Why do we care more about benefit 'scroungers' than billions lost to the rich? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/15/benefit-scroungers-billions-rich-paradise-papers-tax-avoidance <comment><USER4> False optimism? Old article, but probably still true today: 19% of Americans think they are among the top 1% of earners and 20% more think they will be one day [1]. When you introduce a plan that hurts "the rich": 39% of people think they're the target.

1: [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of- hop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over- self-interest.html)

<comment><USER5> This isn't false optimism. It's a surprisingly accurate self-assessment.

 _It turns out that 12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What's more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution._

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from- rags-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-to- riches-to-rags.html)

<comment><USER6> So ... 39% think they'll be in the top 1%, when in reality that's the proportion who get to be in the top 5%. How is that an accurate self- assessment?

<comment><USER5> For a question about finance to the general public this is a cheating-on-the- test and educators-wept-tears-of-joy level great result.

<comment><USER7> So you call it "accurate" because it's not as inaccurate as you think it could be?

<comment><USER8> It's pretty close, for people taking a shot in the dark. It's just what these people believed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a matter of principle.

I think most people just have this plan of working hard until 65. They're deeply unhappy with this. They sacrifice joy, comfort, relationships, and family to live this dream of survival. They value others who suffer similarly.

Benefit scroungers have some level of comfort without the hard work.

I don't even tell people I live comfortably freelancing anymore because people have such a negative perception of it. I may work 20 hours a week at double the effort but all people see is that I'm being lazy for not doing a full 40 hour week.

Whereas people have this perception of a rich person working weekends, waking up at 4 AM, getting divorced to make their company work. And so people empathize more with the corrupt rich.

<comment><USER10> In the UK I don't think it's "people empathize more with the corrupt rich" \- I think it's simply that most people aren't aware of the amounts of money lost to the Treasury by benefit fraud and tax evasion.

<comment><USER11> In one case someone wants you to work harder so they can work less, in the other someone worked hard (or smart) and doesn't want to give up as much of what they earned to others so they can work less.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I know what they both are - and I don't approve of either.

However, looking at the simple finances of it (because that's what actually impacts public services) tax evasion is about 30 times bigger a problem than benefit fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As the article states, a lot of this is to do with the characterisation of the ultra-rich as 'hardworking', vs the characterisation of benefits claimants (legally or otherwise) as not. This narrative plays depressingly well with a lot of people in the UK, especially with those who are in the socioeconomic classes just above recipients of benefits.

<comment><USER13> Why do you say "depressingly well?" Charitable people from the upper classes tend to have a naive, cartoonish vision of the noble poor. As someone who has been poor, who has family members who still are, I can tell you that it's a mixed bag. I know lots of people who could be characterized as benefit "scroungers." They're not bad people. They don't deserve to starve. And I'm happy they're getting the help they need.

But I wouldn't describe any of them as particularly _hard-working_.

That's feel-good nonsense.

<comment><USER14> Are they less valuable human beings? Do their lives mean less than the average person, or the supposedly "hard working" millionaire?

<comment><USER13> Clearly not. In fact, I went out of my way to say as much in my comment (in anticipation of responses like this one). But I guess there's almost nothing you can say to prevent this response (which is unfortunate, because it's a _significant impediment_ to productive discussion).

<comment><USER14> Is someone who isn't "hard-working" (a non-specific and subjective concept) a lesser person?

<comment><USER13> No. I've now answered your question _twice_ (three times, if you count my initial anticipation of this question). What is this weird impulse? What are you trying to accomplish here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When the rich have significant influence over the media and politics, they are able to sway public opinion to focus on others rather than them

<comment><USER16> Wasn't the lesson of Trump's election that the rich and powerful don't have significant influence over the media that people actually consume (social media) anymore?

<comment><USER17> Is Trump not rich and powerful?

<comment><USER16> Yes, Trump is rich (and powerful, now that he's president), but he doesn't control the media in the sense that the person I was responding to was referring to. I think they had someone like Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, in mind.

<comment><USER17> He might not control the media in the traditional sense, but we have to give him credit for how he manipulated it into giving him endless free coverage and exposure. He turned the lack of media control INTO the powerful position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> because we, mere thousandaires and paupers alike, live in a separate reality from the ultra-wealthy. The rich and poor-and-middle-class might as well be living on different planets. When a benefits cheater somehow gets free housing or spends foodstamps on lobster, we ordinary citizens can see that and relate to that. "That could have been my house or my dinner!" We can see the cheaters on the street and imagine ourselves in their place. We can _relate_.

But when a faceless corporation we've never heard of hides umptillions in a place we've never heard of, somehow the impact is lost. Ask an average joe on the street the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion and you will be answered with shrugs. We don't see how that money flows from one holding company to another and we fail to connect that to the broader economy, and this illusion has been perpetuated by hidden class of venal, remorseless, well-educated and very smart mercenaries beholden by law and their shareholders to accumulate every last speck of capital.

This state of affairs is not new in America- Kurt Vonnegut recognized the phenomenon 50 years ago [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158414-america-is- the-wealt...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158414-america-is-the- wealthiest-nation-on-earth-but-its-people)

</comment><comment><USER19> Because the rich are contributing and it's a question of the degree to which they're contributing.

Scroungers are just taking and draining the system even if it's a "smaller" amount.

<comment><USER20> This raises the question of the importance of the consumer in our economy. Scroungers still spend money, and often spend most of the money they get, which puts money in the pockets of companies, which they then spend on payroll and other things. If the money they get is being put back into the system, then how is it draining?

<comment><USER21> _Almost_ by definition, these people can't manage their resources _as_ efficiently as the wealthy.

<comment><USER22> There is nothing to manage at least from the perspective of monetary assets, things would disappear too fast for you have a chance to 'manage' them; also it's the opposite, the poor are very efficient with the limited resources they have -- you kinda have to be wouldn't you? Lest you end up from just being poor to being a corpse. Below a certain breakpoint money only functions as a means of consumption. With what they are bringing in they will never be able to save enough to make any investments that will have a net positive in their lives and a negative shock will very quickly wipe out whatever progress they make. From their perspective it is actually logical to buy lottery tickets and gamble since the price of admission is low enough for them to afford; the calculus for them is shifted in a way that is different from your experiences. When you have an abundance of resources you are in a completely different position since you don't need to be concerned with survival anymore -- also you get many chances since your eggs won't end up in the same basket. It's not impossible but the chances that somebody who is poor can execute the process for a legitimate means of making money outside whatever formal arrangement they are in as opposed to brewing meth (which can be considered a 'side project' depending on your frame of mind) is unlikely given the context they find themselves in. The prior statements also hinge upon the unlikely event that someone can escape the cess pit of proletariat culture in the first place. It's structured to be this way, the range of choices somebody can make at the bottom of the socio economic ladder is much more restricted -- why do you think there are such stringent drug and prostitution laws in certain places? It's to reduce the actions that poor people can take outside the game that a relatively small group collectively decided we need to play -- when you reduce people's agency enough you can get them to do absolutely anything through a 'legit' channel: like taking a bullet to the head in some far off country, doing back breaking work in a kitchen, or something else that is equally unpleasant. A certain fraction of the population needs to be meat for the grinder to do it's job.

<comment><USER21> The soft bigotry of low expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This seems to be the central data point of the article:

> _less than half (48%) thought that legal tax avoidance was "usually or > always wrong"._

> _By contrast, more than 60% of Britons believe it is "usually or always > wrong" for poorer people to use legal loopholes to claim more benefits_

I think there are two reasonably simple explanations here:

First, I don't know what a legal loophole to claim more benefits is - <USER3> you qualify for a given payment, or you don't. Perhaps I'm not paying attention, but I don't recall having heard much debate on legal benefits loopholes, just regular fraud. There's a risk that some portion of respondents heard "fraud", even though the question was about legal loopholes.

The other factor is that there is a significant moral difference between arrangements for paying less tax on money that you legitimately earned, and arrangements to receive more money that you didn't, but which are provided to you to help you become your situation is considered precarious.

Yes, there are people (legally) receiving unreasonable amounts of income that they didn't "earn", in many cases from public budgets, directly or indirectly, through various kinds of cronyism. This, not which rate of tax is paid on such income, is unethical, basically a crime, but I believe that the way to deal with it, is in a first class way, not through the tax code.

<comment><USER24> > There's a risk that some portion of respondents heard "fraud", even though > the question was about legal loopholes.

Isn't that the point? People see tax avoidance but don't see it as fraud; people see legal benefit maximisation and see it as fraud.

> First, I don't know what a legal loophole to claim more benefits is - <USER3> > you qualify for a given payment, or you don't.

A benefit claimant's benefit is paid by the secretary of state for the department for work and pensions. That person is obviously busy, so they employ decision makers who sit in benefit centres across the UK.

There's no way to interact directly with a decision maker. You can only ever interact with them via forms and postal letters, and those letters and forms go through an intermediary.

A decision maker looks at the details of the person's claim. They apply the various acts, statutes, statutory instruments, and case law to the person's claim. All that law is scattered across various places, and so decision makers have a couple of handy guide books.

These are available online.

[https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/decision-makers- gu...](https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/decision-makers-guide-staff- guide)

[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advice-for- decisi...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advice-for-decision- making-staff-guide)

The advice for decision making is for:

> DWP decision makers now use Advice for decision making (instead of the DMG) > for decisions that involve:

> Universal Credit

> Personal Independence Payment contribution-based Jobseeker's Allowance and > contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance for people who are > eligible for Universal Credit

I think all the rest use the decision makers guide.

Have a look at the guide. Have a look at the page numbers listed in each volume. The decision makers guide is 14,000 pages (fourteen thousand) long. And there's no index.

It's impossible for ordinary people to work out if they're really entitled or not to a benefit. And the quality of decision making is, frankly, piss poor.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/30/stagge...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/30/staggering- rise-pip-complaints-rot-system-disability-benefits)

here's a judge from a first tier appeal panel saying the decision making is terrible: [https://sirhenrybrooke.me/2017/11/08/poor-decision-making- pe...](https://sirhenrybrooke.me/2017/11/08/poor-decision-making-personal- independence-payments-pips-and-pip-appeals/)

So, a legal benefit loophole might be a skilled benefits adviser who helps claimants make claims by helping them fill in the forms and gather evidence, and then helps them attend the independent medical assessments, and then helps them write the letter for mandatory reconsideration and then follow up with an appeal.

<comment><USER23> My argument is that I don't think that's what people hear when you ask them about "legal loopholes".

And so the survey accidentally, implicitly ends up comparing "legal tax avoidance" with "benefits fraud" which is apples to oranges. If the questions instead had been "working with your accountant to minimise you tax liability in legal ways" vs. "working with your benefits advisor to make sure you receive the benefits you legally qualify for", I suspect the result would have been different.

If you want to write the article the author actually did, the more relevant question would probably have been "tax fraud" vs "benefits fraud". I'd be curious to know what those numbers are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the answer is because you tend to compare yourself to people that are close to you in terms of attainment. So you don't compare yourself to the Queen of England or a malnourished farmer in Africa. A middle class person compares them self to the person who lost his job, and the person that is doing a bit better in their town or neighborhood.

Focusing on the "scroungers" is a way to hate what you are afraid of becoming, or what you sacrifice to avoid.

</comment><comment><USER26> To me the biggest benefit of UBI is we might be able to get rid of this attitude. It's hard to criticise a benefit when you are a recipient of it yourself.

<comment><USER27> This is precisely the reason I'm against UBI, I don't want to be involuntarily subject to it. I'd rather have the choice.

<comment><USER28> The capacity of people to rationalise a literal free lunch as oppression never ceases to amaze me.

<comment><USER8> And the capacity of people to call government hand outs 'free' never ceases to amaze me.

The money is coming from somewhere. It may be free to you, but it's someone else's money.

<comment><USER29> And with an actual free lunch the group handing it out is losing something. That doesn't change the fact that to you, it is free, and how is that a bad thing for you?

<comment><USER8> Because there isn't an infinite supply of money, it has to come from somewhere.

It's the flaw in democracy that I'm surprised has taken this long to come about. People are inherently greedy, as you are pointing out, and will generally vote for whatever candidate will benefit them the most. They don't care about how it will effect the economy or where the money would come from, just that they get it. And with how hard it is to remove entitlements once they're passed, it's a constant snowball.

<comment><USER30> Money is only useful while in motion. Money paid to poor people is immediately spent on, mostly, necessary goods and services. Local economies benefit from the extra liquidity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Without expressing an opinion one way or the other, the reason is very simple to explain. Taxes are seen as taking something away from you. Benefits by contrast are something that somebody else is giving to you. Having less taken away from you is going to be seen as less of an issue than somebody else taking more from other people than they 'deserve.'

There's plenty of lost nuance in this view, but if you try to empathize with people who feel this way - it's not hard.

<comment><USER26> A lot of the people in the UK you hear complaining about benefits are pensioners, the pension budget dwarfs that for benefits, it's the largest part of our welfare state. They don't complain about that gift from the government.

The reality is we have had a rather rabid right wing press for some time, this has led to some people having a distorted view on these things. There was a survey recently which asked people how much is lost to benefit fraud, the answer people gave was 25% when the reality is 0.7%. I don't know about the costs but I can imagine you couldn't get lower than that without spending more than the return.

I try and empathise with their attitudes but I don't want it affecting policy.

<comment><USER32> 'gift from the government'?! These are people that have worked their whole lives from times when benefit scrounging was not a viable life plan. There's plenty of poverty in retirement.

Also quite apart from fraud there are peversely generous incentives for people not to work, and thus we end up with the spectacle of multiple generations having never worked, and having no intention to do so.

<comment><USER28> Incentives not to work: a real problem. The only way out of that is methodical reform of the system; what Universal Credit could be if it wasn't a disaster being run by IDS.

Multiple generations never having worked: very rare, this is a common piece of anti-benefit propaganda that's rarely rooted in fact. [https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/are-cultures-worklessness- pass...](https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/are-cultures-worklessness-passed-down- generations)

<comment><USER26> I don't think IDS is involved anymore, May didn't like his face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Because the billions aren't lost to the rich. They ain't spending it, so there is no real resource drain. It's just numbers in a bank account. Essentially the rich saving has the same economic effect as taxation. Hit them with remittance taxation and it will just sit there 'offshore' doing largely nothing other than making the rich feel rich, even though they can't spend it.

The 'scroungers' however are draining real resources for nothing apparently in return. Not that they can provide anything because there aren't sufficient jobs for them.

In other words they are not 'scroungers', they are just the 1 in 20 people who can't get a job under neo-liberalism because it requires about 5% permanently unemployed to control inflation.

What we do get annoyed about are the 'idle rich'. Those who appear to get their money 'for nothing' the same as the 'scroungers' and then flaunt it by buying expensive stuff.

There is no reduction in public service capability by the rich having vast sums of money 'offshore'. The government is never short of money - as they demonstrate everytime somebody they don't like needs bombing, or a set of new nuclear submarines need purchasing.

<comment><USER34> > _Those who appear to get their money 'for nothing' the same as the > 'scroungers' and then flaunt it by buying expensive stuff._

How someone got their money is irrelevant, but it's _much_ better for the economy that they spend it, even on garbage, than let it sit in a brokerage account. Every person with a trust fund spending $400k on an Aston Martin is sustaining (not creating) jobs and distributing wealth to some degree.

<comment><USER33> "but it's much better for the economy that they spend it,"

Generally it isn't - because that tilts the economy towards producing goods and services that are wanted rather than those that are needed. Trickle down has been shown over the last 30 years to be largely a myth.

For example if you have public healthcare and private healthcare and there is a shortage of doctors then the wealthy "crowds out" the public healthcare system by purchasing private healthcare. Essentially they are using their wealth to jump the queue. Like the 'priority queue' at a theme park.

<comment><USER35> Consumption through spending is economically beneficial to everyone. You misunderstand what 'trickle down economics' is.

<comment><USER32> So then let's have permanent war because all that spending on bombs is economically beneficial to everyone, right?

<comment><USER35> Say hello to the military-industrial complex

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "The rich" have more education, political and media influence and resistance to accusations as advertisers, potential litigators, owners, etc. Many people are not critical thinkers and lap up media as gospel without a second thought.

</comment><comment><USER37> For some reason, people can't wrap their heads around the fact that every enterprise needs some degree of "shrinkage" to keep functioning effectively. Try to get those margins to zero and everything starts going haywire.

</comment><comment><USER38> H.L. Mencken once defined puritanism as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having fun. Based on my interactions with conservatives in the U.S. who are religious I've modified Mencken's quote:

Religious conservatism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve.

<comment><USER7> So, in your country only the religious are greedy?

<comment><USER38> No. I think your logic may be off. If I say all A have property B this does not imply that no other type of object can have property B. For instance, it is true that all living men have cells that reproduce. But men aren't the only living humans with this property.

Also it's clearly just meant to be a witty statement and not to be taken as a formal definition.

<comment><USER7> It was a question, not a conclusion; I think you'll find the flaw with your own logic, comprehension, or both.

>"Based on my interactions with conservatives in the U.S. who are religious [...]"

This strongly implies you only find the given characteristic, greed, amongst the religious subset of conservatives.

I was thus enquiring so as to establish whether, for example, you found all those without religion to be devoid of greed. You strongly implied it was only _non-religious_ conservatives who were immune to greed; do you care to comment on those who aren't conservative, do you find the same result.

Of course my question was loaded: I expect your position to be based primarily on prejudice rather than science but would be happy to be corrected.

FWIW I'm not religious, not conservative, not USAmerican, but am often greedy.

<comment><USER38> My statement does not imply what you say it does. My statement is about religious conservatives and defining a characteristic of such people. It does not define greedy people. My statement isn't even about greed it's about a subset of the people who have the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve. This isn't the same thing as greed.

When I say that religious conservatism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve, I am defining a characteristic of the set of people who are religious conservatives. That set of people may have other characteristics and, here's the important thing, the set of people who have the haunting fear that I described is itself not described. Other people may have this same haunting fear and not be religious conservatives. I have merely posited that the set of religious conservatives is a subset of the set of people with the aforementioned haunting fear. A Venn diagram may be useful.

If I had said that one has the haunting fear if and only if they are a religious conservative then you'd be correct in your interpretation. But I did not say this. I did not make any claims about non-relgious conservatives or any other group. Therefore any conclusion on what I believe about these other groups is not logically supported by what I wrote.

Again, clearly the statement was merely an attempt at wit and not meant to be taken literally. It's hyperbole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think this is a question everyone who is anti-austerity should ask themselves. It seems like every program labelled 'austerity' marginally cuts social services and benefits instead of actually cutting bloatware programmes (construction, military) that send money to the 1%. And then is declared (usually by the left) to be a failure of the concept of ending deficit spending.

</comment><comment><USER40> Human nature is such that we are in awe of tigers but disgusted by cockroaches.

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe it's a matter of staging and perception. Every quarter Social Services audit their books, and the local fishwrapper features the County Executive and the Sheriff grandstanding with their arrest record over overclaimed benefits.

Now if you did like Mohammed-bin-Salman and paraded with the most brazen tax evaders payment morale at the top would increase quickly.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm surprised this wasn't flagged. Who is "we"?? God knows what the British think, but for years I've considered Republicanism as "a debilitating phobia that somewhere out there, someone is getting something they don't deserve, and it isn't you."

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't know enough about who-hasn't-paid-what or what the cuts to benefits are and what the impact of those are, but the article feels a bit like flame- bait to me by doing things like directly equating corporations not paying tax to people committing suicide. Surely if someone is fit for work (and so their benefits are cut), then they are fit for work even if we did have a benefits system overflowing with untold riches from Apple/Facebook/Alphabet? They'd still be fit to go to work regardless of tax revenue, surely?

Perhaps there is something deeper and there is research between tax revenue and suicide due to being found fit for work, but they didn't cite any research - anyone seen any?

</comment><comment><USER44> I've talked about tax avoidance to many people. I get the sense that most people don't understand it or the consequences.

If you say "so and so company avoided paying 1 billion in taxes so all of us will have to pay it instead" that means nothing to them.

</comment><comment><USER45> We don't plan to be poor, and all wish to be rich.

When someone claims that extra £30 a week we feel it's our money because we can visualise it in our minds.

When a rich person finds a way to not pay tax, it feels more like it's their money to begin with and it is taken from them, and we ourselves wouldn't like to lose out on millions.

<comment><USER46> I don't feel that way. I feel much more angry about rich people dodging taxes than relatively poor people cheating on benefits.

<comment><USER47> Especially given that benefit "cheating" isn't nearly as widespread as people tend to think it is. The percentage of benefit payout errors (not just fraud but overpayments for other reasons including fraud) in the US is typically in the single digits, whereas public perception seems to be that anyone using any sort of welfare program is cheating and doesn't deserve it.

<comment><USER46> > whereas public perception seems to be that anyone using any sort of welfare > program is cheating and doesn't deserve it.

I think this is it. Even being on benefits in the first place is considered scrounging by some.

I'd much rather see someone on minimum wage manage to get a free medical card than someone making £100k a year find a way to avoid paying tax on their holiday home. I find it hard to believe I'm in the minority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some more, and recent, info: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42012116](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42012116)

UK gov has been cutting disability benefit, but it turns out they've been underpaying by maybe 0.5 billion.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's because normal people see the money that we make as ours, then the government takes their cut. "Benefits" are our money redistributed to people who don't work. At no point do the people receiving benefits actually contribute to the system.

</comment><comment><USER49> Because the rich are essential the functioning of society, while the poor are expendable.

If the poor don't trust the government, even the poor will agree that the rich should pay less taxes.

I really believe that's how things lead to anarchy.

</comment><comment><USER50> the scroungers are visible while the rich are rather abstract and invisible.

</comment><comment><USER51> Because if we were rich, we would try and avoid the government also? Can't blame them. Don't like it? Find yourself an angel investor.

</comment><comment><USER52> The other day I was listening to a clip from Jordan Peterson, and he said something that I found a bit surprising/shocking, but this articles seems to confirm it: people on the left who claim to side with the poor don't actually care about the poor, they just hate the rich.

This article is basically just hating on the rich people.

I think it's rather easy to understand what this author is puzzled by: people want to keep their money. If you've earned your money and you want to keep it, I can empathize with you. If you think you deserve to take other people's money, I can't empathize with you.

<comment><USER28> A little case study from Twitter today: [https://twitter.com/imajsaclaimant/status/930515080130826240](https://twitter.com/imajsaclaimant/status/930515080130826240)

Do you "empathize" with the person referred to as "PH" there? Why not?

<comment><USER52> For every guy who legitimately could use some temporary help until he gets back on his feet, there are hundreds of free loaders.

If you think about it actually more reason to hate on free loaders. They cause tragedies like this.

<comment><USER24> Clearly not in the UK. For every freeloader there are hundreds who need a bit of temporary support.

We know this from the number of people who are working and claiming benefit. (I think these now outnumber people not working and claiming benefit).

<comment><USER52> > We know this from the number of people who are working and claiming benefit.

For how long do they claim benefits?

This could actually be a bad sign.

<comment><USER24> It's a bad thing, because it shows the minimum wage isn't enough and zero- hours contracts aren't keeping people out of poverty.

But people in work who do over sixteen hours per week and who are claiming eg working family tax credits are not free-loading.

This is one of the mechanisms that's designed to get people back into work. There's a benefit cap in place, and that cap is removed if you work more than 16 hours per week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't care - we need to counter the cynicism at both ends of the scale. For example, it cannot be right that someone that pays into the system their whole lives can then be refused housing in favour of an able bodied person that has paid in nothing and caused their own homelessness by arriving in the UK without a job or means to support themselves. Needless to say the tax avoidance is also disgusting.

There are some very strange situations in the UK at present - for example when a person would actually be worse off by going out to work, or when someone's (viable) career plan involves having a child in order to get a house and benefits.

Given my political views I'm consoled by the fact that the level of welfare spending is unsustainable in the long term. The UK is already going deeper into the red every month, despite supposed austerity.

<comment><USER28> > able bodied person that has paid in nothing and caused their own > homelessness by arriving in the UK without a job or means to support > themselves

Is this actually possible? People claim it happens a lot, but without being specific on what they mean. Note that most UK visas involve "no recourse to public funds" [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-funds-- 2/p...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-funds--2/public- funds)

> the level of welfare spending is unsustainable in the long term

Reducing this means either an expansion of employment in run-down areas like Blackpool, or reducing benefit levels and hoping that people die quietly.

[http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news- articles/1117/161117-austerit...](http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news- articles/1117/161117-austerity-deaths-england)

<comment><USER32> But if you come from the EU you do not need a visa, do you?

>Reducing this means either an expansion of employment in run-down areas like Blackpool, or reducing benefit levels and hoping that people die quietly.

Not reducing means that the country eventually goes bankrupt. And then there won't be any benefits for anyone at all, will there? To put it another way, if your principle holds true, why don't we just increase benefits until they are 100% of the economy?

<comment><USER28> EEA nationals are not entitled to HB until they have worked in the UK:

[http://www.housing- rights.info/02_4_EEA_workers.php#housing-...](http://www.housing- rights.info/02_4_EEA_workers.php#housing-and-benefits)

[https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-rules-to-stop- migrant...](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-rules-to-stop-migrants- claiming-housing-benefit)

There are other ways of closing the gap, such as addressing tax avoidance. It's not that the UK is a poor country, but it's an increasingly unequal one. And a lot of the Crown dependencies operate as tax havens.

<comment><USER32> Women are always first in the queue and they do indeed house women that have never worked. Just because you quote that page doesn't mean that's the policy that's followed.

You honestly think that tax avoidance is the cause of the deficit?

Point is, it's not an either or. Let's follow up whatever ways we can find of eliminating the deficit - it's still utterly shameful and wrong that someone should be able to get themselves pregnant and be supported by the state in relative comfort whilst someone that has paid in for decades is refused housing. Your defence is to avoid addressing this and instead deflect by talking about generalities.

<comment><USER28> (are we still talking about EEA nationals or have we gone back to the old Tory demon of "single mothers"?)

> "get themselves pregnant"

I hadn't realised there was such a problem with parthenogenesis among women in this country, that pregnancies were happening without men being involved at any point.

So, what's your solution? Mandatory abortions? Divorce ban? Women with babies in homeless shelters? Living in cardboard boxes on the street? What's an acceptable fatality rate for the children in this scenario?

I'm talking about specifics, the extremely brutal ones of what exactly is required for people to remain healthy in these circumstances.

A person presents at the benefit office holding a baby. She is homeless. What specifically should the response of the system be? What questions to ask? Why? What outcomes are acceptable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Because in general the rich are a net gain to society.</comment>


Show HN: Turn NPM installs into a Space Invaders style game in your terminal - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/nplaym <comment><USER2> If you are tired of waiting for NPM, I'd suggest checking out the `ied` alternative: [https://github.com/alexanderGugel/ied](https://github.com/alexanderGugel/ied)

To give some perspective, I'm dealing with systems that install npm packages at scale. NPM3 has had way too many show stopping bugs for us. The delays in installation time compound when dealing with thousands of packages, pretty much causing package installation to fail ( take forever ).

<comment><USER3> Try to set

        npm set progress=false

it speeds up installation time. I am also approaching an alternative solution, to put dev deps in another package.json, then do something like

       npm install src/dev

where src/dev is a folder that contains a package.json with dev deps only when you are developing.

<comment><USER4> isn't that what devDependencies is for?

<comment><USER5> "npm install" installs devDependencies too. You can do "npm install --production" to skip them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Feels like this "do [x] while npm install is running" silly project is turning into a running gag. Why not fix the issues with NPM install that makes it extremely slow instead? Not saying that people shouldn't make things just for fun, but when you've got 10 different projects around the idea that NPM install is slow and you should do play a game or watch silly gifs while it's installing, maybe the time would have been better spend fixing the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, it's a joke. I was chatting to a colleague about how long his installs took to run and I thought having a game where you shoot all the packages that are installing would poke fun at the fact that you're probably installing way too many packages. I agree, fixing the problem would have been better, though probably harder and definitely less enjoyable.

<comment><USER7> I think it's an effective satire on the existing implementations of the gag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Loading screen minigames were under a Namco patent until last year: [http://gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidHoppe/20150109/233806/2015_T...](http://gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidHoppe/20150109/233806/2015_The_Year_We_Get_Loading_Screen_MiniGames_Back.php)

<comment><USER9> I wonder if the patent would have covered this since it's not "loading", it's installing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's Invade-a-Load all over again!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invade-a- Load](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invade-a-Load)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh that's fantastic! I'm afraid I'm probably too young to have known about that, but it's obvious I was wrong when I thought I was being original!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Feature request: Only install dependencies once you've blasted them.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love the idea of user interfaces that provide little distractions from long- running (usually unavoidable) tasks. It's silly, but the right kind of silly.

I recently purchased a Korg Minilogue analog synthesizer. Because of the instability of analog oscillators it has to go through a tuning procedure when it's first powered on (which can take around 20sec). They included a little game of breakout to help pass the time, though :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDWv- KgzMXM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDWv-KgzMXM)

<comment><USER13> > I love the idea of user interfaces that provide little distractions from > long-running (usually unavoidable) tasks.

Something like a java/c/etc compile on a large project _is_ an unavoidable delay. And yet those tools don't offer to jingle some keys for you to make you _feel_ like its quicker. They just do what they can to make the process as quick as possible.

Installation of packages that don't require compilation (e.g. decompressing files, moving them and _possibly_ running some simple tasks) is not _unavoidably_ slow. NPM is just a terrible package manager, and the community is in some kind of munchausen situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Uh oh. Looks like you failed to install any packages._

> _Have you tried just mashing the spacebar?_

Gave me a good chuckle XD

</comment><comment> cat-dev-null Nifty.

This cool "arms race" cannot go unanswered, it demands Ruby gem-install-pac- man. ;)

         ᗧ ・・・・・・・・       and: ᗣᗢᗤ┏┗┓┛┣┫┻╋┳┃━

Also: Alien monster [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=U%2B1F47E](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=U%2B1F47E)

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh man I needed this yesterday. Was doing some livecoding, stupidly decided to run npm install, and there was dead air for waaaaaay too long.

This would've been perfect.

</comment><comment><USER16> As an old boss of mine put it once: "What this means to users is that there are no bugs in the program."</comment>


Sleep Is For Quitters - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@RayNicholus/sleep-is-for-quitters-6fa843960825

<comment><USER2> I think "don't say no" to new opportunities etc is a much better lesson and take away than the title and related paragraph. I'd tell you why but I've got a bunch of code to fix this evening.</comment>


Top 10 Reasons Startups Fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.squidoo.com/starup_failures <comment><USER2> I'm not crazy about using federal research stats and applying them to 'start ups'. I think those stats are skewed by restaurants and franchises, which fail left and right.</comment>


Ask HN: Open source developers, would you do paid support for your projects? - <AUTHOR> If there was demand, would you do paid support for your projects? <comment><USER2> As a user, part of the motivation for FOSS is that it has no direct cost. This is fundamental to the model: everyone shares the output, everyone contributes to the input (be it through advocacy, bug reports, community support, patches, major development effort, or whatever).

If I use some FOSS component, I know that if I use it in the usual way, there's a community of others doing similar things that I can ask if I get stuck. I don't expect to pay for that (nor do I expect payment for my own contributions to those discussions).

I don't want to pay for a "support contract" for FOSS. \- First and foremost, that's not the model: if I want commercial software, I can buy it already \- I use way too many components to manage support for all of them \- Many of the components I use are too small to warrant paid support at a practical level \- Most of the time, it works just fine anyway \- When it breaks, I'm usually happy to fix it myself and contribute that back (and that's the indirect cost I'm happy to pay).

I am willing to contribute to community costs: funding eg. Python Software Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy, etc, on an annual basis.

I am willing to pay "support aggregators", eg. RHEL licenses. My expectation there is that I have one support contract that covers everything shipped with the OS, and that Red Hat will use their aggregated income to perform my community obligations (and do better because they're full-time experts in a team). I pay extra for convenience, and they take a profit.

I also strongly support a bounty-style model. I'm happy to pay someone (either by tasking an employee, or contracting an external developer) to add significant new functionality, or to tackle a backlog of maintenance, or to start a new project.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that the bounty-stye approach works well for encouraging new development. I'm thinking about the times when you get stuck: the community boards often do not have exactly what you need and it can be tough to explain your issue and slow to need to wait for replies.

In these cases, having a synchronous discussion with the right person could save a lot of time. For smaller projects, I think a pay-per-time approach would work better than support contracts.

<comment><USER2> From a FOSS-user point of view, having a pre-established commercial relationship is good: no-one wants to get approval to spend money on a per- incident basis. After that, having a per-hour model to get good-quality support would be good. If there was a place that I could find someone with the right expertise, recommendations, etc.

As a maintainer, this would fine too. I'd likely not offer paid support myself -- I have limited time available, and I'd rather be looking after the small queries, and doing the development I want to do rather than doing paid support work, but I'd be really happy for someone else to get paid to do it.

I should point out that this has been tried before ... see Cygnus Support, LinuxCare, etc, etc. I don't know of any recent attempts though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, founders and others with spending power, would you hire open source developers for help using their code?

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes

<comment><AUTHOR> What would you want your hourly rate to be?</comment></comment>


Things the most successful people I know struggle with to be happy - <AUTHOR> https://leowid.com/the-7-things-the-most-successful-people-i-know-struggle-with-to-be-happy/ <comment><USER2> This resonates with my own experience: "Although most people look forward to vacations and days off, most successful people I know dread them."—working more hours was a socially acceptable route to not dealing with my own sh*t.

<comment><USER3> I enjoy my work quite a bit. Vacations, not so much. I like the challenge, I like being in the game.

I have no plans to ever retire.

<comment><USER4> What do you do for work? Have you always done that? Have you always liked the challenge?

<comment><USER3> I work for making D the best programming language in the world. I've always been doing things like that since my first job. I've always liked the challenge, especially when people tell me I can't do that.

I selected a college specifically to prepare for the kind of things I wanted to do as a career, and selected classes in the service of that. I once told my dad that I was never bored for a moment in college.

Vacations dull pretty quickly.

Lying around doing nothing is my notion of hell.

<comment><USER4> That's cool, thanks for sharing. I vibed with your point about being stimulated and [not checking out]. I'm relatively new to programming (5 years, self-taught) but I find the endless amount of information to learn quite appetizing and inspiring. I think I'll stick around with this stuff for a while.

Maybe I'll take a look at D now :)

Do you have any resources you'd suggest to someone (who, btw, doesn't have a systems programming background -- but is curious to learn!)

<comment><USER3> That's a hard question to answer, because how I learned was on equipment that is so dated it is no longer available in any reasonable form.

The only thing I can really suggest is get one of those tomes on Linux systems programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One word I am surprised the author did not use in this article is patience. Successful people are used to being in a hurry. It takes practice to have patience with yourself, and patience with others.

Another problem that I struggle with, and I'm sure "successful" people do as well, is chronic pain. Sometimes it's just bad luck, or an old injury; or maybe you have sacrificed your health to get more work done (in the short term). Many long-term problems are invisible; you never know who is struggling on the inside.

<comment><USER6> As a person with a 10+ year chronic injury, thanks for saying this. It was nice even just to read it on the internet from a total stranger and know that somebody is aware that people are dealing with things like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't claim to be super-successful, but these are things I've thought about quite a bit. Some people are good at being happy. Even when their situation is objectively lousy, they still find humor and love and fulfillment and so on. Other people just _aren 't good at being happy_. Can't relax. Can't take a compliment. Can't enjoy when things are going well, without worrying about when it will end.

The thing a lot of these have in common is _being in the moment_ vs. looking forward. Absolutely nothing wrong with looking forward, it's how we all progress and ensure future good times, but you also have to be able to turn it off (which is another item on OP's list). Learning how to shut up those internal voices for a while can be hard, but it's worth the effort.

</comment><comment><USER8> 8\. Don't overtly screw people on the way up.

Most 'wealthy & successful' people I have known screwed people and never learned how to not do that and ended up paranoid about everyone since they don't know who they screwed.

<comment><USER9> Screwing people is inevitable. The only consolidation you can really take is knowing that the people you screwed at some point probably screwed someone else, and you're just continuing a cycle of karmic justice.

<comment><USER10> According to karmic religions him having screwed someone over doesn't let you off the hook for the bad karma you're accruing when you screw them.

<comment><USER11> Luckily karmic religions aren't real.

<comment><USER12> Maybe not but 'karma' in its original meaning of cause and effect is: if you hurt somebody, they will be hurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It could be Asian thing (I'm Asian), but there's a saying, "Money can't buy happiness, but it sure hell better crying inside my BMW than crying outside by the street."

<comment><USER14> What are your thoughts on the (in my experience more common) phrase: "I would rather cry in a BMW than laugh on a bicycle"? When I really consider this phrase it brings tears to my eyes.

<comment><USER13> I'm biased, I prefer (nice) bicycles than (nice) cars. Not because it's healthier, but because I don't like to be stuck in traffic. -- Again, living in overpopulated Asian country.

<comment><USER15> Cycling a bicycle is just easily one of the greatest of human experiences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A lot of these seem tied to narcissism in some way. Not that it's a bad thing but there are a lot of secondary effects of prioritizing ones "success" over all other things like relationships, friendships, mental health, etc.

<comment><USER7> "Narcissism" is an unnecessarily pejorative way to put it. Narcissism is about having an inflated view of one's own merit, importance, or appearance. In popular parlance it also refers to an unquenchable need for external validation of these qualities. However, most of the issues mentioned in the OP are often associated with self-doubt and/or internal motivation - i.e. the very opposite of narcissism. Frankly, using such a negative term seems a bit like sour grapes.

<comment><USER16> Narcissism isn't necessarily characterized by strength even though we imagine the quintessential narcissist people to be "strong" and "driven". That may be true in their professional lives but not personal.

Narcissists are driven by external validation and appearance, yes. So much so that they forget the people most important to their lives are humans too, not tools or ornaments of achievement. When these relationships sour, there's a lot of self-doubt, not about the achievements, but if the trade offs are really worth it in the end.

<comment><USER7> Nobody's defending narcissism. My objection was to reflexively associating _these problems_ with narcissism, and by answering only in the context of narcissism you're still equating the two. So let me even more blunt: that theory is so weak that it's almost self-refuting. Let's try to apply it to the OP and see just how badly it goes.

The first item on the list is inability to celebrate. How does that suggest narcissism? Can it not be explained _at least_ as well by feelings that the subject of celebration is undeserved, transitory, and subject to reversal?

The second item on the list is inability to rest. How does that suggest narcissism? Can it not be explained _at least_ as well by feelings that one is an impostor, unable to keep up without making extra effort?

And so on. Every connection you claim points to narcissism actually points even more strongly somewhere else. Narcissism causes problems, to be sure, but it's far from the only thing that can cause _these_ problems. Claiming that these issues are all about narcissism is tantamount to claiming that conventionally-measured success itself is all about narcissism. As I said, it comes across as a _big_ load of sour grapes.

<comment><USER17> Really many on the list seems far more neuroticism or compulsion than narcissism in either the clincial or colloquial sense. "Good habits" to an excess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you aren't happy, you aren't successful. Far too many (like the author of this article) equate economic wealth with "success". How can someone who is miserable be described as a "success" no matter how many baubles they collect or how many accolades they receive from their fellow bauble collectors?

To me being successful means being content and leading a happy and rich life. Economic well-being often helps facilitate contentment and happiness through the security it allows, but it is, at best, a piece of the pie. Unfortunately all too many (especially Americans) have been conditioned to believe that life is a game of Monopoly and the goal is to accrue as much material wealth as possible. This leads to the oft-referred to, "mid-life crisis" when people start coming to terms with their mortality and realize they've wasted the best decades of their life pushing pencils and sitting in traffic. Perhaps if we start changing the way we view "success" we can help some poor souls avoid this awful day of reckoning in the future.

</comment><comment><USER19> \- A successful life often feels like day-to-day failure. Failure to reach ambitious goals, but 90% of the goal is often good enough.

\- Dedicating one's life to work is often a form of suicide. « SINCE my life is void and I won't do anything tonight, why not study this book, apply for an MBA or build a company. At least that will be some challenge. It's not like I'm losing family time, and it will help me focus on one thing. »

I'll leave people to decide whether this is good or bad, but if most people's lives were fulfilling, we wouldn't see that much technological progress.

I'm not denying a good share of people are into tech or work by passion, I'm just talking about those who work as a mean to avoid depression.

<comment><USER20> > if most people's lives were fulfilling, we wouldn't see that much > technological progress

Which then makes you wonder: do we really need that much technological progress?

I love technology, especially when it helps people lead better lives. But if we are just developing it without real purpose and mentally/emotionally enslaving ourselves to do it, then it seems self-defeating.

<comment><USER21> > _Which then makes you wonder: do we really need that much technological > progress?_

Spoken like someone who takes all of the technological progress of the last centuries for granted. And I don't intend that as a personal attack. Many, many people think like you do, because they can't even begin to imagine a life without the fruits of progress. As for myself, I'm eternally thankful for that progress, for without it, I wouldn't be alive today (appendicitis), neither would my wife (also appendicitis), and probably neither would my two children (historically, most children died within a few years after birth). I'm also extremely thankful for not having to fear death from starvation (thanks to agricultural progress) or from bacterial infections (thanks to antibiotics).

> _But if we are just developing it without real purpose [...]_

That "if"-condition is doing _a lot_ of work in your sentence. Kind of like saying "if technological progress wouldn't be bringing all the immense benefits it is bringing, it wouldn't be so great".

<comment><USER20> You bring up some excellent points, and you are right that I most likely take most technology for granted.

I would say the issues that you bring up don't have a clear "right answer", and it's all about perspective.

Me and my siblings were all born thanks to c-sections. Without that, none of us would have been born and my mom would have died trying to give birth. Are we better off having been born? Can't say. Is the world a better place because we were born? For who?

It all depends on goals and perspectives. If the goal is to be happy then, are current people happier than people that lived for example five thousand years ago? Have most technological advances been made in the service of happiness? It doesn't seem like it.

So what's the actual benefit of "all the immense benefits" of technology? Being alive? Living longer? Is it better to be alive and live longer just because we can? The answers to those questions depend on your individual situation and perspective on life.

<comment><USER21> > _Are we better off having been born? Can 't say._

If you're not sure whether there's a point in being alive, then why do you think there's a point in not "mentally/emotionally enslaving ourselves", as you wrote in your original post? If you have no terminal values [1], there is no point in anything, and everything is meaningless.

I suspect that you _do_ value being alive [2], and your father _does_ value his wife not having died in childbirth. But you take being alive for granted, because actually facing death (yours or that of your children) is a rare occurence, and the probability that you or your loved ones die before the age of 60 is very low. Again, mostly thanks to technological progress.

[1] I.e., a value that is not in service of another value – similar to an _axiom_ in mathematics.

[2] If you really don't value being alive, you might suffer from depression. In this case, please seek professional help.

<comment><USER20> You are making way too many assumptions about me and life in general. It's ok for people to have different points of views.

About not being able to say if I'm better off having been born, I don't know/remember what it was like before being born or being dead, it might be amazing, I don't know, so I can't compare. Doesn't mean I want to be dead right now. I also never said there's no point in being alive.

Why does life need any "terminal values" at all to be meaningful? Do you think there needs to be an absolute truth to it? What if someone disagrees?

<comment><USER21> > _Why does life need any "terminal values" at all to be meaningful?_

Life doesn't have or need terminal values, people have terminal values. Without terminal values, you cannpt have _any_ values at all, and without values [1] nothing can be meaningful.

> _Do you think there needs to be an absolute truth to it?_

No, terminal values depend on the individual, and don't even have to be constant over time.

[1] "Values" in the sense of "goals" or "things important to you", not in the sense of "moral values".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > That it's ok to let go of the image of the lonesome warrior, shouldering the > world's problems on their own.

This is the one thing that I've struggled with as an engineering leader. Much of this article is spot on, but the hardest thing for myself is simply asking for help. Part of it because I have learned how to learn anything, and I can just spend time doing what I need. However, there is only so much time in the day.

For some reason, I've always felt that asking for help was related to weakness, and it took a long time to realize that leadership is not knowing everything, but knowing how to teach people to play the game and ask good/dumb questions.

<comment><USER23> One thing I've been thinking about recently, is the difference between "asking for help" and "being offered help". It's difficult to ask for help in a socially acceptable way: deferential, but not ingratiating; vulnerable, but not needy; bounded, but not transactional. Whereas these tensions are largely circumvented when someone sees you struggling and offers to help in some way. This leads better results also, as often when I need help, I don't even know what kind of help to ask for. But someone who has gone through something similar, can help simply by knowing what it is I might need, even if they can't provide it. It's very difficult to get that kind of help by asking for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Successful people" are those that come to the ocean shore, build a sand castle (indeed, what else is this sand for?), develop depression protecting it from wind, water and sun, and even force other tourists to build the castle for them. And they die wondering why the ocean shore is such a cruel and pointless place. Their lives aren't worthless,though: at least they develop some will. The wise don't build castles, they just watch the ocean and think about the relationship between sand, water, wind and sun.

<comment><USER3> > The wise don't build castles

We would still be trying to kill food by throwing rocks if we were wise.

<comment><USER25> I kind of like not freezing in winter. And having a toilet. And antibiotics. And other stuff...

<comment><USER3> I sure love my first cuppa coffee in the morning. The miracle of global trade!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> np- I feel like the problem may be that we have a distorted view of "success" and what it means. Success is much more than a one-dimensional goal of earning more money. Are you really considered successful if that's all that you accomplished? Success itself encompasses many of the goals espoused in the article, such as having quality relationships and being able to take time for yourself. I think it's a perspective problem. You aren't successful just because you did well in your career. There's much more to it than that.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think a lot of people in the US are taught from a young age to work hard and be the best you can be. Get into the best college, work hard to get the best job. Get promoted. Get promoted. Start your own firm. Work hard work hard, make money.

Often they never learn you are allowed to back off.

<comment><USER27> Absolutely. One of my favorite teachers in high school used to always say "the harder you work now, the easier it will be later." There is always a later, though.

<comment><USER28> Until there isn't

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think the very first exercise is a great one, and a challenge for many this year (including myself). "What am I grateful for that happened in the last 365 days?" A sense of gratitude is extremely healthy and remembering to acknowledge it is hard in the face of adversity.

</comment><comment><USER30> One extreme: calm, content, happy, don't care about much, don't do much.

Other extreme: stressed, unsatisfied, unhappy, always working, getting lots done.

Maybe there is a middle way. A more nuanced definition of success.

<comment><USER7> Great observation. Thank you. I think there _is_ a middle way, but it's not so much about definitions as about balance. There's a time to sow (work) and a time to reap (rest and enjoy). Of course you have to sow before you can reap, but if _all_ you do is sow then your final yield is zero. You have to alternate, maximizing the product of the two instead of either alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Note money is nowhere on this list.... what's the point? Every "successful" person I know simply buys their way into a happier life. What a puff piece without acknowledging this!

Why is this shit even on HN? Is everyone here a rich, narcissistic douchebag? I mean we all suspected....

<comment><USER32> I guess that the point of the article is also that "money doesn't buy you happiness", but the author only says it between the lines. He does state that success in business will also not bring you happiness if you don't take the time and care for other aspects of your life.

The view may be a bit skewed since he is a coach and will mostly deal with people who have a problem. It is still a good reminder to try to have a balanced life, regardless of where on the ladder you are :)

<comment><USER25> The author also owns enough money to buy himself a Lamborghini for his 30th birthday. It's easier to say that money is not the point when you have lots of it. Money may not buy you happiness but it sure does make a lot of things easier.</comment></comment></comment>


ReadWriteStart Has Started - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/04/readwritestart-has-started.php <comment><AUTHOR> If nothing else, another place to post your new site to for exposure

</comment><comment><USER2> Apparently, _Startup_ is the new black. Maybe it's the economy and looking like "the only option" to a lot of folks that have been laid off.

For IT-related startups, though, I'll still be likely to go first to HN to find the stories that really matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like that Microsoft is sponsoring this through BizSpark.

I'm sure there are people with .NET backgrounds who'd feel more confortable building their product using Microsoft technologies they're already familiar with, but don't because of software/licensing costs. BizSpark takes some of that problem away (at least for 3 years).

I'm thinking about applying.</comment>


Statistical analysis of the NYT blog about font credibility - <AUTHOR> http://illuminatedcomputing.com/posts/2012/08/font-credibility/

<comment><USER2> >I suppose we could keep running t-tests where the null hypothesis changes from "Baskerville is the same as Comic Sans" to "Baskerville is 0.5 points better than Comic Sans" to "Baskerville is 1 point better than Comic Sans," and get a range of probabilities. But a probability distribution like that seems more like a Bayesian outcome; I've never heard of such a thing in frequentist statistics.

That would essentially be a more detailed version of a confidence interval for the actual difference - and since the distribution of the "actual value" is almost certainly normal, it wouldn't really tell the reader anything more than a regular one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, neat! Thank you for taking a moment to point that out. It's kind of cool that just two values imply the entire probability distribution.

<comment><USER2> Well, only if it really is normal - and we already know any normal distribution can be described by two parameters, mean and variance, so it shouldn't be too surprising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Article author & submitter here: I wrote this post as self-assigned "homework" to push my (very amateur) statistics knowledge. It responds to an article that made HN last week, saying that font choice affects the believability of a claim. I've love to learn more about how to do this kind of analysis, so feel free to tear my post apart. :-)</comment>


Amazon just upped its game against counterfeit products - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2019/02/28/amazon-just-upped-its-game-against-counterfeit-products/ <comment><USER2> This is great news. I just hope it's a sincere effort with some serious backing, and not just smoke-and-mirrors.</comment>


Data Breach Has Exposed Millions of Fingerprint and Facial Recognition Records - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/14/new-data-breach-has-exposed-millions-of-fingerprint-and-facial-recognition-records-report/ <comment><USER2> To link the other thread about the original publishing by the guardian:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20693438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20693438)

Which has some more info already.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! We've merged these threads.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which RFCs illumined you and why? - <AUTHOR>

For web folks, RFC 2616 could/should be considered required reading. I'm wondering which RFCs gave you the most "a-ha" moments and why?<p>And, which RFCs do you think everyone should read and why? <comment><USER2> RFC 2229 - A Dictionary Server Protocol

<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2229>

It even inspired and enabled us to create:

<http://www.TheEnglishDictionary.org></comment>


Want to create a new habit? Get ready to break it. - <AUTHOR> http://joel.is/post/36591651818/want-to-create-a-new-habit-get-ready-to-break-it

<comment><USER2> Building/breaking habits became far easier to me when I started to understand the true importance and power of choice in the present moment. If you can cultivate the ability to fight with yourself in the moment - when you do (or don't) want to execute - a habit is really just reduced to a single choice during the day. I still have to do it every night when I'm tired and don't _feel like_ brushing my teeth... but I've had no problem running/lifting regularly since I was 18.

If you think about it, character is really just the additive (or multiplicative?) result of thousands of tiny choices we've made along the way in each present moment, for better or for worse. The only time you can be the person you want to be is _right now_ \-- including building or breaking habits. A choice promised to the future has no power or worth, the only time it matters is in the present, when it's time to put words and dreams into action.

In the case of habits, the long-term will take care of itself by focusing on the short term. Win the small daily battles and you'll be on your way to winning the war. And don't forget to manage expectations and give yourself grace when you lose a few of those battles. Something is always better than nothing.

<comment><USER3> Every decision requires willpower. Doing things without thinking (making habits out of them) saves your willpower for other valuable things you have to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More than just expecting to break your habit, I think the crucial piece is _planning_ what you will do once you have.

The most dangerous moment in building a new habit is the moment when you realize that the best case scenario (aka sticking with the awesome new habit) is just not going to happen. For me, unless I have my Plan B ready to go, I tend to just revert to the status quo or worse (since I already failed, why not go all out). Having the Plan B - a glorified "if failure to complete Plan A, then do B" - already articulated lets me immediately move on to the next thing without beating myself up.

This was really helpful for me when I was getting going with a regular early morning jog. If I didn't get it in before work, plan B was a quick run after work before I drove home. The latter wasn't the habit I wanted to stick, but it helped me forgive myself the lapses until morning running became a habit.

<comment><USER5> pure gold, going to try this tomorrow.

thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article seems to be more of an excuse to brag about a morning workout routine than the self help article its masquerading as.

<comment><USER7> I like the authors method better. It's more of a "lead by example".

To be honest, I'm not likely to just pick up whatever life-changing advice someone is preaching. But when I see somebody striving extra hard to achieve, that's what is truly inspiring, and lights a fire under my ass. You can tell me how to create good habits until you're blue in the face, but nothing is going to sink in until I see the results of your actions, and the competitive streak in me comes alive and wants to catch up to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes I like to think about the "why" for these sort of posts. Why are you building the habit? Is it like an addiction? Are you getting a sense of euphoria? While it's a good mantra I don't think it's a traditional habit you're creating.

If I approach this from a CBT perspective then you're not building a habit. Instead you're retraining your mind to place a higher importance on health or physical attractiveness. We can break personal aspirations into different categories ranging from mind, body, spirit... or more specifically -- intellectualism, mental acquity, empathy/compassion, love, friendships, family relationships, spirit, tranquility, peace, relaxtion, etc... We can generally rank these in order of importance from 1-3. 1 being very important, 3 being not important at all.

Prior to this experiment, if he assessed his importance on health and wellbeing, he probably placed it low. Easily a 3. Maybe a 2. After a month or so it may have transitioned to a 2. Either by constant reinforcement of his necessity to go to the gym, or because of an actual change of mind.

Or I'm talking out my ass... I don't know.

<comment><USER9> You may be focusing too much on the fact that the example habit the OP talks about has to do with exercising. The point of the post isn't how to become "physically attractive", it's about to build habits by accepting the fact that you will break them from time to time and to not feel guilty about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One other thing: it's much much much easier to start a new, good habit than it is to change an old habit.

I experimented with this a while back - I figured I would change a small habit (no effect on me either way). For as long as I could remember, I put my wallet in my left back pocket, and my keys in my front left pocket (I'm left-handed). I decided to put them in the corresponding right-hand pocket - I know, very small change, right? Took me a couple of years before I would do it without thinking. Even now, I sometimes put them in the wrong pocket without thinking. For me, this was a big eye-opener.

</comment><comment><USER11> I love that his examples of starting with simple+easy (gym three times a week at 7.30am) are what are for other people the end goal!

<comment><USER12> I could not do that. When I go to the gym, I work out really hard, and it's not healthy do to that every day. Whenever I try to do that, I will fall ill quite soon (maybe due to overtraining) - everybody has her own upper limit of stress the body can cope with, and exercise is stress by definition - no pain, no gain! :)

<comment><USER13> If that's how you're training, then it isn't necessarily the volume/intensity but your diet that's holding you back. I train as an advanced Crossfit athlete 5 days a week and it's _very intense_ exercise!

Diet is more important than most people think! If you are truly training hard and you don't have a hard time getting your last few bites per meal down, then you're not eating enough.

At peak training (for me) an example diet would look like this:

Morning: 6 eggs (free-range), 4 strips of bacon (only happy pigs), two apples, one pear, and a little cup of almond butter.

Pre-lunch snack: half a bag of cashews and/or a few Kind Bars and 48 grams of protein in a shake.

Lunch: usually something I've cooked the night before, like Coconut Curry, Chili, steak or chicken. I always eat bacon to get my fat - some of these dishes will have been made with it, if I'm just eating steak I'll have 3-4 slices of bacon with it. To get my carbohydrates I fall back on fruits and sweet-potatoes. I'll have two sweet-potatoes and an apple, usually, with the above type of meal.

Pre-dinner snack: 48 grams of protein in a shake.

Dinner: similar to lunch, it will be some paleo meal that has been cooking in the Crock Pot all day or something I already made with enormous amounts of protein and fat in it. Again I get a lot of my calories from sweet-potatos and fruit so for dinner I'll usually eat a lot of berries, pears, sweet-potato fries, &c...

This type of diet is 100% gluten free and 100% refined sugar free and HFCS free; I also try to eat organic/free-range where I can. There are some instances where it just gets too expensive for me and have to buy some veggies/fruits that are not organic.

<comment><USER14> Wow. How on earth can you coordinate buying and preparing that much food every day? That seems like a big challenge in itself.

<comment><USER13> It is. Add 2 hours of oly/power lifting and metabolic conditioning in 5 days a week and it's like working a second job :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting. I'm not that big fan of healthy habbits (I go to bed late at night and get up in the afternoon, for example), though I do some running occasionally. But what I liked in the post is that it's not only about habbits in fact. It's about human's psychology that's involved in doing anything. So we can say: "Don't cease working on your startup if you fail at some point - you should be ready to overcome the failure and pivot or start another project".

</comment><comment><USER16> Expecting and planning for failure is definitely a good system to use for losing weight and exercise. Tim Ferris's famous slow carb diet (which has me down 50lbs this year) is based on one day a week breaking the habit and allowing yourself to not feel guilty about it. That was a big factor for me being consistent on the diet plan. I knew if I eat bad today, guilt, but if I eat bad in 3 days, pleasure.

Exercise is a great habit building tool because when you start off, you can really only get better. 30 minutes working out can turn into an hour can turn into 2 hours. And you start to enjoy it more as you go along and learn new things.

Reading is also a good habit to build on. I had an english teacher in high school that would assign 5-10 pages of reading every night. It made the class discussions meaningful because instead of expecting people to be in the habit of reading 50 pages of a book/night he knew he had to build the habit to read. The rest of my teachers expected us to be readers, and didn't focus at all on the habit building side of it.

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://tinyhabits.com/>

<comment><USER18> Additional context: Tiny Habits is a free course about learning how to make habits like the OP talked about. It teaches the habit of habit making. Highly recommend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> BJ Fogg (at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab - <http://captology.stanford.edu/>) and Nir Eyal have great research on the topic of forming habits:

The Fogg Model for Behavior Design and Eyals MEA "Minimum Enjoyable Activity" for habit design are excellent frameworks.

<http://www.tinyhabits.com> [http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/01/your-new-years- resolution-i...](http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/01/your-new-years- resolution-i..). [http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/02/habits-are-new-viral-why- st...](http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/02/habits-are-new-viral-why-st..). (great read for founders <http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/nir-eyal>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbHMwNbXnXo> (nice video presentation)

</comment><comment><USER20> It seems people here don't travel much. If you travel a lot for work, the hell you manage to wake up at 5 am and go running.

Just saying, not everybody stays in the same place long enough to build those habits.

</comment><comment><USER21> I know this wasn't really discussed, but is there a recover fast technique to help you get back on track once a habit breaks; I've noticed that if I break a long standing habit (3 months+) a few days in a row (exercising, flossing) it spirals down to non existence, and takes considerable amount of effort to re- establish

<comment><USER22> I don't know if this will help others but it helps me - I try and go to the gym at lunch, or if I have to work my lunch then go after work, basically get to the gym at some point in the day. If I'm skipping too many days and feel like I'm losing it, I wear my gym socks all day until I go. It's like a constant physical reminder to go. Seems to work for me.

Also, I find that I tend to overwork at the gym and feel tired or I ache too much to go the next time. Recently I've been able to go more just because I'm deliberately not working out so intensely. I tend to do a 5 minute rowing warmup, a 2-3 mile run, some cycling (10 mins alternating easy/hard every 2 mins) and then, if I have time, I'll do some weights (legs or arms depending on what I did last time).

<comment><USER23> I like your gym sock "trick". Regular visual reminders are good.

Regarding your routine, try inverting it once in a while and doing weights first (after some movement prep!) and then doing your cardio.

<comment><USER22> I've heard this advice before but I'm not sure what the benefit is? Will give it a try though - I guess it makes things more interesting when you mix it up.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Humans Prefer to Talk to Bots - <AUTHOR> https://thinkrelay.com/blog/self-service-support/ <comment><USER2> > Given the choice, some of your customers would rather interact with a > machine than speak to a member of your support team.

Some do. Some don't.</comment>


Walls as Rooms (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://socks-studio.com/2012/04/06/walls-as-rooms-british-castles-and-louis-khan/ <comment><AUTHOR> I also liked this article on a similar note: [http://www.deconcrete.org/2011/02/10/inhabit-a- wall/](http://www.deconcrete.org/2011/02/10/inhabit-a-wall/) \- comparing fortresses and modern stadiums.

</comment><comment><USER2> The maps look surprisingly like Doom levels :)</comment>


Get Out of The Building – And Win $50,000 - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2010/11/11/get-out-of-the-building-and-win-50000/ <comment><USER2> The main objective of this post is to advertise a new competition for business models held by BYU. Total prize money is $50,000 in cash and kind, split between winners 1 through 8. Having been through a traditional biz plan competition before, I'm 100% behind this initiative. That being said, I find the post slightly misleading.

The competition is open to _all_ college students--I highly recommend you go check it out at <http://www.businessmodelcompetition.com>. I'm thinking about entering myself, so if you're interested in collaborating send me an email.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those first three paragraphs make up one of the best explanations of entrepreneurship I've ever read.</comment>


How is lazy evaluation in Haskell useful? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/how-is-lazy-evaluation-in-haskell-useful/

<comment><USER2> Note that there is a elephant in the room that the answers fail to reflect on. The questioner asks:

 _How can this paradigm be used to build predictable software that works as intended when we have no guarantee when and where an expression will be evaluated?_

While it is true that this will not lead to unexpected computations in a pure language, it may lead to excessive memory use. For instance, consider the definition of Data.Map.Lazy.Map:

[http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/contai...](http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/containers/src/Data- Map-Base.html#Map)

The Map data type is spine-strict and key strict in Weak Head Normal Form (WHNF). However, it is not strict in its values, and values may be thunks (unevaluated expressions). This may result the memory usage of the values to be much larger than when they are fully evaluated.

There is now also a variant of Data.Map that is value-strict, but only in WHNF, so only the outermost constructors may have been evaluated, and you'd have to evaluate the data further to have thunks replaced by actual values.

Thunk leaks are something that every new Haskell programmer will bump into and is something that makes programs less predictable if you are not yet comfortably reason about strictness and laziness.

Edward Yang wrote a nice explanation of such leaks:

<http://blog.ezyang.com/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-thunk-leak/>

I very much enjoy Haskell, but I think that the benefits of laziness are much overstated. Strict languages are often easier to reason about and laziness can often be emulated when necessary. That said, Haskell has many other attractions ;).

<comment><USER3> I guess the benefit of lazy by default is that (given Haskell is an experiment in purity) it sets the expectation that things will be side-effect free by default.

Were that not a design criteria it might have been better to make things strict by default and have a "lazy" monad rather than do lazy by default and use monads for all the side effecting stuff.

<comment><USER4> Total functions embed into partial ones, which is why we have a partiality monad. The opposite arrow doesn't exist, which is why we _don't_ have a totality monad.

Now lazy and eager are properly adjectives that govern beta reduction, that is, the _interaction_ between a function and its argument.

The short of it is that neither an eager nor a lazy monad makes any sense.

(Heh, I'm totally citing this in the monads class I teach as proof of why unpacking monads starting from functors is a win.)

<comment><USER3> Happy to be of service with my naive wonderings :) Anyway, thanks, I'm not much of a PLT guy but I can begin to see why this could not work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let me point out that the haskell / GHC toolset is broad and deep and constantly being expanded, and also the most common causes of space leaks are becoming documented (the wiki and many stackoverflow threads. Tools:

ghc-vis, to visualize sharing: <http://felsin9.de/nnis/ghc-vis/>

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>--

profilers and analysis of space/time behavior of data structures

[http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/prof...](http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/prof- heap.html)

<http://blog.ezyang.com/2011/05/space-leak-zoo/>

[http://lambdamaphone.blogspot.com/2011/02/automatic- asymptot...](http://lambdamaphone.blogspot.com/2011/02/automatic-asymptotic- analysis.html)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>--

and, sort of a stacktrace:

[http://jpmoresmau.blogspot.com/2012/10/using-ghci-history- in...](http://jpmoresmau.blogspot.com/2012/10/using-ghci-history-in-eclipsefp- debugger.html)

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/107890464054636586545/posts/CfKE...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/107890464054636586545/posts/CfKEHZuqviy)

<http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Status/May12>

\</comment><comment>-----

(not related to time/space reasoning, but a common pea under the mattress): in 7.4 you don't need top level "let" in GHCi

[http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.4.1/html/users_guide/inter...](http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.4.1/html/users_guide/interactive- evaluation.html#ghci-decls)

</comment><comment><USER6> Might as well read the programmers.stackexchange post [1], it's better formatted.

[1] [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163985/why- is...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163985/why-is-the- concept-of-lazy-evaluation-useful)

<comment><USER7> And Daniel Wagner links to a very good answer on another question: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7868507/non-trivial- lazy-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7868507/non-trivial-lazy- evaluation/7868790#7868790)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8>
        Lazy languages like Haskell make it a point to be
        referentially transparent, i.e. making sure that the
        order in which expressions are evaluated will never
        affect their result.

Isn't referential transparency a consequence of purity, not laziness?

Edit: While I believe the quote is saying (albeit in a peculiar way) that lazy languages must be referentially transparent, I don't see how this particular response was arguing in favor of laziness. Referential transparency is great as an optimization enabler, which provides one compelling case for purity.

Meanwhile I'm working on a nascent project to develop an eager, pure language that targets LLVM.

<comment><USER9> >I don't see how this particular response was arguing in favor of laziness.

In a referentially transparent language, you don't care about order of evaluation because whatever the order you will always end up with exactly the same result. Thus, losing control of it through laziness doesn't matter.

However, IMHO, the initial argument is kind of wrong. Laziness doesn't really make you lose control of order of evaluation. You know when expressions are going to be evaluated : when they are going to be needed. Obviously, when you use a lot of abstraction you didn't write like in Haskell, it becomes tricky. But, if you perfectly know how your data structures are processed by the compiler, you can safely use side effects with laziness. Not that you should, but you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://augustss.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-points-for-lazy- ev...](http://augustss.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-points-for-lazy-evaluation- in.html) is a very good discussion of why laziness has some nice semantic properties from the theory point of view.

And the post it is responding to, [https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/the-real- po...](https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/the-real-point-of- laziness/) makes some interesting points against it as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> Whoa, did they just lift content directly off Stack?

I guess it's appropriate for an article on laziness.

<comment><USER12> No; they have an agreement with StackExchange to allow for republishing of the content (check the byline).

<comment><USER13> Actually I think it has more to do with content on Stack sites being freely available under a creative commons license.

<comment><USER14> That would be an agreement to allow for republishing, albeit one offered to anyone under the same terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not so sure I'm convinced by the argument for modularity.

Maybe Haskell makes it easier to write generators of possibly infinite sequences but people use the producer-consumer model all the time in other langages to explore potentially large solution spaces generated on demand.

<comment><USER16> That would be the _implementing your own version of laziness_ part of the modularity argument.

In a language like Haskell you never have to do that. Ever. Because the language is lazy.

<comment><USER17> "Implementing your own version of laziness" makes it sound error-prone and difficult. In fact it's this pattern:

      def move(board, position, player):
        """
          board is a 11-character string which is 3 lengths of 3 of the characters
            X, O or _, separated by newlines
          turn is either X or O, depending on who moves
        """
        return board[:position] + player + board[position+1:]

      def getNextStates(board, player):
        spaces = [ i for i,c in enumerate(board) if c == '_' ]
        return [ move(board, i, player) for i in spaces ]

      >>> print board
      X_O
      _OX
      X_O

      >>> for state in getNextStates(board, 'O'):
      ...   print state
      ...   print
      ...
      XOO
      _OX
      X_O

      X_O
      OOX
      X_O

      X_O
      _OX
      XOO

I doubt most programmers exposed only to imperative programming would even notice that there was a pattern in what they were implementing, let alone identify it as laziness.

<comment><USER16> The difficulty depends on the language and on what you're trying to do.

In Python the correct translation is usually to replace return with yield and work with iterators. In a language without that feature, well, <http://perl.plover.com/Stream/stream.html> demonstrates what a solution looks like in Perl. A Java solution to the same issue is going to be..verbose.

<comment><USER17> I avoided generators because implementing ersatz laziness with lazy language features seemed like cheating - you can read my Python lists as C arrays, but it's much harder to map that onto coroutines without significant handwaving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1) Is there a problem that provably requires asymptotically more memory in a lazy language than in a strict one?

2) Is there a problem that provably requires asymptotically more time in a pure language than in an impure one?

<comment><USER7> Any impure algorithm on a system that uses pointers can be made pure with I think log(n) oberhead, which in practice is usually equivalent to a constant factor. But in the real world constant factors matter, in time as well as space (cache locality to do work in chip instead of ram instead of disk instead of tape)

<comment><USER19> Your answer sounds like the solution to the mutable data question, not the pure/impure question. For the question of memory usage on a lazy language vs a strict language, there is no asymptotic difference. The strict program can be viewed as a series of commands, each modifying the state of the program. For example, consider the following code: int double(int x){ int ans=x; ans=ans _2; return ans; } The above code can be viewed as: Input state | execute(ans=x) | execute(ans=2_ x) | execute(return ans) where execute takes as an input both the state of the program, and a command. (As an aside, this is the approach of piping a state variable across functions is how Haskell handles IO)

The above code can also be viewed as: Input | A(x) | B(x) | C(x)

Evaluating this lazily will get you: C . B . A . Input

What the program wants to return is the final output of C. When the program tries to return C, it will go down the chain of expressions it must evaluate until it reaches one that it can, in this case A(Input). Once A(Input) is calculated, we no longer need Input it memory, so it can be garbage collected. At this point, the program is: C . B . Input' Because Input' is the same size in memory as Input, we are, at this point, using no more memory than the strict version of the program. We can continue this argument until we eventually arrive at the final state, in which we have our answer.

With this, we can see that any strictly evaluated program can be done lazily with no more than twice the memory requirements (there is a point where we need both Input, and Input'), which from an asymptotic standpoint is equvilent.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, that seems to work. Thanks!

I still wonder about the mutable data question though. Can we do better than logarithmic overhead, or is there a problem for which we provably cannot?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In my experience, I tend to be of the opinion that lazy, immutable data structures with eager evaluation bring you most of the benefits of lazy evaluation with the control of eager evaluation.

Clojure is an example of that. You can plant printfs there and it just works, but you can also set it to do huge amount of processing on huge amount of data and eventually just consume and crunch small part of it.

<comment><USER21> What are "lazy, immutable datastructures with eager evaluation"?

<comment><USER22> A lazy data structure exposes access methods that exhibit lazy-evaluator behavior. For example, you have a "rectangle" structure that contains position, width and height, and the structure has methods that let you apply matrix transformations to scale, rotate, and skew the rectangle's corners. The matrix methods perform the computation, and then cache that result in case it's needed again.

<comment><USER7> That is more about functional programming than laziness, but maybe I am splitting hairs. OpenGL, for example, implements the matrix stack functionality, and then it only works for one class. A lot of work then to get ky everywhere you need it.

Clojure is doing a lot of work with fusion and sequences to transfer laziness from arrays up to the other objects that consume them, but it is harder as you go farther away.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Designer & developer plagiarise portfolio website, use it as their own, profit. - <AUTHOR> http://www.themealings.com.au/samuel/2013/03/03/a-very-disappointing-find/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty funny -- a site with a spectacularly dreadful design, with a font size that is way too small and cannot be made larger, complains that someone has copied the entire IP to another site.

> ... , profit.

Doubtful. Very doubtful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Jeesh, plagiarism and misrepresentation on the internet now? What's next?

</comment><comment><USER4> If only they would design this blog! Even zoom can't fix it

</comment><comment><USER5> If there ever was a blog design that discouraged you from engaging the designers, this is it.</comment>


As Tesla struggles to exit 'production hell,' buyers complain of delivery limbo - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sales-delivery-problems-20180912-story.html <comment><USER2> Is it legal for a company to require full payment before the product has shipped? Most businesses don't operate that way.</comment>


StatSheet Launches Automated NFL Coverage - <AUTHOR> http://statsheet.com/pr7

<comment><AUTHOR> Durham based startup</comment>


YouTube Becomes Popular Side Hustle for Hollywood Stars - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/youtube-becomes-popular-side-hustle-hollywood-stars-1246030 <comment><USER2> Will Smith is all over YouTube now, he just did a show with the SlowMoGuys. Can't help but feel like YouTube has turned into late night television.

<comment><USER3> Will smith is heavy on social media, but only in the last year or so, because it allows him to pull in more customers to his shows and get more on the backside of those shows. It just makes sense.</comment></comment>