Warren Has a Good Beginning for Ending Corporate-Tax Avoidance - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-15/warren-has-a-good-beginning-for-ending-corporate-tax-avoidance <comment><USER2> Taxes are a good thing.

They pay, or should pay, for education, health, military, roads and infrastructure and a wide variety of other stuff that is good for everyone.

It puzzles me that people hate taxes so much.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if you're in America, but in the US it federal income taxes largely goes to 14 giant aircraft carriers, a huge network of nuclear weapons, corporate farmers intensely growing carbs that makes our nation fat and payoffs to various politically well-connected lobby groups. State and local taxes probably are more useful for the things you think benefit society. Social Security and Medicare are of course funded separately. There is nothing for the endless army of homeless people living on the streets.

I know in many countries people are happy to pay taxes, if I saw everyone was treated well, got free healthcare and free universities I'd probably be happier about paying tax too.

<comment><USER4> > largely goes to 14 giant aircraft carriers

How much do you think the Navy actually costs? Crunching the numbers, the tax the corporation I work at (admittedly, not a small company) is by itself sufficient to pay for running one of those carriers.

<comment><USER5> The Department of Defense's budget is about Six Hundred and Fifty Billion Dollars. It appears too high for peace time. We have friendly relations with both neighboring states. We have huge natural defenses (oceans) to the east and west. We have the nuclear deterrent. We have a well armed population.

We don't need 355 deployable navy vessels. Improving education and health care of our citizens would do more to improve America's economic position than jostling for terrority in the Indian Ocean. Climate change is a bigger treat than terrorism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tax for revenue's sake (as opposed as one legislated to change behavior, like a carbon or environment tax) should be 0% on businesses. The rhetoric I see coming from the left is very worrying. "We will pay for this by just taxing 'corporations.'"

What happens under high corporate taxes is that executives of the corporation manage to extract their share, while using the share of those not in control (the workers) to pay the tax. The end result is that the government does not decide who must pay; instead, those with power in the corporation decide. This outcome is always unfair to the worker: a line cook at McDonalds cannot decide whether McDonald's should cut wages or decrease dividends to pay for the corporate tax this year.

That doesn't even describe the case where a business cannot operate under a heavy tax burden and ceases doing business, which is a loss for everyone in the economy.

Taxes on corporations should be reserved for those situations where we need to control behavior at the corporate level, where a tax at the individual level cannot efficiently be used. For example; a carbon tax levied on a corporation to effect the corporation's behavior re: carbon.

This is not an argument for lower taxes.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Bloomberg article links to a blog post by Warren, which is headlined by a graphic that says: _You probably pay more in federal income taxes than America 's biggest, most profitable corporations_.

This strikes me as an inflammatory — and generally untrue — statement. Even if you assume that all of these corporations pay zero federal income tax (they don't), then roughly half of Americans don't pay more (recall Mitt Romney's impolitic-but-true statement about 47% of Americans not paying any federal income tax).

But of course, most companies do actually pay federal income taxes, and when they don't it's often because of loss carryforwards. This particular aspect of tax law is not a "loophole", and lumping it in with lobbied-for tax credits/deductions doesn't help move the discourse forward.

The scope of the proposed tax hasn't been fully fleshed out, and I won't comment in-depth on it (as a former tax lawyer) at this point. But when I click through to see the original proposal and am greeted by this inflammatory and untrue statement, I am reminded that even the wonkiest of policy wonks will spin things pretty hard when it's election season.

<comment><USER8> Mitt Romney's statement was not primarily in character a factual observation that 47% of people pay no income tax. It was something far more opinionated and in my opinion, deeply inhumane and unethical. The full quote:

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax."

This is Protestant work ethic taken to a corrosive extreme. This is Romney playing to an audience that believes those who take government assistance are conniving malingerers looking to squeeze every penny they can out of hard working taxpayers. It is an indictment of people who had the audacity to be born without the ability to fully support themselves. It begrudges them for daring to ask for a home, food, healthcare and maybe even a few spare moments of happiness.

In my opinion, this type of thinking is the greatest moral failing of the 21th century. It frees the thinker of any social responsibility by demonizing those least equipped to defend themselves.

I do not agree with many of Elizabeth Warren's policy proposals. Her thinking on technology is dangerously benighted. I will not vote for her. But the essence of Warren's argument is that we need to rethink the relationship between the most successful members of society and the least. Tax loss carryforward is a standard accounting practice that makes rational sense. Nevertheless, it's the type of policy that helps those who need help the least, and I think we need to start to rethink these kinds of policies.

We as a society can continue to pass legislation that favors the strong and punishes the weak. What we can't do is look at ourselves in the mirror afterwards and continue to believe that we live in a humane, compassionate, egalitarian society.

<comment><USER7> > _Tax loss carryforward is a standard accounting practice that makes rational > sense. Nevertheless, it 's the type of policy that helps those who need help > the least, and I think we need to start to rethink these kinds of policies._

Get rid of this and you will find all manner of foolish inefficient corporate behavior. Companies with huge losses will be bought by companies with gains they want to soak up that year. Companies will make investment decisions based on their current year's tax position instead of the needs of the business. The end result will not be a more equitable system; it will be a system in which tax lawyer and accountants are the only ones who come out ahead.

And to be clear, I only mentioned Romney's infamous 47% line because it is well known and makes the point quickly. There's no need to rail against the larger message he was giving, which doesn't bear on whether Warren's headline is accurate or misleading. It leads us down a rabbit hole of discussing whether it was appropriate in the context (stumping to potential donors, IIRC), etc. I only referenced it because many people are aware that he said it and that it was a controversial comment but a true one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All these sorts of schemes are doomed to fail for the very simple reason that corporations are more agile than the law making process.

Here's an easy plan to end tax avoidance:

1\. Any company that sells more than $X/year to people living in the US needs to be registered in the US.

2\. Flat tax with no exemptions (all corporations would be taxed like C-corps).

3\. No more rules.

A plan that won't work is one that adds even more rules on top of the the enormous mound of rules currently in place.

<comment><USER10> Just a thought. How about abolishing corporate tax and then making every entity as pass through entity for tax purposes? At the EOD all entities are owned by someone and that income is taxed at a progressive rate. From what I've read the corporate tax is only 10% of the federal budget anyway.

Edit: This wouldn't stop a company from doing what Amazon did and reinvest all the time but at least given a profit an entity would be pressured to pay out cash in order to cover tax liability of owners. Would help avoid hoarding of cash on balance sheets.

<comment><USER11> We have that in Australia & NZ, called Franking. When a corporation pays tax, it receives credits which can be distributed with the dividends it pays out.

While strictly better than the alternative for business owners, I always felt the incentives were a bit weird; if you left profits in the company to expand, you'd pay tax on that up front which would slow growth. So it would bias you towards withdrawing profits (at least compared to the tax policies of other countries).

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

In my opinion, corporate taxation should be tied to liability; essentially being the compensation to society for the risk that your company will go though bankruptcy. If you are willing to be personally liable for your business, you should be able to operate it as a simple pass-through vehicle. And this should apply even to something the size of Apple - investors willing.

It's commonly argued that capital gains combined with corporate tax is double taxation, but limited liability has a huge amount of value; making the link between them explicit and optional would (I think) be the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER10> I believe double taxation actually refers to paying the corporate tax rate as well as the shareholder paying their dividend tax rate. Not capital gains.

<comment><USER11> I misspoke and meant to say corporate tax which would be more correct. But the tax rate also effectively applies to capital gains, since the value of a company is the NPV of its future distributions.

If Apple were suddenly permanently excepted from income tax tomorrow through some bizarre legislation, its future dividends would be proportionally increased, and its market cap would (should) rise to match.

The water is muddied due to a few factors such as inflation, uncertainty around future tax rates, potential tax holidays for overseas income etc. But they're in very general terms two sides of the same coin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can't we just say "your profit for the purposes of taxation is the profit you report to shareholders?"

<comment><USER3> Yeah I think this is the real problem. Most people think Amazon makes a lot of money. They even say they made $12B, but they gave billions to of RSUs to employees so the IRS wisely says they didn't make much. The truth is they didn't make much/any money which is why their tax is low.

<comment><USER12> The problem I have is being able to report different profits to different groups - you should be required to have a single pretax profit number, and that is what you report.

If you really don't make money then you should be required to report that to your shareholders, and conversely if you tell your shareholders you're making money, then you should be required to report that value to the irs.

I don't care which one you use (I mean I do, but in this case it's not the specific point), what I'm saying is you don't get to make money by having overvalued shares (by giving one profit number or the market), while not paying tax (by reporting a different number to irs)

<comment><USER3> Choose the tax number.

"Accounting for Growth" was a classic book written after the late 80's stock market bubble in the UK about how people were fooled by bad accounting and how to spot fraud. One of the main pieces of advice is that the tax number is usually more correct. If a company says it makes huge profit while paying little tax its likely not real profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Corporations are owned by people, start by taxing them simply. Income should be taxed the same whether it comes from a dividend, capital gain or as wages.

<comment><USER14> It's a nice idea, but tricky to do. The difference is that wages and dividends get taxed in the year they happened and capital gains can't even be calculated until you sell an asset, because you don't know the price it's sold at. And capital gains taxes can sometimes be delayed forever (by not selling).

You could mark to market, but it's tricky for investments that aren't liquid. Do you want to pay capital gains tax on your house every year because the market price is supposedly higher? Do you get it back if the market goes down again?

<comment><USER15> Capital gains are taxed when they're realized, and I don't think OP proposed changing that - only adjusting the rate so that it's not less than tax on regular income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> According to the model in this proposal, corporations report their "true" profits to shareholders, and artificial "profits" to tax authorities using corporate accounting tricks (i.e. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement)) to lower tax liability.

This proposal assumes that, when the tax rate is based on the value of reported shareholder profits, corporations will continue to report their "true" profits to shareholders, rather than just reporting the values returned by corporate accounting tricks to shareholders. I doubt that would be the case. The best argument for it I've seen is "Presumably they want the stock to go up so they will report a profit", i.e. investors will move to companies that are on paper more profitable. But actually, investors do their research and can update their profit models of companies; a higher reported profit number will be seen as (and will actually be) a liability to the company. Companies that forgo accounting tricks will be seen as forgoing potential profit by paying taxes that they don't need to. (The same is true today; if Google announced today that they were voluntarily giving up tax accounting tricks and paying full rate, their share prices would go down.)

The one caveat is whether the SEC enforces that the reported profits really are the true profits. But that model of enforcement (self reporting, cheaters rarely get caught and if they do settle the cases for amounts less than their profits) is silly. If we want taxes paid on true profits, we should implement tax law that precisely defines what those are and instruct the IRS to determine those exactly and send them a bill. Reporting requirements to the IRS should be set up with incentive structures that make cheating unprofitable or impossible.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why should I care about the corporate tax burden? Taxes come out of people's pockets, not corporations.

There's an argument to be made that we can get foreign shareholders to pay taxes they otherwise wouldn't, but that's a much different argument than "corporations aren't paying their fare share".

<comment><USER2> >> Taxes come out of people's pockets, not corporations.

That's not correct - corporations are meant to be paying significant tax.

<comment><USER18> It is correct. People own corporations. So if you're taxing a corporation, you're actually just taxing the people that own it. (And/or its customers or employees.) The only point in taxing corporations vs. people directly is if you're trying to target a set that's difficult to tax otherwise, such as rich people who own big corps but don't realize a lot of income on their own balance sheet.

Which IMO is a fair group to target. But that's the point. Corporations are just things that are owned by people. People, ultimately, pay the taxes. So the question ought to be, which _people_ do we want to pay more taxes, and what's the best mechanism to get them to pay those taxes?

<comment><USER19> > The only point in taxing corporations vs. people directly is

I disagree, you're skipping a _huge_ governmental benefit that almost all the biggest corporations request/receive: "Limited Liability."

If Nuclear Asbestos Infant Toys goes bankrupt, everybody else is picking up the tab for land-cleanup and tumor-removal.

In other words, those owners have _chosen_ to socialize their company's risks, so it's only natural and fair for some of the company's profits to be socialized at the same junction.

<comment><USER18> I dunno if that's very different. Personal risks are socialized too -- via a mechanism known as bankruptcy. Anyway, again, it's a question of who you're targeting. If you think limited liability specifically is something that ought to incur a tax of that amount, then, sure, tax them that amount.

But then company owners ought to be able to drop the limited liability feature and receive a lesser tax burden, right? I'm suspect Apple's owners would be happy with that trade. Unlimited liability in exchange for a zero percent tax rate? Bring it on. What, realistically, is the most damage that a computer is going to cause? The damages from patent infringement are often limited by the economic harm, which is at any rate likely to be far less than profits.

Not to put words in your mouth, but if I had to guess you would not be willing to offer companies this out. I think that should make you question whether limited liability, specifically, is why companies should be taxed.

<comment><USER15> Not OP, I'd be perfectly fine with a tax specifically on limited liability, and I think you vastly underestimate the value of that arrangement to the company owners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't elect wealthy politicians who are in bed with industry lobbyists and watch things change overnight.

</comment><comment><USER21> So much of the tax avoidance tactics ends up as more investment and propels our economy forward. Amazon is a prime example. The government taxes profits. Amazon instead of making a profit, reinvests the money into its business.

Even when corporations do stock buy backs, it's not like most of the money goes to the investors to spend frivolously. Instead most of it just gets reinvested in different businesses that have a better plan for the money than the company that did the stock buyback.

Any way you slice it, Warren's plans just reduces reinvestment and puts the brakes on economic growth. You can't tax your way to prosperity unless the taxes are used strictly for things that are an investment in the economic future of the country such as education and infrastructure. Taking the money from those investing it and blowing it on entitlements is a terrible idea.

At the end of the day, all this reinvestment creates jobs and allows individuals to provide for themselves instead of being dependent on sucking at the teat of the state.

<comment><USER22> Sure, we should be encouraging reinvestment but how do you resolve the unfairness of companies that choose to reinvest themselves vs. pay out a dividend and allow investors to re-invest?

Amazon benefits from many government-funded programs: educated workforce, road & rail infrastructure, national defense, judicial contract-enforcement, etc.

Is it fair that a company that reinvests gets all that for free while a company that makes a profit pays substantially?

<comment><USER23> This is true for any form of taxation, such as income/payroll taxes when paying for daycare versus watching your kids yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Corporate taxes shouldn't exist in the first place. They're just a sneaky way of double-taxing people.

Corporations are really just groups of people. Those people already have to pay taxes on the income they receive from the corporation. They shouldn't have to pay taxes on it again when the corporation reports it as income.

<comment><USER25> I'm sympathetic to the argument in principle, but it hinges on the system for assessing income of/collecting taxes from individuals being adequately rigorous and efficient.

The presence of loopholes, tax havens and other mechanisms (including corporations themselves) for hiding personal income means the bucket is very leaky.

Given that corporations have to maintain complete records of their cashflows and disclose them to investors and authorities anyway, using this data for intermediate tax collection seems reasonable.</comment></comment>


A simple explaination of the financial mess that we are in ... from one of us - <AUTHOR> http://furrier.org/2008/09/20/bottom-line-the-financial-crisis-explained/

<comment><USER2> great story - thanks for sharing dennykmui

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the simplicity. Perhaps more engineers should get involved in politics, or more politicians should have an education in science.</comment></comment>


Amazon "Join Research Panel" email has an external URL in one of the parameters - <AUTHOR> [Link to discussion] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/forums/ref=cs_hc_g_pg_pg1?ie=UTF8&forumID=Fx1SKFFP8U1B6N5&cdThread=Tx2O04NGTNUZOEQ&cdPage=1&cdSort
Hi all,
I've been having a discussion at the above URL today about an email sent to some people.
Here is a sample from the Amazon forum of the URL:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/r.html?C=GMJCWLUIE1WX&R=1D16EZXH1WRXZ&T=C&U=&A=1UGJHCWOURKRTE8GT4FAASSXYGCA&H=NIYAXLWJZ0ZGZDAFR0JQPFMHOJYA%20https://marketresearch.au1.qualtrics.com/SE?Q_DL=57lAxmzkxiIjCzH_3eq12un7iYcJL3n_CGC_2mKC2fo4n6e4jqd
Discussion ensues about the validity of the link within the email and I've made a few posts there.
Would love to get your feedback about some conversation and analysis of security concerns with this email.  You'll have to assume both secure trusted SMTP headers and untrusted SMTP headers since I'll not post my personal headers received publicly. <comment><USER2> I suggest leading the title with "Ask HN:"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much.</comment></comment>


China building high-speed rail line from Beijing to the United States - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1508118/china-considering-building-high-speed-rail-line-beijing-united-states

<comment><USER2> You've editorialized the story title egregiously by omitting the word "considering". Please re-read the HN guidelines, and don't do that.

Burying as dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718277).

<comment><USER3> Hi dang. Someone downvote bombed a conversation I was having with some fellow HN users: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7726544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7726544)

All the comments below that link had a downvote except one of mine. I tried to correct it, but I use Tor. I noticed when I tried to upvote the comments that upvotes from Tor users don't actually register. This makes sense, because allowing access from Tor will make it too easy to create sockpuppet accounts that game the system. But I was wondering if I might be able to be granted an exception based on good behavior? If it's not possible at the software level then don't worry about it, I understand. It's an unfortunate fact that Tor citizens won't be able to fully partake in HN, but it seems like that's the price of anonymity (and it seems like a reasonable one too!)

I was also wanting to check with you: has Tor caused the mod team many problems? I'm hoping that by setting a good example, I can convince others that it's possible to allow strong anonymity to good effect in a community. So I'm crossing my fingers that Tor will continue to be allowed on HN. (Thank you from the bottom of my heart for resisting the urge to ban it from the start.)

<comment><USER2> Happy to look into it, but please send support requests to firstname.lastname@example.com, so as not to dilute the threads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 'Considering' building, not building yet.</comment>


Microsoft: We were wrong about open source - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262103/microsoft-open-source-linux-history-wrong-statement <comment><USER2> I wish Microsoft would officially release the source code for Windows 7 or even XP. I use Windows 7 now (with AV and common sense) and although slower it's a marked improvement from 10 in terms of customization and privacy. If Microsoft gave the open source community the tools to start improving Windows it would completely change the game.

I think Microsoft knows this and I think they don't want to make Windows open- source for fear that they could create their own competitor.

<comment><USER3> To be honest, a lot of Microsoft's open source efforts, while seemingly a change from their old attitude, hasn't been anything substantial. Their inclusion of a linux service later and the forthcoming linux kernel has nothing to do with kindness to the open source community and everything to do with capturing market share and profit.

It entices developers who might otherwise leave windows to stay. Why bother leaving windows when all your linux toolchain needs are available under Microsoft's comfy corporate roof.

Meanwhile, they've acquired one of the largest repositories of open source software in existence and now. make substantial profit from this.

Not that this is bad necessarily, but this 'oh look how benevolent and great Microsoft is now' twist all these stories get is just kind of a bit ridiculous as far as I'm concerned.

Microsoft's still a business concerned with trying to dominate on as many different fronts as it can. It may have changed up its strategy, but the goal hasn't changed. And, while they do seem to be doing some good, their whole underlying business strategy of 'have a presence on every computer everywhere' still remains strong.

<comment><USER4> > Microsoft's still a business concerned with trying to dominate on as many > different fronts as it can. It may have changed up its strategy, but the > goal hasn't changed. And, while they do seem to be doing some good, their > whole underlying business strategy of 'have a presence on every computer > everywhere' still remains strong.

Well of course. That's the essence of capitalism, it's strange to me that you're remarking on one of the most fundamental tenets as if it's interesting or otherwise noteworthy.

The fundamental tenet of capitalism is businesses exist to make money, otherwise they die and the shareholders have to bail out the company and employees, which is exactly why shareholders make so much money, as reward for the risk of investment (or -- in our current system -- the shareholders get bailed out while everyone else suffers the loss). Microsoft makes money by capturing market share and increasing vendor lock-in. The idea of companies doing "good" is outside the realm of market dynamics under capitalism, so it's alarming to think that any self-respecting neoliberal could assume that a company is inherently "good" or "bad".

"Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish" is something microsoft has been doing since the 1980s, and the 1990s leaked Halloween Memos show they've been aware of the threat since Linux's inception, I'm honestly surprised they took this long to start doing it with Linux, although the user experience in the last 5 years has become rather seamless, in my experience, so it's likely that it's only now that because of that, and Android, it's seen as a real threat.

<comment><USER5> > it's strange to me that you're remarking

Reminders are important - and for some, especially the young guns, your comment _isn 't_ a reminder.

<comment><USER4> I guess? That's a fair point. Although I'm on the younger side myself compared to the average population here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft understood, and still understands strategy wrt developers. Microsoft went Open Source because that is where devs go, why do they go there? Access, control and agency.

Why do you think they make VSCode? With VSCode and Github, Microsoft has access to probably > 40% of all developers in the world! How did they do it? Open Source.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23214548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23214548)

Microsoft admits being 'on the wrong side of history' with regard to open source (theregister.co.uk)

73 points by FlyMoreRockets 1 day ago | 110 comments

</comment><comment><USER8> How corrigible of them. We all know damn well they have no choice.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why do we have so much MSFT post on HN?

Be it release related, PR?

<comment><USER10> In general? Microsoft is one of the largest software (and SW dev tooling) vendors in the world. Recently? Their dev conference (BUILD) is starting today. Expect even more in the next 36 - 72 hours.</comment></comment>


Zynga launches new Platform for social games - <AUTHOR> http://company.zynga.com/about/press/company-blog/platform-play

<comment><USER2> Participating in this platform as a 3rd party sounds like the 2012 equivalent of inviting 1990's microsoft into your product meetings as part of "preliminary M&A" talks. Why bother guessing which games are the best to clone when you can simply build their analytics platform?

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh, is this their feature-for-feature ripoff of Steam? :-D

</comment><comment><USER4> It looks like this move has instilled some confidence. ZNGA stock is up 6.8% today.

<comment><USER5> As soon as I saw the title I thought I guess I should go rush to buy some zynga, but I guess I'm late to the party.

<comment><USER6> no, you short on good news, buy on bad.

<comment><USER7> No, you buy before good news, and sell before bad.

(If you don't understand your market well enough to know which it will be, maybe you shouldn't be investing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jim-greer It's a sensible move, but they haven't actually launched it yet as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER8> It will be available "later this month"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wait it still uses Facebook, so what's there to win for 3rd (actually 4th) parties?</comment>


How not to respond to constructive criticism  - <AUTHOR> http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?p=72582#p72582

<comment><USER2> Forum is hosed, but somebody got a screenshot (Reddit). <http://www.imgdash.com/uploads/89bf455cab.png>

Shameful.</comment>


In a previously unpublished story, Kurt Vonnegut bellies up to the bar - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-kurt-vonnegut18-2009oct18,0,4119732,full.story

<comment><USER2> SPOILERS AHEAD:

Maybe Vonnegut is over my head but throwing a cat over a wall that scratches someone later and showing pictures of people to known paranoiacs with the intention to get them killed seem like two very different things.

<comment><USER3> Spoiler alert, dude.

<comment><USER2> sorry didn't see that. fixed it.

<comment><USER3> It's too late now, but using rot13 works well for that sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is the 2nd posthumous short story collection of his released, i think. the first was one was a far cry from 'bagambo snuff box' and 'welcome to the monkey house', but it offered an interesting window into his development as a writer. i'll definitely pick this up when it's released

</comment><comment><USER5> It rather reminds me of the rather absurd/sinister stories by Roald Dahl.

<comment><USER6> It reminds me of Neil Gaiman's short story "We Can Get Them For You Wholesale", which also features a killer and would-be client meeting in a bar.

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


Uber's self-driving cars are coming back to San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-brings-mapping-cars-back-to-san-francisco-2017-1 <comment><USER2> "These cars are being used for Uber's mapping purposes only. They are being driven manually at all times and their self-driving systems are disabled," Uber said in a statement.</comment>


The Day I Saw Van Gogh's Genius in a New Light - <AUTHOR> http://asada0.tumblr.com/post/11517603099/the-day-i-saw-van-goghs-genius-in-a-new-light <comment><USER2> I suspect that this whole exercise is moot. However one adjusts their color spectrum, I'm still staring at tiny digital reproductions of paintings on a fairly cheap LCD monitor.

One of the things I've learned by reading a book on art, and then wandering around various art museums looking at the very art that was pictured in the book, is that _paint is different from ink or pixels_. You can look at a poster print of a famous painting all you want, but you still haven't seen the painting. Paint has color and texture and light-catching qualities that defy easy reproduction.

For example, I wrote an essay on Vermeer when I was in high school. Then I went to see some Vermeers. And, frankly, "View of Delft" is not very interesting in print, even if you see it reproduced in the correct size, but in person "View of Delft" is _amazing_. It has atmosphere. And across the room from "View of Delft" in the Mauritshuis is "Girl With A Pearl Earring", an absolutely ubiquitous work, reproduced on book covers and posters everywhere, but I can't look at those posters anymore, they are hopelessly flat and dull. The actual "Girl With A Pearl Earring" is far more beautiful.

<comment><USER3> > _I'm still staring at tiny digital reproductions of paintings on a fairly > cheap LCD monitor._

If you've seen the originals, there is a 3D quality that is also lost. He had a way of sculpting the paint on the canvas, which I've never seen in any reproduction.

<comment><USER4> Yes! I noticed that too when looking at a Van Gogh in person. He had built it up using a _lot_ of paint - almost like what you see when a small child uses way too much finger-paint. The physical texture of it was striking.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention the paints have translucent and reflective qualities, all of which are lost on a 2d print or monitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> van Gogh chose paints for their immediacy of color, sometimes without understanding the problems of hue shifting and degradation displayed by certain pigments. This causes a huge headache for curators and in many cases the changes are irreversible. For example his chrome yellows contain sulphides which have significantly darkened and browned through exposure to UV. He also used various red lakes that are prone to fading and discoloration.

van Gogh famously wrote in a letter to his brother Theo: "Paintings fade like flowers... All the colors that impressionism has brought into fashion are unstable, so there is all the more reason to simply use them too brightly - time will tone them down only too much".

Any theory of color vision deficiency that attempts to reconstruct the color balances that van Gogh actually saw should take into account the hue/value/chroma of his paints such as they possessed when originally applied, and also consider that van Gogh intentionally adjusted his aesthetic to render color schemes in expectation of future pigment degradation, and that these adjustments cannot have been an exact science.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I noticed: In each version, my focus is drawn to completely different locations.

\- In The Harvest, I immediately look to the farmer in the newer version.

\- In Starry Night, I immediately look to the church in the new version, instead of the moon.

\- Likewise, in The Road Menders and The Sower I look at the people more, and the trees and sun less.

\- In the Cafe Terrace at Night, I immediately look to the server in the new version, instead of the yellow lighted wall in the original.

I noticed I measure the person and their posture much more readily. I can now, in my mind, recall the posture of most of these people: the server is erect, the sower is slightly bent and tired, the farmer in the harvest is steadily working, if slightly hurriedly, and in The Road Menders the two nun-looking characters in the back are somewhat tired as if on a weekend.

What I learned from this isn't "van Gogh had a color deficiency," but the way in which color can affect the mood of a painting in really subtle ways I hadn't considered.

Cool.

<comment><USER5> Maybe I am a little color blind and never knew it- because while I can see a difference between the two, it's not all that striking- the only difference I see is that oranges become yellows and deep blues become a little lighter. Am I the only one?

<comment><USER8> Something to keep in mind: the gamut of your LCD is a pretty crude mapping of the actual paint colors.

In the best case, on a wide gamut panel, these are very rude approximations of what you might see under the unnatural lighting experienced by the author. It should not be taken as any kind of diagnostic.

If you have e.g. a 6 bit TN panel, all of these are going to look very similar, before anomalous vision is even involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is really interesting. I wish the pictures he provided were a little bigger though. I still don't know that this really improves on the originals. To me, part of the genius of Van Gogh is his unusual use of color. The "improved" versions look nice, but they also look sort of boring compared to the old versions- they are more realistic, but they also loose a lot of the whimsicality and surreally of the originals (two of my favorite traits of Van Gogh). I guess my problem with this article isn't as much the new versions of the paintings, as the authors assertion that they are superior to the originals.

<comment><USER10> Concur wholeheartedly. Van Gogh's unusual color choices are a feature, not a bug. The author asserts that the muted color pallet for 'The Harvest' imbues the painting with an autumnal glow. For me, it removes the element of the painting that I find most interesting. The other comparisons fall along similar lines.

Of course, this is art, and it's not truly possible for either of us to be 'wrong'. Taking a new perspective on Van Gogh's art is itself interesting, so this is a great read, even if I disagree with some of his conclusions.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I think it would be quite interesting to have a museum exhibition where a high quality print of a original Van Gogh is displayed next a high quality print of the filtered version. I would defiantly pay to see that

I wonder if any other famous artists saw their work differently than the rest of us?

<comment><USER11> > _I wonder if any other famous artists saw their work differently than the > rest of us?_

Ludwig van Beethoven's hearing started to deteriorate early on and eventually he became completely deaf though he continued to compose.

Of course there has to be a substantial difference between losing a sense or never to have had it but we don't know whether Van Gogh's altered vision was there from birth or the alteration happened later in his life.

I agree with both of you, most of the pictures lose a lot of character and uniqueness in the "corrected" versions; though one or two of them gain an incredibly realistic feeling of ambiance.

Better or not? Shouldn't even be the question - but it is an interesting theory and result!

<comment><USER12> There are some who argue that Beethoven's metronome was broken, and his deafness was part of the reason he didn't realize it. Here's an article about it: [http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/19/arts/critic-s-notebook- pon...](http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/19/arts/critic-s-notebook-pondering- beethoven-s-metronome.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

Along those lines, John Eliot Gardiner conducted Beethoven's 9 Symphonies with Beethoven's metronome markings and with instruments that would have been used at that time period. It's a very different sound that I'm a huge fan of, though I think it wasn't particularly embraced by traditionalists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think that most of the paintings look better or more interesting in the protanomal simulation, some of them actually have lost their magic and look dull. I find this most visible in the self-portrait, of which the author writes: _the man whom one cannot approach easily_.

The tinge of green in the original portrait makes this man much harder to approach, because it adds the psychotic, unusual aura to the picture. This man has left the world of commonly shared human experience.

The author remarks that in the picture _The Road Menders_ the trees have a strange color and after conversion look more solid, giving some depth to the road. So the picture looks more like what we would expect, in other words: we see the usual.

But this is contrary to the kind of psychotic perception of the world, which I associate with van Gogh's paintings, at least with those paintings that we would call typical van Gogh (there are paintings from the earlier _dutch period_ , which have a different character): Reality is distorted, colors deviate from the ordinary, everything is flowing together and swirling, the wheat, the sky, the world. Proportions are deranged, look at the painting of his bedroom for example:

[http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Vincent_Will...](http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_137.jpg&filetimestamp=20050519135921)

Theo van Gogh, his brother, wrote 1889 in a letter to his future wife a characterization of Vincent van Gogh: _"As you know, he has broken since a long time with everything what we call convention. The style of his clothes and his behaviour show that this is a special human, and since many years people who see him will say: This is a madman."_

</comment><comment><USER14> Whether it adds any thing to the article but Van Gogh was on drugs with the known side effect of mucking with your yellow and green perception.

He is specifically mentioned in this article on adverse wise effects of digoxin: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digoxin#Adverse_effects>

<comment><USER15> Interesting, as there does seem to be a consistently stronger vibrance of yellow monochromatic hues in the protanomal paintings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In programs like Photoshop you can preview your design using color blindness filters (View > Proof Setup > Color Blindness). Another trick is to grayscale your design to check the contrast. This will help a lot to create a design that is also accessible for colorblind people.

Contrast is the key here. Red for example is a very dark color. That's why they use to print secret documents on red paper. When you would copy such document with a copier it would become completely black.

</comment><comment><USER17> Vincent van Gogh is arguably the most famous example of a painter associated with crazy; almost everyone has heard of (the rumour of?) the artist that cut off his own ear. And certainly it is not only the colors that are outlandish, boldly dissonant and flirting with the insane. Just look at the strokes, the use of perspective and the general composition of the paintings. Realism is not all there is to it! Perhaps even anything but.

Some of the altered pictures look nice in the same way that greyscaling a photo creates a pleasingly different expression, but generally, as for myself, I get impression that content has been stripped.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm color-blind and I see absolutely no differences between the original and the modified images.

So I assume this is working.

<comment><USER19> Same here - I actually checked the comments to be sure this wasn't a joke, actually. It's just a series of identical pictures to me. I guess I'm a born Van Gogh fan.

(I did a wall mural once involving a large green sea monster; I had a friend tell me when the shadows were getting red so I could compensate back to "normal-brown" - they all looked fine to me.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In some of the converted pictures two colors that were different in the original become identical.

If Van Gogh saw colors the way they are in the converted pictures why would he use two different colors that would look identical to him?

<comment><USER21> Oil paintings aren't painted in a single go. There's a lot of layering involved.

So perhaps a better question is, how would you mix the same color twice, if you couldn't tell a range of colors apart?

<comment><USER22> This is what makes me question the colour blind theory. Although they are very strong in places, the colours all work together.

If he was colour blind surely there would be patches of green and patches of non-green instead of smooth colour. How could he possibly match the same colours over and over again each time he mixed his paints if he couldn't tell the difference?

<comment><USER21> I thought about this for a while.

I'm not an expert in oil painting technique, but I think one possibility is, you tend to overpaint an area at a time. So: mix some paint, layer up part of the canvas. Come back later, mix some paint, do it again.

If that's how it works it would explain a bunch of things in the comparison images. Like: how come the bridge is yellow, but its reflection in the river is bright green? Maybe they were painted at different times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm colour-blind (red-green) and have, since I can remember, always had a huge affinity for the paintings of Van Gogh. I didn't realise that other people considered his paintings to be unusually toned or that he may have been colour-blind, so I found this article fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER24> This makes little sense to me.

A partially color-blind artist has no reason to amplify is dimmed color to "correct" his perceptual deficit. His brain is calibrated on his usual input. Even if his perception of (say) red is diminished, an image with the red channel amplified will look more red to him too.

<comment><USER18> A color blind person does not perceive colors dimmer or lighter, but perceives them wrong. So for example, Van Gogh would see a wheat field and pick a color that matched the wheat to paint it, according to what he saw. Turns out that this color would be orange, because to him orange and wheat both looked the same.

As a color blind myself, I see absolutely no difference between the original and the modified images. They are 100% identical to me. So I already see them as Van Gogh did. But if you can see a difference then this proves that this experiment works.

<comment><USER25> Even The Harvest was the same for you? That one I could see a large difference. The rest were more or less the same for me though.

<comment><USER18> Looking closely at the Harvest I see that that the field is different indeed. Orange in the original, and "wheat" on the modified. But that wasn't immediately apparent at first.

<comment><USER26> The Harvest is different from the others, the wheat goes from intense orange to yellow. All others are about green being replaced with yellow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am partially color deficient, although I don't know the classifications given in the article. I was told it was "medium red-green" several years ago. The modified images look the same to me, except for the last two. In the Cafe Terrace, the sky looks more purple to me in the original, and in the self- portrait, the background swirls look more purple to me in the modified version.

<comment><USER28> I have normal colour vision and I experienced the same thing with those two pictures, a purple to blue shift. (I also saw differences in the others.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm struck by how bland some of the altered images are! Sure, still impressive but there is a certain quality of the spontaneity of the abrupt introduction of new or contrasting color that is lost is some of the transformations. As my personal preference I had to admit I much prefer the original although that's not to say they aren't magnificent works of art regardless.

<comment><USER30> A (professional) photographer friend of mine showed me one of his autumn landscapes. When I was not really impressed (I only saw some bland, kindof greenish kindof yellowish trees), he remembered: "Oh, I forgot you have that sad color filter on"

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If I don't see the difference between these images (ok, some parts are slightly brighter), does that mean I have color deficiency too ?

<comment><USER30> Yes. Or you have a really really bad computer display. Welcome to the crowd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> _When you see a Gauguin, you think, This man is living in a dream world. When you see a van Gogh, you think, This dream world is living in a man._

—Adam Gopnik

[http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/04/100104fa_fact_go...](http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/04/100104fa_fact_gopnik)

A beautiful, inspiring critique if you have the time for it.

</comment><comment><USER33> With the exception of the last example, the two versions of each painting look identical to me. Of course, I am looking at them through a 4+NS cataract, in an eye (the only one I have) that also has a damaged macula and other significant retina damage - but I suspect the cataract plays a bigger role.

I'm having said cataract removed this Friday, so I'll have to check this again next week and see how things have changed. I'm very curious to see what the difference will be. The progressive worsening of my vision over the past year has been so gradual that it's sometimes hard to quantify just how much things like my ability to see color and contrast has changed.

</comment><comment><USER34> "The Harvest" and "The Starry Night" both look under-illuminated. The rest look more or less the same.

Not sure whether that's my deuteranomaly talking or if it's his small pictures.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is such a bizarre exercise, albeit interesting in terms of trivia, i guess.

"""Finally I feel that van Gogh's astounding qualities are available to me."""

I've often felt that nerds (including myself here) shouldn't be allowed near artistically expressive mediums and equipment, such as cameras, because we nerd them up way too much and miss the whole point. And this quote just sums up what i mean. :S A minuscule colour shift reveals Van Gogh's genius? NOPE.

</comment><comment><USER36> Someone who isn't me once ate some funny mushrooms and Van Gogh's paintings appeared to him as though they were made with magic pixie paint that actively ebbed and flowed right before his eyes. That was the day he saw Van Gogh's genius in a new light. Does that mean Van Gogh only painted after eating similar funny mushrooms?

</comment><comment><USER37> He mentions this color vision deficiency simulator app: <http://asada.tukusi.ne.jp/cvsimulator/e/index.html>

It's interesting to look at real life through color deficient eyes.

</comment><comment><USER38> "protanomal simulation" sure looks like an unsharp mask (with some contrast added) to me

OT but I really like that blog theme, very clean and easy to read

</comment><comment><USER39> I have normal colour vision, but the Van Gogh self portrait in the Musee D'Orsay is one of the most beautiful paintings I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think the modified versions look worse in every case, and I question the author's sanity.

You can only appreciate Van Gogh if you can make his color choices more "normal"? So you'd only appreciate Picasso if you could use photoshop to reconstruct his paintings?

Take the work as it is. Attempt to understand it on its own terms. That is how you grow as a person.

<comment><USER41> Hm. But to folks with different color vision, they 'are' different paintings. Neither view is 'normal'. An attempt to reconcile views on the same painting is entirely rational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> All the examples look mostly the same to me. I am mildly color-blind.

</comment><comment><USER43> Anyone else think this article is a plug for his app?

</comment><comment><USER44> So you argues he painted wheat the color you see wheat, even though he does not see it in real life the same color as you see?

Now I'm confused.</comment>


Viacom buying last.fm? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2007/04/27/lastfm-viacom/ <comment><USER2> Heres the text of the post, caught by my RSS reader. Looks like a repeat of the rumour going round during FOWA:

 _Some murmuring in the UK this this week says that Viacom is continuing its negotiations to buy Last.fm for approximately $450 million - a huge sum, but partly justified by the fact that Last.fm is really the "YouTube of music" these days._

 _The royalty rate hike for online radio stations in the US, which is now being countered by a bill that aims to overturn it, doesn't seem to have affected the purchase price._

 _Based on a corroborating story from DealBreaker earlier this week, I guess we can upgrade this one from "vague rumor" to "possibility". More details appreciated._

</comment><comment><USER2> For some reason I cant connect to mashable today, anyone else getting this problem?

</comment><comment><USER3> same here</comment>


Bayer CEO: Nexavar cancer drug is for "western patients who can afford it." - <AUTHOR> http://keionline.org/node/1910 <comment><USER2> > Bayer Chief Executive Officer Marijn Dekkers called the compulsory license > "essentially theft."

He's a bit mixed up. Government enforcement of your temporary monopoly is a _privilege_. Failing to give you the privilege you think you deserve is not the same thing as stealing from you.

<comment><USER3> Witty sarcasm much?

Without this "privilege" a company has no incentive to develop anything new, leave alone anything that requires _massive_ R&D investments. What India did is it effectively said that they don't want to participate in the development of new drugs, so their stance on this matter is frankly quite ludicrous.

Try this for a comparison - Germany declares that all software sold in their country should be priced at $1 or less. Would you still be talking about software companies being crybabies for objecting this? Doubt it.

<comment><USER4> The scientists who develop such drugs generally do not do it to make billions of dollars. Their salaries usually are in the 6 figures and I see no evidence that fewer drugs would be developed if society paid for development through universities and nonprofit research centers.

There are other incentives in life other than money.

<comment><USER5> That would be worth exploring, but the cost of developing a drug is astronomically high: "The average drug developed by a major pharmaceutical company costs at least $4 billion, and it can be as much as $11 billion." [http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the- tru...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the-truly- staggering-cost-of-inventing-new-drugs/). The most expensive part is Phase III Clinical Trials, and it's growing: "We examined drug development in four major public health areas and discovered that for any given drug on the market, typically 90 percent or more of that drug's development costs are incurred in Phase III trials." [http://www.manhattan- institute.org/html/fda_05.htm](http://www.manhattan- institute.org/html/fda_05.htm)

No university or nonprofit has that kind of budget, and even if they did, they are unlikely to take on the risk of a failed drug.

<comment><USER6> Pharmaceutical companies typically spend more money on advertising than drug development which leads me to think that the patent system isn't that necessary to the overall profitability.

<comment><USER7> Ridiculous argument.

Marketing spend is based on the idea you spend $X and get $X + Y back. This doesn't always work, but it's the general premise.

This means without marketing dollars they'd be making less money.

<comment><USER8> Or they'd be making drugs that actually matter, instead of drugs they can market well to unassuming consumers.

<comment><USER5> Well, they're picking the drugs that they can sell the most of -- i.e. the ones that will benefit the most people. That's not a bad thing.

However, the cost of human trials are still a problem. Because of the costs, drug research to treat rare diseases aren't going to get funded by anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We need an alternative mechanism to fund medical research. Granting artificial monopolies aka patents isn't cutting it, and it's getting highly unethical.

Given that what we currently have isn't a free-market approach at all I wonder why we couldn't just fund it directly, via taxes. The cost could be shared between countries AND the research could be directed. The companies could be pure R/D labs, leaving the manufacturing to others.

<comment><USER10> I think it's really hard to say. The efficiency provided by companies trying to make money can't be overlooked. They make every attempt to reduce costs and increase development speed, and it's possible that in the long run, things are better.

Also, if research is publicly funded, it would probably tend to focus on whatever the public is more aware of. Public awareness of diseases doesn't do correlate well to the severity of the problem. For instance:

[http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/05/breast-cancer-receives- muc...](http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/05/breast-cancer-receives-much-more- research-funding-publicity-than-prostate-cancer-despite-similar-number-of- victims/)

If the market wasn't given any incentives to perform research on its own, then I could see this problem becoming magnified.

<comment><USER11> Companies are also motivated by profits. This can create a perverse incentive to focus on treatment methods and ignore prevention/cures. They might also focus more on problems that effect "rich" people (blood pressure, cholesterol, weight loss, depression) while ignoring things that kill many poor people like malaria.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think one thing that India has got right is the patent system. As I understand, you can't patent as product in India, you can only patent the process. Thus multiple companies can have multiple process patent on the same product. This actually encourages innovation and keep prices low (especially for drugs). $65,000 is extremely expensive considering that the average annual income in India is a mere $2000.

<comment><USER13> Am I missing something because I'm not sure that a lot of new drug research is coming out of India. It would be great if there was because we could probably double the amount of new medicines.

<comment><USER14> You would have to prove that there would be more drug development in India without the current process, and I really doubt it would change anything.

<comment><USER13> How much drug research is done now? Can you quantify it in dollars or drugs produced?

<comment><USER14> I'm asking you because evidently nobody knows, so all this speculation about the disadvantages of their policy seems to me like smoke and mirrors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Went digging through for past articles. This has been a long-running situation. For context, Nexavar was patented in India in 2008 (it's first FDA approval, for advanced liver cancer was granted in 2007, a process started in 2004). According to this article [1] from last year, Bayer was running a program that gave ~70% of Nexavar users a 90% discount from their in India market rate ($5500 USD monthly). The generic maker sells at $176 monthly, and per licensing fees, pays Bayer 6% of net sales.

Also, about the nature of the drug. It's basically a treatment of last resort. The initial study that granted it FDA approval for in advanced liver cancer showed a 3-4 month increase in median survival time compared to placebo (remember, this is with cases that have exhausted other options). Further studies show some greater synergistic effects combined with other treatments. Also, in a study with a smaller population, and slightly different subtype of liver cancer showed an overall median survival time of 26 months (it's unclear to me from reading the abstracts how the baseline conditions of the two trial's patients compare, so it's difficult to directly compare their results).

[1] [http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/bayer-to- appea...](http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/bayer-to-appeal- against-indias-patent-ruling-on-nexavar/article4484568.ece)

</comment><comment><USER16> I know most people will oppose this, but what about the massive financial investment that Bayer took in development that the Indian company Natco didn't take. Surely Bayer should get some sort of payback.

<comment><USER17> As long as we're talking about what ought to be: Should the model we have be incentivizing the recoupment of investments using the threatpoint of death to extract maximum resources from choiceless "customers"?

However we do it, the answer to "how much will it cost?" when it comes to medicine needs to stop being "how much do you have?"

<comment><USER18> Maybe India could fund its own NHS instead of nuclear weapons and space missions?

India is a country that likes to play poor when there's some advantage to be had, but it's a facade.

<comment><USER19> Nuclear weapons are arguably necessary with a nuclear armed neighbor they've regularly been at war with, and the space missions have the potential to make profits for India.

The US funds space missions with folks dying for want of medical care, but people don't tend to complain about that.

I'm not sure funding their NHS is going to do all that much good when the drug costs multiple times the per-capita income of Indians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "At a daily dose of 4 tablets, this comes to $5,637 per month,"

"..is for western patients who can afford it"

Oh the irony, at least in the US. How many can actually pay $5,637 per month out of their _own_ pockets if not for health insurance which is mostly subsidized by your employer if you are lucky enough to have a job. On the other hand, India is still more of a "I pay you out of pocket, how much do you charge" system.

Having said that, I am not necessarily saying that protecting your IP/inventions is a bad thing. But before you start comparing countries/markets, make sure you have enough knowledge of how a particular market operates.

<comment><USER21> America is certainly nowhere near the top of Developed western countries, so maybe they're not even talking about Americans when they say "..is for western patients who can afford it"

<comment><USER22> Money is typically the criteria used for "if you can afford it".

American still has the greatest GDP, and the the greatest household income (average _and_ median, as I recall).

<comment><USER21> > Money is typically the criteria used for "if you can afford it".

I would dispute that and say "spending money" is the criteria used for "if you can afford it".

Income means nothing if you have to spend it all just to live.

I doubt the average American has has much spending money as people from Developed countries.

<comment><USER22> It would be nice if you were less vague, so we could have a reasonable conversation about cost of living, incoming, savings, disposable income, et cetera.

As it stands, you've provided a dearth of information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure what exactly the history of this product is, but my guess is it's a treatment that:

1) Cost a shitload to research

2) Is only applicable to a handful of patients

If this is true, then I don't see what else they should do. If they aren't allowed to sell it at the price they want, then perhaps the research wouldn't have been funded in the first place?

<comment><USER23> It's a life saving drug of last resorts. And considering the population of India, 'a handful' is too many :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is one hell of a hit piece. I'd love to see the actual quote from the CEO since this has gotten ZERO press in the mainstream media. I'm assuming he meant the drug was _priced_ for westerns who could afford it, not that the company would prefer if Indians with cancer would just die.

The thing that makes me laugh about the IP struggle going on in India is that Indian companies who have developed their own generic versions have often priced their drugs not much lower than what western companies have[1]. This isn't about providing access to medicines (since many western companies, including Bayer, have patient assistance programs that offer free drug to Indians), this is about protecting and supporting the Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers.

[1] Biocon just launched their biosimilar version of Genentech's Herceptin. Genentech's price in India is $1,366 per month while Biocon's is $933 per month, still well out of the reach of most Indians.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-20/roche-herceptin- cop...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-20/roche-herceptin-copy-s-price- still-out-of-reach-in-india.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> Legalities of all this aside, these comments perpetuate many of the worst stereotypes of major pharmaceutical companies. This will not be smoothed over lightly.

<comment><USER25> This is the same company that sold off their stock of HIV contaminated medicine to hemophiliacs in Asian and Latin America in the mid 1980s while a newer version was sold to western patients.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Also the same company that sued the European Commission over a ban on pesticides that are killing bees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> India's setting a great precedent by granting exclusive rights granted by a patent only in combination with a requirement that the result be reasonable.

I think this kind of tweak to the patent system should be extended beyond medical life-or-death kind of products.

Our society grants these exclusive rights under certain conditions, because as a society we believe doing so benefits us all. There is no inherent natural right to have a patent (unlike what this bozo seems to believe), it is an artificial construct humans made up to improve society.

There is no reason we shouldn't tweak the parameters of patentability and the benefits received on an ongoing basis.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In case, if people missed this part

        The U.S. government has weighed in on the side of Bayer in
        the patent case, at the highest levels of the India and the
        US governments.

What can be the possible reason?

<comment><USER27> If United States patents can be discarded at will by global markets, it creates serious intellectual property concerns for research and development groups in the US.

Without a possible profit incentive, what will incentivize drug companies to spend billions on cancer medication or other research if the compound will be lifted from them the next day and sold at pill cost, not compounded R&D cost?

It's definitely in US interests (both public and private sector) to strengthen the value of a US patent and US patent law globally.

Why would a government not argue in favor of this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just thought I'd share this for context:

> "It takes about 10-15 years to develop one new medicine from the time it is > discovered to when it is available for treating patients. The average cost > to research and develop each successful drug is estimated to be $800 million > to $1 billion. This number includes the cost of the thousands of failures: > For every 5,000-10,000 compounds that enter the research and development > (R&D) pipeline, ultimately only one receives approval."

Source: [http://www.innovation.org/drug_discovery/objects/pdf/RD_Broc...](http://www.innovation.org/drug_discovery/objects/pdf/RD_Brochure.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER29> Direct statements indeed. The honesty is refreshing, even if it will naturally be countered for weeks by PR. It's interesting to gain some insight into how this sort of person views the world.

</comment><comment><USER30> Basically, what Bayer is asking is for India to enforce US patent law and to not enforce Indian patent law (which allows this exception). It doesn't help that Bayer's CEO comes off as extremely racist: '"We did not develop this medicine for Indians".'

</comment><comment><USER31> It's interesting to see protectionism V2.0 play out via the patent system.

</comment><comment><USER32> The first journalistic source to report the statement,[1] an article published by Bloomberg Business Week, includes the statement near the end of a general article on patent protection in India. Both the reporter and editor who put the story together are based in India and (at a wild guess, based on their names) are perhaps citizens of India. This sort of national policy issue, of course, often results in different countries coming up with differing laws. Then the countries have to resolve differences about their laws in negotiations when they look at overall trade between their countries. And that (nothing particularly nefarious) is all that is involved in the United States negotiating with India about this issue.

I'm very glad that somebody is developing new medical treatments (both drugs and medical devices). All of that work is very expensive, and much of it results in products that never turn a profit. I can't think of any social justice reason why my childhood best friend, a first-generation college graduate from a working class family, who now develops medical devices, should have to work for free. Nor can I think of any social justice reason why anyone who needs effective medical treatment should be without it, in general, but until new medical treatments are invented, wishing doesn't make that so. India's approach to compulsory licensing on non-negotiated terms for new treatments developed outside India may be very politically appealing in India, but it's not completely clear that that is the best national policy for responding to the grave health problems[2] that still exist in India.

[1] [http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-01-21/merck-to- bristol...](http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-01-21/merck-to-bristol- myers-face-more-threats-on-india-drug-patents)

[2] [http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news...](http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news/40134749_1_stop- tb-department-mario-raviglione-jmm-meeting)

[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230344420...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303444204577460734274201756)

[http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of- Drug-R...](http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-Drug- Resistant-Tuberculosis-Challenges-and-Potential-Solutions-in-India.aspx)

[http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%2...](http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%20in%20India%20-%20Jan%202012%20update.pdf)

AFTER EDIT: I see some wild karma swings on this comment, so feel free to tell me what you really feel about this comment. India, of course, would have no objection to how drug companies market drugs if only it had a country full of companies that are already innovating affordably to solve all the health problems of India.</comment>


Anonymity and the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html <comment><USER2> _Accept that you'll never truly know where a packet came from. Work on the problems you can solve: software that's secure in the face of whatever packet it receives, identification systems that are secure enough in the face of the risks._

Schneier is spot-on as always, but the social problem is that this requires actually doing the hard work of building a secure product instead of calling for an impossible solution from outside.

</comment><comment><USER3> When i meet someone in the real world I don't, or can't possibly know everything about them immediately, and thats been fine for thousands of years. Our standard mode of operation is quasi-anonymous.

<comment><USER4> that won't last.

How long till Facebook releases an iPhone app that lets you take a photo of a person on the street, then query that photo with facial recognition software against the millions of photos on their servers.

5 years? 10 years?

You don't even have to query a ton of people.

1\. Query the immediate area around the person to see if the guy you took a pic of has the app installed on his phone.

2\. Query all people in a 10 mile radius

3\. Query all people in the state for a $5 fee.

4\. Query all people in the country for a $50 fee

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also read the counterpoint to Schneier's article (linked at the bottom of Schneier's): [http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/magazinePrintFriendly/0...](http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/magazinePrintFriendly/0,296905,sid14_gci1380347,00.html)

<comment> loup-vaillant Two thing about this rebbutal:

The difference between crime and anonymity on the internet is that we can have a substantial influence on crime. If someone wants to commit a crime, he will likely be caught. If someone wants to be anonymous on the internet for a while, however, there is nothing anyone can do. "Never worry about what you can't control."[1] By that principle, security problems caused by the internet have to be solved by other means (or not at all, if the costs are too high).

About his suggestion to implement identification mechanisms in the network itself, I strongly disagree. Currently, the internet is a "dumb" network on which "intelligent" machines plug in and exchange information. If we add some intelligence to the network, it will be disastrous for civil liberties (selective filtering, browsing logs… all in very few places). Plus, such centralization will require the collaboration of most countries. If one ever get rogue, the "intelligent" network is doomed.

[1] Tom ripley: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Ripley>

<comment><USER6> Also, the idea that most people taking advantage of anonymity are spammers or criminals is absurd. The default pseudo-anonymity of most discussions makes it possible to say things that you don't want your boss or customers to find in Google. Yes, we should live in a world of perfect tolerance where you could express a reasonable opinion on controversial issues without suffering ill effects, but we don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe in the future we will all have our own certificate authorities.

</comment><comment><USER8> The people who push for anonymity are those who don't understand the Internet (or anything else, quite often), usually politicians - the antithesis to the scientist or engineer.

<comment><USER9> Do you mean "push for an end to anonymity"?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What features or properties (from any language) are essential? - <AUTHOR> Without any particular religious One True Way(tm) flamewara, what do you expect in a modern statically-typed language?<p>- REPL/debugger?<p>- Package manager/TDD project watcher?<p>- C FFI without un/boxing?<p>- Gradual typing/type inference?<p>- Less punctuation?<p>- Shift-indentation blocks?<p>- GC or not to GC?<p>- Bare-metal executables / static libs?<p>- Opt-in duck-typing and mandatory interfaces?<p>- Capabilities?<p>- Compiler in C but mostly self-hosted? <comment><USER2> I personally think that sum types (discriminated unions) are essential for a "modern statically-typed language."</comment>


The God Project — Hinduism as an open source faith - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-schrei/the-god-project-hinduism_b_486099.html

<comment><USER2> I think he's painting a bit too open and free picture of Hinduism here. Also, the consistent superlatives used in describing the "glorious" open-source Hinduism and the "closed-source" Western/Middle-Eastern religions is a bit drab. He seems like he wants to capitalize on the goodness that is associated with the term "open-source" and link that goodness to Hinduism, and associate the negativity associated to "close-source" with Western/Middle-Eastern religions. They shouldn't be compared like this without painting a false picture.

There are many sects within Hinduism = true. There are many sects within nearly any other religion = true. Should you be able to add something to the body of a religion without any push-back? Can you? I doubt it and it would be silly if you could. Can you do that to any open-source project? Nope, unless you fork, and at that point it's a new "sect" or possibly "religion" anyway.

If you must compare them, they are simply different levels of open.</comment>


Buzzup Docs is Digg for Documents - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/01/23/buzzup-docs/

<comment><USER2> Just what the web needs... more fragmented and derivative ideas.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mashable will truly cover anything.</comment>


Go Daddy Wants Patent for Selling Business Cards with Domain Names  - <AUTHOR> http://domainnamewire.com/2010/03/04/go-daddy-wants-patent-for-selling-business-cards-with-domain-names/

<comment><AUTHOR> The fact that GoDaddy expects to be able to patent this process again highlights the need for patent reform.

I mean patenting upselling on checkout? Give me a break.</comment>


I'd like to introduce you to [...] the Herrenknecht EPB Shield TBM - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/sitting-in-the-park-in-the-sun-watching-videos-about-robots/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not _exactly_ hacker news, but there are two elements that make the linked video worth watching: it is a nice description of a tunnel boring machine, and the video uses some great CGI to support the narrative.

In short, I liked it, and thought others might like it, too.</comment>


Counting Pizza with Python - <AUTHOR> http://tomforb.es/counting-pizza-with-python? <comment><USER2> If a person told you about the IDs and you then used this resulting info, is it insider trading?

I wonder how many degrees away from the base info you have to be for it to be an issue

<comment><USER3> It still has the integer ID in the URL, so if you're willing to drop $20 a week on getting your own pizza, you can still see how many online orders Dominoes gets - it could be valuable information for competitors, or investors, as you say.</comment></comment>


Samsung Made a Bitcoin Mining Rig Out of Old Galaxy S5s - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/3kvdv9/samsung-upcycling-galaxy-s5-bitcoin-mining-rig <comment><USER3> The rig is not the important part of this article. What is extremely cool is Samsung supporting upcycling initiatives and going as far as having approved ways of unlocking and replacing the OS in the devices with stuff such as Ubuntu Core and others.

This could be huge! I believe a better title would be something related to the upcycling project.

<comment><USER4> This made me excited to see as well. Here's some more information for others that may be interested.

[https://youtu.be/J1bK3TxdMeI](https://youtu.be/J1bK3TxdMeI)

Skip to 9 minutes for a more fluent english speaker that I found much easier to follow. He mentions wiping Android, installing some base OS and using Docker at 12:25 in the video.

The website [http://upcycling.io/](http://upcycling.io/)

<comment><USER5> This is a great idea from Samsung. A phone has everything needed to become a useful IoT device.

But how would I connect sensors and other things to the phone?

<comment><USER6> USB-OTG?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It looks like the Samsung rig is doing about 2600Kh/second at about 4W per phone. This is a hash rate of 1538.46 J/GH.

In comparison, the Antminer S9 will do 13Th/sec for about 1275W. This gives a hash rate of 0.098 J/GH.

In essence, an actual bitcoin miner is about 15,000 times more efficient. I'm all for recycling, but this is not an effective solution.

Why not release the documentation for the displays for use in other products, or release technical documentation for other parts of the board? This would be a much better step in recycling instead of building an anemic space heater with bitcoin.

<comment><USER8> I don't think the point was for other people to recreate a bitcoin miner - <USER2> one will have 4+ S5s laying around to use anyway. It's just to show that they still have some computation power that can be used.

<comment><USER9> But the post you are replying to is showing that they literally can't be used for this.

<comment><USER10> I think they quite literally _can_ be used that way. Practically? No.

<comment><USER11> They can mine bitcoin. They can't be _used_ for mining bitcoin. It proves nothing whatsoever about the utility of old S5s, any more than this[1] shows that old 60s mainframes "still have some power that can be used".

[1] [http://www.righto.com/2015/05/bitcoin-mining-on-55-year- old-...](http://www.righto.com/2015/05/bitcoin-mining-on-55-year-old- ibm-1401.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is super cool! I was just thinking about what all you could use old phones for, and they could easily replace a lot of existing devices.

Like Nest thermostats and cameras - there's no reason those devices couldn't be replaced by old phones running custom software, instead of buying purpose built hardware that costs $150+. My old iPhone4 is just as capable hardware- wise as a nest cam - so why can't I turn it into that?

Amazon Echo Show - that could just be an old phone docked to a speaker base.

Smart Light Switches - phone on the wall.

Dedicated alarm clock - old phone on the night stand.

Host device for chromecasts or AppleTV? Old phones have more than enough power, they just need an HDMI output adapter.

Lots of possibilities, especially with something like their bitcoin rig that ties a bunch of devices together for more horsepower.

<comment><USER13> I know I've used old phones as baby monitors, wifi cameras, Roku and soundbar remote controls, alarm clocks, and streaming video clients. And all that was just using regular Android versions. But I could imagine using an old phone as a wireless print server, or something. That would be pretty cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't imagine such a rig could effectively mine any coins. As a proof of concept it's cute but its actual utility seems dubious.

<comment><USER15> I think you are missing the forest through the trees. The point is that there is significant computational power inside your old smartphone, which could be used for many different things. The bitcoin mining is simply illustrating this and showing how it is more computationally efficient than a desktop/labtop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is the author conflating "cryptocurrency" with "Bitcoin?" These devices' CPUs might be able to mine Monero, but definitely will not be able to mine Bitcoin without losing money on power.

<comment><USER17> I don't think Samsung is worried about how much money they'll make from it, rather that is's a cool engineering project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A manufacturer could make it easy for everyone if the day after the warranty expired a pop-up gave you the option to carry on using your device with whatever updates happen, install stock Android or install stock Ubuntu. They could even charge extended warranty or for updates to their version of an operating system so long as the option was there to use your device the FOSS way.

Old phones could become the standard device replacing things like the Raspberry Pi if it was that easy to switch them over to post-warranty FOSS mode. Even better would be if this upcycling was a requirement, so out of warranty devices could default to being a compute device with well defined interfaces to cameras and sensors. The EU could pass laws to enforce 'upcycling' standards so all electronics is not waste but has at least some usable compute capability even if thermally inefficient or with latency issues.

</comment><comment><USER19> ARMv8 includes optional AES extensions and Monero already has code for it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of this paper: [https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/08/25/towards- deploying-decomm...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/08/25/towards-deploying- decommissioned-mobile-devices-as-cheap-energy-efficient-compute-nodes/)

</comment><comment><USER21> One thing manufacturers could do to reduce waste would be to make phones less locked in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Old" Galaxy S5s.... and I'm still using my G3

<comment><USER17> Just because someone is still using it doesn't mean it's not old. It's three versions behind current, so that seems to fit the definition.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I'd never use firefox 54. Blasphemy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have a few old android phones laying around.

I have two app idea:

write motion activated camera app that stores motion activated pictures on google drive - special folder. Only me and my family have access to that google drive folder. Files will be deleted from that folder after N days.

       --- Turn your old phones to security camera.APP

Or another app can do time lapse pictures convert to movie where I can mounted on car's dash board and turn 1-2 hours trip into 10-20 seconds clip.

What do you guys think? Good, bad, there is an app for that already?

Any other idea?

<comment><USER15> I believe there are already apps for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really don't see the point of this. The mining power is so low it wouldn't even be worth the cost to operate. Samsung should focus on updating ALL of their current devices with OS and security updates rather than replacing them with another OS and not updating the drivers or firmware when they get bored of it. Their flagship devices are still not on a monthly security patch cadence and they treat their low and mid range phones as if they don't even exist.</comment>


Netflix will stream CBS' new Star Trek series all around the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/18/12211820/netflix-star-trek-cbs-all-access-international-streaming <comment><USER2> Except in USA/Canada. I'm nervous about this. It sounds like some exec thought nerds like Star Trek and nerds like the internet, so of course they will come to our site. It misses the point that Netflix and Hulu are about ease of access. I can easily access Netflix on my computer, phone, xbox, or apple tv. If I can't get to their site just as easily, their numbers will suffer.</comment>


Waymo's safety-related disengages drop to 0.2 per 1000 miles - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/waymo/accelerating-the-pace-of-learning-36f6bc2ee1d5#.n17gw7pb3 <comment><USER2> [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b-b119-91319c27788f/GoogleAutoWaymo_disengage_report_2016.pdf?MOD=AJPERES) link to the report.</comment>


Coby $85 Smartbook Feels Like a Hundred Bucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/03/coby-85-smartbook-feels-like-a-hundred-bucks-hands-on/ <comment><USER2> Coby's logo will always remind me of The Simpsons episode where they go TV shopping.

Homer: [gasps] Look at these low, low prices on famous brand-name electronics!

Bart: Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knock-offs.

Homer: Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny.

</comment><comment><USER3> The $100 laptop is here, someone tell OLPC.

<comment><USER4> Actually, they are working on a $75 tablet:

[http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/22/tablet-computer- negroponte-...](http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/22/tablet-computer-negroponte- technology-cio-network-olpc.html)

<comment><USER5> The hat is bigger than ever, but still no sign of the cattle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've had experience with a lot of Coby stuff and I've never been impressed. CD players, stereos, vcrs and the like they are almost always the cheapest option and they do work, that I'll admit but they are cheap.

But I do like this and shoot, I'll give it a shot for $85, why not I can do whatever while I'm watching tv or take it to the kitchen and watch a cooking show while I cook the meal.

Can't get a beagle board for that. it could control a solar panel or lights or a home automation system.

3 usb ports, thats more than my mac book pro.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully, this will actually be available in the US for $85.

I've seen too many of these ultra cheap netbooks vaporize into thin air after a press release/demo or increase dramatically in price.

E.g. Cherrypal announced a $99 netbook but I have not been able to find anyone who has actually received a unit to review.

<http://www.cherrypal.com/products.php>

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this sort of thing the perfect hardware for ChromeOS? Why run Windows CE?

<comment><USER8> Coz then they wouldn't have been to do the demo as it wasn't connected.

Seriously I see these to be more popular in 3rd world countries like India where purchasing power is not as high as the western world. Also as Wifi or internet connectivity isn't as pervasive as US/Europe and people are more familiar with Windows (possibly due to rampant piracy) there I see Win CE as good platform to market there for a company in ultra low cost net books.

<comment><USER9> and I think everyone underestimates the demand for dirt cheap computers that can browse the internet. go to any library, university media center, or other place with publicly available internet and you'll see hundreds of potential customers for this sort of thing.

<comment><USER8> yes that is true in the US not in India... public libraries are not that common (I recall New Delhi having 3 or 4 good ones and they have paid membership of about $30-50/year) and not all have internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 624MHz Marvell PXA303 processor, 2GB of flash storage and runs Windows CE

<comment><USER11> The Marvell part is an ARM-based processor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ugh, I promised myself I'd lay off getting toys for the near future, but I don't think I can resist this. Been looking for a little ARM machine for Renraku development, and this fits the bill nicely. Wonder if JTAG is exposed somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER13> Off-topic but I can't resist: A friend bought a hairbrush for $100 (!) and now I love to tell her she looks like a hundred bucks (rather than a million).</comment>


Inside India's CAPTCHA solving economy - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1835

<comment><USER2> How much is the work that <http://recaptcha.net/> is doing worth? Not only would it keep some of these people busy breaking useful captchas but we could get some good books digitized out of it. $1.25/1000 ? You could get a book digitized for $100 easy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nobody can beat a Mechanical Turk. They are smarter than machines and cheaper than one. So i think when designing next generation security, other than bots, even low-wage workers will be taken into consideration.

<comment><USER4> tada: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazons_mechanical_turk...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazons_mechanical_turk_used_for_fraud.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Free market economy?

Is this really serious? I googled it and didn't turn much up. I think this may be more paranoia than reality at this point.

Please prove me wrong, as this is interesting.

Jer

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd consider paying an "account creation service" a dollar to create a single (legit) account for me at some web sites. Some CAPTCHAs are just awful.

Maybe they could flip this into a legit boutique business.

</comment><comment><USER7> Indians never fail to stop impressing me. This is an awesome hack available to the email spammers.

They can create millions of fake accounts(email for e.g.) per months and pass them over to the spammers that spam via their huge botnets(millions of infected windows machines).

This can be a lucrative business in the 3rd world countries.</comment>


Ask HN: How should I quit my job? - <AUTHOR> I am not earning enough so i want to quit and start something on my own. <comment><USER2> Start something first. When you have earned enough over a year to live on, give your two weeks notice.

For me, I am aiming for 80% of my salary in a year's profit from my business before I leave the day job.

Never expect your job to educate you or expand your abilities. While it's nice when you have that opportunity, it isn't common and usually requires showing that you already are capable of doing the new stuff. It is not your employer's job to improve your skillset. You're hired for the skills you have and your ability to learn their practices.

</comment><comment><USER3> Write an open letter to your boss telling him that you are not earning enough and want to quit to start something on your own. Publish it on as many outlets as possible, like medium.

He will understand and fire you on the spot, making it the easiest way to quit.

QED

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands Well if you're not going to go to another company or agency and are starting your own gig, here's some advice from someone who's done this a few times.

1 - Get your business plan together for your business. This will solidify what you're going to be doing and will give yourself and possible investors a road map for how to get there. I've seen so many businesses fail because they thought they had a good idea and just started throwing stuff together before really mapping out the financials, the product offering, the marketing and all that. This doesn't need to be 60 pages, but it does need to be fleshed out to some extent.

2 - If you don't already, put together a logo, marketing materials, business name, etc. These are the things you absolutely need to get awareness of your product out there.

3 - Depending on what country you're in, you'll need to form your business legally. That means you're going to have to register with the state (if in the US) and get legally recognized (incorporated) as a business. I would hire a business attorney to do it since it will save you time and money down the road. Also, having a legally recognized business will also absolve you from being sued personally if/when something goes bad with a client or company you're working with.

4 - Don't quit your job until the first three are completely nailed down and finished. You can waste months doing those and if you're not employed, you won't have the funds (unless you've already saved money in advance) to do some of these and being cash strapped while trying to get your business off the ground is no way to start a new company.

5 - Once you have the first three done, I would say its optional, but out aside some money so if things don't take off right away, you have some "float" reserves to keep you going so you can continue to work on your business. The last thing you want to do is to start something, have all your money drained and then have to give up and go back to work

6 - If you can, try and land some clients _before_ you quit your current gig. This will give you a much better barometer for how good your product is and if people think its going to solve the problem you think it will. It also allows you some opportunity to generate some revenue so you're not starting "cold" with nothing at all.

7 - Once you have all those, then and only then would I consider quitting your current gig. Be polite, put in your two weeks and be affable till the last day and make sure you can use them as a reference. If there's one thing you absolutely never want to do, it's burn a bridge anywhere, for any reason. You never, ever know when someone, or some company may help you down the road.

8 - The last step is your first step towards freedom and being your own boss. Remember it takes twice as much effort, determination and courage to do something like this. So when you take that step out, have the courage to stick out to the bitter end, never give up and always be innovating and shipping.

Hope this helps, good luck!</comment>


Reasons Why Job Postings Are Dead - <AUTHOR> http://ongig.com/blog/hiring/5-reasons-why-job-postings-are-dead

<comment><USER2> I like and agree with this article in terms of finding A-listers. But one of the biggest challenges is getting the hiring team/managers to be more proactive. The culture especially at larger companies is to give it out to 3rd party vendors/recruiters who just shoot in the dark to find a good candidate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your comment is right on the mark. Those who have a great team, environment, business model, etc. need to be more progressive with their recruiting approach. Although it may be a slight shift, transparency will work in their favor with engaging top candidates.

<comment><USER2> exactly. It is disappointing to see hiring manager ready to shell out top dollar to find _that_ guy but they do not even take out 5 mins of their own time during the search process. The question is: how to get these middle men out and get the hiring manager to interact directly for finding the A-listers.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Develops a Faster Touchscreen With Only One Millisecond of Lag - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/251757/microsoft_develops_a_faster_touchscreen_with_only_one_millisecond_of_lag.html

<comment><USER2> Whats the iPhone/iPad's lag?</comment>


B2 visa holder: Can I work on my future Europe-based startup in the US? - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
I am planning to move to the US for about 5 months to build a prototype for a startup I want to launch in my European country. The reason I am moving to the US is to join my co-founder, since he has better housing and internet and lives in a nice area where we can hibernate for sometime while we build our business.
I am a holder of a B2 visa, and I just want to get some quick feedback on this from the HN community. I won't be making any money in the US (Actually I will be spending my savings). Any other things to look out for? Is this anywhere illegal? <comment><USER2> Technically, a B1 is what you would want rather than a B2. But I wouldn't worry about it. Entering at the border, don't say you will be starting up a company.</comment>