Unfit for work - <AUTHOR> http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ <comment><USER4> Means-tested social assistance is now a vestigial remnant of an economy strictly dependent upon labor as its primary input for growth. As the share of economic inputs tips increasingly in favor of capital (via automation), most laborers will steadily become unemployable at a subsistence-level minimum wage. As a result, we will see dependence and abuses of means-tested social welfare by these laborers who can no longer participate in the market.

The only long term solution is a basic income system, which rewards consumption and allows the market to continuously reward innovation and efficiency. Without a redistribution mechanism to fuel consumption, the market collapses entirely as wealth is further concentrated.

Further reading:

1\. [http://www.naturalfinance.net/2013/02/nearly-all-of-us- suppo...](http://www.naturalfinance.net/2013/02/nearly-all-of-us-support- slavery.html)

2\. <http://amzn.com/B005WTR4ZI>

3\. <http://amzn.com/B002S0NITU>

<comment><USER5> I often discuss this with friends. It often comes down to:

Big technology disruptions have happened before. The market adjusted and something new came along for people to do.

I like to argue: There were about one million working horses in the UK in 1900 but only 20k by 1914. No one found new jobs for those horses... [1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_horse_in_Britain>

<comment><USER6> Except when a horse became a cost instead of providing income, it would likely have been slaughtered. I don't think that's the path we want to take with people.

<comment><USER7> Add to that the fact that we can control domestic horse breeding, whereas controlling human breeding is, you know, _frowned upon_.

<comment><USER8> Is it? Contraceptives and to some extent education are pretty normal in a lot of societies.

There's no stigma involved in buying or using condoms or other means of avoiding pregnancy, although there is with abortion.

<comment><USER9> The OP means such as forced sterilization. There's precedent for it, and it's widely (and IMHO correctly) regarded as monstrous.

<comment><USER10> Or "one child" policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Part of the rise in the number of people on disability is simply driven by the fact that the workforce is getting older, and older people tend to have more health problems._

This is probably one of the key points the article could be making, but it's kinda glossed over. As the baby boom generation (the one born ~1946 –> ~1959) nears retirement, it makes a lot of sense. That generation - my parents' generation - really did a large portion of the work involved with building out the physical infrastructure that allows our economy to operate as it does today: buildings, roads, power lines, mining, machinery, warehouses, etc. Physical work tends to create more injuries and disabilities than sedentary work, and people who do that kind of work simply cannot do it for as long as people who do sedentary work. How can we forget there was an entire generation of people who turned the 1940's USA into the one of the 1970s?

I know I've mentioned this on here before but it's relevant: my dad hung sheetrock for living. He stopped going to school after 6th grade. There was _no way_ he could have made to age 64 -- people thought he was crazy to be doing it until age 53 -- which is when he died, almost 10 years ago. From a combination of issues related to what his work did to his body.

But the sheer idiocy of the system which has rewarded and continues to reward neat-suit Realtors and loan officers and salesmen (those "educated" ones who tend to work the sedentary jobs) -- instead of the workers meant that he was left with no options for healthcare, retirement, or even being able to leave his children a dime.

It's not like none of them have a work ethic. . . many of them have worked long and hard already; they're just "prematurely" tired and worn out. Not to mention the system keeps trying to move the dangling carrot of retirement further and further away from their grasp by attempting to increase retirement age.

[edit -- apologies for the awry double pasted text in the original post]

<comment><USER12> I appreciate your post and your pain. However, one thing that I will point out is that one data point is not something one can draw conclusions from. A friend of mine's father (Ph.D. and desk job) died in his early 50s too.

Looking at data, it seems that the sedentary-jobbed have a life expectancy of 79.3 while the manual workers have a life expectancy of 75 years. So, there is a difference of 4.3 years (males, UK 2002-2005). It should also be noted that life expectancy for the manual group has gone up about 7 years since 1972-1976 (the sedentary saw a similar 7 year increase).

Governments aren't looking to increase the retirement age to dangle some carrot in front of people they consider too stupid to know better. If life expectancy is going up by 7 years, that means that a pension needs to provide income for more years. That means higher taxes, raising the retirement age, or putting more onus on the individual to save for retirement. There's a genuine question: where would the money come from to give someone a retirement at 50? To provide the average 50 year old male a $50,000 salary for the rest of their life costs over $1M - and that isn't $50,000 adjusted for inflation. What does that come out to per year? Assuming the kind of conservative planning that the government does, over $20,000 pear year. Essentially, we would need a tax of 40% for people to be able to retire at 50 and replace their income for life. Now, maybe 75% income replacement is ok and a 33% tax would do it. But then you have to think about providing inflation adjustments and healthcare for that period and it's just not good. Health costs are rising substantially faster than inflation. Should we lock people into the standard of care at the year of their retirement with newer, more expensive treatments unavailable to them?

There's just a big money issue when it comes to retirement age that's hard to ignore. Ideally, none of us would ever have to work. Unfortunately, that isn't our reality. Not to become too weird, but it's really tragic when you think about it. We're these biological beings trying to strive against what would happen to us if we stopped working to survive. And we've created some awesomeness to make our existence a lot better (medicine, for instance), but it's a thin veil over the harshness of what happens to us in the absence of working to survive. To come back down to earth, it's really crappy that we can't have the same retirement age that we used to have. However, I'm not sure how to go about talking about retirement ages without talking about the money we need to support it. Maybe it's time we raised social security taxes realizing that we don't care as much about iPhones as we do about our retirement. Ultimately, it isn't about governments trying to hurt people, but governments not having the money to offer it.

It should also be noted that a lot of these jobs pay better than similarly skilled jobs that are more sedentary. Construction salaries average $44,630. Office and administrative work averages $34,120. Sales $37,520. Personal Care $24,620. Part of the higher salary might be because of the nature of the work you speak of. The additional money per year could go toward providing an earlier retirement via individual means. I know that most people won't save and that's why I like social security. Maybe we should have a lower retirement age for certain professions along with higher social security and medicare taxes on jobs in those professions.

\--

I can't imagine how hard it is to lose a parent so young. I'm sorry.

<comment><USER13> > Where would the money come from to give someone a retirement at 50?

Well, it looks completely different if we take out the money from this situation.

Consider this: we have big unemployment, a lot of part-time workers, a lot of people not working because of disabilities, there are also millions of college and university students who are obviously not working full time. But the economy keeps going, it has no shortage of workforce, number of workplaces is limited and less than total number of people.

Then you propose to increase retirement age.

The number of workers will increase, but the number of workplaces is the same. Wages are decreasing, tax revenue is decreasing and we again have no money to pay welfare, pensions etc. So we don't need more workforce.

Redundant workers rely on disability pensions, unemployment payments, food stamps etc. All these welfare programs have obvious deficiencies, but we need to feed the people anyway. If these people were working it would be much better. But there is simple way to increase number of working people without extra resources.

We just need to limit working hours. And it is possible, because it was possible to introduce 40 hour work week. Now cut it to 35, and you get 12% increase of number of working people and unemployment completely disappears.

<comment><USER14> That train of thought is known as the lump of labour fallacy.

What you propose would reduce output; if it was optimal for firms to hire the unemployed, in place of those already employed, then they would do so - <USER2> they are prevented from doing so by labour legislation, which doesn't seem to be the case the U.S.

That the unemployed are not hired might make sense when there are costs to hiring and training a new worker, which don't exist for a worker already in place. On an aggregate level, this policy would increase the cost of labour, and consequently reduce its demand, so less overall would be employed (though the rate of employment would probably stay about constant because you reduced the denominator by reducing the labour force).

Probably a better explanation here: <http://www.economist.com/economics-a- to-z/l#node-21529454>

<comment><USER15> "In theory, theory and practice are identical. In practice, they're not."

A fair portion of the Western world's underemployment and unemployment problem derives _directly_ from the _over_ employment of those who have the jobs. As people keep putting it, "Whatever happened to the 40-hour workweek?"

For example, among those sedentary professionals who can keep working for decades upon decades, most in the United States are classified as Fair Labor Standards Act _exempt_ , and are therefore _often_ made to work overtime. Health insurance is a fixed cost that _needs_ to be driven down both through socializing medicine and, preferably, through requiring _per-hour_ National Insurance taxes, but only the latter action would actually change the fact that firms find it cheaper to hire two professionals working 60 hours/week each than to hire three professionals for normal 40-hour workweeks.

And, here's the trick, neither of those two professionals actually receives overtime pay. The company is literally getting a 1/3 boost to their productivity-per-employee solely by using a legal loophole to not pay for all hours worked. This is not the lump-of-labor fallacy, it's straightforward exploitation.

To paraphrase many Hacker News-targeted blogposts, "Fuck companies, pay workers."

<comment><USER16> Thanks, I like the quote re: theory and practice and will swipe it for my own re-use...

Attribution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a blind individual in America I'm an example of someone on the disability bubble. What allowed me to avoid going on disability was college. By being blind I got some additional financial help to get through college. Even though I could have probably gotten full disability it made a lot more sense for me to get a degree and a programming job. I never considered going the disability rout since I easily make three times what I would have on disability and expect that gap to grow wider as I become more experience. If college hadn't been an option for me I could easily see myself going on disability. I can't think of a lot of jobs I could do that wouldn't have required a college degree since most physical labor is not an option for me. Even with the help I got from the government with college I'll still wind up being a plus on the governments balance sheet since I don't receive any disability payments now that I work full time and pay taxes. Unfortunately from reading the story most people don't have the opportunities I did, and even if they do some refuse to take advantage of them. While I think we should expand opportunities for education and job training there's no way to force people to take advantage of them.

<comment><USER18> I am curious: How does one program while blind? Obviously it's just as easy in your brain, but what is the process for reading and writing code?

<comment><USER17> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/118984/how-can-you- progra...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/118984/how-can-you-program-if- youre-blind)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems like what journalism should be. This is shocking to me. An entire generation of people have slipped through the cracks, and I had no idea this sort of disability-gaming was occurring. Is this common knowledge?

<comment><USER19> Anecdotally, I am closely acquainted with several people who receive disability assistance from the government. They are all genuinely unable to perform moderate physical labor _at present_.

However, without exception, their disability was brought about by poor personal decisions and could be remedied fairly easily. The financial assistance gives them a strong incentive not to try.

<comment><USER20> > all genuinely unable to perform moderate physical labor

I know of several people who spend all day sitting at home blogging or chatting on email because they're physically disabled. Yet I've employed multiple people as customer support techs who's job description is "sit at home and chat on email".

Our government is unwilling to tell people that they're free to either work or not work, but if they choose not to work, they won't get paid.

It's a collective action problem: no politician wants to be the first one to be "mean" and tell perfectly competent people that they can't live off of the stolen labor of others.

...so we continue to have "disability" for people who are entirely capable of working, albeit not at wages that they'd prefer to earn.

<comment><USER9> Right, the old "take it or leave it" proposition. But is it _actually_ better for our society to have all of these people living on the street? Becoming homeless? Going to our emergency rooms for medical care? Or, better yet, forcing them to become dependents on the next generation for food, shelter, and (expensive) medical care?

Realistically, those are the alternatives. A large subset of people have insufficient education or qualifications for a desk job. And note that "being old" is itself likely to disqualify you from a lot of jobs.

Remember, this amounts to $13,000/yr, which hardly qualifies as a sinecure, _and_ health insurance. Do you think they're likely to be able to get a job which includes health insurance? Because otherwise "get a job" is a non- starter.

<comment><USER21> I'm betting when faced with the prospect of living on the street, or worse, starving to death, these people would figure out a way to cope with their current afflictions.

<comment><USER22> This is ridiculous considering that a large number of homeless people have a disability, physical or mental. To say that this people are just faking it or overreacting because they don't want to work is really messed up, you are essentially saying you really don't believe those people actually live with a disability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, surprised that there's no comments here yet about the visual design of this page. I really enjoyed the long, scrollable page, with readable typography and just the right amount of flair with the headings. It's also a well implemented responsive design.

This type of long, scrollable design seems to be growing in popularity these days -- e.g. the NYTimes Tunnel Creek article [1] or AirBnB's annual report [2], and I think it's a good trend. Even though this NPR page has less special effects than those other two examples, it's still a fantastic reading experience, and I'll take it over a standard paginated article any day.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow- fall/#/?part=tunne...](http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow- fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek) [2] <https://www.airbnb.com/annual/>

<comment><USER24> I came to say the same thing. Also, nobody mentioned the "scrolling window" effect on the images behind the headings. One problem is that it doesn't show up with paging (Page keys or scroll wheel), only with smaller scrolling increments.

As as counter-example, I continue to be baffled by expired pages here on HN. The parent comment is "below the fold" so I clicked on more comments, read a dozen comments, clicked on the AirBnB link, and by then--about 5 minutes, the Reply button (after typing in my comment, not the reply link below the parent) was expired. I had to back up to the first page of comments, click on more comments again, and then I was able to submit my reply.

<comment><USER24> Sorry for the multiple posts. I didn't expect that when the page returned Link Expired. Consider this a bug report.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The rise in "back pain and other musculoskeletal" disability claims since the 1960s seems to track well with the rise in obesity during that same time. And I noticed that a fair number of the pictured subjects were obese.

<comment><USER26> Not to mention asthma. I know of a few people who are disabled because they have asthma, and they are obese.

<comment><USER27> My sister is a paramedic with asthma that sent her to the hospital regularly for much of her childhood, but has diminished as she's gotten older.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> We geeks are working at increasing the rest of the world's productivity. And we're doing great! This means that less people are needed to produce the same wealth, and that more and more people have nothing left to contribute, because we improve productivity faster than teachers improve education.

It's not a bad thing: I'd rather have everyone being useful, but I'd rather pay someone for doing nothing than for doing an unnecessary job; at least in the latter case, we've got a honest view of the situation, we haven't broken the compass. A society where half the people are economically worthless and they don't even know it is doubly broken.

Jobs serve two purposes in our modern Western world: they produce wealth, and they're our way to redistribute that produced wealth. The latter is a convention, not a necessity. Exchanging wealth for work proportionally is an effective motivator for those able to produce actual wealth, but for the increasing masses who simply can't, it's a cruel joke, a game they're forced to play and doomed to lose humiliatingly.

So sure, they shouldn't get the same revenue as a heart surgeon; but if there's a robot which can flip burgers better than them, and thus make them economically worthless, I'd rather give them their minimum salary and let the robot do the flipping. My life is interesting enough that I don't need others to suffer in pointless jobs in order to endure mine.

<comment><USER29> I think you touch on one of the greatest problems of the 21st century - <USER3> to terms with the reality that maximizing for wealth creation rather than redistribution means very few people are doing things anyone can predictably assume is beneficiary - such as research, arts, etc. Almost every job lost in the last 50 years due to globalization and automation have been jobs very few people would _want_ to do with their lives, and people always dodge that over some preconceived notion everyone should be putting in 9 - 5 hours.

Though, I think the more acceptable solution is to just drastically cut the hours of the uneducated grunt work that still isn't automated (while spending the time to automate it, because we are at the threshold of eliminating traditional labor and that is a good thing) and just divvy up the available work to the many, maybe even as little as an hour a day, or an 8 hour shift a week.

The problem is changing the entrenched century old agriculture / housing / trade industries to accept a lack of scarcity and dramatic price drops across the board. You want the income from that tiny work week to be the disposable income after providing food, warmth, shelter, and transportation, since it seems silly to even think of anyone living today unable to enjoy their life, when we have so much plenty.

<comment><USER30> I worked for about 4 months at a factory. My job was thus:

.5 sec: Put bracket in tapping machine. .5 sec: Press Tap button. 4 sec: wait to Tap bracket. .25 sec: Air blows tapped part into crate \--Goto Beginning until 120 parts are in crate Change Crate \--Then Goto beginning.

Do this for 8-12 hours. Yes. a 5.25 second loop.

Other things in this job was if a part was in the crate that wasnt tapped properly (I found out Im also in charge of QC as well..)I would have to manually check the last day's work all by hand.

I was hired temp labor, at 8$ an hour. The machine that would replace me would cost $.5 million. That was one of the worst mind numbing jobs I had ever done. I figured once I started to contemplate suicide, I should probably get out of there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What' s interesting is that this move to disability is just another manifestation of the unanswered question, "what do we do with all of these people for whom the economy no longer has use?"

Between globalization, automation/technology, and "increased productivity" (aka working people like slaves), we just don't need as many U.S. workers. Yet the wealth is still flowing, corporations are realizing record profits, and more billionaires are being minted.

We here on HN tend to feel immune, due to our skillsets. And, while it is true that the shift currently most affects those with high school educations and/or in other sectors (manufacturing), our time is coming. With continued outsourcing, gains in automation (software writing software), and other shifts, we will all experience this. While the software and technology we here produce are helping to facilitate the shift for others, some day the focus will be on us as too costly or ineffecient.

So we will have wildly profitable corporations, an extremely wealthy investor/executive class, and an economy that produces all that the world needs while employing only a tiny fraction of the world's population.

Either these entitlement programs will continue to bloat to unprecedented levels or we will require a fundamental restructuring of society.

<comment><USER32> They can continue to bloat. Eventually, they will cause so much debt that the wealthy will have no choice but to pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We have very similar problems in the UK. The number of people claiming Incapacity Benefit grew from 0.75m to 2.75m in less than thirty years. Two- thirds are claiming for reasons of mental health or back pain. In the most impoverished parts of the country, nearly 20% of the population is officially "too sick to work".

The issue is currently the most contentious of many welfare benefit reforms, I suspect in large part because discussing the issues raised in this article are almost totally taboo. Everyone knows perfectly well why disability rates are 10x higher in the poorest parts of the country, but there's a political taboo that prevents anyone from saying "Incapacity Benefit was used for decades by governments of both parties as an accounting trick to keep down the official unemployment figures".

<comment><USER34> I don't think it's a taboo to discuss it, it's not being discussed because it shows very clearly what a big problem we have (just like America) with waning job numbers and really awful support for the poorest. We're not in as deep is as America is (from my basic understanding of our benefits vs. American welfare) but if the government were to talk about the problems with Incapacity Benefit they would also have to address the problem of _another_ 2 million unemployed people with no recent job history and no jobs for them even if they could work.

Things are just about ticking over now, imagine the shit storm that would occur if every unemployed person was told they're now competing with another 2 million people, keeping this a "secret" is as much in the governments interest as it is every person that votes. No good would come of this issue being out in the open now, it needs to come out when there are jobs available or proper support for the unemployed, neither of which is true at the moment. I could be missing an important factor (due to aforementioned shallow understanding of benefits) so please correct me if I'm wrong and there is an advantage or proper way this can be addressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> In the city where I live, I walk to work. On the way, I see an uncountable number of cars with handicap placards. They are especially dense near large office buildings. My wife once drove to my work to have lunch, but ended up going home without us having lunch--there were no free parking spaces she could find after 30 minutes circling. This has got to hurt business.

I'm not saying there are a lot of disabled people in my city, but it shows the mentality. People want something for nothing and a lot more people that I would have thought don't mind pretending to be disabled.

My favorite is watching people pull up next to Lake Merritt to park, but before they get out they put up the placard, then proceed to walk 3+ miles around the lake.

My wife works in social services, and people are constantly trying to game the system by claiming disabilities.

On the flip side, our social safety net in the US is horrible and unemployment is very high. I don't really blame people to trying to use any means they can to live.

The bottom line is that if we had a real safety net that caught people slipping into poverty, there would be many fewer people claiming disabilities.

<comment><USER36> We need to accept that a byzantine bureaucracy isn't the way to achieve social welfare.

Simply cutting everyone a check would be far cheaper and equitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> While not related to the topic of this article, the UI around the pictures for the article is impressive. It's modern and clever, but not in a distracting way like a lot of attempts to do things that are clever. And it's still perfectly readable on my phone. Normally I don't like "clever" designs, but this one is pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER38> And so continues the attitude of "why should I take care to keep myself healthy when the federal government will give me checks to be unhealthy"?

Nevermind that it's a sure path to continuing the cycle of poverty for one's family and their kids' families. Sigh.

<comment> mkr-hn Did you read the whole thing? The system pulls the rug out from under people the moment they start making progress. The scaling that exists is too abrupt.

<comment><USER38> The federal government disability program pulls the rug out from under people the moment they start making progress? I read the whole thing but missed that part of the reporting. Maybe I read it wrong. Where is it?

<comment> mkr-hn The reforms were meant to encourage people to work their way out of welfare: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare-to-work>

This reflects that:

"Jahleel's mom wants him to do well in school. That is absolutely clear. But her livelihood depends on Jahleel struggling in school. This tension only increases as kids get older. One mother told me her teenage son wanted to work, but she didn't want him to get a job because if he did, the family would lose its disability check."

<comment><USER38> I see. It is unfortunate all around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So the poor get disability and welfare. The rich get bailouts and subsidies. Guess who comes out behind?

<comment><USER40> Not you.

Being poor is not fun. Period. Can you imagine living on $20K, $30K, $40K, a year? Depending on where you are in the US that might just cover your living costs. There is a large segment of the population that will not get degrees, not work in jobs that are considered "careers".

In any demographic class there are people that abuse the system, but I wouldn't consider the poor in that category. These people are as or more hard working than the middle class.

Also, the government giving disability and welfare doesn't mean they are bringing in $100K a year in benefits. The government provides enough to live on.

<comment><USER41> They article states it's $13k/year in cash. Not sure what the value of the medical benefits, but $13k/year would be pretty miserable on a family. I know someone who subsists basically on minimum wage and made just about $12k last year, he's still pretty young and healthy and is looking for a job that's better (has a degree), but he's spent a significant amount of time having to live with family/friends to get by. He's always on the lookout for $.99 taco night, but I think really at some point he'd like to get past that phase of life.

<comment><USER42> For a family or working person, sure. For an individual who no longer has to work or live in a city, $13K/yr is a windfall. One could live like a king, experiencing great nature with all the time freed up, and have money left over.

For medical, it's a safe bet that many of those on disability go to the emergency room and never pay a dime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Jahleel's mom wants him to do well in school. That is absolutely clear. But > her livelihood depends on Jahleel struggling in school. This tension only > increases as kids get older. One mother told me her teenage son wanted to > work, but she didn't want him to get a job because if he did, the family > would lose its disability check.

This system is completely messed up.

<comment><USER44> A thousand times, yes.

But people hate the idea of giving people money when they "don't need it." So for each dollar someone makes that pushes them above bare sustenance, a dollar is taken away. In some perverse income ranges, more than a dollar is taken away.

The only way around it really is to either give people nothing, or to provide a basic income. Most people hate the idea of both of those: if you give people nothing, you in a very real sense end up starving people. You can pick and choose who gets aid, but that immediately adds a bunch of administrative overhead and encourages gaming the system. A basic income, though, gives Bill Gates free money from the taxpayers, and is very, very expensive.

All told, I prefer the BI, but that has a load of difficulties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm going to reply to this thread against my better judgement because I'm afraid of getting trolled. I am on SSI, I have Autism as well as severe longterm depression and PTSD. I get about $700 a month to live off from. In my area you can't find housing under $450. Then I have to pay someone to pay my bills for me at $39 a month because social security somehow deems I can't spend my own money. My point is after necessary things (electric, transportation, gas, water) I struggle for toilet paper at times.

I have tried jobs before, got fired in a manufacturing job getting overwhelmed by the process - got fired in another job because i could not understand "shop talk". I don't like living off the system and one of the main reasons I'm really pursuing entrepreneurship is I see it as the only way I can get off the system.

<comment><USER32> My sympathies. I know someone with a some similar mental health issue on SSI. It's tough out there. (And they have relied heavily on basically working at home online to have a little extra money. It's tough right now due to the recession and basically nothing comes in, but the process of doing that work is positive.)

I can also understand being overwhelmed. I don't have autism, but have done the programmer thing, and have trouble interacting with people so might be on the spectrum a little bit. I swear, if it weren't for our mechanized society with machines to repair and computers to fix and program, I'd be a poor dirt farmer.

I wish you the best of luck.

If you'd like to brainstorm possible jobs or business maybe we can talk on this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> EconTalk had an excellent interview about this: [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.html)

This EconTalk is also interesting: [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/12/mulligan_on_red.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/12/mulligan_on_red.html) – the thing that really made me think is the observation that the marginal benefit of work is often negative for people on different assistance programs, and that comes up in the first interview too. To try to get ahead, to try to get off disability, will put you behind where you'd have otherwise been. I think it also offers something of a solution, to look at the entirety of the support systems and make sure that there's always a benefit to being more beneficial to society. I suspect that would largely mean increasing benefits for the not-quite-poor, or the almost-disabled, etc. But if a well managed slope of benefits is achieved, the incentives may lead to less total dependence.

It's also something that, in theory, could be supported by Republicans and Democrats, as analysis is based on ideas that are appealing to both sides.

<comment><USER32> I agree about this - the fact is, there's a gradient of disability, and a gradient of employability, and a gradient on the ability of people to participate in the market.

Having benefits pulled out doesn't work, particularly health insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> If disability is masking unemployment, we should expect anomalies in other labor statistics, like labor force participation rate, or per capita employment.

Labor force participation has been declining the last few years, but at least some of that is aging population and massive recession. And despite the decline, the rate remains well within historical bounds. I'm glancing at Bureau of Labor Statistics charts, not seeing a massive hidden class of people that are somehow staying off all the books.

On the other hand, there's an MIT economist that totally disagrees with me, claims that disability DOES explain trends in other labor statistics, like participation rate: <http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/dautor/papers/disability>

Full disclosure: I am most definitely not nor have ever been "an MIT economist."

His paper from 2006 depicts some interesting trends.

(Wait, 2006? This guy has been forecasting disability armageddon for seven fucking years, when the real threat back then was the imminent housing bubble!? Now I'm skeptical again...)

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

Data:

 __UPDATE __Neat labor data infographic:<http://newyorkfed.org/employment/>

Scary labor force participation chart (with really narrow scale to heighten the effect): <http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000>

A million Census charts: [http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/labor_force_empl...](http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/labor_force_employment_earnings/labor_force_status.html)

Employment status, 1970+: [http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0586.p...](http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0586.pdf)

A long article on unemployment rate, participation rate, etc., with some brilliant charts: [http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/02/graphs- unemploymen...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/02/graphs-unemployment- rate-participation.html)

Autor and Duggan's 2006 piece I reference above: <http://economics.mit.edu/files/597> [PDF]

</comment><comment><USER48> This article just reminded me to support what is probably one of the last worthwhile news programs on air. Here's a link for you if you want to too!

<http://www.npr.org/about/support/>

</comment><comment><USER49> The social safety net and creative destruction discussion is interesting.

However, I'm interested from a design perspective. Does anyone know if this was built by the "apps team" at NPR? IMO, it's very well done.

More from the NPR "apps team."

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5279440>

<http://blog.apps.npr.org/2013/02/14/app-template-redux.html>

<comment><USER50> I was actually wondering if this was posted here for content or design reasons

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The layout reminds me of this story:

<http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall>

I like it. The snowfall article is fancier, but they share an aesthetic, and I hope we see more of it.

Thinking about it, I'd be willing to pay for a regular stream of articles that are presented so nicely. (Well, assuming the content itself is also good). This is significant... I've never been willing to pay for news in my life.

</comment><comment><USER32> I just heard the show on TAL, and while it was interesting, some aspects grated, particularly the one about learning disabilities. That part of the show is going to end up as a proxy for all kinds of mental disabilities, making it sound like these things not only don't exist, but when they exist, they don't matter.

I know some people on disability who have mental issues. Some had developmental problems, and some had strokes, and some have mental illness, and there are other situations in between. They aren't employable, at least not easily and full time. The reason is that as the economy has shifted to a service economy, the service jobs, which used to be considered "kick back" or basically low stress, have become high stress. When the profits of the business depend on the service workers, the stress falls on the service workers.

That stress is either around increasing production of mentally produced product (I'm sure programmers here know this), or of producing a positive psychological experience for someone else. For example, the people working in retail have to be nice. They can't be grouchy and talk shit to each other like people used to when they worked in factories.

Maybe Joffe-Walt hasn't really thought about this, but within the class of sit-down jobs, the ones she has are not the common kind. There's variety in the work, and a huge need to "think outside the box". Even the stressors have some variety to them.

Most service jobs are about forcing your mind into the box, and handling the same stressors over and over. These are easy on the muscles, but rough on the mind, and the mind, as we sometimes forget, is a manifestation of the brain, an organ in the body, subject to being overworked and injured.

</comment><comment><USER27> I lived in Aberdeen when they shut down the mill. I remember everyone saying how this was the end of the town. It's weird that the article didn't show a picture of downtown. It's just a bunch of run down buildings with boards over the windows.

The Wal-Mart there is doing great though, one of the most profitable in all of Washington state, according to friends that work there.

</comment><comment><USER52> The part about kids and SSI abuse is also cited as being the reason for the uptick in ADHD diagnoses (and not violent video games or high fructose corn syrup or gay marriage):

[http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/12/13/follow...](http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/12/13/follow_up_process_lacking_in_ssi_disability_program/)

</comment><comment><USER53> Denying more people disability is not a fix. Solving the question of what to do in our partially-post-scarcity economy is the fix.

</comment><comment><USER54> "The company has an office in eastern Washington state that's basically a call center, full of headsetted women in cubicles who make calls all day long to potentially disabled Americans, trying to help them discover and document their disabilities"

Why am I not surprised that getting people on disability has become an industry. I very much believe that governments should look after people who need help but there seems to be a significant lack of accountability when it comes to disability.

Does anyone know the details American of politics of disability? Welfare, social security and health care are constantly in the political news but I do not recall seeing much about disability. As someone who regular consumer of political text I find this surprising. Especially given the size of the program.

</comment><comment><USER55> Unemployment benefits run out after a year (or whatever they changed it to), but disability benefits never run out. If you look at the chart the big increase from 1961 to 2011 is "back pain and other musculoskeletal problems", which, as every prospective medical marijuana patient knows, is impossible for a doctor to disprove.

Of course disability claims are going up - the economy is bad and people are using disability as an unemployment benefit. The unfortunate result of all of this is going to be lots of extra paperwork (and potential rejections) for people who really are too disabled to work.

</comment><comment><USER56> Relevant: [http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/11/the_terrible_awful_tr...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/11/the_terrible_awful_truth_about_1.html)

He argues that the system is "broken" on purpose.

</comment><comment><USER57> > People don't seem to be faking this pain, but it gets confusing. I have back > pain. My editor has a herniated disc, and he works harder than anyone I > know. There must be millions of people with asthma and diabetes who go to > work every day. Who gets to decide whether, say, back pain makes someone > disabled?

I dunno, maybe the difference is that you don't have a job where you have to STAND ALL DAY?

If you're in a wheel chair you can still do a desk job. Does that mean you're not disabled?

</comment><comment><USER58> We're kidding ourselves if we believe that we can continue to find meaningful work for the uneducated. Given that education for the poor is appalling and getting worse, it seems that we are kidding ourselves.

At some point we need to accept that an economy based around leisure is already here. The irony is that adapting people to that mindset is going to take education...

The bigger irony is that only the (rapidly becoming extinct) upper classes really know how to entertain themselves.

</comment><comment><USER59> The fact that more and more people do not have the skills to make it in America today is the most heart breaking. And with the costs of college education, the problem will only become worse with the offsprings of those affected today becoming the most likely to be affected in future.

I think education is what should be provided free or subsidized.

Not related to the topic.. The site is really well designed and kudos to NPR for a splendid coverage and presentation as usual.

</comment><comment><USER51> _Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government._

Holy cow. The working population in the USA is a little below 140 million; that's almost 10%.

</comment><comment><USER60> The same reporter did a more human-interest variant of the story for This American Life (available at [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/490/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits)). It's an interesting perspective on the issue.

</comment><comment><USER61> I noticed quite a few of the states on the top 10 are from the south. I'm curious how many of them were ex-military.

</comment><comment><USER62> With a guaranteed income defined not in dollars but in goods, the government could automate (much of) the welfare of these people. "You get 10 loaves of bread, 3 cheese, and 1 elective per month." for example.

Then people wouldnt complain about the big screen tvs, etc. that they think the poor spend the welfare money on.

<comment><USER63> We had that. "Government cheese" was not always a metaphor. Neither were "food stamps".

As it turns out: it's better to just give people cash and let them make their own determinations and let the free market and substitution do its thing, than maintain a huge parallel infrastructure just to avoid hurt feelings over the idea that someone somewhere may buy a non-necessity with welfare dollars.

It costs the taxpayer less, people get better results, they have a better opportunity to learn and improve, etc. Some will abuse it, but some sold their government cheese and food stamps to buy non-essentials as well.

People complaining about the big screen TVs are flat-out disingenuous. They're either outright ignorant of history and/or of the specifics at hand [1], or they're lying to effect a policy change they couldn't justify with the truth.

[1] Studies have been done. The "welfare queen" and "strapping young bucks buying steak dinners" do not actually exist. Exceptions do, but they've never amounted to significant quantities of waste. And we already do search for, and ferret these people out.

<comment><USER62> The only problem with the "free market" thing is that the current market isn't really all that free, and a totally free market is full of externalities and wrong incentives (incentives for A and B to collude to the detriment of C) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It seems that a large part of this is a problem with implementing and/or acting upon rudimentary analytics. If a particular doctor or judge is referring plenty of patients into the disability rolls, that doctor/judge should be singled out for special investigation.

<comment><USER65> Or they are in an area with more disabled people.

<comment><USER66> or the local specialist who gets all the referrals

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> What large number of sit-down jobs do you expect to be available to dubiously- educated people that can't also be outsourced to poorer/cheaper countries? It's a problem if you believe the less educated should still have nice rich- country middle-class lives.

</comment><comment><USER68> Ok, I haven't read this. The title alone brings an immediate reaction.

I live in the U.S. I've observed, first hand and individually, more instances than I can count of deliberately unsafe work conditions.

Contractors having e.g. employees deal with lead paint without protection. Small businesses as well as large corporations having employees work regularly with unsafe chemicals.

Landlords renovating "under the radar", spreading toxic contaminants throughout their properties.

People take advantage of other people's ignorance. They "don't want to be hassled" and "hate the government" and want to "save money".

I'm _one person_. And I can hardly go through a day in life without running across this. In part, perhaps, because I am at least semi-informed, and because I pay attention to my surroundings.

It's no mystery to me that our population ends up with so many "unfit to work", disabled people.

In addition to the above, add the stress of job insecurity, health care insecurity, bully bosses.

 _A lot_ of people who have to live amidst this (and you, exhalted programmers and "high technology" wonks, are generally not -- in such roles -- among these; that is speaking generally, while I do recognize the individual experiences vary widely), eventually resign themselves that "this is the way the world works".

The smart ones try to save and earn a retirement before their body gives out. And/or to move into some sort of management position where knowledge and experience keep them valuable and employed.

In the U.S., at least, these circumstances continue to exist _because we let them_ and because many people _continue to take advantage of them_. The next time you're looking for lower bids on your renovation project, keep this in mind.

There are the formal rules -- OSHA and all that. Then, there is an entire culture of "on the side" and "under the table" and loyalty and betrayal, that changes and morphs somewhat but that remains, on a day to day basis, apparently largely untouched by all this.

I'm sure it's worse, often far worse, in much of the rest of the world. But... the U.S. has more -- far more -- than a "few bad actors" that contribute to the problem, domestically. Lots of people make lots of money, in amounts both small and large, from taking advantage of this.

And... this is _anecdote_. One guy, just looking around as he goes through day-to-day living.

Another reason I am disgusted by the health care situation in this country (where the results of these problems ultimately end up). Another area where costs and benefits are not at all aligned and balanced, on an individual basis.

</comment><comment><USER69> Redistribution of wealth is incompatible with liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It violates my liberty when my wealth is taken away by force.

Wealth redistribution is morally hazardous to the recipients, getting something without earning it or doing anything in exchange.

</comment><comment><USER70> Would it be somewhat fair in this situation of disability as described to say that disability is a bit like welfare with an excuse? "I'm not too lazy to work or study, my back hurts."

Easier to say in front of peers/parents/etc.

</comment><comment><USER71> A simple fix would be to give each disabled person a "wage bonus" subsidy. For each hour they work, their employer gets x$. If they were more disabled, the number gets bigger.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands wondering why nobody has brought up the fact under Obama, unemployment assistance has been extended multiple times and it would seem obvious once your unemployment runs out, you would simply apply for disability.

I wouldn't propose this if I didn't already know several people who have done this in order to continue supporting their family. Also, my best friend is on disability and wholeheartedly deserves it, so I'm kind of torn about how I see people use and abuse this program.

</comment><comment><USER72> Has anybody ever had a situation where someone left work for an extended period of time because of "stress" - and what did the employer do about it ?

</comment><comment><USER73> ADHD makes one very unfit for work, or not unfit. But it makes it harder.

</comment><comment><USER74> How do they do that scrolling over the bus image? That's pretty cool.

<comment><USER75> `background-attachment: fixed`

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> fascinating piece, i'll have a deeper look later. i came here to say it's gorgeous and presented beautifully and functionally. the designers should be proud.

</comment><comment><USER77> Further reading: Charles Murray's _Coming Apart_.

</comment><comment><USER78> Nice job Rich Orris - I really loved the design

</comment><comment><USER79> That's a really nicely designed article!

</comment><comment><USER80> Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-a-a-alcohol

</comment><comment><USER81> Absolutely fantastic content and presentation.

</comment><comment><USER82> "Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it."

Self reliance, while not always possible, is always better as it empowers the individual _and_ the state. I have never met a disabled person who enjoyed being helped.

</comment><comment><USER83> Oh no. Poor injured people might be getting money. Stop them!

<comment><USER21> I'm injured! I want money! Can I get some money?

<comment><USER51> If he gets money, I could be injured too! I bashed up my leg when I slipped on ice last month. Can I get money for that?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a good modal/pop-up blocker? - <AUTHOR> Like an ad blocker, but something that prevents modals/pop-ups from popping up on screen and annoying everyone. It could also block ads as those are often modals telling you to turn off ad blocker. <comment><USER2> Many ad-blockers are configurable so you can use blocking on some things only. With "uBlock Origin", you can right-click and say "Block Element" and then select exactly what annoying piece (or hierarchy of pieces) should be removed on that site. This works pretty well when sites use something generic for their blocking backgrounds like a "#modal_overlay" ID or something. Some sites are more tricky and use IDs and CSS classes that appear to be randomly- generated.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of my pet hates and they seem to be getting more prevalent all the time. I say, vote with your feet (or 'finger') and just click away from sites as soon as a modal overlay pops up. Maybe, if we all did that, the site owners would stop this unbelievably annoying practice.

[https://stiobhart.net/2015-05-04-overlays-new- popups/](https://stiobhart.net/2015-05-04-overlays-new-popups/)</comment>


Audio zoom picks out lone voice in a stadium crowd - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19541-audio-zoom-picks-out-lone-voice-in-the-crowd.html

<comment><USER2> _The most obvious application is in televised sports_

Not surveillance then?

Major shopping malls, airports, etc etc

<comment><AUTHOR> Wired covers this story too, and they thought of surveillance.

[http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/super-microphone- pick...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/super-microphone-picks-out- single-voice-in-a-crowded-stadium/)

(last paragraph)

Sports events do sound suspiciously like they've been chosen as a good demo for the surveillance applications of the technology.</comment></comment>


World's Largest Traders Use Offshore Supertankers to Store Oil - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-largest-traders-use-offshore-supertankers-to-store-oil-1421689744?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories

<comment><USER2> This is nothing new has been going on for decades.

</comment><comment><USER3> Paywalled.</comment>


Retron 5 hacked to dump ROMs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mikepavone/retron_dump <comment><AUTHOR> Not explained in the repo is how to root the Retron 5. That information is available at [http://www.chromableedstudios.com/techninjutsu/rootron5howto...](http://www.chromableedstudios.com/techninjutsu/rootron5howtoroottheretron5)</comment>


Thread from Foone on statistics and warfare by other means - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1193942666058166272 <comment><AUTHOR> Yes, twitter threads are horrible. But please read another twitter thread to understand why @foone uses them:

[https://twitter.com/foone/status/1066547670477488128?s=21](https://twitter.com/foone/status/1066547670477488128?s=21)</comment>


Raytracing: Theory & Implementation Part 1, Introduction - <AUTHOR> http://www.devmaster.net/articles/raytracing_series/part1.php <comment><USER2> Doesn't look like this article covers this, but you can anti-alias your scene using a method similar to what is covered for soft shadows. Instead of shooting rays back to a random point on a light surface though, you move the camera slightly (randomly) on the XY plane and shoot multiple rays per pixel.

Not only does this AA, but it also naturally offers depth of field blur.. The more you allow the camera to move with each ray, the more depth of field blur you get.

And then if you not only shoot rays from different camera locations, but also spread them out over time, AND you move objects in the scene, you get motion blur :). The greater the delta t you allow, the more motion blur you get.

Raytracing is really damn cool.. Too bad its still too performance intensive for real-time applications.

<comment><USER3> I think some pretty smart people (Neoptica) are working on this problem - aided by the the general purpose programmability of the latest generation of GPUs.

<comment><USER2> The nice thing about raytracing is that it scales so well with parallel processing. The more pipelines, the more simultaneous rays you can process at one time. Synchronization issues are minimal because essentially what you are doing is waiting for pixel data to return from all of the rays shot from the camera. Order doesnt really matter. Sounds like a perfect problem for multi- pipelined GPGPU programming.

Hadn't heard of Neoptica before, but they do look like they have some really smart people there. Raytracing itself is an old concept, but I'm sure there are creative ways to optimize and extend the concept yet to be done.

Here is some info on what Neoptica is doing. Sounds very impressive [PDF]: <http://www.neoptica.com/NeopticaWhitepaper.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nick, why the sudden interest in raytracing? Just curious...</comment>


The Lonesome Tale Of An Unsung Computer Genius - <AUTHOR> I posted this on reddit a little while ago, but not many people really saw it, so I figured this community could perhaps appreciate it a little more.
As a tech geek, you come to respect a number of the greats in computing history.
Perhaps it's Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates or a personal favorite of mine, Edsger Dijkstra. There is one genius of the history of computing that doesn't have much fame or notoriety, and I couldn't even find his name on a reddit search. This man created the concepts behind the idea of our modern computers. Running a graphical operating system on a limited, simplifed, chipset and mostly just the CPU, rather than having to use specialized hardware. Now he, apparently, lives a sad and lonely life in California, occasionally making his only human contact on the way to Whole Foods to pick up some groceries.
I am talking about Burrell Smith, the Apple engineer who designed the motherboard for the first Macintosh and found ways to shoe-horn upgrades into older computers in ways no one ever thought possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrell_Smith
You can find some amazing stories about his genius and unique personality here: http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?characters=Burrell%20Smith
What has become of him today? http://tradertim.blogspot.com/2007/07/lonesome-tale-of-burrell-smith.html
According to Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs there is a chance Burrell suffered from schizophrenia during the 1990s... I don't know. I just feel sad reading about what has become of him and wish we could tell him somehow that there are geeks out there that appreciate the work that he has done and his unparalleled creativity in the field of hardware engineering. <comment><USER2> How do you know he is sad? How do you know he would want to hear that young people admire his work? You have never had a chance to tell Steve Jobs you admire him; did he suffer because of that?

I think Burrell has had a happier life than Jobs, honestly -- and he is still alive. Plus, Jobs and Hertzfeld make/made sure he has the help he needs.

That said, the different paths the Macintosh team have taken through life are good to dwell on. None of us know where our lives will take us.</comment>


List of All Current TLDs - <AUTHOR> http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt <comment><USER2> The IANA TLD list should never be used directly. What you really want instead is the Public Suffix List [1]. It will help you determine the "effective TLD" of domains like amazon.co.uk or sflawlib.ci.sf.ca.us, and gives you more insight in to how a technical allocation at the root transforms politically in to implementation.

1\. [https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat](https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat)

<comment><USER3> PSL maintainer here: please don't use the PSL!

Yes, it's weird to have a maintainer asking people not to use their project, but the PSL was a very specific (and unfortunate) hack for a very specific (and unfortunate, and browser-created) problem. It is something we live with, not something we like. While the ideal world is "don't use any list at all, use the protocols as God, the IETF, and IANA intended", if you are going to use a list, using the IANA list, updated daily, is much better than the PSL.

Do not use the PSL for anything that is not "cookies abusing the Host header"

[https://github.com/sleevi/psl-problems](https://github.com/sleevi/psl- problems)

<comment><USER4> Are you still adding suffixes to the list? If so, wouldn't refusing to add new suffixes help with the issue? If no new organisation can make use of PSL to link their subdomains, then they are only left with SOP. Since the list stays like it is now, no existing websites, depending on the list suddenly break down.

<comment><USER3> We are. Deliberate sabotage like that would take quite a while before it was noticed, however, and it wouldn't magically fix cookies and how people use them.

To the extent it is used by cookies, we still want to maintain a fair and equitable solution. However, we also want to actively discourage any new users or use cases, to the extent possible, while we also try to fix cookies.

Ideas _like_ [https://github.com/privacycg/first-party- sets](https://github.com/privacycg/first-party-sets) provide a possible model. While FPS doesn't directly address this, as part of keeping a narrow scope, the approach to explicitly expressing boundaries is one that has the best viable path. However, that's effectively "Deprecate the Host option for cookies", so... that's a big task.

Simply sabotaging the PSL doesn't force the problem to be solved, so mostly, it's an education campaign of "We made a mistake; learn from ours, rather than repeating it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked with some slightly crazy businessmen who were tricked by an out-of- work "domain name consultant" into putting in an application for some new gTLDs.

They got one, and cashed out another application to let someone else take it which got them all their application fees back plus a decent chunk of cash.

They were genuinely convinced their terrible new gTLD was going to make them $100 million a year.

My main job was to stop them from blowing what money they had in reserve on insane publicity stunts for long enough that they woke up and realised they had been conned.

Eventually they woke up but had spent something approaching $2m finding that out. I stopped them spending at least as much again.

"Tell me again why you want to hire ten hot air balloons to fly over this stadium...?"

<comment><USER6> Worked Directly for a fortune 100 CEO.

His attitude on advertising was it was better take all the money, put it in a pile and burn it.

Had positive things about superbowel ads, but dissed everything else

<comment><USER7> Nice typo. Superbowel.

<comment><USER8> Could have been entirely intentional if he's not a sportsball fan.

<comment><USER6> Let's go with that. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For comparison, the same file 10 years ago: [https://web.archive.org/web/20100502082201/http://data.iana....](https://web.archive.org/web/20100502082201/http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds- alpha-by-domain.txt)

There were only 279 TLDs back then, or 32 TLDs if you excluded all the country code TLDs. Now there are 1508 TLDs, or 1260 excluding country code TLDs.

<comment><USER10> > There were only 279 TLDs back then, or 32 TLDs if you excluded all the > country code TLDs.

Arguably that's about 30 too many and really the root of this whole mess. Imho Postel, for all the good he did, in retrospect mismanaged DNS by not establising really any structure or policy, in a way that feels now bit naive/idealistic (and US-centric).

By the time ICANN took over dot-com bubble was already knocking at the door and laissez faire anything goes attitude of DNS pretty well cemented, so any drastic changes would have been difficult to accomplish.

Essentially by leaving the legacy TLDs completely open and mostly without restrictions or hierarchy/structure their meaning was eroded away, and if the TLDs have no meaning then it's only logical to throw them away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of my side projects is [https://twitter.com/diffroot](https://twitter.com/diffroot) a twitter account that publishes changes to the root zone (except for nameserver IP address changes). Alongside that I have a couple of Twitter threads commenting on the changes.

The relevant one is [https://twitter.com/fanf/status/903709051606978560](https://twitter.com/fanf/status/903709051606978560) my collection of dead .brand TLDs which is now 3 years old (tho I didn't keep it very reliably the first year).

It's also amusing to see if you can spot a .brand TLD being used for real services, where the brand is not an Internet company. The biggest one I know of is SNCF.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for this service. It is actually the only Twitter account I have push notifications enabled for (though I need to figure out a better solution when there is a lot of churn).

FWIW, I know at least one non-tech company that was already using .brand as an internal TLD and spent the money to avoid a name collision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> ICANN sold out the internet. The namespace is all but ruined.

.PHOTO, .PHOTOGRAPHY, .PHOTOS, .PICS, .PICTURES

This should offend everyone.

<comment><USER13> I'm more concerned about TLDs like:

        .ACCENTURE
        .AIRBUS
        .AMERICANEXPRESS
        .AMERICANFAMILY
        .AVIANCA
        .BAIDU
        .BARCLAYCARD
        .BARCLAYS
        .BENTLEY
        .BESTBUY
        .BLOOMBERG
        .BNPPARIBAS
        .BOEHRINGER
        .BUGATTI
        .CALVINKLEIN
        .CAPITALONE
        .CITI
        .EPSON
        .ERICSSON
        .FERRARI
        .FUJITSU
        .GMAIL
        .GODADDY
        .HDFC
        .HDFCBANK
        .HITACHI
        .HYATT
        .HYUNDAI
        .JAGUAR
        .JEEP
        .JPMORGAN
        .JUNIPER
        .KERRYHOTELS
        .KERRYLOGISTICS
        .KERRYPROPERTIES
        .LACAIXA
        .LAMBORGHINI
        .LANDROVER
        .LANXESS
        .LPLFINANCIAL
        .MASERATI
        .MATTEL
        .MCKINSEY
        .MICROSOFT
        .MITSUBISHI
        .NETFLIX
        .NORTHWESTERNMUTUAL
        .OLAYANGROUP
        .PANASONIC
        .PRAMERICA
        .SAMSUNG
        .SCHAEFFLER
        .SCJOHNSON
        .SONY
        .STCGROUP
        .SUZUKI
        .SWATCH
        .TIFFANY
        .TOSHIBA
        .VIRGIN
        .VOLKSWAGEN

It's disgusting.

<comment><USER14> If those TLDs were actually useful, then the domain name system would be in much better shape than it actually is.

In reality, you have .gov for government, .com for business, .org for organisations who don't care how much traffic they get, local country TLDs for if you operate a service for one country only, and tons and tons of garbage.

com is the only TLD that has any value for international commerce. It doesn't matter that .netflix exists, because it will never be used for anything productive. The problem is that you can only ever count on a person knowing .com and their local TLD. Everything else either won't register with people as being an actual domain name, or will look like a scam to most people.

The internet is locked into this system, and it's one that cannot possibly scale. The explosion in new TLDs is an attempt to address that. But we don't need to worry about how disgusting it is, because it's an attempt that has failed.

I would suggest two issues that are more concerning is that there is nothing that seems to be a realistic alternative or solution, and that the way this problem has played out has diminished the actual usefulness of domain names, with that gap being filled by the google search engine.

<comment><USER15> There were plans on potentially allowing [https://netflix/](https://netflix/)

I can't recall the technical term for it though, and my search engine couldn't help me find it within a few minutes.

<comment><USER16> That would ruin local host names

<comment><USER17> Not if the final dot to denote the root zone were to be brought back, i.e. [https://netflix./](https://netflix./)

<comment><USER18> Brought back? It's still a thing and required.. your OS's DNS implementation might not handle it in the way you expect though ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I agree with @jrockway below. There is no point in retaining TLDs the way are now. The original idea of TLDs were to have separate namespaces. For example, apple.com is the company apple and apple.fruit, may be a fruit seller. This never worked though. At the end, the companies ended up having to register all the TLDs or someone else would get apple.dong and pretend to be related to apple. ICANN decided to use the opportunity for money grab and started releasing new TLDs every now and then. It makes all sense to get rid of usage of TLDs as they are today. If apple is <any subdomain>.apple, that's it. People would know that apple.dong is something related to dong. It might sound to be far fetched, but it is not. Once people see the flooding of TLDs (like handshake TLDs which are easily and cheaply available to general public on Namebase (namebase.io) or Bob wallet(Bob wallet.io)) and when they realize TLDs are the new equivalent of .coms, they would realize that it's just the TLDs that matter for auth aspect and the subdomains are more functional within the company (like mail.google and chat.google) The only people to lose are the scammers and ICANN.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd love $myhandle.sucks but alas the domain registrar decided to charge extortion rates in the hopes that large companies register their own domain to prevent hate sites >_>

<comment><USER21> Incidentally, if the $185,000 you're about to spend on a new gTLD registration is bringing you down, you could use the money to register _icann.sucks_ instead:

[https://www.rebel.com/search/?exact=false&q=icann.sucks&tldo...](https://www.rebel.com/search/?exact=false&q=icann.sucks&tldonly=sucks)

Turnabout is, I suppose, fair play.

<comment><USER22> Funnily enough, I tried to check dotsucks.sucks…they've thought through that already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> .calvinklein? .bananarepublic? A clear money-grab that has no benefit to users, complicates validation and security for developers, and seals off vast swathes of the namespace for the sole use of corporations.

<comment><USER24> A money grab for whom? ICANN, sure. But if a company wants to spend the $200k, what is the big deal?

Some companies (ex [http://www.nic.ovh/en/index.xml](http://www.nic.ovh/en/index.xml) ) are using it for their customers.

Some companies (ex [https://calculator.aws/](https://calculator.aws/) ) are using it for shorter URLs, while still being descriptive.

Sure some are just doing it because they can, other's have no good use case yet. But I fail to see how .bananarepublic being in the hands of one company is a detriment to me... the average internet user.

<comment><USER23> It's a money grab for ICANN, precisely. Neither users nor developers have any say in this process, and the body that stands to benefit financially from accepting trademarks as TLDs is _not_ going to be acting in the interest of users or developers, are they?

My argument wasn't specifically about .bananarepublic or .calvinklein. It was more that I don't believe trademarks should have been admitted, full stop. There's no way ICANN can make impartial decisions here that benefit the bulk of Internet users.

I reserve judgement on generic TLDs, although I really don't like the implications to user confusion caused by .photo, .photos, .pics and the like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't understand why we even have TLDs, and don't just register names at the root level. Sure, it's nice to be able to shard data structures among many providers (.com can be different servers/infrastructure/rules than .net) and might have been a technical necessity "back in the day" (though there weren't many shards, so I doubt it), but now it's actively harmful. You found a company called foobarcorp and register foobarcorp.com... and some jerk registers foobarcorp.net, foobarcorp.info, foobarcorp.sucks, etc. Why even allow this? Let there be one and only one foobarcorp.

Yes, I'm bitter that Google gets google. but I'm stuck with jrock.us. Why does it cost millions of dollars to remove one dot from my domain name? There is no technical reason. Maybe it's time to overthrow the default root servers and start our own Internet.

Also "." should have an A record.

<comment><USER26> > foobarcorp.net, foobarcorp.info, foobarcorp.sucks, etc. Why even allow this

Because there can be multiple companies with the same name. Why cut them off from using their own name in a domain address?

<comment><USER27> You already have that problem - there is only one .com and most companies will want to hog all others too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maintainer of ZoneDB (zonedb.org or [https://github.com/zonedb/zonedb](https://github.com/zonedb/zonedb)) here:

We extracted this project from Domainr ([https://domainr.com](https://domainr.com)), using tooling that updates the database each day. It's formatted as a single text file (zones.txt) and associated metadata in JSON files. We also generate a Go package for our own uses (the tooling is written in Go).

It's similar to the PSL, but where the PSL has wildcards and inverted matches, ZoneDB explicitly lists each "known" zone, including retired or withdrawn names.

[https://github.com/zonedb/zonedb/blob/master/zones.txt](https://github.com/zonedb/zonedb/blob/master/zones.txt)

</comment><comment><USER29> .GIFT .GIFTS

Why have both? There is no way that isn't going to cause confusion.

<comment><USER30> Also .hotel and .hotels. And .photo and .photos (and .photography). Plus .ink and .inc. And many more "confusingly similar" despite ICANN rules that were supposed to prevent that. Money talks.

<comment><USER31> I agree there's serious potential for misleading customers, but also see the occasional merit of having both, ie, if you own Hank's Hotel you'd want the .hotel tld to correctly identify your business, and likewise helpmefind.hotels makes more sense than helpmefind.hotel. These are my arbitrary examples that do not outweigh the potential for the fraud of someone registering hanks.hotels maliciously. I think icann is a horrible entity and never should have existed.

On a different note, I like how many tlds there are now. .pizza is my personal favorite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hi all, a question slightly related to this topic... Is there an easy (and free) way to get hold of all the registered domains under a TLD or ccTLD? I know that services like [0] exist, but they are paid for and the validity and collection of data is dubious. Why aren't zone files generally and freely available? Is there a way to download or mirror the DNS data?

[0][https://zonefiles.io/cctld-domains/](https://zonefiles.io/cctld-domains/)

</comment><comment><USER33> I like how there are _two_ top level domains for my city of about a million people: .cologne and .koeln

Is there any other town represented twice? OK, places like Berlin, Hamburg, London or Paris don't have the advantage of different spellings in English and a local language. But there's only .wien, no .vienna. How about .tokyo -- is there a puny-coded Japanese version?

<comment><USER34> "cologne" may be referring to perfume)

<comment><USER33> It isn't though :) -- just try [https://www.city.cologne](https://www.city.cologne)

The company behind .cologne and .koeln is from Vienna BTW: [https://nic.koeln/en](https://nic.koeln/en) How could they let .vienna slip through the cracks?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Here is another chance for people who may know more on TLDs.

What happened to .Web?

Verisign got it in 2016 and it has since been in endless legal battle and endless _Final_ decisions from ICANN.

Anyone have any news on that?

</comment><comment><USER36> I looked at the list and ZERO grabbed my attention. Turns out its a private GTLD for Amazon.

Reading Amazons's application for the ZERO GTLD (linked at [https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationde...](https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/934) ) makes me angry. It's completly bland. You could use their application to register any string under the sun. It's not clear what benefits it offers for the public. These types of domains should not be allowed.

</comment><comment><USER37> and still nobody has registered .EXE

</comment><comment><USER38> What stops us, at 2020, to just allow possible string to be a TLD? What's the point of limiting it to this list?

<comment><USER39> Nothing, technically speaking. But legally and economically speaking I think it's a bad idea.

I personally think there should only be a very small handful of TLDs: com, edu, org, gov and maybe a few others. Having a limited number of TLDs communicates to the end user what kind of site it is (government, educational, commercial, non-profit, etc.) and reduces your domain footprint online.

When you allow ".sucks" to be a TLD, now you've basically opened up a new market of squatters and blackmailers forcing companies and individuals to buy up every possible potentially damaging TLD of their trademark or brand[0].

If you allow any arbitrary TLD, be prepared to employ a full DNS police force because tons of people acting in bad faith are going to register every possible typo under the sun in order to capitalize on people's mistakes ("apple.con", "apple.cpm", "apple.vom", "f---.apple")

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sucks_(registry)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sucks_\(registry\))

<comment><USER40> I agree with this only so much as to protect the user with information on what type of site they are visiting. Org for non-profit or clubs, Net for networks, Com for commerce, nation tld's and gov. The arbitrary TLD's are really to keep certain organizations from owning the internet because of how name registration works. Humans are corrupt.

<comment><USER38> .org could still be for non-profits and national TLD's could still be managed by governments. .com, .net, meanings btw, are completely irrelevant nowadays.

My idea is not to cancel the meaning of .org, but rather create other possibilities for names.

What's the difference really between a 1000+ TLDs and a 100,000+ TLDs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have wrote a perl module for this official IANA TLD database, please review it: [https://metacpan.org/pod/Net::IANA::TLD](https://metacpan.org/pod/Net::IANA::TLD)

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER42> .WTF

</comment><comment><USER43> look at all that digital real estate thats not being used. So much opportunity!

<comment><USER9> Ah yes, we were missing out on so much without TLDs like KERRYLOGISTICS, LPLFINANCIAL, or SANDVIKCOROMANT!

<comment><USER44> I think .BLOCKBUSTER is the one that's really going to come in handy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why is there no .FACEBOOK?

<comment><USER46> Presumably they didn't want to spend a tremendous amount of money for no clear purpose?

Most outfits which registered a brand or company name as a TLD are purely throwing away money here, either because they didn't understand what they were doing or out of sheer vanity.

You can _maybe_ make an argument for a handful of very big technology companies that have some sort of plan for what they'll do with a TLD, such as Google, but I don't think Facebook would be on that list.

<comment><USER45> If there's any company that could have _tons_ of uses for a TLD it's Facebook.

Imagine a decentralized Facebook made up of custom websites all using the .facebook domain. Imagine the revenues.

Zuckerberg are you reading this? What are your thoughts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> There should be .anime or .uwu

<comment><USER30> Related, there is .moe

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> My favorite site to watch: ntldstats dot com

</comment><comment><USER49> What are all the TLDs prefixed with XN--?

<comment><USER50> Punycode for these Unicode names:

कॉम セール 佛山 ಭಾರತ 慈善 集团 在线 한국 ଭାରତ 大众汽车 点看 คอม ভাৰত ভারত 八卦 موقع বাংলা 公益 公司 香格里拉 网站 移动 我爱你 москва қаз католик онлайн сайт 联通 срб бг бел קום 时尚 微博 淡马锡 ファッション орг नेट ストア アマゾン 삼성 சிங்கப்பூர் 商标 商店 商城 дети мкд ею ポイント 新闻 家電 كوم 中文网 中信 中国 中國 娱乐 谷歌 భారత్ ලංකා 電訊盈科 购物 クラウド ભારત 通販 भारतम् भारत भारोत 网店 संगठन 餐厅 网络 ком укр 香港 亚马逊 诺基亚 食品 飞利浦 台湾 台灣 手机 мон الجزائر عمان ارامكو ایران العليان اتصالات امارات بازار موريتانيا پاکستان الاردن بارت بھارت المغرب ابوظبي البحرين السعودية ڀارت كاثوليك سودان همراه عراق مليسيا 澳門 닷컴 政府 شبكة بيتك عرب გე 机构 组织机构 健康 ไทย سورية 招聘 рус рф تونس 大拿 ລາວ みんな グーグル ευ ελ 世界 書籍 ഭാരതം ਭਾਰਤ 网址 닷넷 コム 天主教 游戏 vermögensberater vermögensberatung 企业 信息 嘉里大酒店 嘉里 مصر قطر 广东 இலங்கை இந்தியா հայ 新加坡 فلسطين 政务

<comment><USER51> I don't know Amazon and Google have their domain in Japanese too.

アマゾン (Amazon) グーグル (Google)

<comment><USER52> Oh that's clever

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> All because of an ICANN money grab. If it were really about 'having choice', applications wouldn't have cost so much.

<comment><USER54> The end-game is that everyone is going to have their own suffix for their website. And the first part of the hostname will standardize into, I don't know, maybe "com" for the commercial part of your entity, "org" for the more community-oriented part, "net" for projects that have to do with interconnectivity, etc. Maybe even regional ones like "us" and "co.uk".

For example,

        com.shopify
        net.battle
        org.wikipedia
        co.uk.bbc
        gov.whitehouse

Maybe even some sort of routing system, just spitballing here.

        /my-shop/com.shopify
        /elections/gov.whitehouse

Surprised nobody has thought of something like this.

The only problem I see with this system is that the ICANN could get greedy and possibly sell this conventional "com", "net", "org", etc prefix system to the highest bidders and centralize them to just a few suffixes for us to choose between, then we'd be forced to register our websites as prefixes of a small oligarchy that owns the handful of suffixes. :/

<comment><USER55> I think the end game will be that the domain part of a URL will become optional so that it is valid to enter just a TLD in the browser and the company that owns that TLD can redirect.

So [http://google](http://google) would be a valid URL that redirects to [http://www.google.com](http://www.google.com) (for example).

Essentially TLDs will become the new domains and only companies will be able to afford to buy one, but they will do it for the prestige (like the equivalent of owning your .com today).

<comment><USER56> More likely, the whole system will just collapse and so we will use a private organisation who provides a service linking approximate names to websites, something like a telephone directory but it doesn't require you to correctly spell things and get the right prefix. It will occasionally be a problem where you search for "Honest Company" and it takes you to honest.co.fraud, but if it does that too often I guess we will switch to a competitor. I guess the main solution to that problem is to have a list of different possible matches, and require the user to pick the right one.

<comment><USER57> > we will use a private organisation who provides a service linking > approximate names to websites

You are describing Google. Lots of people already type in 'yahoo' or 'paypal' and then click the first link than type the URL.

<comment><USER58> Woooosh !</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Advice For Laid-Off Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/08/mitra-laidoff-engineers-tech-enter-cx_sm_0109mitra.html?partner=yahootix <comment><USER2> "Hi, my name is Steve. I come from a rough area. I used to be addicted to crack, but now I am off, trying to stay clean. That is why I'm selling magazine subscriptions..."

</comment><comment><USER3> Article summary: Many people who got laid off, went to start successful companies.

<comment><USER4> Good advice. Fired? Then go get rich.

<comment><AUTHOR> >> Then go get rich

Some employees are rich, just like some startup entrepreneurs are rich.

In my opinion, entrepreneurship has more to do with a desire to 'envision'. Entrepreneurship doesn't guarantee richness, but it does guarantee satisfaction from what you call 'work'.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I give my early angels extra equity? - <AUTHOR> I raised a seed round (500K) in two tiers, on tier late last year, and another this Summer. All the same terms including valuation. Basically, after raising 350K last year, which I thought would be enough to get to profitability, in April I realized I would need to raise the remaining 150K.
One of our investors told me that it was a bit disappointing that the early investors would get the same terms as those just joining now.
Putting aside the fact that the earlier investors did not raise any complaints at the idea of a second close when we got them in last year, I tend to agree with this investor, and would like to keep my current investors incentivized going forward.
I was thinking of issuing them options, perhaps structured so to give them an additional 20% (just mirroring the traditional discount structure in a convertible note).
What should I do? <comment><USER2> (I'm an early-stage angel, fwiw)

Quick counterpoint to the other advice telling you to give more equity out:

1) Your new investors might feel a bit slighted by this; especially if this additional equity is dilutive, which it probably is.

2) A good angel should understand that raising the additional money is in their best interest and will maximize the value of their equity if it helps the company succeed. I'm not sure what situation you're in; but if not being able to raise the extra capital would be a significant risk; then it's a no- brainer.

I would recommend against giving out additional equity. The beauty of convertible debt or safes is that you can take capital whenever you need it without affecting the cap table and it all gets resolved at your first equity round.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing. Tell them they can put in the extra 150K themselves if they want to keep the others out. They should have 1st rights if they did it correctly.

<comment><USER4> this. do not complicate your cap table early with so little capital raised, think long-term. raise the 150K from value-add angels, emphasize "making the pie bigger" to existing investors. Startups and startup investing is unusually binary in outcome: you should focus on increasing your odds of success rather than maximizing value in case of success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If the new investors only got a _tiny percentage_ , would the angels have given you some equity back?

</comment><comment><USER6> The earlier the investor, the more risk they took on. The same terms, if material progress has been made, doesn't seem like the same risk for the same reward.

What is right, and what you can get away with, aren't the same thing. You need more money, a first option to the original investors makes sense, unless the new investors are strategic. In that case, the current investors should understand that value and you can use that to justify the same terms (lower discount for the money, but additional discount for the strategic value).

Any restructuring should be as transparent as possible and you should spend as much time as necessary explaining your rationale to the parties involved. They don't have to like it, but they deserve to know what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER7> A deal is a deal. My concern would be showing weakness, and thereby inviting all your investors to walk all over you. What happens in the next round? All your current guys start whining. A deal is a deal. Don't willingly spill your blood in shark infested waters.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've seen @joshu occasionally answer questions like this on twitter, so it may be worth pinging him for an uninterested angel's perspective.

From my pov, it sounds to me like the early angel is basically whining. Personally, I'd offer to let him or her buy up and preserve a pro-rata. My decision would depend on if this is an experienced angel with a good rep, or someone who isn't particularly experienced / not used to how investments go and the idea that you can lose. ie if you didn't raise that $150k, this angel's investment would be worth $0 so that's it's own reward.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think increasing their equity, even if only a small amount, is a gesture that will garner goodwill with your early investors. Cultivating an attitude of "we are in this together" cannot be a bad move for any startup.

<comment><USER3> Based on what? The 1st investor should know better. They should say, "we believe in you, and we want to offer the additional funding." This is not a game. If OP has something that investors are interested in then they should be able to raise cash for the good of all shareholders. The OP should go to the original investor and offer them the first right of refusal. This is a business. The angel should say, "cool here is the 150K" if they believe in the company. This is either a new angel that has have never done this before or an angle that is trying to take advantage of a new founder. The right thing for the OP to do is to tell the investors they need addtional funding and ask if they want to particpate.

For what it is worth I have invested in angel rounds, arranged for a startup to receive angel rounds, done a few startups and have held board seats. Also to the OP - warrants with a note is something to look at.

<comment><USER9> Nobody is implying dealing with investors is a game. Communication is key. I guess I assumed the OP did communicate with the original investors. My mistake with that assumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the complaining investor new or old? I would think obviously old but your description makes it seem like it's one of the new ones.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yep, it's smart and it's the right thing to do.</comment>


Rename smack-my-bitch-up - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-scripts/issues/14 <comment><USER2> Some people have very thin skin.</comment>


Marion Stokes: A woman who taped 30 years of TV news - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-48190528/marion-stokes-the-woman-who-taped-30-years-of-tv-news <comment><USER2> Transdiffusion, a small UK based group of TV presentation enthusiasts, have been recording and archiving material related to TV logos, idents and presentation since the 1950s.

[https://www.transdiffusion.org/](https://www.transdiffusion.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Also recently seen on HN: This gentleman recorded 55,000 boxing matches over 40 years:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471312)

</comment><comment><USER4> In the US there is the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, dating to 1968:

 _The core collection of the Archive consists of regularly scheduled newscasts from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News. Special news reports are recorded in addition to these newscasts, including material from other networks. We record broadcasts as they are televised, provide the widest access allowable within copyright for scholarship and research, and preserve the content for future generations. The database currently includes 1,116,752 records, including abstracts at the story level of regular evening newscasts and catalog records for each special news report._

[https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu](https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu)

[https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/about](https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/about)

The archive itself is not publicly viewable online, but the rundowns are (including national advertising spots running with the programmes), and are text searchable. Trends in programme length, topics, and to some extent quality and bias, are evident. It's a hugely useful, little-known, treasure.

Example; every nightly news story on "privacy" since 1968:

[https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/search?utf8=&query=privacy&but...](https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/search?utf8=&query=privacy&button=)

Archives, including (again, text-searchable) close captioning, here at the Internet Archive ([https://archive.org/details/tv](https://archive.org/details/tv)), are hugely useful to researchers and even investigative reporters. Here at WashPo:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/08/televisio...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/08/television- news-coverage-democrats-is-uneven-not-way-you-might-think/)

Andrew Tyndall, independent news analyst, has monitored TV news since 1988, publishing review and data at The Tyndall Report:

[http://tyndallreport.com](http://tyndallreport.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Would be interesting to know if those tapes have Teletext info which can also be recovered, as well as the news video:

      https://github.com/ali1234/vhs-teletext/

(Not sure whether this works in the US, as I'm in the UK)

<comment><USER6> The US never used Teletext, but we do have closed captioning, which should be recoverable and would provide some machine-processable date. Much less than Teletext would, though, for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's gonna be awesome to learn history in the next 100, 200 or 500 years. Video records for all the major and minor events, archived since the second half of 20th century.

Although they may complain that it's "just a video", not a virtual reality or something. Also, we need to last that long.

<comment><USER8> Now that video forgery is easy [1], I think the mountain of video footage will make learning history in a few hundred years painful and difficult.

How would you have any idea what happened and what didn't, from the 21st century on?

Yes, historians worked without video or photography for centuries, but most people aren't as rigorous as a historian, and it's going to take a long time for our cultural norms to adjust to video being "default untrusted".

Furthermore, the written word and eyewitness testimony aren't nearly as important in our culture as they used to be, precisely because of the "pics/video or it didn't happen" mindset. Again, that's what historians have relied on for centuries, but it's considered unacceptable now in favor of technology that's just become completely untrustable. There won't _be_ trustable records for people studying our near-future.

Finally, since we've all given up on "primitive" technology like dead trees, most information is stored digitally now. That's great for convenience but terrible for long-term archives [2]. Digital information will vanish if not tended actively and carefully, and historians have long relied on physical artifacts like letters that largely don't exist any more.

Our culture is a nightmare for future historians.

Edit: expanded on why it will be hard to study history in a few centuries

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake) 2: [http://howicode.nateeag.com/data- preservation.html](http://howicode.nateeag.com/data-preservation.html)

<comment><USER9> I am not a blockchain enthusiast but proof of authenticity is a use case that I've heard. It could be used to prove (for example), that a specific video existed in it's current form at a certain point in time.

<comment><USER10> That doesn't mean the video is real though!

<comment><USER11> At least you can track how the propaganda changes focus over time.

<comment><USER10> True we gotta look on the bright side

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how many people are doing this now and what media they are storing to.

<comment><USER13> I only watch TV through downloads (get_iplayer & youtube-dl), and I have kept it all [edit: only things I downloaded intending to watch, not all TV]. This is since about 2008:

        fs:/volume1/media   14T  8.0T  5.6T  59% /mnt/media

The reason? Why not - disks are cheap. The hard thing is deleting something since I don't know if I might want to watch it again. And at almost no real cost I don't have to make that decision.

Edit: Some stats: 20,269 TV programmes; 11,830 radio programmes; 925 movies

<comment><USER14> Do you maintain any kind of database or additional metadata alongside all of those video files? I only ask because the default filenames generated by youtube-dl don't give you anything more than the title and ID for a particular video and I imagine it's difficult to search among tens of thousands of media files without contextual data about the files.

<comment><USER15> yt-dl has a full-fledged output template system. It's just the default output template that is only the title+id.

[https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube- dl/blob/master/README.md...](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube- dl/blob/master/README.md#output-template)

Also, it has the --write-* switches, in particular --write-info-json, which allow to store metadata data. in files, and --add-metadata to embed (some) of the metadata in the file itself.

Of course, the metadata is only as good as the site in question provides + the yt-dl plugin handing a particular site supports.

<comment><USER14> I was familiar with the -o template system for filenames, but wasn't aware of the --write-info-json flag which is very useful to me. It makes a lot more sense than overloading the filenames with usernames and everything else only to parse it out after download.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone know if this has been digitized yet or when it will be available? I am so impressed by this woman's work. So much of our history is being lost, forgotten, or is inaccessible by the general public.

<comment><USER17> It was mentioned in the article that the Internet Archive is in the process of digitizing it. No mentioned of a time frame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Closest I ever came was recording a few weeks of MTV's 120 minutes.

<comment><USER19> I've actually been searching for tapes of 120 minutes, since all you can usually find online are snippets.

Did you ever digitize them?

<comment><USER20> > _all you can usually find online are snippets_

I haven't looked too closely, but what's this then:

[https://120minutes.tylerc.com/](https://120minutes.tylerc.com/)

<comment><USER21> This is basically an index of the music videos played, not an actual recording of the broadcasts</comment></comment></comment></comment>