Airplane Mode - <AUTHOR> http://minimalmac.com/post/3165411533/airplane-mode

<comment><USER2> I've read this three times now on the assumption that its point was going over my head - I'm now fairly sure it's not.

The lesson I've learned is not to turn my phone off, in case I want to show someone pictures stored on it.

<comment><USER3> Read it again. The real message is when meeting with a friend you haven't seen in a while, make sure you set it up so you get a lot of calls, emails, and texts. Then when you go to airplane mode you seem super important, yet considerate.

And then when you go home, make sure to thank your mom for the messages.

<comment><USER4> There's a business opportunity here: Make me look busy. Now somebody tell me its already been done.

<comment><USER5> It has already been done. I can't remember exactly, but I believe a Samsung phone came out in Korea recently that lets you hold a button on the side that fakes a phone call to you. No iPhone app yet though.

Edit: screen shot of the samsung manual (apparently this is a feature on a lot of their phones): <http://craphound.com/images/e7KOe.jpg>

<comment><USER6> Of course, now that it's a standard feature everyone is going to wonder if you _really_ had a phone call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The nokia E-series E72 has the neatest feature. If you put it face down it silences all alarts. Nokia had a great ad campaign for real face time using this - "Somethings are more important than email".

The iphone and android badly need these features.

<comment><USER8> HTC has a feature like that for its "HTC Sense" phones.

From <http://www.htc.com/www/htcsense/index.html> :

"Ever fumbled with your phone because it went off at full-blast during a meeting? Well, don't worry! Now as soon as you lift your phone up to see who's calling, the ringer volume gets lower. Want it silenced completely? Just flip it over."

<comment><USER9> There used to be an Android app that did that. Though I can't remember the name of it, it was incredibly handy.

I lost it at some point and, not remembering the app name, have failed to re- download it.

<comment><USER10> I think Locale is supposed to do that, but I don't have an android device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _My first thought was, wow, what a show of respect for me and our time together._

It saddens me that not being a rude ass is somehow worthy of blog-post out of the ordinary praise these days.

<comment><USER12> And then get >200 points on HN

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why are people always feeling "honored and humbled" these days? I think they must be confused. Just feel honored and get on with your day.

<comment><USER7> People aren't. Obnoxious bloggers are. and this guy is particularly bad.

<comment><USER13> That's the surprising thing -- Patrick's an exceptionally nice guy in person, but his social-media wankery is, for whatever reason, completely insufferable to me. Especially when he's overtly gunning to claim Gruber's pulpit. In that way, he's much like Zed Shaw from the Zed's So Fucking Awesome days: A kind, down-to-earth guy with a strangely abrasive online persona.

Citation: I attended undergrad at Patrick's last employer, and worked indirectly with him in IT Services for a year. He really is fantastic in person.

<comment><USER4> I didn't mean to pick on Patrick. This "honored/humbled" thing has been going on in our culture for a while now.

<comment><USER14> According to Google, it's been on the rise since the 40's.

[http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=honored+and+humbl...](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=honored+and+humbled&year_start=1850&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

<comment><USER4> Pretty interesting graph. It started growing exponentially in the 90's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very respectful, and awesome closing off of the world temporarily.

Another 'use' I find - in areas where you know you'll have no signal. With the cell radios screaming to contact a station, drains the battery worse than more or less any other part (unless you have the display on 100% brightness as well as on all the time)

<comment><USER16> Nice to see this hypothesis observed by others. I long suspected that "failing to handshake with a cell tower" incurred a significant drain on the battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tow knights, upon meeting, show their mutual respect for each other by extending their hands away from their weapons and towards one another.

A modern equivalent is born?

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. I thought Airplane Mode only turned off the cellphone radio. But, nope, I just tried it and it does turn off the WiFi as well. You can, however, manually turn WiFi back on, leaving the cell radio off.

</comment><comment><USER19> More or less why I got an iPod touch instead of an iPhone. Still have a crappy $10 phone off Ebay.

</comment><comment><USER20> I feel like this is a misuse of Airplane Mode. If your photos, etc. are "on the cloud", via Dropbox or something, they may require internet access to use. I think a more appropriate feature, which as far as I'm aware, doesn't exist, would be a no-interruption mode (probably needs a better name) that holds all notifications and calls during the time it's enabled.

<comment><USER21> You can enable just wifi when you are in Airplane mode. That's what I do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As soon as my head hits the pillow, my iPhone goes into Airplane Mode.

<comment><USER23> I do that, but mostly to avoid "super-airplane mode", also known as a dead battery.

<comment><USER24> Why not just plug it in at night? Or, are you trying to limit the duration of your charges?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I put my phone in airplane mode for exactly this reason--it's not just being super busy, but I have lots of push notifications setup which in my daily life are helpful but while I'm sleeping or socializing not. However I need various other functions on the phone (e.g. my alarm) so turning it off not an option, moreover switching from airplane mode->non much faster.

</comment><comment><USER26> The irony is that Airplane Mode doesn't permit you use your phone on an airplane (at least per US airline policy, despite the FAA indicating that airlines may let passengers use phones in airplane mode).

At least it lets you have a conversation without being interrupted.

<comment><USER27> I use my iPhone, HTC Incredible and 3G iPad (in airplanes modes) all the time on US flights. It's never been an issue.

I think that if an inadvertently left-on cell phone could truly disrupt an airplane we'd see MUCH stricter enforcement. Otherwise you're implying a band of terrorists playing Angry Birds in all-radios-on mode stands a significant chance of downing an airliner...

<comment><USER28> I would guess the average passenger airplane flight has 50-100 cellphones on throughout the entire flight.

If cell phone interference crashed planes, no plane would make it off the ground. I doubt there has been a passenger flight in the last ten years that took off without at least one cell phone operating in the cabin.

<comment><USER29> [http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/unsafe-at-any- ai...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/unsafe-at-any-airspeed)

tl;dr Cellphones and other electronics are more of a risk than you think

<comment><USER28> If they were, planes would be crashing left and right.

They aren't.

Who are you going to believe, some engineers writing in a magazine or a massive experiment conducted over a period of 20 years involving every single passenger flight? Tens of millions of flights per year. Cell phones on every single one of them. No crashes due to cell phones.

Cell phones do not cause unacceptable interference with airplanes. Q.E.D.

<comment><USER29> Safety is operated by statistics, not boolean logic.

Things are not either safe or unsafe. It all depends on trade-offs, and what risks we can accept in exchange of other values, such as comfort.

The article mentionds, though, two worrying things such as the bias in investigations and ongoing GPS technology usage increase.

I would also stress that it _might be not_ linear. Combined risk of few hundrends of turned on cell phones is not a mere multiplication of risk for a single device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This makes sense but is not "hacker news". It should not have made it to one of the top news - it's just obvious common sense.

<comment><USER31> it's actually a great social hack

i) communicates you are important / busy enough to be getting lots of inbound communication

ii) makes the other person feel important that you value their time

iii) it's a trick because it's a totally natural and awesome transition into being present with another person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Airplane mode is also good for keeping your sperm count up when it's in your pockets.

<comment><USER33> Is it really that bad? I'd like to see a study on this, at the moment I'm just a bit freaked out from reading 4HB but I'll definitely try to remember doing this

<comment><USER12> What is 4HB?

<comment><USER10> The Four-Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss. There's a chapter on gaining progeny, for those who want that; he observes that when you put a cellphone next to rats for an hour a day their sperm count and free testosterone are lowered.

<comment><USER12> Tim Ferriss observed this? Or in which peer-reviewed journal did the study appear?

<comment><USER10> Strangely, I couldn't find a place in the book where he directly cites the dozens of studies he says he read; but he does quote from this one: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19578660></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Lambdo – Feature engineering and machine learning together - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/asavinov/lambdo <comment><USER2> > Feature engineering is a mechanism of creating new levels of abstraction in > knowledge representation because each (non-trivial) feature extract and > makes explicit some piece of knowledge hidden in the data. It is almost > precisely what deep learning is intended for. In this sense, feature > engineering does what hidden layers of a neural network do or what the > convolutional layer of a neural network does

Very intriguing and thoughtful statement. I hadn't ever thought of it that way.

<comment><USER3> This is essentially repeating your quote, but an "aha moment" clicked for me when I read that what successful neural networks are basically doing is such good feature learning that the problem can be solved by a simple linear model in the end.

E.g. if you have an N-layer neural network, N-1 layers are doing feature learning, and the Nth layer is a simple {logistic, multinomial/softmax, gaussian, poisson, ...} model

<comment><USER4> Related:"the kernel trick" [1].

"The kernel trick avoids the explicit mapping that is needed to get linear learning algorithms to learn a nonlinear function or decision boundary."

(what powers Support Vector Machines, the neural networks of the 90s, and still alive and kicking today)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_method#Mathematics:_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_method#Mathematics:_the_kernel_trick)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Lambdo is a workflow engine which simplifies data analysis by combining in one analysis pipeline

* Feature engineering and machine learning: Lambdo does not distinguish them and treats them as data transformations

* Model training and prediction: both feature definitions and ML models can be trained as part of one workflow

* Table population and column evaluation: workflow consists of nodes of these two types. This makes it similar to Bistro: [https://github.com/asavinov/bistro](https://github.com/asavinov/bistro)

Lambdo is intended for the following use cases:

* Numerous derived features with parameters derived from the data

* Regular re-training is required by using the same features as those to be used during prediction

* Time series analysis because it is where the quality of derived features is especially important

* Customization via user-defined Python functions

</comment><comment><USER5> I definitely see the need for packages like this. So much of a data scientist's time is spent on feature engineering, but there are relatively few tools out there that are trying to improve that step in the process compared to tools for the modeling step.

I see this tool as a something that can help with the deployment piece of the feature engineering. As things stand, it's "easy" to package and deploy modeling code, but much harder to package up your feature engineering workflow. In part because there is no agreed upon standard for developing feature engineering pipelines.

I'd be curious how this could be combined with a library like Featuretools ([http://github.com/featuretools/featuretools/](http://github.com/featuretools/featuretools/)) which helps automate the discovery of features, but currently has less functionality related to deployment.

(full disclosure: I work on Featuretools)

<comment><USER6> I think there is a need for deployment approaches for both: feature engineering and modeling. For example, please consider feature scaling and case when the mean of the feature is drifting. Then the feature engineering and probably ML model needs to be updated. I'm not aware of ready solutions for such problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Things I always want when looking at something new:

\- Where does it sit in relation to other data science components?

\- What does it integrate with, and what is it agnostic to?

\- Smallest self-contained use case? I see some examples in the repo readme but they are not self-contained so its harder for me to imagine its use

<comment><USER8> Your comment reminds me so much of my PM who asks questions like these to give an appearance that he is putting in some serious effort and energy to understand. Add a few words like 'value', 'leverage' and 'resonate' and the impersonation would be pitch perfect .... Looks up contact detail oops spoke to soon should have guessed.

<comment><USER7> > 'value', 'leverage' and 'resonate'

You could not be more wrong about my perspective though.

My question is from this perspective: I use tensorflow, keras, numpy, scikit- learn, pandas, and Im looking to understand how I would integrate these.

<comment><USER8> Oh I know, from your past comments {you are more famous than you think :}

<comment><USER7> Not sure what you mean by this vague statement.

<comment><USER8> Nothing sinister. I take interest in ML related threads so I remember your HN handle.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CrossHair – SMT Assisted Testing for Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pschanely/CrossHair <comment><USER2> Hey there, this project looks really great! There seems to be some overlap with the Hypothesis-Auto[1] project. Have you looked into collaborating with Tim and perhaps merging your work together? It seems like it would be very powerful!

[1] [https://timothycrosley.github.io/hypothesis- auto/](https://timothycrosley.github.io/hypothesis-auto/)

<comment><USER3> Can confirm that I would be happy to collaborate on this project, it looks really cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be amazing. It's easy to turn CrossHair into an absurdly slow fuzz tester (imagine hashing or printing your inputs early in the process). I think the ideal product would be good at both symbolic and concrete tactics, and the minimization logic of hypothesis would be really nice to have too. I will be in touch!

<comment><USER4> Portfolio of a slow but precise fuzzer + fast imprecise fuzzer is the easiest integration. Start both together and return the one which fails first. SMT solvers are often complementary with samplers.

However, it would be very interesting to see if a closer integration of symbolic and sampling methodologies is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi all! My primary objective with this post is to find potential collaborators and people willing to try it. (and file bugs!)

If you do try it, I'd encourage you to think of it as an exercise in formally documenting your code's behavior, with the side benefit that CrossHair can sometimes help you ensure the correctness of that documentation.

And, of course, feedback of any kind at all is honestly appreciated. Thanks for being the awesome community that you are!

<comment><USER5> This is a really minor nitpick that I am expressing to help you market this better. Instead of saying (defunct) PEP 316 just say inspired which communicates that you don't do everything of pep 316 also .

<comment><USER6> Yes, please. I was confused when I first read this - I thought "why would I want to use a tool based on outdated syntax?". Maybe "PEP 316-inspired syntax"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree that this is confusing. I've stolen and committed your suggestion. Thank you both!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool! Ever looked at the Viper project? It's the only other system in python that I know of targeting pre and post conditions

[https://www.pm.inf.ethz.ch/research/viper.html](https://www.pm.inf.ethz.ch/research/viper.html)

[https://www.pm.inf.ethz.ch/research/nagini.html](https://www.pm.inf.ethz.ch/research/nagini.html)

Another thing that might be of interest is HOLpy. I have no idea what the state of that is. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.05970](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.05970)

I was fiddling around recently with way jankier methods than what you've done here [http://www.philipzucker.com/programming-and-interactive- prov...](http://www.philipzucker.com/programming-and-interactive-proving- with-z3py/)

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks really cool. Love to see z3 being used for tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Z3 is impressive. I intend to do a write-up of how I chose to model Python values in it soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So this is Symbolic Execution based testing for Python?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right! We pick different choose execution paths arbitrarily and accumulate constraints in an SMT solver as we go. It's implemented with special objects that look just like ints, strings, etc; this might help:

[https://twitter.com/pschanely/status/1176151748844691456](https://twitter.com/pschanely/status/1176151748844691456)</comment></comment>


Toy Channels on YouTube are Ruining Society - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/5q5frd/toy_channels_are_ruining_society/dcwttxq/ <comment><USER2> We removed the youtube app from our iPad, because our 4 year old was starting to get too deep into these.

There's a lot of great stuff on Youtube for kids (genuinely, whole-heartedly, terrific stuff; I was amazed), but there's also a lot of very, very weird and sexualized and violent content. Targeted at young children. And unfortunately, the 'recommended' sidebar is a little bit too eager in sending kids down those paths.

I see some comments comparing it to 'video games ruining society' and 'violent cartoons'. No, it is not at all the same thing. I have no problem handing the ipad to my son and allowing him to select a show on Netflix. Youtube crossed my 'wtf creepy' threshold a few too many times.

<comment><USER3> It's disturbing to see our id reflected back at us in the behavior of our children, but I remember playing with action figures. There was the run of the mill blood, guts and violence, but when the girls toys came out all kinds of freaky stuff went down.

As we get older we compartmentalize, but kids won't hesitate to mix and match potty humour, violence, and sexuality in their role play. It's surprising these videos exist, but it's not surprising that they're popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone commenting even watched the linked video? The channel being featured is horrifying for parents. This isn't about ads for toys (we had those, they were GIJoes or Transformers/Barbies). This is about 'content' that preys on children for views featuring overtly sexual themes and all sorts of violence, including rape.

As a parent this frankly scares me.

<comment><USER5> My little girl loves seeing some videos on youtube. Began with playdoh eggs being opened to show surprises, now moved to little stories about girls taking care of her dolls. I try to watch together, sometimes I just listen to see what's being said or what noises are being made.

Sometimes I have to interfere, but nothing scatological or sexual has arised yet (in those videos).

Ahh, that eternal vigilance you have to make...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How easy it is to start to sound like our parents' generation eventually! Video games were ruining society once and, before that, discotheques, TVs and rock music.

I have two young children who enjoy YouTube more than TV and while they do watch a lot of weird (kids') channels, they've learnt a lot too and I haven't seen it play out in any negative way _so far_. At the least, they've seen people with many more opinions and of many more cultures and races than I had at their age - a good thing, to me.

Let's keep an eye on this and continue to be observant, caring parents who don't give up responsibilities to an iPad, but at the same time let's not be the parents who say the Smashing Pumpkins' lyrics are scrambling your brains when they aren't.

<comment><USER7> While I agree with the premise, I'd have to say there's quite a bit more artistic value to Smashing Pumpkins or Marilyn Manson, or whatever other 'satanic' artists our parents hated than these strange, mindless kids YouTube videos.

<comment><USER8> I would argue that artistic value is _highly_ subjective. People used to argue that jazz was just random noise and nonsense for a long time.

<comment><USER9> True, and I don't want to jump the overprotective-parent gun here, but what I think is worth keeping an eye on with these videos is how they are not an underrepresented group expressing their creativity, but rather a very well represented group targeting a vulnerable audience. There are no easy lines to draw, but I think it does bear further scrutiny and discussion (especially from folks used to defending forms of media from demonization.)

<comment><USER8> I think that's the stance that parents _should_ have. As a non-parent, I respect that the line between silly-but-harmless and silly-and-harmful can be very blurry. You are trying to see the world through two different sets of eyes, and those are going to conflict. It can be a tough call on where to draw the line because while I _very_ strongly believe in free-speech and freedom from censorship for adults, I understand that for children it's completely different. Especially when all children are not the same.

Ultimately I think it's important to know what your children are looking at and watching, especially when it comes to the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is interesting -- I never would have suspected seeing the channel linked above (h3h3productions) on a HN post.

Back to the point, YouTube has always had a problem with algorithms. It's fun to see new trends on YT from time to time, but not consistently for 3 months. There's no filtering out video suggestions, if for example you are only interested in technology.

Likewise, on the YouTube trending tab, it's almost guaranteed you'll see CNN, BuzzFeed, TBS, VEVO every day. Instead of "Trending", I'd like to see an "Explore" tab that is personalized based on my _specific interests_, not the assumed interests gathered from the videos I've watched.

Edit: I now realize that this isn't comment isn't directly related to the video, but I the link above shows that YouTube hasn't been strict enough on their policies. The people who make these toy channels aren't contributing to the YouTube community -- they're just cluttering it with unoriginal videos that miraculously make it to millions of user feeds.

</comment><comment><USER11> Youtube is hard on parents. So I wrote a TamperMonkey script to redirect to a blank page when a video ended.

<comment><USER12> Awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How did these videos evolve to be the way that they are? Is it just titling with a combination of terms that kids are likely to hit in a search, plus colors/sounds/expressive faces/weird non-sequiturs that make kids laugh and watch the video to the end?

</comment><comment><USER14> While interesting, I can't see how there is a difference between this and cartoons.

<comment><USER15> Funny you mention that. Growing up, I remember watching the Transformers cartoon, and begging for the toys. Years later, I watched a retrospective program on the series, where they noted that The first episode was just a long form advert, and was so popular, they ordered a series, of toy commercials.

So nothing is totally new here, except that the average youtuber seems to have no ethicical qualms about pushing any product, while networks did, and still do, qualify their advertisers.

<comment><USER14> Now that we're grown up, the transformers "movies" are really commercials for General Motors products. I seem to recall one movie even having just a dozen or so frames of the new Corvette before it was publicly available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well it's easiest to addict them when they're young and clueless.

</comment><comment><USER17> Out of curiosity, has anyone tried making these? Is it relatively easy to get views?

</comment><comment><USER18> >This video has 661m views 600k likes and 231k dislikes. Its not because kids disliked it, its because they keep dropping their tablet and grab it before falling on the dislike button.

[citation needed]</comment>


Malaysia seeks $7.5B in reparations from Goldman Sachs - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-politics-1mdb-goldman/malaysia-seeks-7-5-billion-in-reparations-from-goldman-sachs-ft-idUSKCN1OK0GU <comment><USER2> In case we forget: Here's Matt Taibbi's epic, and fact-checked, rant against that investment bank.

[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the- grea...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-great- american-bubble-machine-195229/)

Taibbi's lede? "The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. "

<comment><USER3> I've no intent on defending Goldman but taibbi is an idealogue not a journalist. He belongs in a commentary page not given credit as a journalist

<comment><USER4> Also a piece of trash human: [https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2017/10/27/tw...](https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2017/10/27/twenty- years-ago-in-moscow-matt-taibbi-was-a-misogynist-asshole-and-possibly-worse)

<comment><USER5> They wrote that as fiction.

[https://twitter.com/onlxn/status/923966695554785280/photo/1](https://twitter.com/onlxn/status/923966695554785280/photo/1)

<comment><USER6> 'I was obviously joking' is the go-to defense of people who are acutely embarrassed. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen that excuse trotted out. As I always say when someone tries this in person 'if only one of us is laughing it wasn't a joke.'

<comment><USER7> > 'I was obviously joking'

That's not at all reflective of the cited text.

First off, he never even implied 'obvious' \- which is used to blame the reader/listener for not getting it.

Second, while he does refer to his view of the material (at the time) as satire, his current view (at least in the cited text) is clearly, and solely, regret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1MDB is the most bizarre scandals I've ever heard. A 27-year-old convinces the Prime Minister of Malaysia to let him manage country's sovereign wealth fund, and then he proceeds to fritter almost $2 billion away throwing multi-million dollar parties and funding the Wolf of Wall Street. How did he get away with all of it for so long?

<comment><USER9> > How did he get away with all of it for so long?

Corruption. He fritter'ed a great deal of this money to precisely the same Prime Minister who selected him.

This wasn't unique, either. This sort of corruption is much more pervasive than most people believe. In China many of the top party officials are billionaires. Vladimir Putin is widely believed to have massively enriched himself during his reign.

Frankly, the biggest surprise is that the corruption in this case was caught.

<comment><USER10> "massively enriched" is a bit of an understatement. He's believed to be one of the wealthiest people in the world and it's why Obama put those sanctions on him and his buddies.

<comment><USER11> He's been robbing his country blind to make him and his allies extremely rich.

<comment><USER12> Source?

As opposed to US politicians like the Bushes, Clintons and Obamas? Or any of the countless corrupt puppet dictators that the US installed around the world?

Listen, I know they're pushing really hard for a war right now; but unless you're right up there at the top of the pyramid, war is hell.

The only thing that will ever get us out of this hole is truth, and truth starts with not spreading BS.

<comment><USER13> The Bushes/Clintons/Obamas make their money from because people want to hear what they have to say (e.g. speeches, books), not because they steal money from the public coffers.

<comment><USER12> Right :)

The Clinton's Uranium deal with Rosatom is a nice example of how this works; of course you can't just give politicians piles of money, it needs to come with a bedtime story for the voters.

<comment><USER14> You've done zero research about this, then.

A Canadian company owned uranium reserves and wanted to sell the ownership of them to Rosatom. Not the physical resources, which cannot leave the country, just the ownership.

This still requires government oversight, so 8 different agencies had to sign off on it. All agencies did, including the state department. Hillary was not involved in the decision to approve the sale, apart from in charge of one of the many departments overseeing it.

<comment><USER15> One last bit that people ignore -- The Clinton Foundation Initiative is a Public Charity (as opposed to a private foundation like the DJT Foundation) managed by a team of professionals subject to regular audits. Everyone one of their financial reports is posted on their website (by law), it would be public knowledge and it would be illegal if the Clintons benefitted financially in any way from the activities of the charity. They didn't. There are reams of pages of IRS guidance around private inurement in 501c groups (aka what was going on at the Trump Family Foundation -- a different type of nonprofit charity).

You can safely ignore anyone who claims that the Clintons took money from anyone if they're claiming that money donated to their charity ends up in their pockets. They don't know what they're talking about.

<comment><USER12> Right :) I do hope they pay you well.

Basically everyone outside of their little communist bubble know what the Clintons are all about. More power, at any cost. But it's ending any second now, mark my words. The stuff that's been trickling out so far is the tip of the iceberg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The commenters saying GS could just withdraw from Malaysia to sidestep any repercussions are mistaken.

First, US prosecutors are also investigating this (and ironically so is the Federal Reserve). Now US banks might get soft glove treatment in their home country but so far the American authorities have shown some teeth in this scandal.

Second, GS executives are personally named in law suits. Malaysia has foreign assistance treaties in other countries where GS operates so that'd be sticky.

Finally, the reputation damage from GS withdrawing from a country to avoid a lawsuit would be hugely damaging.

<comment><USER17> GS already has a rotten reputation. I don't think they care.

As for the executives, they will probably hide behind limited liability. Getting the US to hand them over will not be easy.

<comment><USER18> Why do you say that GS has a rotten reputation? They are probably the most respected bank on Wall St.

Also, I know for a fact that they really care about their reputation, and that internally, they are stressing about this.

<comment><USER19> On main street, GS is known as the "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money"

<comment><USER20> Their reputation "on main street" is largely irrelevant to them.

<comment><USER21> > irrelevant

And so is Malaysia

<comment><USER22> Why does anyone care then?

<comment><USER23> Some people take the ferengi viewpoint - if you made a profit and got away with it, you are successful HARD STOP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As much as I dislike GS, I find their interpretation of the story to be far more believable. US government is a paragon of honesty and virtue compared to a lot of foreign governments. Stealing government money is the main goal of those who "serve" in those governments, with the actual job description coming in a distant second or third. GS should have known this would backfire, it's not like they didn't know the money would immediately disappear into the pockets of government officials. They probably counted on those officials not being quite so brazen as to turn around and sue GS.

<comment><USER25> Malaysia was a single party democracy since it's independence, the probability of new party coming into power was very very low since all the democratic institutions like election commission, judiciary were almost destroyed by the previous regime, so based on this GS would have done their risk/reward calculation. But this May, another party came to power and currently the previous prime Minister and lot of officials are charged for corruption in 1MDB.

<comment><USER26> I did not know that their was a changing of the guard.

That explains more

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Concerned South Africans fought Bell Pottinger, a UK PR firm that was known for spreading nastiness around the world; driving it to bankruptcy, after it tried to destabilise the country, as party of a programme of looting being carried out by its clients in South Africa.[1] KPMG has suffered extensive reputational damage for similar reasons, and its international parent had to intervene to contain the contagion.

Malaysia is taking on Goldman Sachs, going where faint-hearted and fearful first-world regulators fear to tread.

Perhaps we'll see more justice coming from unexpected sources.

[1] I don't think Bell Pottinger's erstwhile members have stopped interfering with South Africa but that's a conspiracy theory for another day.

<comment><USER28> We (South Africa) are not (yet) bankrupt.

Bell Pottinger cannot be blamed for our problems. The problem is pure and simple that the state is spending too much money on civil servants and inefficient state owned companies.

<comment><USER27> You're correct, Bell Pottinger is not to blame for the structural problems in the South African economy, and I never said otherwise. However, many of these issues date back decades (apart from a period of economic liberalisation from the late 80s to early 2000s, South African governments have favoured a large degree of state control over the economy). My comment was referring to the bankruptcy of Bell Pottinger, not South Africa.

What Bell Pottinger did, is provide cover for a state capture programme, that, over a short period, funneled money from state owned companies and other parts of the state to the Gupta and Zuma families, and in doing so tried to foment a race war.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Probably not a bad thing for Malaysia if GS didn't operate in their country.

<comment><USER30> what would be most scary is if they for some reason pay the fine to continue to operate there.

<comment><USER31> Isn't scary now if we entertain the idea that Malaysia wouldn't had done that if they had nothing to gain in some form or another from it ?

<comment><USER32> The allegation is that people in the Malaysian government criminally contracted GS. Of course the criminals profited. There's no reason to assume Malaysia did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Anyone can shed light on Goldman's chances to get fair trial from the Malaysian courts?

7.5b is more than 10 times the fee collected by Goldman, why stop there?

<comment><USER34> 10 fold punishments for proceeds of crime are not that rare, why stop there?

<comment><USER35> 10x was legit in Babylon, circa 1754 BC, with the oldest written law concerning this:

Ex. Law #265: "If a herdsman, to whose care cattle or sheep have been entrusted, be guilty of fraud and make false returns of the natural increase, or sell them for money, then shall he be convicted and pay the owner ten times the loss.

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

Innocent until proven guilty was also in the Code of Hammurabi, not sure about the 'eye for an eye' bit or the treatment of slaves though. Nonetheless the precedent of 10x is there.

<comment><USER36> The eye for an eye bit was in there[1], but apparently only for men of the same class:

> 196\. If a superior man should blind the eye of another superior man, they > shall blind his eye.

> 198\. If he should blind the eye [...] of a commoner, he shall weigh and > deliver 60 shekels of silver.

> 199\. If he should blind the eye of a slave of a superior man [...], he > shall weigh and deliver one half of the slave's value (in silver).

[1]: From page 106 of "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" which I was just coincidentally reading on the bus and would def recommend.

<comment><USER35> Thanks for the tip, I will go for the YouTube talk before investing in the book.

baybal2 - sibling comment - was correct and unfairly modded down. A well known leader referenced the Law of Hammurabi the other day.

Coincidentally I was listening to this press conference whilst procrastinating on HN, to come across this story. New to the Law of Hammurabi, I had to check out the Wikipedia page, to read the 'ten times' bit, enabling me to conveniently cut 'n' paste the above comment.

Despite going to school I had not ever heard of Law of Hammurabi before. I have not read it in depth but just that small bit of knowledge regarding the history of written laws has changed how I see and understand the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Key question about this, to me: who has more credibility, Goldman Sachs or the Malaysian government?

I think the answer is Goldman Sachs. That's not praise for them. If it were Singapore filing charges -- and the article suggests they are looking into it -- then I"d believe Singapore.

But the scandal itself tells you a lot about the Malaysian government's credibility and honesty.

<comment><USER38> I would say Malaysian government, since they need to be responsible for 10s of millions of people's life.

<comment><USER39> > I would say Malaysian government, since they need to be responsible for 10s > of millions of people's life.

This is very funny. It's like saying Stalin or Mao commanded superior credibility because they were responsible for tens of millions of lives.

<comment><USER38> I didn't see it that way. Malaysian government is elected democratically, so unlike Stalin/Mao, they are bestowed with power to fulfill the will of the people.

<comment><USER39> Replace with any corrupt elected government then.

> they are bestowed with power to fulfill the will of the people

Bestowed with power != using it properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> GS is offering $1.8 billion

       "Their figure is $1.8 billion. Ours is $7.5 billion," Lim said.

<comment><USER33> As far as I understand it, he refers to Goldman's maximum assumed losses from _all_ the litigations they are involved in, not just 1mdb.

So, no, gs are offering nothing at the moment.

From Goldman's q3 report: 'As of the date hereof, the firm has estimated the upper end of the range of reasonably possible aggregate loss for such matters and for any other matters described below where management has been able to estimate a range of reasonably possible aggregate loss to be approximately $1.8 billion in excess of the aggregate reserves for such matters.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I take it GS will just walk away. It might not be worth to pay that much to operate in Malaysia.

Not to mention, people could just start a separate company if they absolutely need to do business in Malaysia.

<comment><USER41> Singapore and US are also investigating GS. There will most likely not be a "walk away".

> Singapore's widened probe opens a potential new battle front for Goldman > less than a week after Malaysia filed the first criminal charges against the > firm over a relationship that spawned one of the biggest scandals in its > history. Singapore is coordinating closely with the U.S. Justice Department, > which is also investigating Goldman and has filed criminal charges against > two former senior bankers at the firm, the people said.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-21/singapore...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-21/singapore- said-to-expand-1mdb-criminal-probe-to-include-goldman)

<comment><USER17> They might get nailed in the US but I don't think Malaysia is going to see any of that 7.5B they are asking for.

<comment><USER42> They very well may. SDNY isn't going to let customers get screwed when settling with a bank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Most likely they'll settle for a lower sum if they want to continue to operate there, otherwise it might be simpler and cheaper to just pull out of Malaysia.

</comment><comment><USER44> its damages not "reparations", inflammatory no?

</comment><comment><USER45> Am currently reading the book about this scandal "Billion Dollar Whale". Am about 1/3 of the way through it, but thus far i'd put the entirety of the blame here on the Malaysian prime minister, Jho Low, and the willfully incompetent executives hired to stage-manage the 1MDB fund. I don't see any reason to blame GS given what I know so far, though that may change as I make my way through the book.

<comment><USER46> Id blame GS because they arent idiots and would have been fully aware it was fraud, thus are accomplisses and complicit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> _In China many of the top party officials are billionaires. Vladimir Putin is widely believed to have massively enriched himself during his reign._

Even in the US many politicians are far, far wealthier than their official salaries would suggest is plausible.

Update: By the downvoting I know that you all know I mean the Clintons.

<comment><USER48> Chinese too officials are billionaires, American top officials are millionaires at best unless they have money coming in before. You can only make so much on speaking fees and book royalties, while red families like Xi's own and control significant portions of the Chinese economy.

Just reporting on such issues is why most western newspapers have been blocked. They don't even bother trying to refute it, because princeling dominance of the economy an open dirty secret. It also puts better into perspective how the economy is managed in favor of their own interests.

<comment><USER49> Chinese officials are not at billionaires level, millionaires at most. It'll be a huge risk to their political life if they and their families possess billions. It's very likely they could control multiple billionaires though

<comment><USER48> No it isn't. You simply shutdown all discussion about it.

[https://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-leaders-family- worth-a-...](https://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-leaders-family-worth-a- billion-20120629-218qi.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/asia/chinas- preside...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/asia/chinas-president-xi- jinping-investments.html)

And do you remember that discussion about Wen Jiabao's mom controlling a good chunk of China's jewelry industry that got the new york times banned:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family- of...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen- jiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html)

I think Chinese officials are genuinely surprised in how poor western politicians are and how many of them even lack xiaosans.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The DNC Hack Shows How We've Dropped the Ball on Cyberdefense - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/08/what_we_can_learn_from_the_cyberattack_on_the_dnc.html <comment><USER2> > Russia's hacking of the Democratic National Committee's email, and of > Hillary Clinton's campaign files

So now it's being reported as a stone cold fact.

We've had these "facts" before in the Sony breach [1]

A fact never proven but still used as an excuse for Obama to use an executive order to impose further sanctions on N. Korea.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_ha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_hack#U.S._accusations_against_North_Korea)</comment>


Ask HN: What are best practices for deploying an app to a VPS? - <AUTHOR> I am working on an MVP, which initially ran on Heroku to simplify things. However, I'm realizing I need to move to a provider that gives me control of the the server (likely AWS Lightsail since I'm already familiar).
What is the best practice for deploying applications to a VPS? I have found resources for git hooks, but those seem to focus on static websites. I would love to be able to run "git push prod master" and use git/scripts to automate building and deployment.
Do you have any good resources or recommendations for doing this? <comment><USER2> You can use Dokku to manage your server in a Heroku-like fashion.

(Note, I am the Dokku maintainer)

[https://github.com/dokku/dokku/](https://github.com/dokku/dokku/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I'm going to give that a try!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would say that depends on what technologies and/or web servers you want to use

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I suppose it was a little open ended. I'm using Flask, gunicorn, and looking for tools to keep it simple.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Free site monitoring and trust badges - <AUTHOR> https://trustocity.com <comment><USER2> I don't think ads on badges conveys trust.</comment>


Understanding Blockstream, the most important and misunderstood company in Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://thecontrol.co/understanding-blockstream-25af2b6f0084#.g20xdbv7g <comment><AUTHOR> Every successful open-source project needs a company committed to fostering the open-source community and helping it grow.

Blockstream is that company in Bitcoin.</comment>


Looking Back At What I Learned At College - <AUTHOR> http://excid3.com/blog/2011/05/looking-back-at-what-i-learned-at-college/

<comment><USER2> You know what I learned in college? That you can pass all the classes with very little studying, provided that you -learn- the material instead of thinking you can just memorize it. Some classes don't even require that.

I also learned that teaching yourself is WAY faster than having someone hold your hand. And it sticks better, too.

I learned that the only good thing for me in college was being forcibly introduced to new things that I didn't know I needed or liked, and sometimes didn't need and disliked. (But at least now I know!)

I learned that the world sometimes grades on knowledge that isn't actually relevant to the matter at hand. At the time, I thought it was just college, but now I know it actually applies in business, too.

I learned that the right paperwork (homework/degree) means more than actually knowing things and being able to use them. At least, for some people. There are a rare few (bosses and teachers both) that know how to assess people properly.

And I learned that the next time I want to learn something, it will cost me 10s of thousands of dollars less to buy the equipment/supplies and some books and just start doing it myself. (Along with a healthy helping of internet, of course.)

<comment><AUTHOR> While I agree with most of that, there is a lot of value that you get out of it that you may not directly perceive. Making contacts with all these fellow classmates and professors is worth a lot. Sure you would have met a lot of people skipping college but it's a different class of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The most important thing you can learn while at college is the skill of learning. The ability to quickly absorb disparate information and apply it to the task at hand. The _information_ you learn in college is worthless. You will never use it. However, the skill you pick up as a consequence of learning that information is invaluable and will serve you well for the rest of your life. I work on something new and foreign to me on a daily basis ... that skill allows me to learn quickly and solve the problem at hand.

Granted, you can acquire the same skill by going to the library every day and reading up on a myriad of various subjects, then applying what you learned in self-created projects ... but ... that requires a will of steel and frankly, college just seems more fun.

<comment><USER4> I could not agree more - but would also add that in addition to learning about learning, learning about yourself, others, and society is also very important.

I can never understand all these kids who somehow mistakenly believe that the purpose of college is to prepare you for a very specific job. That's what job training is for. College is about fundamentals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What school did you go to? Honestly, it really depends on the type of school you went to. I felt that most of my learning in college came from meeting other really bright and motivated people, which are in higher concentrations in some schools compared to others (note the phraseology -- I did not intend to argue that some schools are better than others)

<comment><USER6> From the author's about page, he says he went to Southern Illinois University.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct, and while I did have a lot of trouble finding people of similar mindsets at school, attending a couple conferences and meeting people online worked out just as well. Having friends who are just as motivated as you makes all the difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I disagree that general education courses are "crap". I think people greatly undervalue the skills those courses teach when they pass them off as useless.

I'm graduating in about a week myself, and reflecting back on my college education, some of the liberal arts courses I was required to take helped me to develop crucial communication skills - which technical/scientific people stereotypically lack.

Also, taking some of those introductory science courses, like chemistry, help to create a foundation of knowledge to intelligently speak about other scientific ideas. Could you learn this on your own time? Sure, but if you don't particularly like a topic, it's unlikely you're going to devote your precious free time to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the same time, my chemistry courses were nothing more than prolonged versions of what I took in high school. I didn't really gain much from them because they were 300+ students and skewed grading scales (85%+ was an A).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> College is a culture, not just an institution. You think differently (as evidenced by the large blog entry describing exactly how he thinks differently). Others who shared a similar experience have a huge common ground to speed up communication etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> How do you find time to work on personal projects after all the school work and possibly part time job? I have so many things that I want do but there just isn't enough time after all the assignments and the job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Luckily for me my job of 20 hours a week has been quite flexible working in my free time. It's also not been terribly challenging Rails development which makes things easier. Aside from that I have pretty much spent my last semester working from 9am till 11pm all 7 days a week. Glad it's over now though! :)</comment></comment>


Rackspace Gets Behind Cassandra - <AUTHOR> http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2009/09/23/the-cassandra-project/

<comment><USER2> Any recent large-scale experiences with Rackspace Cloud?

<comment><USER3> It's a very safe deployment environment because you can always switch to dedicated metal for the high performance parts. Shopify runs like this.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Framous - Your Photos. Your Personality. - <AUTHOR> https://framousapp.com

<comment><USER2> Lovely design, but unfortunately loading times are super slow for me... The header and footer loads fine, but the loading graphic for the middle section was turning for approx. 60-90 seconds before the content loaded :(

Then, once the content is loaded, the animation between the "About Framous > Select a layout > Select Photos > Select a Frame > Get Framous!" pages also takes too long, which spoils the user experience in my opinion.

Great start though. If you can improve these issues, I think you will have a really nice site.

<comment><USER3> Yes, super slow for me as well. Love the concept though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Photos uploaded to Facebook are usually not in high resolution, do the prints turn out well enough?

</comment><comment><USER5> That is some really fantastic front end design.

</comment><comment><USER6> Loading time was fine for me. I was actually really impressed with the design and animation. Great job for just launching.

However, I also was curious about the pricing. I couldn't even find it on your FAQ page.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The collages are generated by us using the highest quality FB photos available to us. Its printed at 300 dpi. The quality if coming from a decent camera can be quite good. Even droid and iPhone images uploaded with the mobile client are more than acceptable for most consumers.

Our plan is to integrate other image services over time.

Thanks for all the feed back!

If you want you can get a collage half off by usin the discount code 'friends2012'

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER7> You might want to consider a stepped permissions model for the Facebook auth. Asking for a crapton of permissions up front before establishing any trust with the user can be off-putting.

For example, get the email first, give users more info about pricing, how it works, etc., then get photo permissions.

And don't ask for permissions you don't need. Why ask for access to my friends' likes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Like counts are used in photo sorting/selection. We are still testing that feature.

<comment><USER7> You can add more permissions later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> that's how it looks for me <http://i.imgur.com/edS1S.png>

</comment><comment><USER9> I like your concept (and the name is great).

You are probably already doing this, but I would definitely a/b test the speed of the animation on your landing page if you can. ~3 seconds seems like a lot of transition time for me but I can see why it might not be if the data says that it works.

</comment><comment><USER10> Created my frame, left the site, came back, and placed an order.

Did not realize framous had not saved my picture orientation properly. Emailed to cancel order so I could place a new one. No response.

Now I will not be placing a new order at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, we did respond and refunded your order. Sorry for the delay in that response we were still getting our operations up and running.

Feel free to use the free code if you would be willing to give us another try. We are sorry it wasn't an ideal experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This would be awesome except for the huge reliance on facebook. Facebook kills the quality of the photos I take, I would prefer to upload high resolution photos for print. Flickr integration would be more applicable for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there a pricing page?

</comment><comment><USER13> That front-end design is ridiculous. How did you do it?

</comment><comment><USER14> Your site design for iOS vanishes. There's a brief flash of a colored background and then no styling at all.

You need to list pricing info.

Another concern that you need to address is photo quality. Facebook really chews up photos that are uploaded. I'm a photographer and despise what they do to high quality images. I only upload for friends to view and it irks me they'll never see images in their true form.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> launched today

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> made with MongoDB

<comment><USER16> This is a strange thing to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> No pricing is a huge red flag for photo printing sites. It usually means it costs something ridiculous compared to regular printing sites and even expensive ones like MPix.

Your site took FOREVER to load, and then started blasting colorful backgrounds, making the text in front unreadable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

The price is 39.99

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Do you have an algo create the collage? Either way I could never see myself using your service. Your site loads fine on iPad, but yeah it is slow.

</comment><comment><USER19> The wizard says: "Go away and come back tomorrow!"</comment>


Mashable Now Has More Unique Visitors Than Techcrunch - <AUTHOR> http://siteanalytics.compete.com/mashable.com+techcrunch.com+gigaom.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't read either as much as I used to, and I'll explain why quickly.

Mashable for me is often filled with very Fisher-Price-like news, as if it's written for an eighth grade reading level. Not to rag on him specifically, but I think Ben Parr's level of insight is negligible and just downright boring.

Techcrunch used to be more of interest to me because they covered, ya know, startups. I've said it before, and I have no data on the amount of stories about fresh startups, but it seems they have trailed off significantly in the last year.

<comment><USER3> rscott,

Thank you for the honest feedback.

I do go technical sometimes, but I actually write my pieces so that everyone can understand. I will remember this comment though and try to do a better job of bringing new insights to my writing.

\- Ben

<comment><USER4> Gah, even your comments are boring.

<comment><USER3> My honesty didn't require my wit.

<comment><USER5> Lucky for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting- Mashable's #1 keyword isn't "Mashable"- it's "YouTube". Mashable is on page one of the search for YouTube, which gets... (looking up) 618 MILLION searches per month globally (source: <https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal> ).

<comment><USER7> That's for broad match (e.g. youtube, youtube fights, download youtube videos, etc). Even still, exact match searches (i.e. just [youtube], no modifiers) are at 414 million per month, globally.

Also for further insight, here's a percentage breakout of traffic distribution by Google Ranking:

<http://www.seobook.com/images/traffic-by-rank.jpg>

Though the included universal search results and indented search results for YouTube SERPs make for an extra muddy analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Funny, the graph matches my personal experience very closely. I switched to Mashable earlier this year after all the TC drama got in the way of the actual news.

</comment><comment><USER9> Mashable's rise can attributed to being a selected friend on Twitter. When a Mashable story is released a lot of the times it becomes a trending topic on Twitter; not all, but I've seen this happen more times with them over Techcrunch.

<comment><USER10> Female friend of mine followed Mashable because she thought the avatar was cute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mashable plays the SEO game really well, they threw out tons of HOWTOs and "best of" articles when they first started. If you search for "download youtube videos" it's within the top 5 search results. TechCrunch played the same game for awhile but corporate drama is really just a much juicier topic to write about.

However, I've always found that if you want real startup news CenterNetworks still covers that. If you want general tech and media news Business Insider does a pretty good job, though they're heavily reliant on the Top 10 list format. GigaOm, when Om Malik writes his punditry, is pretty on the spot but the focus is broadband and communications than startups. I like ReadWriteWeb too. Point is: get your news and analysis from as many diverse places as possible.

<comment><USER12> And they got tons of traffic for topical/viral posts like the one about tracking swine flu: <http://mashable.com/2009/04/25/track-swine-flu> It was all over twitter and social networks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Readwriteweb and Gigaom are way behind.

I like Mashable so I don't have any problem with that. It's just interesting to see how fast mashable's visitors are growing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Mashable gets a lot of traffic from Google. Mashable is on the front page for a search for Facebook or Myspace.

</comment><comment><USER14> Compete is frequently wrong. For example, techcrunch.com/advertise shows that TC gets over 3MM+ uniques.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, compared to Analytics, Quantcast, and server logs, they appear to be grossly under-reporting unique visitors to my site. What should be 60,000+ is listed as 8,000. They kind of follow the actual trending, but seem to exaggerate the highs and lows, within their already inaccurate measure.

I'm comparing theninhotline.net to ninwiki.com - the trends are right individually, but ninwiki.com should actually never be higher than theninhotline.net, according to actual measured statistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1 million dollars and 1 million pesos and 1 million euros and 1 million yen are all different.</comment>


Amazon Studios - <AUTHOR> http://studios.amazon.com/ <comment><USER2> Sounds kind of like YC for movies, complete with a "demo day"-style first-look for Warner Brothers for the best. Interesting.</comment>


57 Small Programs that Crash Compilers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/696

<comment><USER2> Small program #58: <http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=10604>

Unlike the others, this one was actually found in production.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what he's doing that csmith[1] doesn't do. I quickly skimmed the paper[2], but nothing jumped out at me. In fact it looks like some of the reducers are implemented as plugins on top of csmith. I guess I'll have to read the whole thing later.

1\. <http://embed.cs.utah.edu/csmith/>

2\. <http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/pldi12-preprint.pdf>

<comment><USER4> _I wonder what he's doing that csmith doesn't do._

The contribution is techniques for reducing the size of test cases, including test cases that might be generated by csmith (you realize the author of the blog post is one of the csmith authors, right?). From the PDLI'12 paper:

 _Using randomized differential testing, Csmith automates the construction of programs that trigger compiler bugs. These programs are large out of necessity: we found that bug-finding was most effective when random programs' average size was 81 KB. In this paper, we use 98 bug-inducing programs created by Csmith as the inputs to several automated program reducers..._

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow... amazing! ;) Only one crash for ICC, is it so better or just less analyzed?

<comment><USER6> My experience working with compiler like products is that susceptibility to crashes is related to choice of data structure for AST/IR. If you allow "weird" stuff in your AST, some component won't handle it well and crash. If your AST is strongly typed (but less flexible) this is less of a problem.

As a concrete example, EDG (used by ICC) has a strongly typed AST. GCC's AST consists of a single type (tree), which allows you to build absurd trees. You could represent the equivalent of

        int x = goto struct { while (1); }

because the data type doesn't prohibit a goto target that happens to be a struct. This will probably explode when it gets to some later compiler stage. If you have distinct goto_node and label_node types, the compiler is less likely to accidentally create such monstrosities. You don't usually get such trees directly from the parser, but from some middle transformation pass.

<comment><USER5> I quote: the stronger is the theory behind, the stronger is the software.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's political ad ban created a disaster in Washington state - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/31/20941917/twitter-political-ads-ban-facebook-washington-state-bob-ferguson <comment><USER2> This problem is self-inflicted. Instead of converting users into paying customers with subscription fees and privacy guarantees, corporate social media platforms tried to use advertising to monetize users by turning them into products.

This was a choice, and one for which Zuckerberg, Dorsey, et al should be held responsible.</comment>


How to Learn JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://sivers.org/learn-js <comment><USER2> I've developed with JS for a few years, toying with vanilla JS (and doing some small bootcamp assignments/projects with it) but for actual projects I've used jQuery, Ember, React, etc. I feel like I was productive and there was little I "couldn't" do without going too far off the rails.

I know how to do an AJAX request, delegate an event listener, and update the DOM, all with vanilla JS. I guess it's useful knowledge if you're going to build a library/framework or hand-tune a critical part of your app, but honestly I have no desire to get too comfortable with low-level JavaScript. There's too much weird syntax and too many gotchas, although ES6+ has improved things a little.

Personal preferences aside, I have some experience as a programming tutor and think pushing people to learn plain JavaScript from the start is setting them up for frustration to the point that many will quit before ever becoming proficient.

Also, I learned Python before I learned JavaScript, but actually started toying with Django before I understood even a decent chunk of Python syntax. Being able to build something less trivial than "Hello World" almost right away gives positive reinforcement and encourages people to keep learning.

My advice for people starting out with any language is to ask around and see if there is a framework that is 1) popular and well-supported; 2) easy to learn; 3) will get you a lot of mileage and grow with you. In the case of JavaScript, that's React. In the case of Python, that's Django. I'm still fairly new to Swift, but SwiftUI seems like a great way to start out with the language.

Before people can become programmers, you have to get them interested in programming.

<comment><USER3> While I really support starting up with a framework, I wouldn't recommend React for someone starting out with JavaScript. React strongly recommends JSX for starters (from my limited experience with it) and also has a build system, that even if neatly abstracted away introduces a small delay and another additional thing to do before you're up and learning.

Personally, I feel starting out with jQuery as a perfect introduction. There are no build tools, just a simple refresh and you see all your changes.

<comment><USER2> A few years ago, jQuery would have been an excellent choice, but it's pretty dormant now, and frameworks are moving away from imperative code towards declarative code. For learning how to build very basic apps it could work, so I suppose a person could spend a few weeks with it, but I don't think it's a good long-term investment.

If someone understands HTML they should be fine using JSX after a tutorial or two. The build system adds some friction, but with create-react-app you can get pretty far without having to understand much about build systems (and you even get auto-refresh).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case someone is clicking this with hopes of learning JavaScript, I mostly agree with the author in that it's better to learn core JavaScript before you delve into any fancy libraries, or even the DOM API (although you probably should have a grasp of HTML & CSS _if_ you intend to do front-end development).

I haven't looked into any of the resources the author has posted, but I've been compiling a list of free web books[1] for myself and friends. I highly recommend checking out either Eloquent JavaScript if you're new to programming, or MDN's Reintroduction to JavaScript or the Modern JavaScript Tutorial if you already have programming experience.

[1][https://keb.now.sh/books/#javascript](https://keb.now.sh/books/#javascript)

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I've worked with quiete a bunch of frontend developers on react applications (with serverside rendering) who didn't realise that in the end all it does is render HTML pages. And didn't have any or much experience with old school HTML and vanilla javascript. This only became a real problem when there were edge cases or external scripts needed to be integrated that didn't fit in the framework.

<comment><USER6> > And didn't have any or much experience with old school HTML

A good heuristic for how good a web developer is is getting them to list every HTML element they know, including the deprecated ones like <marquee>. You would be surprised just how little elements they know, and more importantly, the semantic value of the elements. For example, knowing when to use <span> instead of <div>

<comment><USER7> Is encyclopedic knowledge of something that can be searched online a good heuristic for skill? I thought the community agreed this was not a good thing when it came to fizz-buzz type software interviews.

IMO in frontend world there are two important things: knowing how to search, and knowing how to determine which search results are useful as opposed to some Medium/blogpost fluff piece that is varying degrees of misinformed.

<comment><USER8> If you have experience with a framework, you should naturally be able to list things you commonly use.

I was recently at an interview where they just asked me to name a list of CloudFormation functions I've used and what did I use them for. If I listed that on my resume as something I knew, it was fair game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Eloquent JavaScript ([https://eloquentjavascript.net/](https://eloquentjavascript.net/)) is free, up-to-date and really good too

<comment><USER10> I'm not 100% sure who's the target audience of this book, frankly. I had the opportunity to read it some time ago and, for someone new to the language/programming, it is clearly difficult to learn from after the first few chapters.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I moderate on a forum aimed at beginner programmers undertaking a curriculum that uses JS, and they tend to find the book hard going if they attempt to work through it. I had a look at it when I was already very familiar with the language, and it definitely wasn't aimed at me. It's very nicely written (prose-wise) for a technical book (the introduction in particular is lovely), but the pacing and subject matter chosen don't really work for most people afaics

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm an oldskool dev who shys away from 'the new shiny' because I've learned the basics of JS and you can get pretty far with the fundamentals, despite the allure of these rather expressive frameworks that get released every week now.

Frankly I get more joy out of writing bookmarklets, Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey scripts and customizing websites with various CSS 'userstyles'.

I also prefer SFTP and still enjoy uploading PHP scripts with SFTP and then building out some barebones CRUD app in my free time. Again, I shy away from the new shiny like GraphQL and things like Docker or Kubernetes etc.

<comment><USER12> I'm also "oldchool" in a similar vein. But. Docker, dude. Docker.

For instance, yesterday a PHP tool made the HN frontpage [1] that seemed rather interesting. Problem is, it needs PHP 7.2+ and my app runs on 5.6.* What to do? (Bear in mind, 3 weeks ago I moved from Virtual Box to Docker for local dev, and my files are now in a regular folder in my machine).

In this case, I just need to tell Docker to fetch the image and run it pointing to the same folder where my app is. Just a 1 line command.

After that, I just need to remove the Docker image and my system is as pristine as before.

I think I have itches very similar to yours (Like, I'm learning Python and all things Data Science and Machine learning related, instead of virtualenv or even *conda, I'm separating my projects using Docker), and nowadays I'm using Docker for all of'em.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23654973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23654973)

<comment><USER13> Keep in mind you should still use a venv with docker, this removes the need for sudo and won't conflict with the image system python if it has one.

<comment><USER14> For the longest time I thought the standard was to install stuff on Docker as root and not worry about typical permission/user idioms you'd practice on a classic box.

But now I am seeing more of this. Do you have any good links to read more about why using venv/non-root makes sense for Docker?

<comment><USER12> In my case, I think Docker voids the need for virtualenv. But a quick google search returns interesting results [1]

I do know setting up a proper user in Docker is just a couple lines away in a Dockerfile (As a matter of fact, I did that for the main app I develop).

For my other use cases, I just don't care. I'm using Docker to quickly bootstrap a Jupyter Labs environment, and I do that by sharing some confs (Like the Pip cache folder).

The caveat to this is that files I create are owned by root, but that again is just a command away for fixing (If I need it, that haven't yet).

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27017715/does- virtualenv...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27017715/does-virtualenv- serve-a-purpose-in-production-when-using-docker)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What these discussions miss is context. Every learner comes from a different background, and background effects the learning path.

For example, my path for learning Typescript was:

\- read the Typescript documentation

\- read up on relatively new JS features (let, const, modules, spread operator, etc.)

\- recall C-style syntax and historical baggage (return, things that are statements not expressions)

This took maybe a day or two, spread over some evenings.

This works for me because I'm a bit of a programming language nerd, so I have a very good framework on which to hang knowledge of a new language. I also teach programming and I would never use this approach with a student who is relatively new to the field. I also wouldn't use this approach for myself if I was learning a field I'm relatively new to.

</comment><comment><USER16> For beginners, JavaScript.info is surprisingly amazing resource. I found it better than Eloquent JS.

<comment><USER17> Same here. I'm new-ish to JS and have JavaScript.info tab pinned for occasional reference. Fantastic resource.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> JavaScript: The Definitive Guide 7th edition (2020) by David Flanagan is well worth a look for a thorough understanding of the language that includes fundamentals. Not sure if a total beginner should look at it (I got started with 5th edition and it was really useful, but I was already comfortable coding), but it does seem quite suitable for a deep dive once some basics are known.

<comment><USER19> Do you have a recommendation for learning HTML/CSS (and how it interfaces with JS) as well? JavaScript has never been a particularly hard language for me to grasp, it's all the finicky bits of working with an actual browser that act as a deterrent for me to want to do much with browser UI. (Preferably the way to learn this would be based on standards that are generally implemented or have carve outs for how engines might behave slightly differently. I've wanted to do some things with Electron so I only have a single target to care about, but that barrier is still there to even begin to understand how to lay stuff out even with something like FlexBox)

EDIT: Also if you know any resources for writing high performance JS, that would be appreciate too. Not necessarily just number crunching optimizations, but also working with (potentially large) strings/Unicode. I've worked on something that might need to parse tens of megabytes of a simple plain text format including dates and likely (complex) Unicode characters, so making that as fast as possible is important to me. (I got it down to like 500ms for 30-40MB I'd text but I think I managed faster with a version on the JVM, with both being single threaded)

<comment><USER20> >Not necessarily just number crunching optimizations

JavaScript is not the language for that objective anyway. So, No!

It's all about I/O.

<comment><USER19> This is for a client application that is storing a bunch of plain text in a specific format, where the parsing would happen on a separate worker. If you have any advice for how to make faster JS or for how to learn HTML/CSS/JS interop with those things I'd appreciate it. Otherwise it's not very helpful to just tell someone "JS is not for performance! No!". As much as people dunk on JS, you CAN write performant code in it. Like there's been some decades of work put into making it run faster or be able to make games or something in it...

<comment><USER21> This is going to be platform-specific to a degree. I'd expect there to be profiling tools around V8 and Spidermonkey that can help you figure out what the interpreter makes of your code, and potentially guides on what patterns to avoid. With JITed interpreters, these things can surprisingly specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to add a couple of resources that I've found useful -

1\. All courses by Will Sentance on Frontend Masters

2\. Eloquent JavaScript

</comment><comment><USER23> I would suggest considering many other books in addition to "the" book recommended by the author, such as Eloquent JavaScript. In fact, reading multiple books will offer multiple perspectives on the language, and result in a richer understanding.

I would also suggest having an actual project in mind while learning. It can be something very simple to start, such as creating the game Tic Tac Toe. But that will force you to _apply_ what you are learning. In other words, try writing and maybe even rewriting the project based on what you learn.

</comment><comment><USER24> They don't justify any of this advice that goes against the prevailing wisdom of "just build something". Beyond some book recommendations this isn't very useful.

<comment><USER25> If your goal is to learn something deeply and not just get something out the door, I don't believe "just build something" is not the prevailing wisdom.

Building something is a part of how you reinforce what you've learned from actual material like books, documentation and others research. You still need to know some of the basic building blocks to get started.

<comment><USER26> Agreed. There's not much that will bake freshly learned theory into your brain more than realising just how far it could have taken you in hindsight. Over time, this starts to develop into foresight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I agree with the advice to read a few books and solve problems using core language and avoiding non-standard libraries and especially frameworks. This is important. But what much more important to me (and is often missing in this "how to learn language X") is fitting the advice to whether this is a first programming language to learn or not.

If it is the first, a _lot_ of hand-holding makes sense; reviews of good code, exercises to solve a simple problem three different ways, etc. This also helps avoid learning really bad patterns that take years to unlearn. In fact, if JS is the first language I would recommend stopping and doing something else first. Python, C, Go or Kotlin are all better in my view as a standard tools to learn the basics of statements, flow control and data types.

Those already comfortable with programming will pick the basics of JS in a couple of sittings. What they need is a set of problems, both simple and more complex, that highlight the language strengths: wowing the reader with what the language makes possible with a few pages of code. Add some hints and let experienced developer explore.

Everyone is different, but this works best for me. My 2c.

<comment><USER28> Do you happen to have pointers so a set of such problems?

<comment><USER27> I do not have a well-organized one, especially specific to JS. I have my favorite set that I personally like over the years. I think at least a couple are from "The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan and Pike; I especially like the Markov-style text generator -- their well-written solution for the same problem in Java, C++, Perl and Awk provides a good perspective, too. Since my background is in math I like prime decompositions, Lissajous curves, drawing fractals, building mazes. But those are just personal preferences suitable to many general-purpose languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 1\. Learn to read MDN and when you have a problem, don't tell me you searched Google and searched StackOverflow And still can't find the answer.

</comment><comment><USER30> For the most advanced (well explained) Javascript and all the way to Typescript and beyond, get a FrontEnd Masters subscription for a few months. Top notch teachers in all manner of content and Kyle Simpson will lay it out well in his many videos (among other great teachers like Will Sentance). The SessionStack.com and Logrocket.com blogs cover some important concepts with modern ECMAscript standards. Surma and Jake at Google are great and have a lot of YouTube resources to bite into. Maybe start with 'What the heck is the event loop anyway?' by Philip Roberts and then Jake Archibald's: 'In The Loop' to get a foundational understanding of what is happening. Javascript.info also a great text resource. You don't know Javascript also should be on your list. Honestly there are so many resources these days including specific YouTube creators but really it's more about your learning style and what works best for you.

</comment><comment><USER31> > When solving a problem, everyone will point you to some pre-made solution. > > But no! Not yet! Do it the hard way.

This. That is why I'm a big fan of Zed Shaw's 'learn X the hard way' method of learning

</comment><comment><USER32> > First, it's important to learn plain JavaScript.

> Don't depend on a library of shortcuts. JavaScript will be around for many > years, while libraries and frameworks come and go every year.

I agree with the last part but this is not necessarily a sufficent reason to not learn via a framework or library. I'd say it depends on the circumstances, what you want to achieve by learning JS and also what type of a learner you are.

</comment><comment><USER33> > Start with the book: "Head First JavaScript Programming".

Please don't. 6yo book doesn't worth it. Even one year is a lot for modern tech.

> Do Free Code Camp.

Agree. Crazy good chunk of exercises, also useful for React & Node.

I always recommend to get any basic video course if you learning something from zero, it helps to start fast. Avoid crazy 60+ hours all-in-one courses. Then do exercises and grab advanced books & blogs & manuals.

<comment><USER34> JavaScript is not particularly modern. Even all the supposedly new features are copied from even older languages that are more consistent and have supported those features for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't think we should share authoritative seeming advice when the first instruction is to read a 700 page book "in a couple days". How many non JavaScript programmers could keep up or absorb anything from that pace?

</comment><comment><USER36> is the picture at the end bait?

<comment><USER37> Yeah, I think so too. It was weird to see it there as it is associated with something else entirely different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Don't

<comment><USER39> Unless we want a web completely devoid of interactivity client-side, that's not great advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> 2013

<comment><USER41> Not 2013 as it references books published in 2018. This is an update to an older article. The first comment (dated 2013) cites a reference to "Javascript: The Good Parts," which isn't even mentioned in the article. I'm not sure how many times it has been updated, but the most recent update is five days ago, according to the date stamp at the top of the article.

<comment><USER42> Some of the book recommendations seem outdated, such as Effective JavaScript, which was published in 2015, no use of any of ES6+ features. They help a lot. For modern JavaScript I'm really liking Manning Book's The Joy of JavaScript, a MEAP.</comment></comment></comment>


EU: Robot Workers Are 'Electronic Persons' - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/news/345515/eu-robot-workers-are-electronic-persons <comment><USER2> From the EU draft report: "whereas at the same time the development of robotics and AI may result in a large part of the work now done by humans being taken over by robots, so raising concerns about the future of employment and the viability of social security systems if the current basis of taxation is maintained, creating the potential for increased inequality in the distribution of wealth and influence;"

I'm sure everyone here has thought about the implication of automation on the future of employment. But I personally hadn't considered the impact specifically on social security systems in particular. Interesting!

I must admit, this all seems very murky to me. When does a collection of hardware running some software become a "robot"? If I can replace an intern with a Python script, does that script start having to pay social security too? If one were to take a principled stand on this, each business should have to estimate however many people have been "automated away" and pay that much social security. Maybe we could back-date the impact of automation to the invention of the steam engine, perhaps, since this is clearly an ongoing trend and not something that is only starting in 2017.

And why does a piece of equipment need to be deemed a "robot" in order to for someone to be liable for damages it might cause? I'm no legal expert, but my understanding is that there are already plenty of laws and judicial precedents in place regarding such liabilities.

<comment><USER3> Easy. Glowing eyes = robot. Special rule also applies for Tricia Helfer-type robots, that only occasionally and inexplicably glows, and then in a sinister way.

R2-robots are exempt, as they just beeps annoyingly while getting lost.

The thought that you could tax software for the performed labour is new to me, but why not. As the way it is sort-of implied in the text - requiring some sort of mechanical implementation in addition to software, it will probably slow down development of robotics in EU, which is currently the only way we can compete with slave labour^H^H^H^H low-income economies.

<comment><USER4> An automation tax will reduce the inequality between owners of capital, who can buy robots, and those who cannot. I think that's a positive thing.

The tax level should strike a balance that makes it worthwhile to automate something but the downsides (inequality) can be counteracted by the tax still.

Ideally, the same applies to tax on gasoline, smoking etc.

<comment><USER2> I would wage that there's no _obvious_ distinction between an automation tax applied to "robots" and to any computers, industrial or agricultural equipment, automobiles (I'm not paying a horse breeder, or paying people to carry my litter or rickshaw around, am I?), etc. So, would you propose we impose a penalty tax on all machine capable of doing a job that people could also do?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps. Imagine how much less we'd all have to work and still have enough money to live, if part of our livelihood was payed by robots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like a very roundabout way of raising taxes on the European tech industry. The part about establishing liability rules is certainly an important thing for lawmakers to be tackling about now, though.

> "The US, China, Korea, and Japan are currently working on very ambitious > projects," Vice Chair Mady Delvaux wrote in an op-ed last fall. "If we do > not create the legal framework for the development of robotics, our market > will be invaded by robots from outside the EU. The European Parliament could > be the first Parliament in the world to discuss and create such a legal > framework."

Its fascinating how this frames the issue. Not only are jobs being taken by robots, but they're being taken by _immigrant_ robots! We must strengthen our cultural norms to prevent this invasion!

<comment><USER6> > We must strengthen our cultural norms to prevent this invasion!

Fundamentally this is about how the EU commission perceives unregulated markets and it's desire to legitimize them through regulation, or at a minimum producing a 'framework' for their existence.

The whole process is Napoleonic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For years I've been wondering why companies only have to pay taxes for human work but not for robot work, how are we supposed to live in this post work paradise if those with the means of production are replacing human workers with robots to extract more profit by sharing less with everyone else?

<comment><USER8> Because payroll taxes go to social security/medicare. Robots don't need either of those.

<comment><USER9> the people displaced by the robots do, and more than ever.

<comment><USER7> Exactly that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand at all the difference between a "robot" worker and any other type of industrial automation.

Take, for example the production of biscuit packets. Yes you could have a robot artisanally robo craft them. But of course everyone uses plastic thermoformers which can stamp out millions of packets very quickly.

Would new taxes apply to this machine? How many people would it count for?

I don't have a way to make sense of this type of thinking.

<comment><USER11> These are the right questions to be asking:

Did we tax the printing press when it automated writing books?

Did we tax the grain combine?

Did we tax industrial automation?

It seems like a ridiculously slippery slope to begin taxing any means of production. Where do we draw the line? Should I tax a shovel because it takes less time to dig a hole with one than with your bare hands?

<comment><USER12> A VAT does tax all of those in a perfectly sensible way. A business income tax arguably works as well. The point here is that robots are displacing humans, causing less money to be paid into targeted social programs that are funded based on taxing humans.

<comment><USER11> Agreed about VAT. However, has there been any historical precedent to taxing automation? Up until about 100 years ago, a huge percentage of the population was agrarian. Somehow we still managed to employ or re-employ all of those people, and I don't believe we tried to put a tax on the few farmers remaining to pay for the societal costs.

<comment><USER13> > Somehow we still managed to employ or re-employ all of those people

Modulo a world war, a revolution in a major country, a Great Depression and its accompanying famines, another world war, another revolution in another major country, multiple revolutions in multiple minor countries, and multiple localized famines in minor countries. Oh, and repeated genocides.

There was no comfortable transition from pre-industrial agrarianism to social democracy. There was horror, pain, and death at levels to which we've now learned to say, "Never again."

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure how automation caused this, or more to the point how taxing it can update have changed the outcome in any way. Are you suggesting that if we taxed the steam and internal combustion engines we could have avoided WW2? Or are you just saying the transition was painful before and we ought to do something to help with the current one (without saying whether this tax is necessary)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Robots come with high up-front payments and low salaries, humans are cheaper to hire and more expensive to "run" \- in economic terms, the choice between employing humans vs robots is a trade-off between capital and operational expenditures.

Taxation is still the go-to way to influence economic decision, so it's not a surprise that lawmakers try to use it to balance out the difference. From that standpoint it's actually not a surreal idea.

</comment><comment><USER16> So I am no more significant than a robot worker? Great.

<comment><USER4> You are a _normal_ person (as far as I can know from this side of HN). Robot's are _electronic_ persons

<comment><USER12> Calling humans "normal" persons is organonormative. The appropriate terminology is "meatbag".

<comment><USER17> No, "meatbag" is a pejorative (compare "dirtbag").

"Meat glacier" (ht: Schlock Mercenary) is also a pejorative; it implies very slow thinking.

The correct, non-judgmental terms are "carbon person" and "silicon person". (My silicon co-worker confirms this, "meatbag" gets a red underline, but "carbon person" does not.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Its always amusing to watch bureaucrats & friends to rationalize their extortion/authoritarianism. Bitcoin/Mass-Talent_Wealth-Migration cant come quick enough.</comment>