the process will work.

 _I'm frustrated that I can't get some of my linux apps to work in OS X._

the linux community is not exactly known for making user-friendly apps. it's only natural that there would be a disconnect between their apps and macosx.

heck, i could spend all day addressing the misconceptions and downright falsehoods in this comment, but it sounds like you've already made up your mind.

<comment><USER5> _great technical products are [...] almost always the vision of just a few people._

Platforms, yes -- consistency goes a long way there, and a few coherent voices can build something where all the pieces work well together.

Applications? 'the talented few' still need access to the platform. The question is, is there a way for a few, talented people to develop and deploy the killer iPhone app?

That's not a rhetorical question -- is there such a route?

<comment><USER4> i believe that there very much is. the iphone sdk is really, really good. you can get up to speed quickly.

it's a shame that apple is not giving out many of the developer keys yet. but if you're serious about this, that shouldn't be much of an impediment. you can still develop for the iphone simulator. and if you really, really need to see your app on a real iphone, you can jailbreak your phone. it's not what apple wants you to do, of course, but i really doubt they're going to disqualify developers who use that method for testing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only problems I have with the iPhone is that Apple decides what software is available and that makes it extremely difficult to write free software for it. There's _no_ reason in 2008 that people should be excited about (effectively) a computer that is actively free software unfriendly. The iPhone seems defective by design. The thing that makes me sad is that no one -- _particularly_ the people calling themselves hackers -- seems to care...

<comment><USER7> I would care if the existing software on the iPhone was really lacking. I actually wrote a new firmware for the Archos multimedia jukebox for that reason - the original software absolutely sucked. Archos then actually threatened to sue me etc etc. Good times, good times...

Anyhow. Games consoles are pretty closed, I don't have a problems with the iPhone being closed to be honest. It has a very capabale web browser, which means you can run pretty much anything you like anyway.

<comment><USER8> _Games consoles are pretty closed_

Don't remind me :(

That's one of the biggest obstacles to independent innovation in gaming today. The PC is the current bastion of the small developer but PC gaming itself is in decline. We need more open access to the console space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the notification system will work out. Apparently you can use it to play a sound, "badge" an icon, or display a custom message. That sounds limited, but I think it completely encompasses the vocabulary of the user interface. Think of how Apple's programs work, and the only think I think of immediately missing is an action button or two on the "display a custom message", perhaps that will be there, maybe not, I can still attract the user to interact with my program and that makes me happy.

As one of the 21,000 "dicked over" developers, I am still hopeful that they will open the floodgate enough days before July 11th to let me deploy on Day 1 and stake my ground against any potential competitor before they are the incumbent. The nature of my application makes the emulator mostly useless, but I have written a suite of algorithms and when I learn the performance characteristics of the iPhone hardware I will be able to choose and tune rapidly to deliver the best user experience. It has been a lot of extra work that I could better spent if I could have chosen and tuned along the way, but I also understand their desire to limit load from the beta program. I suppose what I would have done differently is make a track for people whose applications need to run natively and made room for them... but that would probably be abused.

I don't see that mobile carriers got kicked in the teeth here. AT&T appears to be loaning you $200 for a stream of 24 monthly $10 payments. That works out to about a 15% return on their money. Then read the articles about AT&T no longer paying a monthly share to Apple and justifying it "because they are using that to subsidize the phones". I call bullshit. The $10/mo more than covers the $200 subsidy.

<comment><USER10> Why didn't you run the program on a jailbroken iphone? The performance characteristics/quirks/etc would be far more similar to the "official iphone" vs. the simulator

<comment><USER9> That's a good idea, probably better than the way I have gone. If I personally knew anyone with a jailbroken iPhone and I saw that the process of loading and running was wrinkle free I might do it. I've recently spent far too much time wrestling strange build and run environments to want to get involved in another. At least my work on the algorithm suite has improved my understanding of the problem and possibly my solution. Time spent wrestling with a platform is mostly lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gotta admit, I was surprised by their new apps. They are absolutely stunning. I heard rumors some time ago that Apple would offload their web apps (.Mac) to Google. Well, these new apps look better (and hopefully work as advertised) than Google's apps. For a company that only dabbles in web development, these new MobileMe apps change all that. They've raised the bar very high indeed.

</comment><comment><USER12> Having worked on the XBox 360, Sony PS3, Sony PSP this is a _HUGE_ improvement.

The walled garden is not as huge an impediment as you believe it to be. Figure out if it is fiscally prudent for your organization to work on the iPhone platform. If not, move on. There are a ton of ideas that need to be worked on on a wide range of platforms.

</comment><comment><USER13> You are definitely not alone. I'm pretty worried myself. A phone to realistically compete with the iPhone (especially at its new lower price point) is nowhere in site and the walled garden seems to grow with each Apple announcement.

AppStore could be another Facebook platform situation where Apple kills startups at will simply by releasing their own version of a application. And Apple wont need to push icon updates, their apps can run as background services just fine.

I'd like to be optimistic about other emerging mobile platforms, but everyone else is so dreadfully far behind and thats a bit concerning for a developer.

</comment><comment><USER4> it's hardly the case that the other 21k developers got "dicked over!" apple decided they were only going to let a few in during the beta period. i bet the situation will be rectified at some point after the app store launches.

the only thing those 4k developers got that the rest of us didn't is a key to install apps onto real iphone hardware. everybody else can still develop for the iphone simulator, which is very good. and if you really really need to see your app on a real iphone, you can go the jailbreak route.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nokia's S60 is a good alternative. A very mature, yet completely open OS. Touchscreen phones coming, too. It would take years for Apple to catch up with Nokia's attention to detail. Too bad they are practically non-existent in the US...

</comment><comment><USER15> You could also root for Google Android.

<comment><USER16> Is there a release date for android yet?

<comment><USER17> Now, let's not quibble over minor missing features like "physical existence". Surely they can patch that after the initial release.

Instead, we should think about all the great things we can do with the imaginary Android phones that are available today. My older model is relatively limited, but I'm told that the new Android 3e^ _i_ , shipping in July, will cure cancer!

<comment><USER18> > but I'm told that the new Android 3e^i, shipping in July, will cure cancer!

Take _that_ , iPhone!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=213895>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's the thing. I think most of us here are rational enough to not degrade into raw fanboy-ism (is that asking too much?). If Apple didn't keep knocking the ball out of the park while simultaneously facing a competition that seems utterly incapable of making an adequate response, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Sometimes I wonder if Apple's real brilliance is in carefully choosing which segments of a market to attack... perhaps they have an incompetence detector?

It's not like open source projects like OpenMoko haven't had a chance to make an amazing phone. Indeed, I'm frustrated because before the iPhone announcement, the OpenMoko looked like a top-of-the-line sort of gadget, and then Apple leapfrogs all their efforts on the first try. But I want a great phone, so now I'm stuck with AT&T and buying an iPhone.

If these independent "great products" want to compete, perhaps they need to start forming explicit alliances with other service providers to form an integrated solution that people want. It's very clear that at least the Apple- buying public wants that kind of integration.

</comment><comment><USER20> I actually think this is going to be a fantastic opportunity for startups.. even though Apple has built some pretty high walls for developers

I'm from Australia and mobile internet is currently just way too expensive and so nobody uses it. If the iPhone (and competitors) can drive demand and push prices down, it could really open up some opportunities for developers working on applications for mobiles.

</comment><comment><USER21> You could always go with Nokia's S60 devices. I've been extremely happy with my N82 so far, and there's also the N95 or the E90. Seriously, give them a look. You can install whatever you want without ridiculous workarounds, and they are all more capable devices than the iPhone.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that technically there are some good devices out there-- but in 18 months when Apple has the market completely wrapped up what's the point?

<comment><USER21> Honestly? What echo chamber do you live in? I don't know anyone who owns or is even considering buying an iPhone.

<comment><USER22> I only know one person who owns a Nokia smartphone (and at least eight who have iPhones). He bought it last summer (when the cheapest iPhone was $499) for $200.

Since he wanted cheap email on the go, the iPhone was too expensive for him. I have read a lot of articles about the fact that the iPhone now includes GPS is a game-changer, but I think that the price cut to $199 is more important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Maybe we should wait to hear whether they remaining devs will be approved at a later date. I've seen people approved with absolutely no track record whatsoever, so the requirements can't be too stringent.

</comment><comment><USER24> We needed a leader in cell phones. Until now, it was such a completely disjointed landscape that developing an app for phones was a walk in a field of mines. Companies were busy grabbing for land, but weren't working hard to create a great device. Maybe this is that start of focusing how to create awesome mobile applications for the masses.

I think we are witnessing a pivotable moment in history.

<comment><USER7> Mobile web is the next big thing!!!! WAP!

<comment><USER25> I hope you are being sarcastic.

<comment><USER7> Erm yes ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Buy Apple stock :)

</comment><comment><USER27> I will prefer open source phones to the iPhone, of that I am sure. Except I don't like Android much (from a developer's point of view), and Linux on the phone seems to be still far away. For the time being it's like whatever, ALL phones suck, the iPhone just sucks a little less (hopefully).

</comment><comment><USER28> No my friend you have it all wrong. The badge updates are a fine solution for now. Everything is fine, my friend.

I'm a bit concerned with your tone. It's almost as if you don't have faith that the Steve will do what is right. Has he not given us the iPhone, freed us from shitty cell phones, and gifted us, from some unknowable realm only he walks in, this beautiful 15 in. macbook pro I am typing on. After all the Steve did, you still want to leave the cult? In spite of everything, you just have to see the spear marks and stick your finger in. In your dark night, you even compare our savior (Steve) to microsoft. Luckily for you, the Steve's ability to make totally awesome gizmo's with a touch of LSD in each one is only parrelleled by his limitless compassion, and he is willing to forgive you, if only you would open your heart up to his forgiveness.

Why don't you sit down and talk for a bit, doubting thomas? You are free to leave, just sit down and talk for a minute first, my friend. We're not going to stop you from leaving. Just sit down and chat first.

<comment><USER29> Wow, I hope that last paragraph is some level of sarcasm that is beyond me or an extract from something, because it sounds ridiculous.

<comment><USER28> It was an extract from the south park where stan, kyle, and cartman join the david blaine cult and kyle wants to leave, and the shaved head cult people say something almost exactly like that.

<comment><USER29> Ah good! my faith is restored. Good quote :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> maybe if you stopped wishing people would be "kicked in the teeth" you'd be a happier person. what you need is a better attitude. as you say, apple made something amazing. we should all rejoice.</comment>


Welcome To Extremistan, Please Check Your Career At The Door - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/ <comment><USER2> One of my first comments on this site pertained to this issue:

>As computers begin to become capable of more and more jobs, the demand for human labor will decline. Automation is qualitatively different from mechanization. Education is a thin gilding on an impressive but non-optimal brain architecture. To say education will cure the ills of automation is a bit like saying fitness training could have saved workhorses from obsolescence. Workers of the world, you're fucked.

My opinions haven't changed much since. Though years off yet, we are heading into uncharted territory here. Sure, the labouring classes survived, actually thrived, after the economic obsolescence of their muscles; I doubt we will do well after the obsolescence of our minds. If a body's worth a penny a day, a mind a nickel, and it costs a quarter to eat - we will not survive even if the lump of labour fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy. It's entirely possible to starve to death while never once wanting for work.

<comment><USER3> > It's entirely possible to starve to death while never once wanting for work.

Perhaps on an individual basis, but not in large groups. An economic and social system in which most humans are starving will rapidly collapse, and be replaced - if necessary, through violent revolution - by a system that at least keeps most people fed, assuming there's still sufficient real resources to produce and transport the food.

Food stamps exist not out of genuine compassion for the poor, but because those in power know very well what happens when starvation becomes too widespread.

<comment><USER4> >Food stamps exist not out of genuine compassion for the poor, but because those in power know very well what happens when starvation becomes too widespread.

someone needs to cc that memo to the right wing American Oligarchs.

<comment><USER5> Right wingers solution to unemployment/poverty is exactly that - let them starve and blame them for not being able to get a job.

<comment><USER6> "imaginenore", I see you like straw men, here is another one for you:

And on the other side of the coin, we have a legion of well-fed, opinionated individuals who, from the comforts of their warm home, tell the poor: "You can not help yourself, only we can help you, using the state. Don't mind me and how I got here, that's irrelevant, what's relevant is that WE are the only ones that can help you!" \- With the implied assumption that the poor are pathetic and can't help themselves.

<comment><USER5> How is it a straw man if your leadership announced the intention to make deeps cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program?

<comment><USER6> Instead of picking just one, here's an entire google search term for you to ponder over: [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=illegal+to+feed+homeless](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=illegal+to+feed+homeless)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >It seems likely that, considered as a whole, Extremistan is far more creative and productive than Mediocristan. But while its economic pie may be much larger, it is also much more unequally distributed.

Consider what would happen if the pie was 1000 times larger and was distributed 100 times more unequally than now. Is this ideal? No, but the worst off would be 10 times better off than right now. This is something very important to consider when we think about increasing industrial efficiency. To bring out an old argument, the freezer eliminated the entire ice industry and put lots of people out of jobs, yet everyone was better off for it.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Inequality is not a problem - poverty is. I'd much rather be in a place where I'm a millionaire between trillionaires, than having little and be between millionaires.

Sadly, envy and need for the social status are very strong.

<comment><USER9> Missing how economics work here. Prices will be adjusted to what the market can bare. There's still a 10^3 difference. That's being work like being worth $1,000 when everyone else is a millionaire.

Edit: sorry, was calculating for billion. it's a 10^6 difference. $1 vs $1,000,000

<comment><USER10> I think people are talking about wealth here, not money per se. If everyone can afford at least two houses, three boat and 12 cabins, they are certainly more well-off than most people are today, no matter what relative money-wealth is being discussed.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but in that vein we can say that even America's poorest are better off than some middle class in other countries, or even the wealthy over 100 years ago.

It's hard to objectively define "well-off" because psychologically people will be comparing what they have and don't have to those around them. So if a person owned 2 houses , 3 boats, and 12 cabins think they're well-off if everyone around them owns double/triple what they do, or would they think they are poor?

Just a different perspective.

Edit: Please note that my line of thought would eventually lead to which is better? Objectively more "things" vs psychological well being (where things are relative to what others have).

<comment><USER11> Are America's poorest better off because of technology, or better off because of America's dominance over the rest of the world's resources?

My suspicion is that as the developing world becomes more educated, the poor and middle class in the US will look poorer. Some of this might be an actual loss in standard of living as the share of global resources the US can consume drops. This change, induced by technology (mass education) is going to be a bigger issue for the developed world sooner than computers-taking-away-jobs will be.

Presumably more educated people are less likely to give away their resources for cheap (or in corrupt countries for free), less likely to work 16 hours a day in a factory, to accept mass pollution as a by product of manufacturing, etc. That is just an assumption, it could be wrong and education will have no impact on these things.

The psychological aspect -- comparatively, might have more to do with whether an individual thinks their condition is improving as opposed to the distance between individuals.

If you generally believe what Ray Kurzweil predicts, none of this will really matter in 2100 as we could be well in to the post-human era. Humans, in their natural form, could very well be relics in a zoo.

<comment><USER10> > Are America's poorest better off because of technology, or better off > because of America's dominance over the rest of the world's resources?

The rest of the First World seems to be doing OK, even without anything remotely close to the US military. Though I would be surprised if developed countries didn't continually try to suppress underdeveloped nations, maybe not by military force but by market forces etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If (e.g.) doctors are automated out of a job, it will mean that health care has become dramatically cheaper, which is a widely distributed rise in living standards. This is more egalitarian, not less.

Thousands of doctors lose and millions of humans win.

Remember, economics is not about the distribution of money, it's about the distribution of valuable things. In this example, health care is the valuable thing and its distribution seems greatly improved.

<comment><USER13> Not necessarily.

It means that a combination of machines and lesser trained people will be providing care. If your condition falls outside of the protocols said robots and PAs can treat, hope there is an expensive doctor around!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One problem that would occur if only ellite jobs remain, is how new ellite workers will emerge?

If mundate programming is performed automatically, how can anybody become an ellite programmer?

If mundate laywering is performed automatically, how can anybody become an ellite laywer?

<comment><USER15> The issue in the article isn't that there will be novice programmers or lawyers, it's that if you can even become a _novice_ programmer or lawyer, you're supposedly already in "Extremistan". The premise is well-contained in the quote early on that "most people are like horses" and can't operate in fields that require primarily intellectual labor.

I'm not sure that I agree with this premise, but it means that it's not an issue of crowding out newbies, just an expression of the popular sentiment that "[insert highly-paid professional position here] are really, really smart" and that to even attempt to become a highly-paid professional x is out of the reach of most people.

<comment><USER16> I'm afraid you have misinterpreted. (OP here.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The best companies hire the best engineers, who, by definition, are a > minority; the best engineers work at, or launch, the best companies; > technology increasingly allows the best companies to dominate their markets > like never before. Extrapolate that twenty years into the future, and what > do you get?

I have to disagree with this statement. Even if the best engineers were all working at a small number of companies, you still don't need the best (global maximum). It is hard to be the best. And that is why the consulting product of companies like Thoughtworks have suffered as they've scaled (they can't continue their rate of hiring at the same quality they had in the previous past).

Yes, there is a power law distribution in programming ability because you cannot rate programming ability on a 1-10 scale (it is an exponential scale). Where 10 is Linus Torvalds, Bill Joy and 1 is someone who does not appear to harbor any thoughts of logical thought.

If you work to become better and what you do - and contribute back to the ecosystem with open-source code, talking at user groups small (local user groups) and large (conferences), teaching the next generation (from mentoring junior developers to teaching), I believe you will receive more than monetary compensation, you will be helping to move the field and community forward.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, was Marx right all along?

<comment><USER19> No, he wasn't. Marx was about the state owning the means of production, and that isn't the case here. We have a handful of super rich people (oligarchs) owning the means of production.

<comment><USER20> Marx was about something else, mostly. You should probably read a bit more of (or on) him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I see a lot of this lately. The problem isn't the automation, it's that the benefits of that automation primarily benefits the wealthy few. We need a different economic system where those benefits are more equally spread around.

Basic Income + a (progressive?) wealth tax, for example.

</comment><comment><USER3> The predicted outcome is probably correct but technology is not its root cause. The primary cause is the animal preference for hierarchical social structures where the top have the largest possible amount of power and control over those at the bottom. These structures have existed throughout human history - certainly long before the industrial revolution.

Modern communications technologies are simply increasing their reach and extent.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe it will turn out that the big middle class of the latter 20th century was just an intermediate state between the exploited workers during the early Industrial Revolution, and the mediocre-humans obsolescence of the later 21th century.</comment>


Ask HN: First 90 days for new CTO - <AUTHOR> I'm about to start a new role with a scale up as their CTO.
It's a team of 45 people with half of them engineers.
What tips or suggestions have you found to form part of a first 90 days of a CTO role?
What are the expectations? What outcomes? What activities? <comment><USER2> Congratulations to the new role!

After two years as a CTO I found that the most important part of my work was to have the right developers for the job. You personally cannot know every technical detail, your 20 developers have to deal with every day. So they have to be experienced to know it mostly by themselves.

In your case I would start with personal interviews with every developer to identify their experience in certain technologies and also to get to know their desires for the next 2-3 years. This will help you to focus on the right candidates in the recruiting process.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that you need to find out what their expectations of your role are... How much outward-facing forward-looking 30,000' stuff vs how much nitty-gritty engineering tech detail they expect you to pay attention to.</comment>


Did the Singularity Just Happen on Jeopardy?  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.speculist.com/2011/02/did-the-singularity-just-happen-on-jeopardy.html

<comment><USER3> Watson is not general AI. Watson is a clever data mining algorithm running on a supercomputer.

<comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect>

<comment><USER5> Way to ignore what was said to link to a mendacious wiki page.

Hint: AI researchers have been promising the moon for a long time - <USER2> page's arguments amount to smugly pointing at paper airplanes as evidence of progress. Yes, Watson is "AI" in the broadest sense, but then so is Minecraft monster path-finding. Comparing this to where AI people have been saying we'd be Real Soon Now for the last ~40 years is like comparing the Android barcode- reader app to artificial vision.

I'm a supporter of AI and extropian ideas, but TFA is link-baiting piffle. A _Jeopardy!_ -playing machine is an accomplishment and heralds future advances, but it is a very early step on a long path.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It was amazing to see how much faster Watson was.</comment>


Debugging DevOps Using ValueStream and LightStep - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dm03514-tech-blog/debugging-devops-using-valuestream-and-lightstep-e1f8e07f4eab <comment><AUTHOR> Greetings! Author here, I was a bit frustrated at the state of DevOps metrics and how difficult and time intensive it is to capture basic delivery metrics across systems. I created ValueStream in order to help address this.

[https://github.com/ImpactInsights/valuestream](https://github.com/ImpactInsights/valuestream)

It is able to connect and capture metrics from any system that emits events through webhooks. Would love to hear your thoughts and/or feature requests.</comment>