Panama Papers - 2.6TB leak on offshore tax havens - <AUTHOR> http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en/ <comment><USER3> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11416928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11416928)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think less quality coverage, but interesting to watch the news spread through media here:

\- [https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-aides-among-world- leaders-e...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-aides-among-world-leaders- exposed-tax-haven-195848285.html)

\- [https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/associates- of-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/associates-of-russias- putin-had-2-billion-in-offshore-accounts-report- says/2016/04/03/25437e1e-f839-11e5-8b23-538270a1ca31_story.html)

\- [http://www.usatoday.com/](http://www.usatoday.com/) (prominent on front page)

\- [http://time.com/4280200/panama-papers-vladimir-putin- russia-...](http://time.com/4280200/panama-papers-vladimir-putin-russia- mossack-fonseca-leak/?xid=homepage)

\- newyorktimes.com buried under politics [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/leaked- documen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/leaked-documents- offshore-accounts-putin.html)

Nothing on CNN's front page as of yet. Don't know if on TV. Imagine editorial staff doing catch up, but wonder why they weren't collaborating earlier. Maybe AOL/TimeWarner are in there?

<comment><USER5> No leaks involving Americans (yet).

<comment><USER6> Don't expect to hear much on that front: [https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate- me...](https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate-media- gatekeepers-protect-western-1-from-panama-leak/)

<comment><USER4> Editor says there may be some:

[https://twitter.com/ploechinger/status/716773530436825088](https://twitter.com/ploechinger/status/716773530436825088)

[https://twitter.com/ploechinger/status/716763595820941312](https://twitter.com/ploechinger/status/716763595820941312)

Also, I hope journalists are asking the "accused" for their comments, and giving them time to respond, as journalistic best practice.

<comment><USER7> "Some" really isn't good enough. From what I've been able to put together, the whole thing seems choreographed if not outright rigged. Why is it that Putin and Assad seem to be the only targets with the initial release?

I will have a hard time believing any of the reporting until the raw data is released.

<comment><USER8> The group putting out this leak is also funded by George Soros and Rockefeller Funds through OpenSociety.

Makes me skeptical to say the least.

<comment><USER9> Süddeutsche Zeitung is funded by Soros? Any proof? And here I thought it was owned by five Munich publisher families for generations - Friedmann, Goldschagg, Seidlein, Schwingenstein and Dürrmeier...

(BTW, people will believe your rather out-of-the-box accusations more if you don't create separate brand-new accounts to post them.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Warning: If you click through to the article itself it will automatically start playing music. You might want to turn your volume down if you are in an environment where that would be inappropriate.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can someone explain me if reading these documents is even legal for journalists? I mean I am pretty sure most of the people that used that law office are completely innocent and having their personal information leaked and now read and investigated by some journalists is kind of crime in its own, I would not want my legal papers stolen and read by anybody if I am doing everything according to the law.

My question is - what legal right do these journalists have to read this confidential information?

<comment><USER12> Mere possession of information is rarely illegal. The right to possess information - even that which was gleaned illegally initially, goes back further than the US Constitution and is clearly established.

If you are interested in the current jurisprudence surrounding the matter of when possessing information can be (and can't be) illegal, you might be interested in "illegal numbers": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number)

<comment><USER11> But can't this Mossack Fonseca firm now go ahead and send a legal request to these journalists to delete these confidential documents and journalists will have to comply with it? It's just so hard to believe for me that company confidential information is not protected by any law and these leaks can happen with no punishment for those who possess this confidential information. It's a great success that this leak had some information to bring public's attention to individuals who evade taxes, but what if there was no compromising data in it - does it mean you can get away with just reading people's confidential data?

<comment><USER12> > company confidential information is not protected by any law

This is not the case. Presumably the original leaker(s) are in violation of their contracts with the company and possibly Panamanian criminal law (which I know nothing about). In some jurisdictions, there may also be statutory civil liability surrounding the subsequent losses realized as the result of the information being in the hands of these non-parties.

<comment><USER13> Aren't these documents the copyright of Mossack Fonseca? They could just sue everyone reproducing copies for copyright infringement, beyond just the original leaker breaking contract and also committing copyright infringement.

If there is no license, full rights are reserved and copyright is implied.

<comment><USER9> They could sue but they would lose because of fair use/fair dealing clauses. In the UK for instance the rule is:

"Fair dealing for criticism, review or quotation is allowed for any type of copyright work. Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of reporting current events is allowed for any type of copyright work other than a photograph. In each of these cases, a sufficient acknowledgment will be required."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3...](http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/56febff0a1bb8d3c3495adf4/)

>Generally speaking, owning an offshore company is not illegal in itself. In fact, establishing an offshore company can be seen as a logical step for a broad range of business transactions. However, a look through the Panama Papers very quickly reveals that concealing the identities of the true company owners was the primary aim in the vast majority of cases.

This makes it sound like owning an offshore company solely to conceal your identity is illegal. Is that true?

<comment><USER15> It highly depends on your country of tax residence and citizenship.

<comment><USER16> And the countries in which you do business that in some way involves the offshore entity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's kind of sad, that the data is not really published. I mean i cant go to some side and take a look at the data. Maybe this is one reason:

"The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists", which is funded and organised entirely by the USA's Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include

\- Ford Foundation \- Carnegie Endowment \- Rockefeller Family Fund \- W K Kellogg Foundation \- Open Society Foundation (Soros)" [1]

[1] [https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate- me...](https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate-media- gatekeepers-protect-western-1-from-panama-leak/)

<comment><USER18> I also wish the data was published in its raw form so people can not only form their own conclusions but maybe someone out there would find an interesting link that no other journalists have found.

Otherwise it's like reading a research paper that provides no raw data - <USER2> way the analysis is not replicable by third parties.

</comment></comment><comment> a-dub It pleases me greatly that the firm is located in Panama, and therefore has a strange sounding name to native English ears and a menacing looking logo that looks like something that walked right on out of a Bond movie.

I guess the real world isn't so boring afterall.

<comment><USER19> Native english ears reporting in, sorry to disappoint you but the name and logo do not strike me as sinister in the least - it looks like the name and logo of a company that would make ink blotters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder who did the leak? I wonder if the law firm knows who did it and where he is now?

My guess is some sys admin presumely at some central office (as this spans the whole company); I mean 2.6TB data - not so easy for an average lawyer to download to his laptop.

<comment><USER20> Good call and probably European given the choice of paper leaked too.

<comment><USER5> It is Germany's largest newspaper.

The data probably would have been handed over in person.

My guess is he is German speaking; maybe from Switzerland or Liechtenstein.

But I wonder about doing something like this: He is not exactly protected, what he has done is illegal (at least to some extent - whistleblower laws etc.), he stands to make no personal gains.

One thing is being a high profile whistleblower like Snowden or Assange. But this guy? Where does he end up?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have never heard of this paper. But really impressed with what they have managed to pull off. Kudos!

It would be cool to see the global engineering community coming together in a similar manner that the journos have, towards one such big project.

<comment><USER21> Sueddeutsche is one of the major papers in Germany. It is worth being aware of major papers in large countries if you pay attention to foreign affairs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This data has been out there for a year, Vice did a piece about it a long time ago. I'm sure there are some juicy things in there, but I highly doubt it will be as explosive as some seem think it will be (especially as the stories begin to rollout over the next 14 days.)

If anything it will be an interesting insight into how tightly knit world leaders are to one another and their investments. The story does say that more data is expected to come in, about 700GBs worth...so that could be new material. However, as it stands I don't think this will cause much upheaval. It does almost read like a plot to a Stieg Larsson novel though, and I'm sure someone is going to write a terrific book about it all.

I do hope there is a lot of explosive material in here, but I do have my doubts, given the amount of time the data has been available.

Here's the Vice article from 2014. [http://www.vice.com/read/evil- llc-0000524-v21n12](http://www.vice.com/read/evil-llc-0000524-v21n12)

</comment><comment><USER11> Why is Mossack Fonceca company website excluded from Wayback Machine? [https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mossfon.com](https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mossfon.com)

<comment><USER23> You can choose to have your own website excluded from archival.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's interesting to see how leak disclosure has changed over the years. Leakers/reporters are increasingly sophisticated at maximizing the impact of their information through titrated disclosure.

Someone, somewhere, is building the theory of the optimal leak.

<comment><USER19> I'd be surprised if the method employed for Snowden's leak is ever topped - several of the first reveals were responded to by the USG, and then the following day the next reveal would demonstrate the response to be a lie. I don't remember the specifics of it, but I do remember wondering how long it would take the PR folks in government to realize that their spin was actually amplifying the message. I'm pretty sure it took three news cycles. It might have been less to do with masterfully predicting the media and government response, and more to do with the amount of evidence available - but it was hilarious (in the darkest way possible).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it just me or is this expose surprisingly low on American citizens?

Is this one of the times when conspiracy theory could be conspiracy fact? It feels like this is an extremely selective release.

<comment><USER26> From the Reddit live thread: The Editor in Chief of Süddeutsche Zeitung responded to the lack of United States individuals in the documents, saying to "Just wait for what is coming next".

<comment><USER25> Good news :)

<comment><USER27> Finger crossed for some dirt on Hillary.

<comment><USER28> (Assuming you are a US citizen from your previous comments)

Why are you hoping one of your presidential candidates is corrupt? Shouldn't you be crossing your fingers _not_ to find dirt?

<comment><USER29> Many people have totally lost faith in establishment politicians... our system is constantly exploited by business and even "good" politicians have shady support (through lobbying/superpacs/etc). If a mainstream politician is implicated in this mess, it gives the public concrete evidence to improve the status quo.

It's like the Snowden leaks. Many knew about the NSA conspiracies years before his information came out. For all those years the public was blind to their rights slowly slipping away as precedents were set, while those that knew were ignored as paranoid nutters. Now we can see the light.

edit: to be clear, I'm not talking about any specific politician here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there a torrent available for us to download the documents?

<comment><USER31> There are banking details, passports, drivers license info for thousands of people.. It'd be hugely irresponsible to publish all of that in a Torrent.. Redacted docs are accompanying all of the news reports.

<comment><USER30> \- Passports: Not Secret.

\- Drivers Licenses: Also Not Secret.

\- Banking details of the people who have been ripping off the rest of the world...sorry if I fail to see the downside of dumping all of it :)

EDIT:

At the same time, I understand where you're coming from so thanks for the info mikeyouse!

<comment><USER31> Some of whom had been ripping off the world, many of whom who are completely innocent.. Also, it'd be incredibly easy to steal identities of just about anyone in the data dump if you had the level of detail the documents have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In terms of e-discovery, 2.6TB is not really all that large.

<comment><USER32> Large, in terms of e-discovery, is on the order of 1PB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looking for some creative data filtering here, hackers.

<comment><USER34> TLDR - The super wealthy use loopholes & hide money offshore to avoid taxes / etc

<comment><USER35> But now we know it's Person A, Person B, etc. and not just "the rich"</comment></comment></comment>


Are Courses Outdated? MIT Considers Offering 'Modules' Instead - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/are-courses-outdated-mit-considers-offering-modules-instead <comment><USER2> No kidding.. Personally, I think for MOOCs [1] to really take off you need to let people choose how they consume the course. Look at Netflix and House of Cards. People can choose the pace at which they consume. MOOCs are trying to use the class structure and convert it to the online world, not to mention the price structure ($7k for an online course?!? [2]). It is a major pain point, but this seems to be the norm, at least for any of the courses I have looked at.

My personal use case is that I want to take a MOOC to learn a specific topic (after I've left school), so that I can use it in my real life, but you want to slow me way down (on some artificial schedule), and then charge me a crap load of money. Yeah, that's going to work great!

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/troyonink/2013/05/15/georgia- tec...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/troyonink/2013/05/15/georgia-tech-udacity- shock-higher-ed-with-7000-degree/)

<comment><USER3> Coursera has a few self-paced classes. I've signed up for a few, and I've never come close to completing one. On the other hand, I've completed a few courses with a strict time schedule.

I think they've tested the self-paced idea out and found it just doesn't work as well under the circumstances.

<comment><USER4> I totally agree. To me, one of the advantages of these online classes is that they usually impose some kind of pace. It's something difficult to enforce when self-studying. Otherwise, I may as well read a book which I think is a better format than a video.

<comment><USER5> The problem, at least for me, is that there's no real incentive to get a "good grade" in those courses. I can't imagine one single employer actually caring that someone has an actual coursera course completion letter.

So when I do those time sensitive classes, if life gets a bit busy and I can't keep up, I'll just skip that week. And then of course I'm kind of screwed as I likely don't have time to do 2x the coursework the following week and it snowballs.

If instead it was self-paced I could go ahead of pace at will and behind pace at will. If I fell behind pace there I can still complete it AOK.

And perhaps this is just me, but for some reason once I fall behind in the time sensitive classes I rarely manage to complete it on my own time. There's something subconsciously working on me with the time schedules such that I throw my hands up and say screw it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I often do is sign up for any Cousera class that I could conceivably be interested in. I do nothing when the course is live, since I don't care about the certificate (paid or unpaid). Having signed up for the courses, though, I have access to the content in the future and can pick and choose what to watch. I then come back to the course and can consume it rapidly and with a focus on the materials I care about.

For example, [https://www.coursera.org/course/money](https://www.coursera.org/course/money) . I had no idea what in this course and its sequel were important to me. But then a bank mentions how Standard Treasury should understand repo markets, and then I watched the lectures on that topic.

So the idea of consuming courses in modules is very appealing to me, and honestly how I consumed most classes in college: the material prescribed was basically incidental to what I ultimately learned about the topic. I'm the type of person who gets really focused on some applied problem and then teach myself the, for example, CS, stats, measure theory, machine learning, etc, to do what I want on the problem.

Tangent: My only compliant so far is that the (pure) math I can find in MOOCs goes exactly to the point I stopped: advanced calculus and theoretical matrix algebra. I don't expect it to have the types of statistics classes I'd like (I majored in the topic) but I'm annoyed that I can't really find an analysis course...

<comment><USER7> Yea, it's really tough to find an analysis course. I looked around online for a long time and never found one. Ended up picking it up as a regular college class and learned a lot. I don't understand why nobody has bother recording analysis lectures and posting them as they have with other subjects. It seems the only autodidactic way to learn analysis at this point is to download a book and dive in. If you're looking for pure math though, [http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning- initiative/ab...](http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning- initiative/abstract-algebra) is a really great Abstract Algebra course taught by Gross at Harvard though.

<comment><USER8> While not a course in the udacity/coursera sense, I found these real analysis lectures by Professor Francis Su extremely good. He breaks down every step of the derivations. And while sometimes the questions he asks, or the things he states may seem trivial I think it helps to focus on these simple but very important details.

[http://analysisyawp.blogspot.fr/](http://analysisyawp.blogspot.fr/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is just so simplistic. I'm surprised it comes from MIT. The idea that students pick songs and not albums seems a silly analogy to coursework. The use of MOOCs as evidence of anything seems very thin. I'm sure many students _report_ that they only studied the parts they were interested in of a course rather than 1) they did not have the time to devote, 2) had some free time but did not take it as seriously, 3) it was hard an gave up, or just that maybe the student genuinely only interested in learning the pumping lemma but not much more about push down automata; however I'm not sure that sort of cherry picking does a college education make.

We can talk about costs and all of this kind of thing but I feel like we dumb down higher education because it seems hip (like picking songs for your iPod because we are all have hyper attention deficits, or something).

<comment><USER10> the very concept of structured courses in education is because we don't know what to study to understand XXX things.When it comes from a teacher , it comes with a dependency graph drawn by a person who knows the course.If proper knowledge gathering is considered an objective.This dependency is a natural consequence of subject-matter than an optional one .

For e.g. for someone to learn abstract algebra ,its highly suggested that they take up linear algebra first.As for me, i've always the dependency graph quite seriously .May be the gifted brains can leave linear algebra and directly take up abstract algebra , is that so?

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure about abstract algebra specifically, but in other subjects that I have tried to take up on my own, I have found that the dependencies become obvious once you realize you are in over your head. In fact, my preferred method of learning these days is to start with your goal, then traverse that so-called dependency graph to the dependent, and often simpler, concepts until you are able to work your way back to your original goal again.

<comment><USER12> This is a nice way of priming your mind for the concepts you're interested in --and is probably another example of why the current educational system languishes under standardized testing for metrics: when the goal isn't in the students' direct interest, the system can only provide an indirect benefit for their minds. It's very inefficient.

The class structure has grown out of the physical limitations of presenting course information to mass groups of people in physical classrooms. Take the MIT Modules, make them asynchronous and add accountability (limitations and commitments: something like, only 5 active modules at a time until you've completed them) and mentoring (which is your next module? If you struggled with X, maybe you should go back a couple dependencies?) and you could have a really effective system that creates even more amazing people--at the pace that suits them best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Surprisingly, the US military embraced online learning a little more than a decade ago. This was a boom for annual sustainment courses and the ability of highly active units to maintain OSHA, EPA, and other more job specific annual training requirements was greatly increased.

This great success in high level reporting percentages for training ended up driving even more training online.

This concept is a very slippery slope. The amazing statistics that accompany online training will provide very direct motivation to administrator(generals). Those administrators will easily come to the conclusion that training should be greatly standardized and moved online, due to the high level of efficiency.

In reality the DOD has moved some entire training programs to online. The navy has moved entire A and C schools(basic job fields) online. These are resident schools, and they are primarily schools based on hardware, that may also have strong software/theory based systems. The result is highly drilled students with almost no real world or problem solving skills in the field that they have been schooled on. I know this is anecdotal, but I have seen the change in the students first hand and the ability to teach critical analysis on a specific subject with out labs and 2 way live debate can not be underestimated.

<comment><USER14> Given the level of tracking of job performance the military does, and pretty much everything else, it seems quite surprising that the result of lacking "real world or problem solving skills" should show up somewhere. Has it?

If it hasn't, what would the military need to track for the alleged harmful effects of this to be visible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, how do you define a course? For me, it's a series of individual lectures / modules that each teach you a given concept belonging to the same topic (that of the course). Concepts will often be dependent on each other, i.e. you will need to first understand concept A in order to be able to understand concept B.

So, taking apart a course and splitting it into modules might make a lot of sense, since it allows students to only learn what is most relevant to them at the time and be rewarded for their learning successes more easily and more often. Considering the horrendous dropout rates of most MOOC platforms this might be a very good way to incentivize students to "keep at it". However, this makes only sense if the individual modules are independent enough, so that students can learn about them individually (which, for many courses might not be the case).

For me, the concept of a "course" is mostly obsolete when delivering educational content online, and is probably mainly still in use because everyone understands what it means. It might even be a good example of skeuomorphism in this sense: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph)

I currently work on a (real-world) course platform that allows people to take "micro-courses" which can be completed in one single evening session and which (mostly) build upon each other. Like this, students can decide more easily which skills they want to learn, get results faster and spend less money on the course.

A concept which is similarly outdated (in my opiniion) is that of a scientific journal: These were created to (physically) group articles from a given field together so that they could be distributed to people working in that field. Digital distribution through the Internet makes this obsolete, since articles can be simply grouped using tags (or other meta-information). Like this, the concept of a "journal" gets replaced by that of a "view" on a group of articles that are similar in a given way, such as "all articles in the field of biophysics published last year", or "all articles [across all domains] that investigate sleep patterns". Using views instead of a journals is vastly superior (again, in my opinion) since it allows you to search for knowledge spanning different disciplines and fields of research.

<comment><USER16> _Considering the horrendous dropout rates of most MOOC platforms this might be a very good way to incentivize students to "keep at it"._

I don't think a high drop rate for MOOCs is a problem in the slightest. They should be evaluated like any other funnel on the web, where even 1% can be a good completion rate, rather than like paid lecture courses.

<comment><USER17> The dropout rate in higher education is a big problem because the _marginal_ cost is high for each student (e.g classroom space, heating, cooling, electricity, parking, etc). The _marginal_ cost for each additional MOOC student is almost zero so it doesn't really matter if there's a high dropout rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "But the professors on the MIT committee that drafted the report argue that the numbers show that larger percentages explored significant parts of courses, which may be all they wanted or needed."

For me the main reasons for quiting a MOOC were:

1\. I wasn't sure whether the course is for me or not. So I did the first weeks, but then decided that I'm not so much interested in the topic/course. Note that this mostly concerns courses which I would otherwise probably never taken.

2\. Lack of time. As a doctoral student in mathematics, even having the time for MOOCs is rather a luxury. Thus it can easily happen that suddenly something important is due (for my obvious main obligations). Because MOOCs have a schedule to follow, I mostly see no other option than quiting the course (and feeling sorry for it).

</comment><comment><USER19> Educational institutions needs to get with the times. Their business models aren't what they use to be. Governments have issued major cutbacks in funding here in Canada (I'm sure elsewhere in the world). These Universities are already largely funded by donations. They need to stop throwing all their money in buildings and start putting it into their technology stack online.

I do like the idea of modular degree's. Most are already fairly modular where you can pick and choose a variety of courses with a set of core required courses. The problem is they can't figure out how to do it online.

There is absolutely no reason why these Universities don't offer complete degree's online. Many offer a handful of starter/intro courses over correspondence but that's about it. They don't need to turn into MOOC's, they just need to offer quality online education - not 10 year old material. If they offer it, people will take their programs.

The only University in Canada doing complete online degrees right now is Athabasca. And some of the material is horridly out of date (COMP 268). Business opportunity? Hello?

<comment><USER20> > they just need to offer quality online education - not 10 year old material.

Quality and freshness are orthogonal, at least at the undergrad level. I earned an electrical engineering degree a couple of years ago. I also collect older texts in my areas of interest. Using only material from the late-1950s I could have passed my classes. Using material from the mid-1970's, aced them. (If you are curious, the reason for the difference is the development of the MOSFET.)

This is not to say that the material taught was 40 years old. Rather that 40 years ago the body of core knowledge hit what could be reasonably taught in a four-year time span. None of this "old" material has been proven wrong (at least at the scales undergrads deal with). The material won't need revising until either the silicon transistor goes the way of the vacuum tube or Laplace transforms are part of the standard high school education.

<comment><USER21> Indeed. For chemistry, for the basic knowledge you could go back quite a bit further, probably to the 1930's when quantum mechanics was applied to it. More recent for some of the lab work, there are some really neat analytical toys to play with.

On the other hand, anything touching on biology, including to some degree biochemistry, needs to be up to date. Very complicated systems about which we're continuing to learn major things all the time. At the other end, at least for MIT's core science requirements, physics of the 19th century are fine (mechanics and E&M).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In some sense, isn't what universities do already modular? To get a degree you don't take a single course consisting of 1200 hours of classroom time; you take 30 courses of 40 hours each. There's no reason to assume that 60 20-hour courses, or 120 10-hour courses, wouldn't be better - or perhaps a mixture of different lengths.

</comment><comment><USER23> MOOCs and the archaic university structure in general should shift to this.

There's obviously something really important to have in mind and it's that knowledge is cummulative, meaning that in order to learn something you need to have some previous knowledge of something else, which would be a disadvantage for what MIT is proposing.

The articles and songs analogy is really accurate and necessary to point out. It's not that the internet is creating an attention deficit disorder in us, it's that it's giving us new alternatives on how to consume different products that satisfy us more.

The best excercise to take learning to a whole new level in any kind of field is "learning by doing", building something. Modules should not be focused in throwing lots of information to the student and ask him to replicate it, but it should be more about both teacher and students learning together, discovering and inventing new things.

</comment><comment><USER24> I always thought learning should be more modular, which is why I broke down educational content on my site into modules. [https://www.learneroo.com/modules](https://www.learneroo.com/modules) (Some people were confused by it though.)

</comment><comment><USER25> I like that MIT is willing to embrace the internet as a teaching channel and open minded enough to be willing to question its approach.

After reading the comments posted here I wanted to add that, as I'm sure most hackers/entrepreneurs here will appreciate, innovation is not a straight path and you cannot know where you'll end up from where you started. The important thing is to be willing to go out into the unknown and find a path to what works.

I can appreciate the comments about how this approach to teaching may not be the best way for everyone, but then again this would also apply to the "traditional" face to face teacher to students approach. I'm not going to be drawn in to making a judgement of which one is better than the other, but I sincerely believe that having diversity in how content is taught is better for everyone.

Also with regards to comments about MOOC completion I'll use my own experience as a guide when I say that some MOOCs are taught better than others and some courses I've been more interested in the content than others. This creates a situation similar to when I was at University and I would say that my grades reflected my interest in a subject and not my ability in it. The more I was interested in a subject the more I would invest extra time and attention to the course content. I have come to the conclusion that this was a lazy way of thinking and now I have a different approach to learning, I can see how this applies to MOOCs.

My take on modularisation is that it can be a good thing and I would point towards Khan Academy and how modular the concepts are and how they build as you go through a subject area. There you can find a supportive community willing to answer student questions focused around the module. Also as someone who is unwilling to go back to University to learn specific areas of knowledge taught at University I'm happy to hear that I would be able to pull out the areas I want to need to know when I need it.

Lastly, I would also like to say that perhaps there should be a MOOC on learning from a MOOC. I'm not sure these comments apply to the Hacker News community, but I've noticed that many people don't acquire an approach to learning. I myself have self taught on a great deal of subjects, including programming, and at times struggled through learning how best I learn. Amongst the insights to I've had into my learning style I would humbly recommend "Learn Anything: Hacking Your Education with Dale J. Stephens" from Creative Live. Besides learning a new portmanteau word "hackademic", I learnt a lot of new and useful strategies for tackling learning. The link is here for those interested: [https://www.creativelive.com/courses/learn-anything- hacking-...](https://www.creativelive.com/courses/learn-anything-hacking-your- education-dale-j-stephens)

<comment><USER26> There's a MOOC going on that explores the "learn how to learn" theme:

[https://class.coursera.org/learning-001](https://class.coursera.org/learning-001)

<comment><USER25> Thanks Icbiazon, I wasn't aware of this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm still waiting for and/or planning to create a directed graph of dependencies between different subjects.

</comment><comment><USER27> The Open University here in the UK has been doing something like this remotely for 30 years or so: [http://www.open.ac.uk/](http://www.open.ac.uk/)

I'm doing a BSc through them and while there are certain groups of modules I have to pick from, perhaps half of my course could be done on modules that other BSc grads in my subject _didn 't_ do.

In undergrad, you can also take an "open" BA or BSc (depending on what modules you take) on almost any configuration of modules. You get the degree of BA/BSc (Hons) Open assuming you did the right mixture of module levels and got the right marks: [http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/qd](http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/qd)

</comment><comment><USER28> > Many professors said they were game to try the approach. In a survey > included in the appendix to the report, 25 percent of MIT professors > suggested that their classes "could benefit from a modular approach,"

Is this another way of saying that 75% of MIT faculty are opposed to this?

<comment><USER21> Or perhaps their courses wouldn't benefit from a modular approach.

A whole lot of STEM builds upon foundations, plenty of which are built up as a course runs. There's also stuff in many courses for which the long term motivation is not clear, and might not even be clear if an attempt at explanation was made.

Once you get past certain points I can think of various fields where modularity might work. Math, e.g. when you have to learn a particular thing to attack another subject. Engineering where, after the initial principles, there are various applications. Biology, a wild, wild world which after getting a very solid foundation I study in a "just in time" manner because it's changing so quickly and it's not my field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think we'll see a variety of solutions appifying different aspects of education that work best, while minimizing bureaucracy and barriers to entry. MOOCs are a clear progression from the university system, but it's also increasingly clear that a human element is needed in personal education.

That's why we're working on www.skillsesh.com

</comment><comment><USER30> I had good traditional classes and bad traditional classes. Does this mean that traditional classes are archaic or only the bad ones?

<comment><USER31> What if some courses work better with the traditional format and those were the good traditional classes?</comment></comment>


Would you pay for Foursquare or Twitter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wadehammes.com/blog/06/would-you-pay-for-4sq-or-twitter-smy-2/

<comment><USER2> I don't know how many sports fans we have around these parts but Twitter has become an outstanding source for breaking sports news. At the trade deadline for the NBA and NHL last season, news was breaking on Twitter well before the major networks were announcing it. Some of the best beat writers are on Twitter posting major announcements before they even bother to write a story for their own newspaper. I would pretty willingly pay to keep having access to that information.

<comment><USER3> Unless you see a specific advantage related to your fantasy __*ball team I don't see why one would be willing to pay to have access to information that would be coming free a few minutes later with a lot more substance behind the information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nope. I'm on the fence about whether I get enough value out of twitter to even bother to keep checking it, much less pay actual money for it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, I would, at least for Twitter (I don't use Foursquare). I would also pay for Facebook, Gmail, Google, Google Analytics, Hacker News, and a whole slew of other sites that are free.

I'm sympathetic to the (probably true) view that they never would have grown to their size (and usefulness) if they were paid services, but that doesn't mean they can't just flip the switch today.

As someone who runs a freemium site, I know how important real (non-ad) revenue is. I also don't mind paying for good quality service or content. Finally, paid services have fewer scammers and bots.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is exactly the positives I came to with the cost-benefit analysis I did for this topic in the article that is linked. There are so many variables that play into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Foursquare – definitely not, but then again I don't use it. Maybe someone who actually plays the game would.

Twitter — possibly. It depends if twitter had the same pervasiveness as it does today. In reality, that's probably impossible: twitter's ubiquity is due in large part to the lower barrier of entrance. So it seems that paying for it reduces the utility of the product and, therefore, makes it not worth the money.

In summary: no.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am all for foursquare charging its users. I suspect that would strongly reduce the amount of spam I get from friends.

</comment><comment><USER8> Twitter I might pay for, but it would have to be either much more reliable, or distributed. Maybe not even then. Publishing status updates that anyone can subscribe to, and having awesome lines of communication with folks I'd otherwise never speak to is awesome, but it seems there's something missing before I'd pay for it.

Foursquare: Nope. It seems to me that the core of Foursquare is a feature that can be replicated on any site, and the only thing that makes it unique is the badges and the potential deals with retailers. Neither of which I'm willing to pay for.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would defiantly pay.. just like i pay for any other service I enjoy.. if I would like to continue using the service or for the service to grow it needs support so why not.

If I don't care about the service then of course I won't.

</comment><comment><USER10> Forget about even answering the question in the title. This is a poorly written article on a very silly premise.

</comment><comment><USER11> Probably not. But only because I think it would be less popular.

</comment><comment><USER12> No

</comment><comment><USER13> Hell NO!

</comment><comment><USER14> This is silly. Social networking requires critical mass, else it's useless. Something like 2% - 5% of users pay for freemium services.

So imagine if you had only 2% of your friends on FourSquare, or Facebook, or Twitter. Much less valuable, no?

Also, These companies can make _far more money_ via other business models.

Users > Revenues for some consumer startups. Grow now, monetize later.</comment>


Coinbase Billionaire Brian Armstrong's Plan to Make Crypto Safe for All - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/02/19/coinbase-billionaire-brian-armstrongs-plan-to-make-bitcoin-ethereum-xrp-safe-for-all/#6e8cc26345b0 <comment><USER2> I've been checking in on cryptocurrencies and blockchain things every couple of years and I tend to come away with a weird mixture of confusion and admiration each time.

Confusion because I don't understand how all of this has such an immense amount of time and capital invested in it when its actual use case for anything is extremely vague (mostly about future potential) and some that have moved away from proof of work (Stellar) seem a lot less safe?

Admiration because all of the different approaches, goals, and designs are really technically interesting (Dai using market incentives to stay pegged to one dollar, Tezos proof of stake and ability to get consensus on its own updates/formal verification, Zcash using zero knowledge proofs to keep transaction history optionally private, etc.)

I can't help shake that while the ability to hold decentralized consensus is neat, most of the current value seems to come entirely from speculation on future token price from people on reddit that have no idea what they're buying. Why do these things have any real value?

I've tried to follow the reasoning of people like Balaji S. Srinivasan from what I can find, but I have a hard time modeling a future where the current value of these things makes sense.

The value of Coinbase in all this makes sense though, if you build reliable infrastructure in a market you should make money - it doesn't matter if the underlying assets are worth anything or not.

<comment><USER3> Bitcoin has a great use case as internet native money, which can be thrown around programmatically, without being reliant on any private, corporate, or nation controlled services. Considering how much of a shitshow the payments industry is, I think this is a huge opportunity for bitcoin. Sure there are cases where regular payment methods are preferable, perhaps even most, but that doesn't mean that there is no place for true peer-to-peer permissionless money transfers.

<comment><USER4> This to me is the real value. I'm not a huge believer in Bitcoin, but try moving > 10k USD between bank accounts (just operating a small business I run into this several times a year) and you will quickly see the appeal. High fees, multi-day settlement times, raised eyebrows. It's just a mess. With cryptocurrencies you can move millions of dollars for less than a dollar in fees and it executes in as quickly as 10 minutes. There is definitely a downside in terms of price volatility, and other cryptocurrencies offer much better settlement times (beyond the network effect, they seem to offer more long term value here than Bitcoin), but having what is essentially gold that can teleport is very appealing. Sadly the ecosystem is not quite to where I would actually operate my business in this manner, but I can definitely see the value.

<comment><USER5> Transactions are about 10 minutes because that is the average block time, but you want at least 6 confirmations (blocks) too pass to really solidify things. So, it is more like 60 minutes. It is this reason (and volatility of course) that people dislike bitcoin as a regular payment mechanism. Nobody is going to wait 60 minutes at the counter to buy something.

But, if you have 1 trillion USD of value (insert the actual value that is meaningful to you) that you want to transfer around the world, you certainly want to do it in the most secure way possible. Especially without having to get permission from your local bureaucrat first. Bitcoin certainly makes that possible. The problem being that buying up 1 trillion USD worth of bitcoin is going to obviously move the market and anyone holding enough to do that OTC, makes it pretty centralized.

I do feel like there is a middle ground here and that is to look at it as more of a store of value. Just buy and hold it in the same way that people hold onto gold. If you look at the 100yr charts for gold, they are all over the place. 2008 was one of the largest dips that set things back at least 30 years! Now things have bounced back... but it is all on speculation and really has nothing to do with some sort of 'intrinsic value' of gold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Corporate fluff article on Forbes.

Should just be renamed Big-Brotherbase, or Banned-for-Life-and-Won't-Tell-You- Whybase. Coinbase is famous for suddenly disabling accounts and refusing to give an explanation. At least a traditional bank will normally explain the circumstances.

Got one of their arbitrary sucks-for-you letters last year. No way would I ever recommend them to anyone.

In my case I'm a mining developer, so I have a huge digital currency profile. Coinbase is horrifically opaque and impossible to deal with if they flag you unlike most other organizations.

E: I'll just lump some more examples of their corporate ineptitude.

1\. Recently I asked them for a dump of trades and fees executed on their exchange for audit and record keeping purposes. All they had were records of deposits and withdrawls but none of the actual trades. So no cost-basis data and now a huge accounting headache.

2\. When my personal account got locked, we separately had an application out for an institutional account. 4 months go by and suddenly I get emails saying "we're ready to proceed with your institutional account". Excuse me? Told them to fix my personal account first. Never heard back.

<comment> brian-armstrong Yikes, that sounds terrible. Hopefully the US can set legislation for this kind of thing. Having people get locked out of their crypto is no good.

<comment><USER7> It's interesting you didn't address his two points:

\- Coinbase not having records of your trades (although it's operating from a highly regulated jurisdiction)

\- Coinbase not communicating why/how accounts are locked.

> Having people get locked out of their crypto is no good.

Funny thing is that crypto (Bitcoin) was made so that people could _hold_ their own monies instead of relying on a third-party.

<comment><USER8> > \- Coinbase not having records of your trades (although it's operating from > a highly regulated jurisdiction)

This isn't accurate for active accounts, at least. I use the REST API to pull down my trading history, and it has all of it going back to 2013.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I question what these people value about cryptocurrency: with none of the autonomy, anonymity, or resilience present in initial pitches and offerings in the space, it seems like it's mostly valueless. Surely there's more to it than a cash grab that takes a massive amount of energy for these people, isn't there?

<comment><USER10> It's a cash grab for many people. On the other hand it feels like a kodak moment. Digital currency just feels like a natural progression for the world. It doesn't have a military backing it though. This makes me think that the most "revolutionary" crypto currency will be tied to a social media where people pressure elections in it's favor... sort of like reddit karma where there is no buying power but there is a lot of social power.

<comment><USER11> Maybe this is an American perspective (the American financial system is horribly outdated) but in the developing world, "digital currency" is mostly a solved problem. Your bank account integrates so seamlessly with digital payment systems that creating a separate currency seems entirely superfluous.

Here in India, we have a system called UPI. Connect it to your bank account once and you get a username like 'YourName@OkAxis'. Anyone can send money to this username and it goes straight to your bank account. You can pay establishments - online as well as offline - by simply verifying a one time password on your mobile. It's so seamless and cheap (essentially free) that I can't ever imagine needing a digital currency.

<comment><USER12> Interesting to hear this perspective as one of the main arguments people used to make was that people in rural India or wherever could now access banking products that traditional banks refused to give due to cost. I'm assuming that's no longer the case?

<comment><USER11> The current government had a massive banking drive where it almost forced the rural poor to open bank accounts. This was followed by demonetization of currency notes, which, as harmful as it was to the economy, "normalized" the idea of transacting digitally.

A bulk of transactions still happen via cash but digital payments, especially UPI, are seeing increasingly wider adoption. There has been a lot of innovation in this space just to make customer-merchant transactions easier.

For example, this product from PayTM basically acts as a confirmation box for UPI transactions.

[https://business.paytm.com/blog/introducing-paytm-sound- box-...](https://business.paytm.com/blog/introducing-paytm-sound-box-turn- your-business-into-a-smart-business/)

Something like this reduces the trust deficit in rural areas about digital banking products.

It's going to take a long while, but technologically, it's a solved problem. I can't see any utility that crypto brings to the table except for decentralization which most consumers don't care about anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The title is misleading. This doesn't sound like it will do anything to help make crypto safe for those people who need protection from government backdoors and key escrow.

</comment><comment><USER14> > That success comes from acting like a bank. Coinbase draws in customer funds > via bank wires. It stores its assets—numerical keys that unlock coins—in > vaults. It boasts of insurance coverage from Lloyd's of London. It has a > security staff of 41, including an Iraq War veteran assessing perimeter > risks and a Ph.D. cryptographer doing the same for mathematical assaults.

It is a bank, that instead of storing cash, stores keys. It is centralized. It complies with regulators. It does allow you to withdraw your keys into your own wallet, but a bank also allows you to withdraw your cash to your physical wallet. It walks like a bank, and it quacks like a bank. It is a bank.

</comment><comment><USER15> > "It's like if Google made Gmail for bitcoin," says Chris Dixon, an > Andreessen partner who serves on the Coinbase board. "And that's literally > the way they described it."

One of the most painful startup analogies I've heard.

<comment><USER16> Every startup should adopt this formula for their decks.

"Juicero: it's like if Google made Gmail for juice"

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The sooner that billionaire becomes a greater pejorative, the better.

The whole of society suffers from the accumulation of wealth to these few people.

On that basis, I don't give a fuck what this person says because they won't overcome the exploitation that got them there. And he does not command respect by having so much money.

This is the aristocracy by a different measure. Back then they used agricultural output. Now it is measured in assets.

<comment><USER18> >they won't overcome the exploitation that got them there

Do the corporations that evil billionaires own not pay their employees?

You realize that this wealth is just a result of a couple percent of markup per transaction on a massive scale, right?

Yeah, Armstrong may be a scummy person, and his exchanges are trash, but he made his billions by offering a service that no one else did. There was no other way that I'm aware of to easily buy BTC or ETC with cash before coinbase popped up.

It's possible to make a billion honestly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there any other reputable site for a US citizen to buy crypto quickly with a credit card or bank account?

I have used Coinbase for lack of alternatives. It's awful. Every time I sign in (a few times a year) there's some new problem with my account. Either they need more ID verification (done it 10x) or they decided my purchases are going to be delayed 3 days or blah blah blah. I just got an email from them today saying my account is suspended if I don't take some action.

This is not the decentralized future crypto people want. It's a half-assed bank that doesn't need its customers.

<comment><USER13> > Is there any other reputable site for a US citizen to buy crypto quickly > with a credit card or bank account?

You can buy it here: [https://www.axcrypt.net/](https://www.axcrypt.net/) and [http://www.cryptoexpert.com/](http://www.cryptoexpert.com/).

However there's really no need to buy it anymore, as there are very good open- source implementations, like [https://gnupg.org/](https://gnupg.org/) and [https://www.veracrypt.fr/](https://www.veracrypt.fr/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really wish people would stop using the title "billionaire". Is "billionaire" the new aristocracy or priesthood?

<comment><USER21> What, you never heard of the tres comas club?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How kind of him to give us us all be same opportunity to be fleeced.

</comment><comment><USER23> As usual it involves making questionable fashion choices

<comment><USER23> i.e. the 'hey I'm a billionaire / bond supervillain' look</comment></comment>


RE: "How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016" - <AUTHOR> https://0xa.io/its-funny-but-the-reality-is-these-tools-solve-real-problems-ebf48402d4af#.o92ddrako <comment><USER2> Hopefully all tools solve real problems, but JS right now has too much 'throw- out-everything-you-know' re-implementations of too many ideas at the same time. As the post suggests, this manifests as incompatible implementations where previous experience with one tool does not translate to familiarity with the problem domain.

There's also not enough genuinely helpful meta-information to go around, as single-tool how-to and quickstart guides dominate, and most discourse about pros and cons doesn't address deep, foundational concerns. Some counter- examples are the Redux Prior Art page [1] and the Mithril comparison page [2] that go into detail about how their architectural decisions and dataflow differs from that of other, similar frameworks.

But what this post doesn't address is why additional new tools proliferate. It seems to both defend tools as legitimate, but yet admit that all of them suck bad enough that new ones are constantly coming out. So what's the way out?

[1] [http://redux.js.org/docs/introduction/PriorArt.html](http://redux.js.org/docs/introduction/PriorArt.html)

[2] [http://mithril.js.org/comparison.html](http://mithril.js.org/comparison.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> op here: Yes I do defend the tools because the alternative the article I responded to apparently was not to use any tools. Obviously this is an option, and for some cases it's hands-down the best one, but simply complaining about the complexity isn't a solution either. The tools fix major problems with JS development which the authors of the tools had no hand in making or power to fix.

Many people complain about grunt/gulp/webpack but they don't want to use Makefiles. Many people complain about how icky JavaScript is and can't wait until ES6 and Babel already gives that to you today. There are thousands of well written packages you can use to avoid reinventing the wheel which you need to include as yet another file on a CDN which could end up being a security vuln. or at the very least slower in HTTP 1.x. Same issue when people complain about npm or left-pad.

They have perfectly valid complaints though, but the experience and productivity then and now are completely different. And when you get past setting up the tooling it's light years better. One hopes this only gets better and simpler over time, but for now it's not.</comment></comment>


Mountain Lion Migration - <AUTHOR> http://jonbeebe.net/2012/08/mountain-lion-migration.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This article shares some advice on migrating from one 10.8 machine to another, to make the process as smooth as possible (especially for developers). Based on what I learned from migrating from my old MacBook to a new one the other day.</comment>


The Ubuntu Package Roulette - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/UbuntuPackageRoulette <comment><USER2> What we need to do is develop business models for the painful integration engineering.

For example Guacamole has proven quite the fussy little critter, but NetCubed[1] has a Ubuntu Linux Desktop that is quite nifty.

Does it hurt my pride to use a well-integrated, packaged solution? Yes, but: "What Marcellus Wallace said about pride."

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller- profile?ref=cns_sr...](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller- profile?ref=cns_srchrow&id=d4b96339-6a83-4b02-9a8e-4ba3fb121edc)</comment>


Original Smalltalk-80 Xerox images - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rochus-keller/Smalltalk <comment><USER2> Note that the original link of the image is [http://www.wolczko.com/st80/image.tar.gz](http://www.wolczko.com/st80/image.tar.gz)

The referenced github page is a tool which makes use of the sources file included in the original image tar.gz provided by Mario.</comment>


Micromobs: Group discussion made easy - <AUTHOR> http://micromobs.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting mashable quote - Realistically, Micromobs will need to tinker a bit more before it finds the right balance between one-to-many communication and inbox harmony. As it stands, the startup offers a compelling way for users to do a quick e-mail data or conversation dump. But, ongoing Micromobs usage will do little to eliminate inbox clutter.

Thinking about this, it's pretty easy to see a solution in this space, though it's not clear how an inbox "feature" is going to make for a compelling company...

</comment><comment><USER3> Mashable article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2276651></comment>


Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis - <AUTHOR> https://www.aviationtoday.com/2020/02/03/battery-supply-problems-faced-electric-air-taxis/ <comment><USER2> The Achilles heel of electric aviation is that batteries don't shed weight as they discharge. A fundamental aspect of Aerospace engineering is that rockets/planes shed a lot of weight during flight by by burning fuel. Many big jets take off at weights far too heavy to land and long ranges are only possible because of all the weight shed in flight.

Until that issue can be addressed with electric aviation, electric planes will be a concept limited to very short range flying.

Rockets solve this problem by dumping the dead weight overboard but not sure a bunch of dead airplane batteries parachuting back to earth is a viable approach.

<comment><USER3> Don't conflate rockets and airplanes. Most of the energy an airplane uses is to overcome parasitic drag – to overcome the air resistance caused by moving forward through the air mass. While some of the energy is used to keep the plane in the air, that is not dominant. Yes, planes have a higher maximum takeoff weight then maximum landing weight, but that has to do with the design of the landing gear, in some hypothetical world where jet fuel did not shed weight, planes would only have slightly worse range.

The real problem with electric aviation is that batteries have terrible weight to energy ratios compared to fossil fuels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's pretty clear that battery technology and cost efficiency is going to have to advance substantially before it can have a meaningful impact on air transport.

Blimps might be a slight exception.

<comment><USER5> Or just use hydrogen, it's a much denser energy storage medium, and airflight is less cost sensitive than ground transportation.

<comment><USER6> Or not bother with air taxis, civilisation won't collapse because some rich arsehole can't get across New York in five minutes.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but on another hand we should encourage the rich asshole to spend his money so it could be useful to the rest of the economy.

<comment><USER8> Universal basic income and massive carbon taxes to pay for it!

It's about time we tax actual destruction, not a minimum wage earner's Netflix subscription.

<comment><USER9> Best way to do it I've ever seen is the automated transactions tax, whereby you replace most taxes with a small percentage taken on every financial transaction (plus a larger one when converting to/from cash to account for the black economy).

It's progressive because poor people will only pay twice (once on their salary/benefits, once when buying stuff), whereas rich people will pay several times when moving money around.

<comment><USER10> Expect a new class of companies to spring up overnight that are dedicated to bundling transactions to avoid this new tax. For instance, I could make a single transaction to my broker that covered all of my expected expenditures for the month, and that broker would then disburse it to my payees, bundling it with funds from other payers to avoid the tax on the other end.

I am strongly in favor of a tax on all stock market transactions, though—anything to deter HFT, which IMHO has little societal benefit while externalizing a _ton_ of risk.

<comment><USER11> Wouldn't work. Tax law can tell the difference between an individual transaction and bundled transactions. It's also the only area of law that allows for ex post facto changes to the criminality of acts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the chart from the article I see that capacitors are shown as having high specific power. Would it not work to use a hybrid approach of capacitors for takeoff and then Li-ion for most of the flight? I know it would make the system more complicated and therefore more expensive up front, but I wonder if it's an option or if it's out of the question for one reason or another. I've read that supercapacitors are being used for busses and other applications. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor)

<comment><USER13> Capacitors are great for high load requirements but not great as an energy storage device. i.e. if you wanted to draw several hundred amps for a second or two with relatively low heat waste, an ultra-capacitor arrangement would be the way to go, but for energy storage, a battery wins hands down. There's huge research going into expanding the capacity of capacitors.

Check out this video about capacitors: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoWMF3VkI6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoWMF3VkI6U)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> PS -- author here, happy to discuss.</comment>


The iPad's dominance of the market for tablet computers may prove short-lived - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/03/tablet_computers <comment><USER2> I really don't know how they come up with these estimates. It's estimated that the iPad will sell 40 million units this year. Judging by the relative sizes of the graph, other mobile tablets will sell around 18 million units this year and PC tablets will sell around 3.5 million units.

With the year already 17% over, and only two real competitors on the market (Xoom and Galaxy Tab), I fail to see how 18 million Android tablets are going to suddenly fly off the shelf. I don't even think and Android Tablet makers are planning for anywhere near that amount of uptake.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand it either.

The iPad isn't a phone. It's all about the apps, so unlike Android phones the number of apps are important. Apple is selling apps like hotcakes so it doesn't make sense to say apps aren't important for a tablet.

Xoom and Galaxy Tab doesn't have a real selection of apps, so what's the selling point? They're not cheaper.</comment></comment>


1000's of publicly accessible private HDD's spread on Piratebay. - <AUTHOR>

From the leaked content's readme:
-- start quote
ASUSTeK Computer Inc (ASUS) have spent the better part of a year ignoring the fact that their RT-series routers suffer from two CRITICAL security vulnerabilities.
1. Default setting for the ftp-server was to allow anonymous login. ASUS calls this feature "limitless access rights". We call this madness.
2. AiCloud usernames and passwords were stored in plaintext in a file available for download without logging in. We call this insanity.
This release includes
- IP-addresses to 12937 ASUS routers with vulnerable FTP and/or AiCloud.
- 6536 complete and 3605 partial lists of files shared from these ASUS routers.
- AiCloud login credentials to 3131 ASUS routers.
-- End quote
The story was removed from most sourced, but magnet-link containing IP and directory data are circulating on darknet sites like wildfire.
I'm afraid that many innocent victims are going to get hurt by this, and it all could have been avoided if the ISP's scanned their networks and warned their users.
I am at least trying to warn those i know have an ASUS Router, and so should you. <comment><USER2> I'm all for responsible disclosure, and going public in case a vendor ignores the issue. But publishing the private data of innocent people on bittorrent? And they have the audacity to write it in the tone of a honest security researcher? I call them irresponsible pricks.

Really, I'd have more sympathy with them if they would have used the security hole for criminal purposes, for their own monetary gain. Not nice, but I would have gotten that. But just dumping private data on the net, and believing people should even be thankful for it... _that_ is insane.

Thankfully its probably just a list of filenames, but even that can do enough damage, and they have no right to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree completely, that's why i want to get the word out and warn people about the fact. I don't understand why this is not getting more attention!

No, it's not only the filenames - the dump gives direct access to all files and private harddrives without any login or password (Anonymous login).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe a URL or few? The text reads like an Infowars.com post on 9/11.

Edit: [http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/526942](http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/526942)

<comment><AUTHOR> Note sure what to link towards, every publicly available source have been removed.

EDIT: Found a blog [http://sam3.se/archives/782](http://sam3.se/archives/782)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. I just added an Asus RT router to my shopping cart this morning.

This is one of amazon's biggest sellers:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FK1E46U](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FK1E46U) \- ASUS RT-N66W (1,986 customer reviews, Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39 in Electronics)

<comment><AUTHOR> More than 50 new public ASUS routers appear every day on FTP-indexing sites, N66W is one of the most common ones.

All you need to do to share your harddrive publicly on the internet is to plug it in. And that is something that most people do without much thought, it's not like anyone expect the router to share all of your stuff publicly by default.

Someone should write a review and contact Amazon so people get a warning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, I was considering getting an ASUS to replace my current Netgear R6200 (the built-in DNS relay stops working after a few days of operation and can't be disabled). Now it's looking like I'd be better served building a little ITX box and doing it myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can check out [http://www.mikrotik.com/](http://www.mikrotik.com/)

Their routers are extremely powerful, in the same ballpark as cisco's smaller routers and they also take their security very seriously.

It runs a custom linux with a web based configuration environment.

Also, for what you get - very cheap.</comment></comment>


Plotnine: Grammar of Graphics for Python - <AUTHOR> https://www.datascienceworkshops.com/blog/plotnine-grammar-of-graphics-for-python <comment><USER2> Awesome, basically a free book chapter. Will definitely fire up the notebook and give this a try.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trying to get some resources on python</comment>


Machine Learning for Drummers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.petersobot.com/machine-learning-for-drummers <comment><USER2> Great! Refreshing to see a ML post using some well-understood methods instead of throwing a random neural net from Kaggle at the problem...

Tangential:

> _Is a given audio file a sample of a kick drum, snare drum, hi-hat, other > percussion, or something else? (...) Humans have no trouble classifying > these two sounds, as we've likely heard them tens of thousands of times > before._

Are people taught that in schools or something? Because I personally can't classify those sounds, don't know these names, and I'm not sure how I was supposed to learn them, other by playing in a band.

<comment><USER3> > Are people taught that in schools or something? Because I personally can't > classify those sounds, don't know these names, and I'm not sure how I was > supposed to learn them, other by playing in a band.

This is something that is taught at schools with a music program. (Although, not necessarily discretely).

If you are someone whom has played music before, it is easy to forget what music sounded like before your ear was trained. (i.e. certain instruments and harmonies can be indistinguishable without training)

Is it common to have never played on at a drum kit in your entire life?

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

> _Is it common to have never played on at a drum kit in your entire life?_

I didn't, not on a real one at least. I know the sounds though, I spent ungodly amount of time playing on an electronic keyboard as a kid, where I could (and often would) change the sounds under keys to drums. However, nowhere (AFAIR) were the names of those sounds mentioned, and I'm not sure where I could encounter them.

<comment> jbenner-radham In my anecdotal experience I only know the names of various percussion by sound because I was a drummer in band class at school. My friends weren't taught that in the general education program though. That could possibly vary by region though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Had an idea to do this a couple months ago, but haven't got around to implementing it yet. I'm curious: did you consider using standard image processing techniques with spectrograms as an alternative to decision trees? I know thats how Izotope does their Neutron instrument detection, but I'm not sure how it would compare performance wise. Also, have you tried classifying percussive sounds that aren't actual drums? I'd love to see how it categorizes various stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! In order:

\- I did consider using image processing techniques as opposed to decision trees, but the point here was not to come up with the most advanced and accurate classifier possible, but rather to build something simple and explainable to folks without an ML (or even a CA) background.

\- I haven't tried this extensively on non-drum-like percussion, but that'd be a great follow up post.

<comment><USER5> I totally understand your decision, but I bet a 1D deep convolutional network would do really well at this given a larger dataset. You can also do a lot of data augmentation by speed changes, filters, adding reverb, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Surprised there's no discussion of FFT, power spectra, etc. Would like to see someone with an electrical engineering/signal processing background work on this problem.

<comment><USER7> Stock FFT is a really high-dimension feature vector given the number of training examples used here, and most of the resolution of the FFT would be unneeded anyways. "Average loudness in several frequency ranges" captures spectral information at a granularity much more appropriate to the data and classification task. For analyzing drum samples you don't need a lot of frequency resolution, although other low-dimension spectral features like MFCCs or flux would probably be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could I use something like this to identify which of two or three people is speaking in an audio clip? Assume I can label several samples of each person's speech, then present an unlabeled sample for classification.

<comment><USER9> I'm looking for something that can do this as well. Anything out already?

<comment><USER8> I had a go of it by replacing the drum samples with voice samples (both 1-2 seconds and 3-5 seconds), then removing the features concerned with length and volume. Fiddled with the number of sub-sections per sample, and some of the random forest settings, but never consistently got higher than 77% accuracy between the four speakers. Maybe it would do better with two speakers.</comment></comment></comment>


CodeFights - <AUTHOR> https://codefights.com/home

<comment><USER2> Cool but hijacks the back button on safari iPad? I mean...</comment>


Ask HN: Buying unused domains from big corporations - <AUTHOR>

There's a couple of domain names that would be great with the startup name we're working with, that are registered by big corporations (in this case two, one belonging to IBM, and one to AOL).
The domains in questions aren't being used, they are leftovers from past projects or acquisitions, and just redirect to the mother corp index.
Anyone here have any experience whether or not it'd be possible to get them somehow, if so who to talk to etc, or should we just move on with our lives as if the domains never existed? <comment><USER2> Don't expect them to move quickly. If they do agree to sell, I would personally plan for it to take close to 5 months. (Decisions and actions don't happen quickly at IBM or AOL).

Options to make it go faster... 1) Start with a similar domain (eg: getProduct.com) simply to get started 2) Use Linkedin to find a first or second degree connection in the company in IT Operations, or Legal. 3) Contact that person on Linkedin and try to get a phone number of the right person to talk to OR 4) Ping them directly from a non-gmail account (ideally a personal business sounding domain). (expect a 2 week time for them to respond). 5) Follow up consistently. It will get dropped. 6) Legal will say "No" at first, bc that's what they do. 7) Try try again.

hope it helps

</comment><comment><USER3> I think if ant of the time these domains were the face of the awesome things they done in the past then they won't.

If it were used to host some of their internal app then they might give you.

I suggest to find some personal contact (ofcourse from some middle man) with some Manager level in the IS department.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for input.

It's mainly from past acquisitions. One is from a company acquired in 2004, the other a past unused name of an acquired company that was acquired in 2006.

Do you happen to know if there are legal reasons they might be scared of doing that?</comment></comment>


How much does it cost to hire some devs to finish my job? - <AUTHOR>

I work with operations at a VC firm and we started developing an in-house solution to manage our funds and investments.
I am no professional developer, I am a finance guy, and right now I am stuck. I can't manage my amateur codebase anymore nor develop it further.
It is written in Rails, so my question is, how much does it cost to have 2-3 developers finish it in 2-3 months? <comment><USER2> I have this bathroom project and I need 2-3 plumbers to finish it. How much does that cost?

Funny comment aside, you need to write specifications, talk to Ruby-on-Rails engineers (or an agency) in person to get a proper quote. Don't be surprised if an agency already charges for the first meeting. Alternatively post it on odesk or freelancer.com.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pay someone to review it. It's by far the best solutions and only real way to get an accurate estimate. I have seen project quoted off the cuff finish at 5 times the original price.

Pay someone.

</comment><comment><USER4> You're probably won't be out of the woods for under $60k.</comment>


HN: post is offtopic?  Don't complain, redirect - <AUTHOR>

We have two spin off sites by mattmaroon and nickb, respectively:
www.nonhackernews.com
www.newmogul.com
I've been trying to direct off topic posts to these forums. I think that's more constructive than complaining, b/c it also helps to develop new communities, and it is the community that provides the real value.
I'd rather see a concentration of off beat news, or financial news, posted and discussed by passionate people in the know, than to have them trickle through the regular HN feed and have the discussions filled with "!HN" posts. <comment><USER2> well get down witcho bad self then</comment>


Ask HN: Missed Connection – HN Story that got away - <AUTHOR> I'm a long time HN reader. You are a story about a new? college - in california? We met about 3 years ago.
You're kinda liberal-artsy: critical thinking and writing, but geeky, too, with skills in stats and systems theory. You're petite and selective. And of course you're well-travelled - everyone does a year abroad, I think.
Hit me back if you remember me. Or if you remember the story, Or recognize the college. <comment><USER2> Olin[1] or Harvey Mudd[2]?

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_W._Olin_College_of_En...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_W._Olin_College_of_Engineering)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Mudd_College](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Mudd_College)

<comment><AUTHOR> i don't think so, but it might have been Harvey Mudd. Olin I know well from recruiting there.</comment></comment>