Things that I think will be important in the next decade - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10111311886191191/ <comment><USER2> I think Zuck is too full of himself. People often get confused that their success means that they are wise, and that we should listen to them. Should we as well follow the thought leadership of drug cartels and the Saudi monarchs?

<comment><USER3> "Full of himself"? Way too mild an indictment. In the last 24 hours Facebook bought a story in a publication, pretended it wasn't sponsored, their COO posted it, then when they got caught, they denied knowing anything about it. And what was that ad/story about? Their commitment to stopping disinformation. All the while we've learned that they have utterly sold the company to international electioneers.

<comment><USER4> Citations to your references would be appreciated. It's the first step to overcoming the state of internet disinformation, as well as helping society overcome the fear of missing out just because someone doesn't already know your references.

<comment><USER5> I understand what you are saying, but this is a mainstream story, easily searchable with DDG from hints in the comment, covered by both Washington Post and New York Times as well as being splashed all over Business Insider, Mashable, The Verge, etc. etc.

This is not the comment to be fighting this battle with.

<comment><USER6> The first part of the comment is true, but then unfortunately used to prop up a false claim:

>All the while we've learned that they have utterly sold the company to international electioneers.

This is disinformation, laundered with the trust of the first comment.

<comment><USER5> I wasn't agreeing with the original claim, though it's probably somewhat accurate, nor that this news item supports that claim. Just disputing that a citation was required for that claim in this forum.

<comment><USER7> > Just disputing that a citation was _required_ for that claim in this forum.

The ask was: "Citations to your references would be _appreciated_."

It's true that a citation is not needed, but including one adds _value_ , in that it increases efficiency.

<comment><USER5> Curious what wording you would have liked from me here?

> Just disputing that a citation was _appreciated_ for that claim in this > forum.

There is no word to replace _required_ that wouldn't be open to your complaint; e.g. needed, necessary,

Yes, a citation would always be appreciated, but it's gate keeping to _ask_ people to always provide citations when not truly necessary.

<comment><USER7> > There is no word to replace required that wouldn't be open to your > complaint; e.g. needed, necessary

 _Appreciated_ is an appropriate word, you subconsciously swapped in _required_.

A citation is required if the goal is to maximize constructive communication - _if_ that's the goal, of course.

<comment><USER5> You missed my point, I deliberately swapped so you could see how that word doesn't work. Clearly we are talking by each other on this.

<comment><USER7> I agree, we're clearly not understanding each other perfectly, I think this phenomenon is all too common and it's worth some mild effort to investigate where things have gone wrong.

The original comment:

> Citations to your references _would be appreciated_. It's the first step to > _overcoming the state of internet disinformation_ , as well as helping > society overcome the fear of missing out just because someone doesn't > already know your references.

This _request_ (and it's just that, nothing more) seems reasonable.

This subsequent comment exchange:

>> All the while we've learned that they have utterly sold the company to international electioneers.

> This is disinformation, laundered with the trust of the first comment.

...specifically: "laundered with the trust of the first comment" seems like perfectly valid criticism, and arguably adds to the "onus" (or _value in_ ) for the original person to provide a proper citation, in order to minimize misunderstanding.

And then here is where I see a problem arises:

> Just disputing _that a citation was required_ for that claim in this forum.

You are criticizing someone for saying a citation is _required_ , but it is you that introduced the idea of it being _a requirement_ into the conversation - which is what I pointed out (perhaps not as eloquently as I should/could have).

Your subsequent reasoning:

> I deliberately swapped so you could see how that word doesn't work

...doesn't make sense to me. Replacing the original word with a new one that has a distinctly different meaning, and then criticizing OP _for the new meaning of the sentence_ , doesn't make sense to me.

Am I misunderstanding somehow?

<comment><USER5> Yes, you are assuming I have a much more extreme view than I actually have. When I used the word required that didn't mean I thought the original poster was ordering/demanding there be citations. When I tried to clarify that, you again misinterpreted my intent. And again now. At three misinterpretations it's time to let it go. L

<comment><USER7> > you again misinterpreted my intent. And again now

Words have distinct (non-interchangeable) and broadly accepted meanings, independent of either intent or personal preferences for what the meaning should be. I have merely interpreted your words according to the broadly accepted meanings, have I not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >"at some point in the 2020s, we will get breakthrough augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology."

Constant video surveillance, direct-to-eyes on-glass advertising, targeted advertising beamed on every approved spot, interests profiling via retina movements/focus and God knows what else will undoubtedly come about if AR glasses become "cool" and ubiquitous like mobile phones.

Maybe we'll be able to see one another's social points, as earned on the Facebook Ubiquity Platform for All Things Interaction, when gazing upon one another? Maybe we'll be able to haze filter out those naughties who haven't earned enough, or have had points taken away for naughty behaviour like posting against the "community guidelines"?

Maybe we'll be able to use image recognition + the voter records to put an angel or devil next to the people we agree/disagree with politically? How novel would that be? And talk about a time saver! Who wants to even acknowledge those who don't vote in line with our party!?

But seriously though, what options do those of us have to _not_ be part of this dystopian fucking nightmare that the tech elite have in store for us? Save up and try to buy a hut near their fallout shelters in NZ under the hopes that they won't shit where they hide?

<comment><USER9> Huh, I just want my heads up life display because...why not? Maybe I won't trust Facebook to give it to me, but if the tech becomes good enough, I'm definitely going to embrace it.

Is it really a dystopian future? We've adjusted to the telegraph, camera, telephone, radio, TV, cell phone, smart phone and...why are AR glasses going to be the tech to bring society down?

<comment><USER10> _Huh, I just want my heads up life display because...why not?_

Assuming that your heads-up live display contains a public facing camera here's: Why not!

I don't like sitting in a bar (or a strip club, or in any other semi-public, or even public dodgy or non-dodgy place) and you hang there with your heads-up live display recording my image.

I don't like the fact that it's uploaded to some tech behemoth' server for further analysis (or even if not - by you later to your personal social media page, controlled by such a company).

I don't like an army of people like you recording every little nuance of my life, which then gets abused to feed even more AI algorithms by companies whom's major raison d'être is to violate all our privacy and infringing on my personal rights without permission or consent.

And no! Locking myself permanently into a room is really not a solution conductive to me or for us as a society.

Remember Google glass and why it failed? Not because the tech couldn't be useful. But it failed thanks to a company, which didn't give a shit about the impact of such tech and an army of glassholes (here's a nice example[1]) who cared even less.

I think the answer to your "why not" and to your personal gratification is that the price for us as a society is far too expensive.

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+scoble+glass+hole](https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+scoble+glass+hole)

<comment><USER9> Those bars and strip clubs already have plenty of CCTVs, you are being recorded. Police have body cams, cars have dash cams, almost every phone has a camera capable of taking video, the chance that you are being recorded if someone wants to is already very high.

A glass cam will probably work out the same way CCTV has: people are worried about the potential for privacy abuse, but in the end these fears don't come to pass.

Google Glass wasn't ready, the tech isn't ready yet. People stopped using it because it wasn't useful. The tech will be useful someday, however.

Luddites complained about the automated loom as well, saying the cost to society was too great despite its benefits. It didn't work out well for them in the end.

<comment><USER10> Sigh! Where to start? OK, let me give it a shot.

 _Luddites complained about the automated loom as well_

Now that's a really bad case of whataboutism. I'm not complaining about technological advance. I'm complaining about tech, which is a massive invasion of privacy. Have you ever been lying on a beach and some asshole lets his drone flying around? I don't know about you, but I really don't fancy to be half naked on some cretin's social media feed without my consent (which, needless to say I didn't give and would never ever provide).

 _Those bars and strip clubs already have plenty of CCTVs, you are being recorded._

I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that if such an establishment uploads the feed to the internet they'll go out of business mighty fast. In addition I don't have cops hanging around semi private places constantly recording what's going on in such places.

Those establishments may have a justified use, namely security, for such tech. You don't.

 _almost every phone has a camera capable of taking video_

That was one of the more stupid arguments used by glassholes. When you whip out your phone and start recording that's obvious as hell. Not so, when you do it by a wearable.

 _people are worried about the potential for privacy abuse, but in the end these fears don't come to pass_

Actually they are very much. There were umpteen stories about glassholes using their gizmos even in places that explicitly banned their use. They then had the nerve to complain publicly about "ludites" that deemed this unacceptable.

Here's a search for you:

"privacy abuse google glass"

It yields 53'900'000 results. If just one procent of one procent involve actual stories of real privacy violations that's a massive invasion of societal privacy for ones own gratification. And that's exactly what's completely unacceptable.

You're free to believe in your techno utopia and that it only leads to progess and betterment of humanity.

I think you're wrong and believe my arguments to be sound as proven by the last 20 years and the rise of those tech behemoths and their constantly shitty behavior.

Calling me a ludite and using tech, which truly benefited humanity to make your argument makes you, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest.

And that's where I'll close my argument, since it's pretty obvious that we'll never agree.

<comment><USER9> We have had CCTVs around for the last 30 years, where are the massive privacy violations that you guys predicted 30 years ago?

Very very few people had google glass to begin with, the glass hole term was invented and perpetuated by a bunch of conspiracy theorists, enough to get 3.9 million hits on google (for < 1000 units?), it provides no evidence of anything.

Tech Luddism is as old as technology itself. It isn't surprising that you don't want this, that you don't want other people to have this, we've gone down this road before and we will go down it again.

<comment><USER11> Tech Luddism has nothing to do with these arguments. I do not want tech that someone else controls, because it benefits 'them', not me. I want tech that I can control. See, e.g., Free Software Foundation and Purism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The section titles are pretty funny. It's almost as if they were chosen to specifically disappoint cypherpunks.

> A New Private Social Platform

Cypherpunk: Signal! Tor! Riot!

Mark: Small groups of people who know each other.

> Decentralizing Opportunity

Cypherpunk: Bitcoin! Peertube! IPFS! Mastadon! Namecoin! Scuttlebutt!

Mark: Products for small businesses.

> The Next Computing Platform

Cypherpunk: Ethereum! Urbit! Homomorphic encryption! RISC-V! Solid! Dfinity! Blockstack!

Mark: Augmented reality.

<comment><USER13> You give a _lot_ of weight to cryptocurrency/blockchain/similar tech, and there's a lot more out there than that. I'm still waiting to see one reasonably decent application of a blockchain, and remarkably few of the things you mentioned provide much more than opportunities for scams and speculation.

<comment><USER12> While I do have a certain interest in some of those technologies, the character "Cypherpunk" was not autobiographical.

Yeah, a lot of blockchain stuff seems quite impractical and motivated by pump- and-dump opportunities. But if I close my eyes, I can almost imagine a reality where the blockchain tech is useful and widespread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mark seems to be embracing remote work here citing how it can help alleviate skyrocketing housing costs, yet Facebook doesn't hire remote workers. He's in a position to start an industry trend here by putting his money where his mouth is, but instead we just get this blog post.

Certainly better than nothing though, just like him previpusly bringing up universal basic income. Would be nice to see him again put his money where his mouth in and support Andrew Yang. He's rich enough to do whatever he wants and actually change reality.

<comment><USER15> Zuckerberg said he supported UBI because he recognized that he was only able to start a business because he grew up well-off enough to know that he wouldn't starve if the business failed.

But... I always like to think of the Taleb quote: "Don't tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio"

So, still waiting (unlike Elon Musk and Sam Altman who have both come out in support of Yang right now)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think antitrust enforcement and privacy legislation will be important in the next decade.

<comment><USER17> I honestly don't think privacy legislation would make much headway, simply for the reason that vast majority of people outside of the HackerNews crowd don't care about it.

When people say they care about privacy, most of the time they mean they care about anonymity, as in privacy from people who _knows_ them personally. They don't want their internet search history to be known by friends or family or coworkers, but they probably have no qualm if it's just data being sent to large corporate service providers.

That's why people would continue to trade personal info for conveniences for the foreseeable future, and as long as corporations maintain public anonymity for those data the most we'll ever see are temporary public outrages.

<comment><USER18> This, exactly this. I have been trying to convert a bunch of my non-tech social network to start using privacy respecting services (DDG/Signal/Tutanota primarily) and have seen more of apathy than pushback. People seem to have no qualms about their search history/messaging being analyzed/indexed/used for targeting as long as they can keep using those services free.

<comment><USER19> Honestly, until they experience first-hand a totalitarian government weaponizing their information they won't care. Even then, only that generation - well the survivors of that generation - will care. It's not enough to ponder about how much more deadly the Soviets could have been, or reading about what China is doing. For most people, if it's not happening to them immediately and directly, they just don't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ignoring his ramblings, but saying what I think will be important:

Control. The problem with technological advances today aren't with the tech itself, it's that the burst of consumer users allowed people like apple to turn computing into a user prison where the user has no control. This then set a standard, and many people have grown up without ever using a free and open source piece of software.

So AR and VR and AI and virtual assistants etc, the main problem is always going to go back to the root of why RMS started GNU in the first place; because he saw the future of tech was a fight for control of the user. He was just a man ahead of his time and socially awkward enough that it was and is easy to dismiss him based on what are essentially ad hominem attacks.

The future I want is FOSS/FOSH, regardless of the tech!

<comment><USER21> The dream of open source isn't any closer to being realized than it has ever been. Open source enthusiasts tend to overlook the fact that most people don't want control. Control is difficult to handle and requires a lot more energy and effort than ceding the control to another entity.

This isn't strictly a terrible thing. Anyone who has chosen to share their life with a partner gets that it is a lot easier if you divide up control of different aspects of your life among each other.

The problem is - as a society in general, and as tech consumers in particular, who should we cede the control to and how should the controllers be held accountable?

These are the same problems societies have faced for millennia, and now that newly emerging tech can operate at the scale of society in a couple of years, it is unreasonable to expect that billions of people adopt the libertarian mindset when it comes to tech alone.

<comment><USER22> So then the greater holy war is to make control easier and more friendly so that more people desire it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Generational Change

I could do without paid PR fluff.

"When I started Facebook, one of the reasons I cared about giving people a voice was that I thought it would empower my generation"

I'm pretty sure this was not one of his goals when he started facebook.

> A New Private Social Platform

So more facebook, just bite-sized for smaller groups.

> Decentralizing Opportunity

Essentially libra.

> The Next Computing Platform

Oculus.

> New Forms of Governance

"There are a number of areas where I believe governments establishing clearer rules would be helpful, including around elections, harmful content, privacy, and data portability. I've called for new regulation in these areas and over the next decade I hope we get clearer rules for the internet."

Although I somewhat sympathize with his predicament here, whose regulation is he talking about? If governments step in, then facebook would have to ultimately fracture into national facebooks. US, European nations, India, Middle eastern nations, etc are not going to have the same ideas about elections, harmful content, privacy and data portability. Even within the US, we are not going to have real consensus on this issue. This is where principles could help, but principles always seem to lose to political and financial interests.

In short, zuckerburg envisions we'll be using facebook on oculus paying with libra while governments solve all of facebooks intractable problems for him.

</comment><comment><USER24> >I don't think private companies should be making so many important decisions that touch on fundamental democratic values... As long as our governments are seen as legitimate, rules established through a democratic process could add more legitimacy and trust than rules defined by companies alone.

This is a big chicken and egg problem. Mark wants the government to set the rules but what happens when Facebook doesn't make the rules, people are elected through questionable means (notice he used the phrase 'seen as legitimate'), and those people don't want to crack down on Facebook because an unregulated Facebook is a key to them remaining in power. There is a feedback loop there that Facebook could shutoff with a single decision from Mark. It is much harder to fix that problem through government action.

<comment><USER25> Mark wants the government to enact rules that only huge established players can possibly comply with in order to stamp out competition. If FB just went ahead and did these things themselves another player could enter the field in their place.

<comment><USER26> And he wants a seat at the table where those rules are designed. It's all of a piece, Facebook's place in the law and the kind of bog-standard Econ 101 regulatory capture I'd expect from Zuckerberg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Look at everything Mark's overseen at Facebook over the last decade.

The unimaginably deep dark pools of data collection, the targeting, Internet.org's absolutely transparent attempt to get developing nations trapped on Facebook under the guise of philanthropy, the complete non-response to extremism on their own platform until way after it was a problem, the list goes on and on.

That's the last 10 years. Now Mark says they're building a more private, smaller platform? Private for who?

Mark says he wants to enable small businesses to connect with customers through their networks. What he's really saying is he wants every last piece of society to operate through his network so Facebook can get it's cut of the local laundromat.

I hate these grand-yet-bland, corporate flavored prognostications. There's absolutely no reason we should believe any of these things he's excited about will be a net benefit for the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER28> So his main point is a private & potentially decentralised social platform. He didn't address how the platform is going to be funded though.

Advertising as we know it is well and truly dead, and I don't think Facebook or Zuckerberg are the right entities to push for change in this field. They've already demonstrated their bad faith and maliciousness.

There are ways to make advertising ethical, but Facebook definitely won't do that, as they currently profit from the negative externalities & bad side effects of the current advertising model. Doing advertising ethically will be a serious downgrade from their current income, and while it's still a big chunk of money they for sure won't like it and will never do it for this reason.

<comment><USER8> >Advertising as we know it is well and truly dead

Based on what? More people are spending more money online than ever, the holidays alone in 2019 broke records at an increase of 3.4% over the previous year's sales [0].

That is on top of an increase of 2.8% the previous year, something which was heralded as a disappointment [1].

Given the above, people are clearly being guided what to buy and where to buy it, so how could one realistically claim that "advertising as we know it is well and truly dead"?

[0][https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/25/reuters-america-corrected- re...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/25/reuters-america-corrected-record- online-sales-give-u-s-holiday-shopping-season-a-boost-report.html)

[1][https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/holiday-sales-were-a-huge- di...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/14/holiday-sales-were-a-huge- disappointment-retail-report-says.html)

<comment><USER28> People are creeped out and think phones are listening to them, privacy regulations around the world (GDPR and the California one) are making it very hard to do targeted ads, etc.

<comment><USER29> Nobody thinks that. Just a handful of loud ones. Look what happened after Snowden. Did people start spending less time using their phones? The biggest step they took was covering their webcams via tape. Nobody cares that they are being watched as long as it doesnt make the news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> No one in this thread has pointed out that Zuckerberg states that he is literally planning to bring how WeChat works in China (one marketplace for literally everything, sent through conventional apps and all fielded by a single company) to the entire world with Facebook.

That ambition is impressive, amazing, and terrifying, and everyone is completely ignoring it.

The 2020s are going to be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER31> Since I am self taught Mandarin, I thought it was novel when he did too, and I saw his humility when he tried to speak it. Now he is painful to read for me. First, he lost my trust. Second, it's esoteric, nothing very concrete. Perhaps our ability to be anywhere through augmented reality sounds interesting, but not all that novel.

<comment><USER32> > I thought it was novel when he did too

He thought learning Mandarin would help him conquer China. lol.

<comment><USER9> I really don't think he did, just that is what the Chinese wanted to think for face reasons. He seemed very much like the average foreigner leaning it because he thought it was cool, because he had some family connection, and so on. Even him jogging in smoky Beijing is something a fresh off the plane foreigner would want to do (like I did when I was newly arrived to Beijing).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hi Mark,

In the next decade I don't want to give you any money and I don't want you to know anything about me. Also my friends, family, likes, dislikes, my appearance, what my voice sounds like, or what I'm susceptible to buying. You have no right to this data and I want you to stop trying to get it. Kind of like what was absolutely normal in the 1990s or earlier, where it would have been impossible to know such things without literally following people around 24/7--you know, the kind of stalker behavior that would end up with me getting a restraining order against you. Kind of like before your insatiable and frightening lust to know everything about people drove you to build a surveillance panopticon designed for one purpose: to make you and your ilk some of the richest people in the world.

Please stop trying to sell access to my eyeballs.

</comment><comment><USER34> Honestly for a decade of change; this doesn't seem like a big enough perspective to have. Rather current challenges and things that are mostly anticipated. All of this is on CNBC everyday.

</comment><comment><USER35> What sort of censorship is going on in the comments?

If you look at the Twitter responses to any famous person's comment, you can see how polarising it tends to be.

Everyone there is kissing Zuckerberg's ass, for the lack of a better expression (sorry). What's going on there?

<comment><USER36> You have to be on Facebook to respond? Selection bias?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> My take:

>A New Private Social Platform Marc doesn't know what it will be but wants to buy it. He knows that it is a thing.. Well we all do and have been trying to figure it out. Path was one attempt... maybe it was too early.

> Decentralizing Opportunity Marc could already allow easy "buy it now" > buttons in Facebook but doesn't for some reason...

>New Forms of Governance This is the wrong question. He should be pushing democratic ideals world wide.

</comment><comment><USER38> How about standing up for simple truths and basic facts, for a change?

Facebook's active complicity in spreading falsehoods is appalling.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why don't we start the decade off right and knock it off with the political ads on Facebook. Seriously, this guy lacks so much self awareness it blows my mind.

<comment><USER40> It's called hypocrisy! He pretends to care for decentralization while he pushes policies which fortify a monopolistic hold on social media. He claims to care for democracy as he runs a platform which undermines it by putting our governments for sale to the deepest pocket and most malicious. It's disgusting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Funny the way that he included "Decentralizing Opportunity", and then followed up by envisioning a scarily centralized future for e-commerce.

Thats a shame because a re-decentralization of the web is one of the things that really should happen.

True decentralization will happen when anybody can host a functional website on their mobile phone(s) without depending upon the services of a corporate behemoth.

<comment><USER42> This. There are real initiatives to support actual decentralization, not "decentralization" that means using any service, as long as Facebook owns it.

<comment><USER43> Decentralization is just taking the place that blockchain took for a while before too many people lost faith in it.

<comment><USER42> Decentralization as a general idea predates blockchain. VRM/personal data lockers, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Rule of Thumb :

General Predictions from experts/specialists are almost useless.

For decent predictions of the ways of a world, find multi-disciplinary generalists. They would likely be right, at least directionally.

<comment><USER45> Do you have any pointers for some recent predictions you thought made sense?

<comment><USER46> I am very curious for "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy" by Matt Stoller

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47891654-goliath](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47891654-goliath)

See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943874](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943874)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Important for which actors?

Early adopters are already using some form of what will become mainstream this decade. Will came a a lot of new things for early adopters, but only a few will become mainstream in the next one.

In the same way, intelligence agencies, hackers, and more are already using things that with a bit of luck general people will become aware this decade (but will fail to take good measures about it), and new advancements will become gradually available for both kinds of bad players in the next years, some that will remain, others that may be override by more prevailing ones.

Besides technology, the divide that I did above will become more important next decade too. How technology changes us, and what we become caused by it, is more important than the technology itself. Think in how we went from a culture of discretion and privacy to one of mindless sharing.

</comment><comment><USER48> ,,Today, many important institutions in our society still aren't doing enough to address the issues younger generations face -- from climate change to runaway costs of education, housing and healthcare. ''

Maybe there are ways to improve the quality of discussions _within_ Facebook to help solve these problems. It works for Hacker News, so I don't think it would be impossible. Of course indirect revenue from oil companies would decrease somewhat, but a balance should be found.

<comment><USER49> HN is essentially a hive mind cult. Look at my join date. At some point, you could dissent with your own opinion. Nowadays it's downvotes and outrage.

Shields up — ready for the downvotes.

Not a great model for FB to follow. You'll start getting DMs from people like "dang" telling you to behave, LOL.

<comment><USER50> I'm always curious about claims that HN is degenerating. Where are those dissenting opinions of which you speak?

I took a look, and didn't find any. I did see several early comments by your account, including its very first one, that were downvoted. Which comments were downvoted vs. not seemed consistent with what would get downvoted today, though today they'd probably get downvoted more—probably because there are many more readers who can downvote things.

<comment><USER51> It's degenerating in multiple aspects:

Fewer constructive discussions due to aggressive downvoting based not on the quality of argument, but on the opinion expressed.

More junk on the front page, this is general trend in attention economy, so somewhat unavoidable.

One of the telling things is structure of the titles. Few years ago titles where more informative, now more clickbaity on average.

<comment><USER50> The problem is that these perceptions are very much in the eye of the beholder. As the saying goes, things have always been getting worse.

If anyone can come up with an objective measure for any of this, I'd be interested. As far as I can tell, though, these perceptions are strongly affected by the fact that the things that we dislike make a much stronger impression than the rest of what we see.

From my perspective, the downvoting isn't more aggressive than it used to be, there isn't more junk on the front page than there used to be (though there might be more ideologically conflictual material, since society is moving in that direction), and the titles aren't more baity than they used to be, since we edit most of the bad ones. I'm biased, though, and conditioned by the moderation job. The interesting question is whether there's a way to get beyond such biases.

<comment><USER52> While I think "degenerating" is a strong word, I do think there is a noticeable drop in the quality of comments since a decade ago. I don't have any hard data on this, but I think it's fairly obvious if you dig around in the archive. There used to be a more academic and countercultural feeling to commentary, as well.

Maybe some metrics to investigate are: number of words per comment, vocabulary level of the average comment [1], and so on. While neither of these are solely indicative of quality, I think they are something to consider.

[1] [http://www.englishprofile.org/wordlists/text- inspector](http://www.englishprofile.org/wordlists/text-inspector)

<comment><USER50> I dig around in the archive a lot, and that's not obvious to me at all. There was a lot of variance in the past and there's a lot of variance now.

Number of words per comment would be easy enough to measure, but I'm not sure length is a good indicator of quality—not everyone who goes on at length has much to say. Your vocabulary link is interesting though—thanks! I've made a note to look into that.

Edit: since you mentioned "academic", I was thinking of your comment when I noticed the top two comments in the current Sci-Hub discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22008977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22008977)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22009107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22009107)

To me that seems more common than it used to be, and a good sign. But it could just be sample bias.

Edit 2: here's another, randomly run across today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22012673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22012673). Not academic, but technical in an unexpected way. There are a lot of physicians posting to HN.

Edit 3: or check out the top comment of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025961)

Edit 4: and of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21963509](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21963509)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I think the fact that he cites work on a 'private social platform' is significant. Even if you set aside broader trends in consumer apps and just look at FB itself, this trend is inevitable given the way statuses--a prominent part of the Newsfeed--have been in decline for years, while Groups have been flourishing.

<comment><USER54> Haven't statuses just switched to instagram stories instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Got Facebook blocked, or simply don't want to visit it directly? I run a FB proxy for public posts:

[https://nofb.pw/?p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F4%2Fpost...](https://nofb.pw/?p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F4%2Fposts%2F10111311886191191%2F)

</comment><comment><USER56> I agree we need a new private social platform. But, I hope it isn't Facebook that wins that race.

I've been working on a social network that I believe represents "generational change" \- no ads, no clickbait news, no public profiles. It goes against the grain of what current social networks are doing.

Check it out at [https://get.thread-app.com](https://get.thread-app.com).

It's still early days, but I would appreciate any feedback!

<comment><USER57> Hey I tried out your app, but I don't understand how to use it at all, in fact there's no information really at all on what it is. Maybe you could consider making a small tutorial when you first sign up? Also feel free to email me if you want to talk about it, I'm also working on a social app. Was this built in react native?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Zuck said, "It is important I find ways to get even more of your data and figure how to monetize it."

</comment><comment><USER59> > By the end of this decade, I expect more institutions will be run by > millennials and more policies will be set to address these problems with > longer term outlooks.

He "expects" this? This is trivially true in that it is an unavoidable result of the human lifecycle. 40 years from now, the boomers won't be in congress or in jobs -- they'll be dead. The only possible conclusion is that the millennials will replace them. I don't see why he felt the need to state that he "expects" this. Everyone who understands that humans die expects this.

> reconstruct all kinds of smaller communities to give us that sense of > intimacy again.

This is how people _use_ Facebook already. Most of my friends who "use" Facebook are really just in private groups and chat. Twitter is the go-to global platform -- it's one big bubble. Facebook is distinguishing itself as more of a private platform of isolated bubbles. This has already been happening for the past 10 years.

> Decentralizing Opportunity... If we can make it so anyone can sell products > through a storefront on Instagram, message and support their customers > through Messenger, or send money home to another country instantly and at > low cost through WhatsApp -- that will go a long way towards creating more > opportunity around the world

Decentralizing Opportunity? Maybe. Centralizing monetary transaction traffic to Facebook so they reap the equivalent of a VAT on every sale? Definitely.

</comment><comment><USER60> I still don't understand how the one of the most intelligent minds in Silicon Valley work for Facebook to make sure people click ads. Can they work on real problems like the ones Bill Gates foundation is working on? No, non-profitable enough

<comment><USER12> Facebook makes money. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative spends money.

Microsoft makes money. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spends money.

It's a bit strange to compare Mark Zuckerberg's money making organization to Bill Gate's money spending organization.

<comment><USER61> I don't have any love for Microsoft, but they at least have a handful of objectively useful products that probably make the world a little better.

Pretty much all the research I've heard about social media indicates that it makes the world worse. So I think it is relevant.

<comment><USER62> That's interesting. I just don't think there has been any research into holistically evaluating social networks. AFAIK studies mostly focus on small parts often with the premise to find something negative (e.g. effect of seeing other feeds with success stories).

Obviously a lot of people do in fact derive pleasure and some other benefits or they wouldn't keep using it.

<comment><USER63> "Obviously a lot of people do in fact derive pleasure and some other benefits or they wouldn't keep using it."

That doesn't follow at all. When I used to use Facebook it was based on an addictive compulsion but each time I used I realized it made my mood worse. My life got better when I stopped using the platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmXACRrzLMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmXACRrzLMA) (Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye...)

</comment><comment><USER65> As your mind will become another peripheral to cloud systems, I think in the next decade, is more important to regain yourself from the social media fake virtualizations and balance with true life experiences.

</comment><comment><USER66> so he's focusing on low hanging fruit for 10 years. i take it this is his retirement announcement? if not, why not focus on real challenges like climate change

</comment><comment><USER67> when did an industry decentralize historically? the tendency is towards centralization. The only thing that can counter centralization is ubiquitous encryption

<comment><USER68> Almost always: industries or activities which were once only viable in a single (or small number) of instances, but which, given increases in net total capabilities, but no inherent efficiencies of scale, require replicated instances rather than a centrally-controlled monopoly.

Even here, if there's a space for centralised control, it's possible that either some single entity will gain effective unitary control or impose a control overlay.

High-mass products, which ship poorly, products which are very highly localised (culture, custom), "high-touch" (1:1 or 1:(small-n) activities, on- site services, specifically-tailored activities, rapid spoilage, tend to be amongst these.

Examples which come to mind of each:

\- High mass: concrete, dairy, and water. Shipping costs rapidly eat into profits, though water can move efficiently for hundreds, possibly as much as 1,000km, via aqueducts and pipelines.

\- Localised: culture, including to an extent the film industry (at least at the national level), which contrasts with video's otherwise extreme ephemerality, and hence centralisation. Teaching is probably the ultimate, with the failures of ed-tech reinforcing this yet again. The gold-standard in teaching remains 1:1 tutoring, for complex reasons. Most personal-care services, ranging from medical to beauty, therapy, and training. Activities proscribed by widely-varying local regulation also tend toward geographical dispersion.

\- Most of the trades -- plumbing, electrical, HVAC, landscaping, on-sight equipment maintenance, auto repair, and the like, all spawn from the fact that it's cheaper to provide local expertise and capability than to move the equipment to a centralised facility. The more specialised equipment is, the more likely service is to be centralised, and some transport equipment (aircraft, ships) sees centralised servicing based on both mobility and complexity.

\- The degree to which spoilage is no longer a pressing concern is impressive: cold-chains and air freight mean that fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers now move globally, though local produce remains viable. Freshly-cooked meals remain a holdout, with even in-city delivery limited to a few standbyes: pizza, Chinese takeaway, and the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel. ([https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...](https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm)).

In most other cases, the supposed freedom from location afforded by technology and ephemeralisation actually _strongly favours_ centralisation. Almost anything related to mass culture (film, music, video games, and some books, as well as clothing and fashion) tends _extremely_ toward centralisation.

Look around you at the "small shops" in your neighbourhood, town, or suburb. Those are the serivces which have resisted centralisation, though almost all have some strongly centralised elements.

<comment><USER67> good points, but as they say, the internet doesn't weigh anything

<comment><USER68> Regulation, language, and firewalls might have effects.

Generally, though, that's my point: infotech tends strongly to monopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> If Mark is ID number 4, are the first three test accounts?

</comment><comment><USER70> > I don't think private companies should be making so many important decisions > that touch on fundamental democratic values.

> One way to address this is through regulation.

> I've called for new regulation in these areas and over the next decade I > hope we get clearer rules for the internet.

Surprising to hear a near-monopoly call for regulation.

> Another and perhaps even better way to address this is by establishing new > ways for communities to govern themselves. An example of independent > governance is the Oversight Board we're creating.

Oh I see, self-regulation is the answer.

<comment><USER71> > Surprising to hear a near-monopoly advocate for regulation.

Not really. When a company reaches a certain level of dominance, government regulation is a good thing because it increases the cost of entry to the market, so it acts as a kind of moat for the established players.

<comment><USER72> Especially if they can get any of the rules to be as byzantine as their current internal processes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> The number of people in this thread that apparently know the secret, nefarious intentions that Zuckerberg truly has is...

Well, not surprising, given that this is the internet and Hacker News. :)

<comment><USER46> Well, this is a thread speculating about the future decade, reflecting on a guy's insights who has a dubious track record, by intelligent people that are in the loop of current tech trends.

<comment><USER74> An AI could easily have generated this thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Why does he think he's a thought leader?

</comment><comment><USER76> So AI didn't make it to Zuck's 5 most important things for the next decade (but small businesses and VR did)!

Huh?

<comment><USER77> I'm more worried that he didn't even mention the word "privacy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Wow! I'm impressed. He sounds like an adult now. He actually has nuanced opinions. What a world we live in.

</comment><comment><USER79> Question: would VR be adopted en masse if it dropped permanently in price by 70% tomorrow?

<comment><USER80> No. VR is probably destined to remain a niche interface. There just aren't enough potential applications which would benefit from VR, or which would be improved with VR. It won't be adopted en masse because there will never be that great a demand for it.

Although if the price went down, what demand there was would probably be met. I definitely don't want to pay $400 or more for something that should just be a peripheral.

<comment><USER81> Anyone who's seen clips of an NFL or NBA game on a VR headset knows that this is the future. Unfortunately we are not there yet and development seems to have really cooled down recently. In fact we might have another VR winter on hand until someone makes a new breakthrough and re-awakens all the hype and interest. But I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that sometime within my lifetime VR could easily become the main delivery medium of entertainment, replacing TV sets, movie screens and gaming consoles for most households

<comment><USER82> Even beyond entertainment, when working hours in an office, I'd rather look at a beach or fantasy landscape with a nice ambient sound than a dull wall with rain under a greyish light outside. I'd likely spend most of my time in VR just because it's nicer.

Life-like VR fundamentally holds the promise of being one more great social equalizer if you can essentially simulate material wealth (objects, locations) like a video game, even just the visual part of it. E.g. IKEA is all over such research, with good reason.

Most people also don't realize that in terms of communication, any non- physical interaction (so excluding sex and hugs) would be just as good in VR as in reality, thereby making face-to-face meetings the norm anew (like before any form of distant communication existed, save for mail). That's bound to be a healthy change, a welcome improvement from text, audio and even video.

It's just a little bit too early indeed, and probably headed for a (shorter) winter I agree. Come 2030ish we should have much more decent options to move forward (from current specs you'd estimate a 10x at least to reach 'acceptable' capabilities, and more like 100x if you seek visually life-like sim, i.e. ~250px per arc minute at 100Hz or more over at least 180° field of view).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> It read like something an advanced AI would write in the not too distant future.

</comment><comment><USER84> It scares me when he talks about "Decentralizing Opportunity"...

</comment><comment><USER85> Decentralized opportunity... centralized on Facebook's apps?

</comment><comment><USER86> I wish I could downvote this self-promoting post

</comment><comment><USER87> I feel like Mark is speaking in code here.

Generational change: Boomers and political reposts are making younger, more desirable demographics not want to use my platform.

A New Private Social Platform: Making everyone in the world talk in the same space is damaging user engagement

Decentralizing Opportunity: Selling stuff and moving money on Facebook. Mark wants to be a bank.

The Next Computing Platform: Mark wants to be your next remote access client for your job.

New Forms of Governance: How much do I pay and to who for regulatory capture so competitors can't arise?

</comment><comment><USER88> Facebook buys Oculus. Zuckerberg predicts that VR will be the next big thing in the 20's. Shocking.

</comment><comment><USER89> I say AR yes, but glasses no

</comment><comment><USER90> So, The Road Ahead redux.

</comment><comment><USER91> Another one who doesn't know how calendar works. There is no year zero Marky darling

</comment><comment><USER92> so... Facebook wants to acquire Stripe.

<comment><USER93> I thought he meant Libra.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> This strikes me as mainly a lot of malarkey from a person who will happily earn more billions in coming years trough the monetized distraction of a another final generation.

But I'm dumbfounded by the private network reference. Zuck sees people trying to circumvent oppressive regimes as some sort of emerging market opportunity? Or does he think you and I would pay to use "FB Private" if they promised to turn off everything about normal Facebook's current business model?

<comment><USER95> > This strikes me as mainly a lot of malarkey

Hear hear. "Holy shit, I got rich, I must be smart! It's a new decade, let me write something I think sounds smart and publish it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> What a bunch of crock! It seems like it'd always remain too much to ask for Mark to understand things and look at the big picture for the good of everyone. IMO, this post yet again makes a good case for breaking up the company.

Most of this post is about how Facebook is looking for new ways to make money, and just a few sentences about large problems like diseases or poverty.

He carelessly uses words like "private" and "decentralized" in dishonest senses to mean that:

a) Facebook (the company) will provide you these solutions and misname them as private and decentralized

b) Facebook (the company) will still run on ads and profiling users.

Augmented and virtual reality — yet another way for Facebook to surveil people.

Asking for regulations as if he wants it. What he has wanted from the time Facebook has come under scrutiny by lawmakers is regulatory capture...getting laws passed in a way that prevents competitors from even trying, while Facebook can continue to claim that it's doing its best with "independent" boards and committees and escape penalties and punishments.

Anyone wanting something better for the future can only hope that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg get out of running Facebook the company in any manner by 2030, if we go by wishlists by decades.

<comment><USER97> Or just stop using Facebook and its products.

<comment><USER98> They're invaluable for democracy. Right now, there are a number of anti government, pro democracy protests taking place in my country. All of them are being organized and spread via Instagram and WhatsApp

<comment><USER99> Why could those not be on Signal and be actually safe due to real end-to-end encryption and no spying from Facebook?

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/27/facebook-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/27/facebook- is-committed-to-whatsapp-encryption-but-could-bypass-it-too/#295b029a3efe)

<comment><USER100> Presumably because Signal doesn't have the install base to make that realistic.

I do hope that the people taking real risks are doing their most sensitive communication on something better like Signal.

But for mass reach using another tool seems necessary as of now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> tyrant

</comment><comment><USER102> WOOF!

</comment><comment><USER103> A little irksome to be told that climate change is an issue "younger generations face." Like I'll be dead soon so it doesn't matter to me. Is that what you're telling me? Well all right then, I'll sell that bicycle I keep laboriously pedaling and start partying with gasoline! Don't worry, you guys got this!

No but the funny part is, since the climate _has already changed,_ that actually means I'm currently dead.

</comment><comment><USER104> I prefer this list of what's important: [https://www.gatesfoundation.org](https://www.gatesfoundation.org). It has things like kids not dying from diarrhea.

<comment><USER105> Normative vs. positive.

<comment><USER106> Not really, more "products and services that facebook offers" vs "various diseases we are trying to obliterate"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can't see this article as connections to malicious domains like facebook.com are blocked on my network - anyone has the full text on a PasteBin or something?

<comment><USER107> Claiming that facebook.com is "malicious" doesn't serve to make a point, it just makes you look reactionary.

<comment><USER108> Anecdotal, and not the GP, but one of the interview questions I ask is "If you could uninvent one technology, what would it be and why?"

Many of the answers are the same: Facebook. At least for developers, Facebook is generally seen as a net negative for the world in it's current form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> > As long as our governments are seen as legitimate...

> Another perhaps better way ... is the new Oversight Board we are creating...

Zuck wants to use FB to continue to delegitimize democratic governments so he can replace them with FB itself.

Zuck is a fascist.

<comment><USER50> Maybe so, but olease don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> Mark Zuckerberg is much more thoughtful than he's given credit for.</comment>


Differential coding of perception in the world's languages - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/115/45/11369 <comment><USER2> My working model for why colours admit description more readily than smells is that we judge and decompose them in largely the same way, but it's simply easier to develop a _repertoire_ of colours. They're everywhere, most people have decent colour vision, and someone can point to them and tell you what they are in relative isolation.

Whereas smells (and tastes) are much more diverse, and rarely pure, isolated chemicals but more often complex profiles of many different compounds.

A common way that people develop a repertoire of smells is through cooking: now that I have some experience with many different ingredients and styles, I can now readily tell what went into a dish and how I might replicate it, describe new tastes in terms of old ones, and imagine new flavour combinations and how they would work together.

Chemistry offers another angle—if you know what I mean by "indolic" then you can probably conjure a mental image of exactly the heavy musk I'm referring to, but you probably have no clue if you haven't experienced it _and been told that that's what you're experiencing_. You can add specific chemicals to your repertoire of smells.

A similar thing seems to hold for recreational drug experiences. If someone has had many different drugs before, especially drugs with similar pharmacodynamics that operate on the same receptors, it's relatively easy to give them the gist of what something is going to feel like by reference to similar experiences. If they haven't, there's only so much you can do to prepare them for what is going to be a novel experience.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps I'm simplifying/abstracting a bit too much here but - colors are single dimensional (i.e. the wavelength of the light you're seeing) whereas smells are multidimensional/maybe not even really mappable to any continuum.

<comment><USER4> > colors are single dimensional

Light is a mixture of different wavelengths, so, in a sense, it's infinitely dimensional. People's perception of light is usually three dimensional.

> maybe not even really mappable to any continuum

I think it cannot be continuum, as sense of smell is caused by discrete molecules. As for "not mappable", it can be that it's mappable, but our brain is really bad at it.

<comment><USER5> But light is composed of photons, which carry a certain energy which is responsible for the color you see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The long-standing presumption in Western thought has been that vision and audition are more objective than the other senses, serving as the basis of knowledge and understanding, whereas touch, taste, and smell are crude and of little value._

Uhh... citation needed?

Off the top of my head, certainly Proust would disagree.

<comment><USER7> Even the concept of Western thought is dubious itself, there's not much in common culturally between "western" countries. There's no common language, values or vision of society.

<comment><USER8> Maybe I don't know what the definition of "Western" countries is but if there's one thing that seems common to me across them it's Christianity. Every western country I've been to is full of churches.

There's clearly a lot of thought influenced by those churches. It wasn't until I moved to the other side of the world did I have the experience of cultures not nearly as influenced by Christian thought.

I don't have concrete examples of the top of my head but I've read academic papers trying to put forth ideas about universal human behavior that clearly have never lived outside a Christian influenced culture. Even if the author was atheist they didn't seem to notice how those influences shaped their conclusions.

<comment><USER9> Try looking at how missionary shape south America and Africa... I bet they are not "western" countries, also in Europe "church" power vary from country to country, for instance in France it have both little presence and power, in Spain or Italy have far more presence and power.

Christianity itself steal many aspect of ancient religions from Egyptian one to Celtic and Romans one. Just as an example in ex-Celtic area of Europe christmas symbol's are mostly ex-celtic like "decorated fir tree", santa claus (a male dressed with heavy winter clothes red because of the blood of animals he have killed being a hunter), a big wooden log to be burning in the night etc. In ex Viking part of EU santa claus is a female with more "Viking" dress, in the southern christmas nativity scene are far more common while still remain winter/snowy scene certainly not possible in ancient Lebanon etc.

Substantially all Christianity events Christmas, all saints, Easter etc are Celtic or Roman or Greek events. Think only about our time measure: ancient Roman count days starting with "ora prima" (first hour) in the morning, Celts use midnight as we use today (an ancient Roman phrase "the Celts are a strange population that count days starting from the nights").

Religions are political means to subjugate populations so their history mostly follow political/military history of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting that visual perception seems to code better than sound perception, but our main way of communicating, even across cultures, is via sound. Is it because talking is faster than miming?

<comment><USER11> I imagine it has less to do with speed and more to do with not having to keep a speaker in focus in your line of sight to understand speech. And we hear just as well in the dark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd go out on a limb and speculate that much of existence was peviously described amid a fog of superstition, with only a handful of objective facts for primitive humans to draw consensus on.

Vocalization among animals finds its roots in high energy emotions, typically fear and rage. Barking, roaring, hissing. As you walk up the socialization gradient, vocalization gets combined with body language (raised hackles, charging), facial expressions (staring down with a domineering gaze, bearing teeth). Then, with inversions like group hunting tactics, coordination of remaining silent while stalking prey.

Highly social animals have a seemingly partial grasp of fair play. Performing tricks for rewards, or a pet ruining an owner's bed as revenge for a slight. Most " _pet_ " chimpanzee maulings are the consequence of a chimpanzee's perception of a violation of status, noticing a peer enjoy briefly held favouritism, or a favorite toy transgressed by a stranger.

When it comes to perception of experience, and descriptions thereof, and objectively related concepts arrive _VARY_ late to the party, so a null finding is unsurprising to me.

First you need counting and accounting, in order to quantify, and then to objectify, you you also need codification and enumeration. So already, you have prerequisites of intellect, before anything objective happens. This means writing and consistent phonemes, to establish conrete rules. But speech is operational and practical long before it becomes romanticized with experience.

People would be counting and naming discrete essentials as part of primitive trade, long before ascribing color to the sky. Indeed, color probably wasn't important until decoration and desirable possessions became noteworthy. Interesting animal pelts, face paints, stone and shell beads and bird feathers.

Probably by the time leather and textiles are normative, you really begin to see vocabulary take off, but still, it's not about what we sense, but material objects to be grasped.

Some of the object aspects of sensory description that took centuries to isolate are pretty subtle. How many colors are there? Only six, or many millions? Which parts of the world boast the highest variety of flavorful foods? Quanitfying tone scales, harmonics and other auditory details like timber and rhythm require not only complex materials to emit controlled sound, but also time pieces to measure duration and period.

Finally, we have centuries of superstition plagueing the discovery of facts as science. Is the earth round? What happens when we die? How did the world and universe come to be? Did an intelligence conjure us into existence by intent? When will the world end? Are we the most important thing? Is nothingness actually something?

So objectivity is not an incidental thing, even if experience is.

<comment><USER13> >Indeed, color probably wasn't important until decoration and desirable possessions became noteworthy.

The prime mover for these things is probably sexual selection, and we can see that they are foundational all throughout nature, let alone animals, in plants and fungi which do not even have brains or move. I guess that they are more central than you are giving them credit for.

<comment><USER12>
      in plants and fungi which do
      not even have brains or move.

You've adjusted context to change focus from qualities of established vocalization patterns to fundamental motility. Color as a phenomenon of outward appearance does not obey the same principles as observation, cognition, willful behavior and verbalization.

The externalities involved in plants adapting colors to suit pollinating insects, versus crustaceans adapting colors to avoid being scavenged by birds when they wash up on shore, have nothing to do with the noises animals make to sound alarms or warn of aggression.

The next layer beyond the more obvious emotive sounds, is subtle noises in proximity like cats purring or infrasound at a distance among elephants. These sorts of noises still don't signal choices, which is why we wouldn't find obvious objective patterns for color.

Most telling though, is the history of the word for Orange. This alone indicates that the factors for thinking about colors, no matter how attention grabbing they might innately be, is extremely subjective. Most colors find their root words in a famous noun as the parent object for the concept of the color. Blue as the sky. Brown as the dirt. Green as the grass. (not literally these words, but definitely words like azul or chartreuse)

We know that colors exist, but to converse about them with peers is something few animals seem to do.

The next cognitive leap after dividing up the observable world with discrete vocabulary, is mastering the underlying principles that underpin the jargon used to describe objects. Realizing that light travels from source to target. Understanding that wind is an expression of air pressure and that air is more substantial than vacuum. Differentiating between fire and heat.

When can words to describe these principles arrive within a linguistic subculture? Only after a rich vocabulary already exists, and rules for arbitrary word construction emerge.

It doesn't matter that evolutionary pathways are selecting for observable traits that result in ready differentiation of species. Language requires awarenes and the will to communicate.

The subject matter that gets prioritized for communication is going to be based on immediate operational factors and urgency. Necessity being the mother of invention. So it's not about the senses. It's about reacting to surroundings, whatever they may be, to gain advantage and persist in the wild, at the moment.

You won't see apes describing orange as a quality of the fruit, nor would the orange trees be considering this fact as the orange gains success in convincing the apes to distribute the seeds widely. The orange trees require two factors to convince the apes to use the fruit. It needs to be obvious and it also needs to taste good and serve biological needs.

Did the tree invent language constructs according to a linguistic model, to evolve the orange? Did the apes invent a complex dictionary to describe the subtleties the orange color or the citrus flavor as they introduced their young to the source of food? No, you just know an orange when you see it. The signal for it's ripest best taste is a singular color, you'll figure it out after you eat a few.</comment></comment></comment>


Google's Remarkably Close Relationship with the Obama White House, in Two Charts - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/ <comment><USER2> Nice visualizations. Disturbing information.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I avoid getting mouse arm while doing webdev/front end work? - <AUTHOR> The Q may be a bit weird, but please stay with me. Before, I used to do mostly backend work. So I could spend all day in the IDE and mostly just see if the tests passed.
Now, I do a lot of frontend, which is not easily testable in the same way. I have to click back and forth, scroll a lot etc. to trigger the conditions I'm testing. All this I do with a mouse, and I'm really starting to feel it.
Any tips on a workflow that avoids using the mouse so much? <comment><USER2> There are a few browser add-ons you might be interested in, for example Pentadactyl [0], or an entirely new browser like luakit [1], to return navigation control to the keyboard.

Another thing you might consider - and my personal preference - is switching your mouse for a trackball. I use the Logitech M570 [2] and find that I can be doing heavy UI work all day without fatigue. This is because your thumb drives the trackball, leaving the mouse body and your wrist stationary. In fact this mouse has been so great I've gotten everyone on my team using one as well.

Hope this helps.

[0] [http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/](http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/)

[1] [https://mason-larobina.github.io/luakit/](https://mason- larobina.github.io/luakit/)

[2] [http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/wireless- trackball-m57...](http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/wireless- trackball-m570)

</comment><comment><USER3> I switched to a Wacom pad and I really like it. It's a little weird to get used to picking up the pen but that is mostly when context switching between programming and web browsing.

I have heard good things about using a vertical mouse but I haven't tried it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Which type/brand of mouse are you using I found that my work MAC mouse was giving me aches in my little finger - so I switched to an old ergo Microsoft mouse and the problem went away

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe headless browsing can automate some of the repetitive stuff -

[http://zombie.js.org](http://zombie.js.org)</comment>


Can Elon Musk lead the way to an electric-car future? (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/24/plugged-in

<comment><USER2> To be fair to Musk, Randall Stross is a huge douche bag and an idiot.</comment>


A game in a pure language (part 1): introduction and problems with Idris - <AUTHOR> https://flowing.systems/2020/01/13/a-game-in-a-pure-language-part-1-introduction-and-problems-with-idris.html <comment><USER2> Could someone quickly summarize how a stateful game is best implemented in a purely functional language, like here?

Is there a main tail-recursive function which takes any inputs that have appeared since the last iteration and adds them to the arguments for the next recursive call? The global state would evolve as the arguments of that tail- recursive function over time?

Any state-evolution would need to be made by creating new data-structures out of existing ones, not by modifying the existing data-structures, to be "pure". So in essence the whole state of game-world would need to be copied for each iteration? What's the trick that makes it efficient enough to be usable?

<comment><USER3> The whole state of the game doesn't need to be copied per se - if you use efficient functional data structures then only the parts of the state you modify are copied, the rest of the unchanged data structure is referenced directly.

<comment><USER2> Is that what happens by default, or do you need to take care to make it be so?

I understand you can create a new car-cdr -list out of existing list and a new element, without having to modify anything. So would implementing the game- state functionally then mostly consist of creating new lists non- destructively?

Also still wondering about the 'main loop". Is it a tail-recursive function?

<comment><USER4> The common data structures in pure languages are slightly different than what you would find in a stateful language, so you do need to take care to make it so only via what data structures you choose to use. Additionally, the author does say they use Control.ST, which depending how you look at it is either a pure wrapper over stateful operations or stateful looking syntax implemented with technically pure semantics. [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/1994/06/lazy-functional-state-threads.pdf)

The main loop is probably a tail recursive function.

<comment><USER5> That's not the correct link. Idris' ST is not the same as Haskell's ST. Haskell's ST is a way of introducing locally scoped mutability, which is indistinguishable from immutability to an outside observer, but can offer better performance. Idris' ST is a way of implementing a state machine with statically checked state transitions. [http://docs.idris- lang.org/en/latest/st/state.html](http://docs.idris- lang.org/en/latest/st/state.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        case health <= 0 of
        False => pure ()
        True => Output $ Death target

This ought to just be:

        when (health <= 0) Output $ Death target

It takes years to learn all the general-purpose helper functions in these languages (I'm still discovering new ones after 10 years of Scala), but they can help make code so much clearer. And since they're just plain functions rather than keywords or anything, a reader who doesn't know can just jump through to the definition, which is a one-liner: [https://github.com/idris- lang/Idris-dev/blob/master/libs/pre...](https://github.com/idris-lang/Idris- dev/blob/master/libs/prelude/Prelude/Applicative.idr#L51)

</comment><comment><USER5> > Sadly I didn't manage to make as much use of this type-level programming as > I had hoped I would at the beginning: Idris allows you to gradually refine > your types, and I've often succumbed to just moving on to the next feature > as my interest for the game itself grew.

This sounds quite promising. Large amounts of mandatory type level programming makes constructing useful programs hard. That it is opt-in is a good thing, and agrees with my own experiences with Idris, which are on a much smaller scale than the OP's.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm fascinated by Idris, dependent types and the promise of massively expanding compile-time guarantees. The compile times mentioned in the article raise a question that I've wondered about, and would love to hear from an expert: are compile times essentially unbounded in languages like Idris? Is it possible (likely?) in practice that wrong or misguided uses of the type system could cause quadratic or exponential scaling of compile times?

<comment><USER5> Not an expert, but I've played with these languages. The short answer is yes this is possible, but it is also possible already in non-dependently typed languages to do so.

Moreover in practice it's not very common to actually evaluate your functions on large literal inputs at compile time. Indeed it's not very common to evaluate the function on a single value as such at all. Instead it is better to think of your functions as abstract rewrite rules, that allow you to substitute one side with the other. Unlike at runtime, recursive functions do not always need to recurse until their base case.

Therefore it's not actually very common to e.g. have a recursive function recurse many times at compile time. However, when it does happen, yeah your compile times can shoot up, but it's usually fairly obvious what's causing it. Even then, in absolute terms the quantity of calculations involved generally isn't astronomical, it's rather the case that the compiler is far more inefficient at executing your code at compile time than your runtime system is at executing the compiled code.

That being said, dependently typed languages on the whole do tend to have abysmal compile times, but this seems like an implementation issue rather than a fundamental limitation. Efforts like [https://github.com/AndrasKovacs/smalltt/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/AndrasKovacs/smalltt/blob/master/README.md) make me hopeful this is something that can be solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What always amazes about such write-ups is the question "but... but... how?"

So:

\- A year (started in 2019)

\- With a new language

\- A purely functional language that's not the easiest to learn and use

and ended up with:

\- an actual playable game prototype

\- a level editor

\- a scripting engine

\- etc. etc.

But.... how?! I would still be trying to read files from disk or some such.

<comment><USER9> Languages like Idris and Haskell have a big learning curve along with fixed costs around missing ecosystem. But once you pay those off, they allow for single developers or small teams to manage large amounts of complexity and get lots of things "for free" thanks to their composition- and data-oriented nature. A level editor and scripting engine are actually the exact sorts of things I'd expect Idris or Haskell or the like to make noticeably easier than other languages!

<comment><USER10> Eh, I'm not sure the level editor/scripting comes from the language so much as the nature of game dev. I've written a hobby 2d engine + game before, level design is a hell of a lot easier if you build an editor to do it in. Same with scripting for enemy behaviors. I wrote one in c++ and another in Java, both ended up with level editors and a limited scripting language designed for my own benefit. Once you have them, it speeds up actual game development immensely.

<comment><USER9> Yeah I agree. But what I was saying is that implementing the level editor / scripting engine is a class of application where pure FP tends to shine.

<comment><USER11> This is an interesting point. As a humble pythonist I would like to hear more about why that is... thanks!

<comment><USER10> For language design, fp tends to make things a lot easier to represent. Any parser-type application is going to be a recursive structure with a lot of continuations which is the natural way of coding in a functional lang. If you ever look into language design or compilers, you'll see that things are generally written as sum types in bnf, cnf, etc [0]. Basically all fp langs implement sum types, so you can practically translate theory 1-1 into code. I guess you could think of a level editor as a type of language, it's just so minimal that I don't.

[0] [http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pjj/farrell/comp2.html](http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pjj/farrell/comp2.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Grief, this is impressive. For the record, I really can't recommend learning (typed, pure) functional programming on Idris. It's a whole extra step beyond learning to do Haskell well.

<comment><USER13> On the contrary, I'd recommend to start with Idris instead. The design of the language is globally better and way more coherent. It fixes a lot of Haskell "mistakes".

Check out "Type-Driven Development with Idris" by Edwin Brady himself. The book is truly amazing.

<comment><USER14> Idris is great, its design is super impressive, and it expanded my mind tremendously in terms of what is possible in programming. We can and should ask much more of our type systems!

It is also way less mature than Haskell, and someone trying to learn it will run into many issues as a result. I mean, read the linked blog post! Needing to regularly restart one's editor, long compile times for even short programs, and difficulties with installation are all issues I also ran into.

(Also, strong agree about the book. It's really well written, and all around excellent)

<comment><USER15> Idris 2 is supposed to be better in that regard. I could not see in the article if 1 or 2 was used but I think it was 1; 2 is a lot faster and fixed a lot of issues from 1.

<comment><USER12> But there won't be a book.

<comment><USER16> I believe the plan is to release an Idris2 edition of the book. The Idris2 repository currently has all of the book code as part of its test suite and is making progress towards compiling all of it (currently 12 of the 15 chapters).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Developer productivity outside, I'm curious if garbage collection (which almost every functional programming language all have) would become an issue. Especially if you're making a 2D platformer, you really don't want to have any sort of frame stuttering.

And yeah, compile times are really a big problem if you're making games, because you need to constantly tweak your game logic and playtest). To be fair C++ also has this issue, but fortunately there are ways to alleviate this problem (minimize template usage, do not use libraries which use template metaprogramming like the notorious Eigen, divide your files into source/header files frequently, etc.)

<comment><USER18> Unless you're making a large or complex game, I doubt it will matter. Remember that Minecraft was written in a garbage collected language (although its possible they carefully do object pooling, I'm not sure they did in the early days).

On your second point, some people dynamically recompile C++ too! I guess that code maybe is designed for fast compiling. Many other people use an embedded language like Lua for fast iterations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > 1\. Compile times

Give Idris 2 a try if you're not afraid of the teething problems.

<comment><USER19> Isnt Idris 2, like new racket, compiled to chez? I remember Edwin Bring very impressed by the chez backend for Idris 1.

<comment><USER13> Yes. IIRC according to Edwin, he didn't want to spend too much time on implementing an efficient RTS and decided to focus on his core competency instead to (correctly) bring in qtt. The result is surprisingly good and fast. Way faster than v1 actually on both compile and run time.

Ps. Brady btw.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Interactive IP/CIDR range visualizer - <AUTHOR> http://cidr.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Did this mostly as an exercise to learn React and Webpack, and to finally understand the bit hacks going on in CIDR notation.

Source on Github: [https://github.com/yuvadm/cidr.xyz](https://github.com/yuvadm/cidr.xyz)

<comment><USER2> This is great! I recently went through the same lightbulb moment on CIDR blocks and was looking for a visual like this. I just wrote some examples on a piece of paper, but I'll definitely be sharing this with some coworkers.

Thanks for sharing!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Dealing with ganglions/RSI - <AUTHOR>

Just been to to doctors after noticing small cysts on my left middle finger - diagnosis is ganglions[1] caused by RSI (the constant nature of typing has worn out the protective membrane in places around joints in my finger, allowing fluid to leak out and cause cysts)
It's not causing me any pain currently, though I have noticed slightly decreased mobility in the finger they're on.
Doctors advice was mainly to invest in speech recognition software (I work as a support analyst/developer during the day and am bootstrapping an idea in the off-time) so I wondered if anyone else on HN suffered similar, and had any suggestions for things that might help (I mentioned it in #startups and was told that change of posture and exercises would possibly help, something my doctor didn't mention)
I already take regular breaks from the keyboard (usuaully 5mins or so out of every 60 I step away completely during the work day)
Oh, and here's what mine look like for reference
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/730422/Photo%2010-05-2012%2011%2012%2051.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/730422/Photo%2010-05-2012%2011%2013%2010.jpg
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganglion_cyst <comment><USER2> I inherited a predisposition to RSI and was headed for surgical intervention when I made a few minor life changes that cleared it up completely over the course of a few months.

1\. I started taking huge doses of vitamin B6.

2\. I moved my work space around a bit to allow for better typing and writing posture.

3\. I switched to a good buckling-spring (mechanical) keyboard, like the IBM Model M or one of its successors from Unicomp[1].

4\. I switched to the dvorak keyboard layout, which reduces the awkward twists/bends that qwerty forces on us.

5\. I stopped writing with ballpoints, rollerballs, or any type of pen other than a fountain pen.

6\. I purchased the book Write Now by Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay and learned their italic and cursive italic handwriting, which is much better for the hands than how most of us were taught to write in school.

7\. I keep mousing (esp. use of "eraser mouse" or touchpad pointing devices on my laptop) to an absolute minimum.

...and that's it. I've been RSI-free for about a decade. The only caveat I have is that my RSI was in my wrists and the backs of my hands/third knuckles. It was not in my fingers at the second knuckle as your pictures show. I'm not sure that this makes a difference, but I'm not sure that it doesn't, either.

I still spend most of my typical day typing, and a lot of time writing longhand. I don't take any scheduled breaks from either (just the usual pause- to-think/snack/etc) or do exercises for it -- I tried both of those things and they did nothing for me.

Good luck, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions. RSI is not fun.

\--Susan

[1]: <http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/keyboards.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I've spoken to my boss about it (WFH today) and we're going to discuss when I'm next in the office, but I think a laptop stand/proper keyboard are things I'll be getting (I do all my work on a laptop, on a desk, using the laptop keyboard) plus I've got 4 days holiday starting tonight in which time I'm going to limit my keyboard usage severely and hopefully this will let them die down, and then start with the new ergonomics etc. next week and gauge what effect that has on them.

Good shout on the B6, I'll have to try that too!

<comment><USER3> Using a laptop is what started my RSI off in the first place. I would suggest at least plugging a proper ego keyboard in to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had RSI to the point I could not longer work, happily I am now pretty much back to full health. What really helped for me was:

Take a week off, no computing (actually I had no choice) Physiotherapy for a month (once per week) 3M ergonomic mouse (it looks like a joystick) Being conscious of my body position, when working its easy to get in to a tense position to ease the pain. Stretching, having break to walk about Exercise Not using Apple keyboard or mouse, the Microsoft Ergo split keyboard is great, if only they did a small form version. Switching to Vim text editor (no mouse). Setting my Mac clock to speak the time every hour (so I know when to take a rest). The book, "Its not carpal tunnel syndrome", it talks about identifying the root causes not just addressing the symptoms. A herman miller chain, pretty expensive. Work less, 9-5, no evening or weekend work.

\- Kris (teamcoding.com)</comment>


Let's Say Obamacare Is Repealed. What Then? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/upshot/lets-say-obamacare-is-repealed-what-then.html?mtrref=nuzzel.com&gwh=1A6873C8411AB5E1B70BC36BB5E20C2F&gwt=pay <comment><USER2> Wasn't the intrastate demands a GOP added addendum to the bill? As well as the removal of the single payer option? I feel like people forget how much stuff changed from the original ACA to the one that passed through congress.

Also, I fully expect that I'm remembering completely wrong. I'm human, and in mobile, and about to prep a turkey, sorry.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ok, so as much as I didn't vote for Trump, or Hillary, I think the media in general is fear mongering. Trump wants to replace ACA. He doesn't want to just say, "Fuck it! We'll do it live". He want to repeal the law, while invoking a new one.

While I admit that it's not a fleshed out plan, the website does provide reasonable guidelines for what his administration wants to perform. Republicans have, half-assedly, been trying to do the same in the House for years. Perhaps all of the saber rattling will lead to a coherent plan.

[https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/healthcare- reform](https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/healthcare-reform)

<comment><USER4> The Republicans never brought forward any proposals for improvement but voted 40 times or so for repealing Obamacare. I don't think they have any plans other than letting the market fix itself and if you can't afford healthcare you just have to do without.

In reality, American healthcare is just a big scam and ripoff. On my last trip to Germany my girlfriend had a problem with her eye. We went to an eye doctor there and paid 25 Euro out of pocket without insurance. Doctors in Germany don't starve but they have nice cars and houses. In the US she had recently several surgeries and every hospital bill has had massive errors in the range of thousands of dollars. It's just a racket. How about enforcing some standards of billing accuracy instead of allowing this kind of scam?

<comment><USER5> > The Republicans never brought forward any proposals for improvement but > voted 40 times or so for repealing Obamacare. I don't think they have any > plans other than letting the market fix itself and if you can't afford > healthcare you just have to do without.

[http://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2016/11/18/13678690/r...](http://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2016/11/18/13678690/republican-obamacare-replacement-plans-explained)

<comment><USER4> Why didn't they vote for any of these in the last 8 years?

<comment><USER3> Mostly because the House knew the Senate would not actually back the repeal, but they wanted to look like they were doing something for the folks back home. That's the saber rattling. Now, maybe, they will actually put forth a plan or a few plans. I think multiple approaches, with hopefully Democratic and other party input, should make for a better system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's see. Both Trump and the Republicans in Congress want to keep the ban on not allowing exclusions based on pre-existing conditions. How will that happen?

1\. Insurance companies must cover everyone but can charge more based on pre- existing conditions. Insurance companies know acturatially how much treatment will cost based on a person's condition, so they charge that person and exhorbant amount. People complain and the government either has to subsidize the cost and pay insurance companies the difference or have the dreaded public option - just what the Democrats originally wanted.

2\. Alternatively, everyone has to get coverage so you can't game the system and only get insurance when you think you will need it - an individual mandate.

Either way, all roads lead back to some form of either ObamaCare, a public option, subsidies that go directly to insurance companies, or people not being insured.

</comment><comment><USER7> Full on capitalism based health care, or full on communistic health care

</comment><comment><USER8> The only thing I liked about Obama care was the pre-existing conditions clause. I think we should keep this and open insurance companies up across state lines. This should bring competition and reduce our overall rates.

We also need to be able to have plans where we can specifically choose what kind of care we need (IE: women, men, children, etc).

I run my own business and my costs went up 100% this year for a higher deductible and less coverage. If this happens again, I may not be able to afford it.

<comment><USER9>
      The only thing I liked about Obama care was the pre-existing conditions clause.

You can't separate that clause from the mandate and minimum coverage clauses. All three were designed to keep costs from inflating on the one hand, and coverage becoming useless on the other. It's sort of like saying you like your lunch, but have a problem with having to pay for it.

We can quibble about rates for men vs women, but unless you were matured to adulthood in a lab, it's hard to argue that men as a class do not benefit from improved and cheaper access to reproductive healthcare for women. (Also, better reproductive health means fewer criminals, if only because they're born healthier and with fewer mental handicaps.)

Opening up insurance across states would be nice theoretically, but you must realize that it's a states' rights issue for a large segment of the GOP, and a cause for concern among Democrats. It would necessarily limit and perhaps destroy the ability for states to meaningfully regulate insurance within their own borders. Unchecked, it would also mean a race to the bottom in terms of regulatory oversight as every provider would only sell insurance from states with the least restrictive regulations.

What state do you live in? Coverage in states like California and many other states that haven't fought tooth-and-nail has been fairly stable as far I know. The Kaiser HMO rate at my company actually decreased slightly for 2017, with no change in coverage. And California not only has a rigorous regulatory framework, it even maintains a weird tax on hospital income to pay for uninsured coverage.

Also, you don't need a federal law to support an inter-state insurance scheme. States could voluntarily permit policies to be sold from other states. For example, states in different regions could elect to normalize their regulatory schemes and open up their markets to each other. There's plenty of precedent for this. It doesn't require Congressional approval; just coordination among state legislatures like is so often done for other regulatory frameworks.

<comment><USER8> "but unless you were matured to adulthood in a lab, it's hard to argue that men as a class do not benefit from improved and cheaper access to reproductive healthcare for women."

There are plenty of single men that should not be forced to pay for women's reproductive healthcare.

"What state do you live in? "

[http://time.com/money/4535394/obamacare-plan-premium- price-i...](http://time.com/money/4535394/obamacare-plan-premium-price- increases-2017-states/)

8 states rose by at least 30%.

"States could voluntarily permit policies to be sold from other states. For example, states in different regions could elect to normalize their regulatory schemes and open up their markets to each other. There's plenty of precedent for this. It doesn't require Congressional approval; just coordination among state legislatures like is so often done for other regulatory frameworks."

Great, but Obamacare in its current form needs to go.

<comment><USER10> > _There are plenty of single men that should not be forced to pay for women > 's reproductive healthcare._

I have to say this attitude makes me viscerally angry. Men have a much higher incidence of heart disease, so maybe women should not be forced to pay for that? Men engage in lots of unhealthy, risky behaviors, but I've never heard a woman make a statement analogous to yours. It's like saying "Well I'm not handicapped, so why the hell should I have to pay for special accommodations for those people?".

If you accept that socialized healthcare is a good idea, then it seems to follow fairly obviously that we're all unique and will have individualized healthcare needs.

<comment><USER9> Let's be honest here: it's about children. The only difference between men and women that would substantially effect insurance coverage rates are prenatal care and birth.

But few men are willing to come out and plainly state that they aren't interested in subsidizing prenatal care. When you say it aloud it just sounds so obviously wrong, whether or not you're asexual, homosexual, or infertile. And it's especially hypocritical for the anti-abortion set.

It's like the argument that childless property taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize public schools. People just rely on vague handwaving about fairness and risk allocation. And, FWIW, it's also like arguing that taxes paid by pacifists shouldn't support the military. Even most liberals understand that it's a ridiculous assertion as a practical matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Idea:  Code Snippet Storage - <AUTHOR>

I always come across interesting code snippets that I can use in development, but never have a central place to store them.
I have decided that I am going to start using a text file that I store them in, and proceed like that. But there MUST be a better/more slick way of doing this.
The app doesn't have to be a web app (actually probably shouldn't be, or have the web integration as a bonus and not the main feature). I should be able to easily search it by a number of factors - language, keywords, type (e.g. method/function/etc.), etc.
That's just my $0.02 that I won't be doing, but would definitely appreciate and probably purchase, if someone did it properly. It also should be available for both windows + os x. <comment><USER2> Sounds like <http://gist.github.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been wanting something like this for almost a decade now. I always sort of pitched to myself as sourceforge without needing a full project. Like a code dumpster. Or code rolodex.

The key differentiation should be personal storage vs a large open shared pool of code. There are countless code recipe sites, but one that focused on just letting me keep stuff I wanted and wouldn't get spammed with 900 recipes for string reverse in Java.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are several Tools for Desktop, Mobile and Web which suit your description. Just compare and use one of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which are?</comment></comment>