Show HN: Kizina – Self-Executing, Interactive Music Album Technology - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/NuChwezi/KIZINA <comment><USER2> The demoscene has a rich tradition of executable music albums, badly termed "musicdisks", with various levels of visualizations and interactivity. This stuff has been going on for decades so I'm not sure about that "world's first" nomer. But musicdisks are cool, and so is this one! Consider adding it to pouet.net :-)

Here's a selection of a bit over 3000 musicdisks. [http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?type%5B0%5D=musicdisk&page...](http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?type%5B0%5D=musicdisk&page=1&order=thumbup)

Many in there are pretty cool!

Some personal favourites are Kooitriplex by the Serbian art group Kosmoplivci (made back when Flash was cool, please cut them some slack): [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=10734](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=10734) and anything by YM Rockerz, who can do _any_ style of music on an Atari ST: [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=56810](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=56810)

<comment><USER3> I saw "world's first" in the title, immediately thought of demoscene musicdisks, and was expecting something about the _real_ "world's first" musicdisk...

Then again, the demoscene isn't really well-known amongst the general public so I'm not surprised someone else reinvents the same idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure about "world's first." Here's an album released on Raspberry-Pi Zero from a couple of months back:

"Musician Releases Album as a Live Coding Device on a Raspberry Pi Zero" [https://blog.hackster.io/musician-releases-album-as-a- live-c...](https://blog.hackster.io/musician-releases-album-as-a-live-coding- device-on-a-raspberry-pi-zero-1474924f5fb7#.9rvekf11q)

<comment><USER5> See also the completely-in-hardware "1-bit symphony" ([http://www.1bitsymphony.com/](http://www.1bitsymphony.com/)) and innumerable other projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Novel, but terrible. The reason why the iPod, then iTunes, and now Spotify has gained so much traction is EXACTLY because they let you store all your music together in one place. I can't, for the love of me, imagine wanting to download an app for every album of every artist I follow. "This is the future of music!" the Github readme boldly claims. Sorry, but I beg to disagree.

</comment><comment><USER7> So, the music is locked into a dedicated player which could potentially also spread viruses while at it?

And for each album, the music player is duplicated?

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene)

BTW I do actually enjoy the linked music (allthough I have to admit I'm listening on soundcloud)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great way to prevent people from hearing your music... nobody wants to trust your "Album" app to not contain a virus.

<comment><USER10> Why would an application that was a music album be any more likely to be a virus than any other piece of software?

I'd have thought the bigger obstacle to people hearing your music is that people tend to prefer to listen to music in their music player of choice, in their own playlists or on shuffle. Then again, maybe creative control over how the songs that compose the album are listened to is part of the app's raison d'etre.

<comment><USER11> > Why would an application that was a music album be any more likely to be a > virus than any other piece of software?

That's not the concern here. How many applications do you have installed? Maybe 10-20 things for the average user. That's pushing it really now as most things are in browser.

Now given that, how many music albums do you own? 10, 20, 30? It's not uncommon to see people who have in the 100s (at least in college).

If you need to install something for every one of those albums that's a much harder space to audit then 1 music player.

<comment><USER10> I don't think it's unusual for people to have more apps than music albums installed on a particular device, and people that audit them in any great detail are very much in the minority. I'd be surprised if the average person could even detail the differences in security implications between downloading an mp4 music video or downloading an executable application purporting to be a music video from the website of a band they like.

It's not exactly as if good old-fashioned music CDs never installed rootkits on users' computers either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who hadn't heard about the demoscene, it still doesn't seem that ground breaking. Basically sounds like an online game centered around music. Making a hackable mmo that does just that would be pretty cool. Still neat though!

As a side note, I'd like to disrupt the use of the word disrupt.

</comment><comment><USER13> From the README:

"I have already tried SoundCloud, I have created a website, I have uploaded lyrics to Genius, and have even had some traction talking to the good nerds at HN. But, as a tinkerer, I still wasn't satisfied. This album is by essence a big challenge to the status quo..."

I can see how you might think you've created a "world's first" if your concept of music distribution is SoundCloud, websites and Genius. But I think you would very much enjoy learning how wrong you are in this case, since there is a huge world of generative / procedural / computer / algorithmic waiting for you. Here are some random points of interest:

\- RjDj, 2008, iOS App, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RjDj](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RjDj) \- various founders and employees of RjDj can be found at: [https://enzienaudio.com/](https://enzienaudio.com/) [http://reactifymusic.com/](http://reactifymusic.com/) [http://www.mogees.co.uk/](http://www.mogees.co.uk/) [http://hearapp.io/](http://hearapp.io/)

\- Some books: Sonic Interaction Design [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sonic- interaction-design](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sonic-interaction-design), The Sonification Handbook (free!) [http://sonification.de/handbook/](http://sonification.de/handbook/), Designing Sound (look for the author's procedural audio lectures on YT) [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/designing- sound](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/designing-sound)

\- [http://toplap.org](http://toplap.org) \- lots of free software projects for making live music and visuals with code (plus loads of artists in this community have been releasing interactive music for decades ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> I sympathize with the experiment but if one of the goals is to provide

> Albums that just aren't files rotting away on a CD, or DVD,

This is going to rot as an Android app instead, probably much faster than any CD or DVD. How long is the author planning to maintain the app?

<comment><USER15> Better make these things for stale platforms. Goto80 just released dubcrt, a self executing, "fully interactive" album for the C64--a platform unlikely to make an app-breaking change anytime soon. IMO this is a great example of what this thing claimed to do first, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So is there a YouTube link to actually listen to what it sounds like? :)

</comment><comment><USER17> So instead of music being on a platform, music is the platform?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. In some respects, that's the essence of this. Music that's meant to be "listenable" independent of other platforms but the "album".

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nfixx here.

Interesting commentary; some heated, but most informative nevertheless. Yes, like @caseymarquis, I hadn't heard of Demoscene despite being someone who kind of hoards all kinds of music (yes, I've even collected some algo-generated music as many folks do refer to that more modern trend here). But, in my part of the world - I'm doing these projects from East Africa, there's a lot that could use some innovation.

I definitely know there are more optimal means for my music to reach fans - and I'm being vigilant here (see how much channels I've tried thus far). This is my first serious music project in all of my life thus far, and being a techy, I always felt there should be a means to do something else besides suffering at the hands of tradition - I've not yet been successful with getting someone to manage or help sell my music. So I've decided to do whatever with it, as I see what ideas work, what doesn't.

Contrary to what one person said, I don't love locking my users/fans in. I just like to advocate for diversity - and looking at how many options a new musician has to use for distribution, I felt like, why not use all that I can readily use at the moment - especially sites/platforms that are more self- service, and have something new to bring to music distribution:

Genius: I love it, because, a potential fan gets to listen to your music while studying the lyrics and possibly seeing how others have interpreted what you have to say. This sort of method of consuming music, in my opinion, is the "higher end". It is more important than most other methods, especially for genres such as Hip Hop that I do, where so much effort goes into writing not just nice-sounding, but educative, often poetic lyrics, and this can best be appreciated when someone listens as they read the lyrics as well.

\-- so in a way, despite being an official editor on Genius myself, I used their sleek idea to do something else my folks in this part of the world might love : my typical local fan here in East Africa might not have the resources to savor my music album via Genius/Soundcloud all the time, and yet, the idea of giving them something more than just typical audio/video, seemed to me like a nice thing - if packaged as an app, not only do they get to listen to the music, but there's more exciting things they can do with the album even while offline: read lyrics, take notes, browse longer album bio/stories (which can all be part of the package, and which, due to the dynamic nature of the app- medium, allow for more creative ways of presenting many things than a standard album on disc)

SoundCloud - the possibility of my fans highlighting specific parts of songs that they liked the most, and possibly leaving context-aware comments for why. I see Soundcloud giving to the lyricist in me, the equivalent of Genius's per- line annotation power, but instead, the focus being on the lyrics and soundscape, as they are combined, at a given moment during the song. DVDs and most other means of distributing music don't readily given the artiste this sort of power. \-- and, who says some future version of this KIZINA tech might not allow "album-app" authors to bake-in perhaps soundcloud-api-powered discussions for the tracks or offer something similar that uses the internal streams, but posts to the remote soundcloud (or does a sync of those comments, and renders them in sync to the user playing the song in the album?) There's lots of room for innovation and experiment here, and I think this does all of us more good in the long run, than not. I for one, love to tinker with things that seem to be important to what I'm doing with my life, and music is one of them.

So, what might be the real benefits of KIZINA? \- fans can choose to download the self-contained album app once they really want to be that engaged with your music (think of a fan that wants to unplug from the internet, but yet go on that hike with your lyrics, music, album gallery, stories, etc. They can spend more time engaged with experiencing your music, than what the typical audio-only or video-only methods of consuming music would offer). And this doesn't only have to work for music albums only. \- I've already hinted at the possibility of many educational projects that might use this sort of thing: story-books, magazines that bundle both music and visual/text, etc. \- The lure of this all, being the creative power the content author has, when determining what other auxiliary things to include besides their main product (in the case of music, the main product being audio). This is an app, so you might even bundle a game that lets the user play as they listen to your music! No existing music packaging tech might easily give you that sort of power IMO.

So, TL;DR: This is not as fringe/cutting-edge as I first thought, but it is nevertheless meant to address some concerns about music (and generally, content) publishing that I don't see other platforms offering me yet. And it also sort of opens up innovation, as making albums software, means we can do an infinity of things with each new music release... Think about that. So, perhaps KIZINA is still relevant to introduce to the public, as many, like me, didn't know of other similar options.

I will definitely even consider selling my music directly on the street (it's one of the more popular methods of indie distribution in Kampala - some bunch of chaps basically duplicate the records, and vend them on the verandas of shops and in kiosks of all sorts).

<comment><USER18> Old-skool demoscener here, I applaud this effort because it's both an attempt at adding "more" to the music and because it also shows that sometimes interesting ideas end up getting developed multiple times. When I was a kid there used to be these videos [1] that just crammed interesting computer generated graphics in with a custom sound track -- the one I'm linking to here had music composed by Thomas Dolby for example.

True, the demoscene produced lots of this kind of stuff also, but with as many different purposes and goals as similarities. I don't think of your effort or the video I linked to as being demoscene because they don't share the same ethos. Sting [2], and other big pop stars [3] played around with this kind of audio-video (sometimes interactive) stuff when people thought multimedia meant "CD-ROM" and FMV.

I think your effort here sits very comfortably in the context of these kinds of audio-visual efforts. Nicely done!

1 - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KWyXopLxac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KWyXopLxac) 2 - [https://archive.org/details/sting-all-this-time- interactive-...](https://archive.org/details/sting-all-this-time-interactive- cdrom) 3 - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSdI7HEn6EU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSdI7HEn6EU)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing this, and especially from the bespoke demoscene community! Sure, I now realize this concept in its most general form isn't that novel, and perhaps isn't as phenomenal, but, my motivations warranted it, and well, those fans of mine who've tried the new album packaging really seem to love it over the conventional package - audio/video.

I'll just keep it around, and perhaps tweak things as long as there's some passion for hacking on this some more or if it turns out to be that good for my fans...

Otherwise, thanks for that background you gave, and the interesting links! Discovering ideas you resonate with isn't easy either ;-)

<comment><USER18> Sure! I'd say even to keep it up. Release the music separately as well, but these kinds of more sensory productions can be useful to keep fans and to get new ones. You could end up known as the artist the releases as apps as well as normal albums.

There's also no need anymore to frame releases as albums to be honest, that's a by product of the distribution medium. Just make what you like and resonates with the kind of fans you want and enjoy being creative.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle major setbacks in life when you loose big opportunity? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If it is a major setback, I generally have taken a day or max two days, and I just go do something totally personal and unrelated to let my mind reset. I limit the time I allow myself to dwell on it (something learned from my parents), but I do recognize that I need to let my mind flush it, categorize it or whatever you want to call it.

99% of the time, I handle almost every setback large and small in stride and just keep moving. But I have had a few where I just couldn't do that, so the above method worked well for me. When you are younger a lot of setbacks look major, as you get older, you realize most setbacks aren't that bad and the ones that are affected a lot more than just you.

Losing a big opportunity to me sucks but it is just part of a journey, there are always more opportunities for people who don't stop. IMO people who get stuck and can't move forward get trapped in the past and not the future, this does no one any good. Recognize it, learn from it, and put your foot forward and move on. Nothing good comes from dwelling on the past, learning from it though is invaluable.</comment>


Ask HN: FAANG to Founder - throwaway-22449 Hi HN! I'd like to get some perspective from the community here.
I'm currently working at a FAANG company making a very comfortable income (500k+ total) with good work life balance and I think good career prospects. I've wanted to do a startup since 10+ years ago, but have not done it for various reasons. Now I have enough financial cushion that I don't have to worry about money for a while and it feels like the right time to take the leap.
The problem is now I'm not sure if I want to. Maybe it's getting comfortable in a cushy job that pays well. Maybe it's me getting older and less ambitious. Or I just had a fanciful view of what startup life was like earlier on. Realizing that startup life is going to be a lot of work and stress and if all goes well a long slog, is making me doubt myself.
For those of you that have gone from a high paying tech job to startup founder, what made you do it? Do you regret making the leap? <comment><AUTHOR> You might want to talk to a lawyer about a non-compete.

[https://www.geekwire.com/2020/amazon-sues-former-aws- marketi...](https://www.geekwire.com/2020/amazon-sues-former-aws-marketing-vp- brian-hall-accepts-google-cloud-job/)

<comment> throwaway-22449 Fortunately I'm in CA where non-competes aren't enforceable.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To me startups/new businesses are all or nothing propositions. You either commit it all or you'll have doubts.

So, now do you have an idea that's worth risking everything you have on?

<comment> throwaway-22449 I have a idea I believe in (but of course startups are risky) and have some angel investors with interest, but discussions haven't gone very far yet.

The risk, at least financially I think is pretty minimal. The initial cost wouldn't be very high and I'd get some investors before proceeding too far into it.

The cost is mostly time / opportunity cost and life style I think.</comment></comment>


White House discussing asking foreign visitors for social media and phone contacts - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/29/politics/donald-trump-immigrant-policy-social-media-contacts/index.html <comment><USER2> Well, it happened under Obama's leadership [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/26/us-customs- soc...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/26/us-customs-social-media- foreign-travelers). Previous HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11984609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11984609).

<comment><USER3> Notably:

"If the foreign visitor declines to share such information, he or she could be denied entry."

That part is new, isn't it?

<comment><USER4> No, this is refusal to cooperate with a border control / immigration agent which is grounds for rejection of entry.

I've seen 2 loud white chicks being denied entry to the US with a valid visa because they were acting obnoxious and causing a mess at the immigration line in JFK.

If they don't want you in it's extremely easy, if you used drugs, if you gotten as much as a parking ticket it's enough for them to deny you entry either due to lying or not being "of good character".

And this happens a lot to people of all races, nationalities, sexes and ages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's say they implement this. What are some ways around it? You could uninstall Facebook and say you don't have an account. You could sign out of your Google account (Android). I wonder if there is a way to programmatically back up your contacts, remove everything, the reimport them.

I happen to be a US cit, but if I wasn't, I would just factory reset my phone before entry. Periodic factory resets seem to be a good idea anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there an official blacklist of disapproved websites? If so, isn't that a form of censorship?</comment>


The Greatest Bug of All - <AUTHOR> http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/07/pimp-my-code-part-15-greatest-bug-of.html <comment><USER2> Wil Shipley's blog is recommended reading, all the archives, all of it... great stuff. Well written, relevant and insightful.

</comment><comment><USER3> That interlude was great.

<comment><USER4> Interludes like that should be part of everything. I want Steve Yegge to have a Scarlett Johansson mini rant in the middle of his blog posts.

<comment><USER3> I'm not gonna lie, it would make me read the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Memory mapping is not faster than read(2) for typical access patterns.

<comment><USER6> More to the point: if the data is really on the disk, an API change isn't going to make the hardware run faster.

But a mapped region certainly can be faster for random access reads from a file. Doing a seek() followed by a read() takes two system calls (and thus four context switches) in addition to any I/O overhead. Faulting the page in from an existing mapping instead takes only one interrupt handler at worst, and potentially completes without kernel intervention at all if the page is already mapped.

<comment><USER7> Typically a system call only leads to a context switch if the call will block, or if the caller has used up its timeslice; otherwise, it's just a couple of relatively cheap protection domain crossings.

<comment><USER6> A system call _is_ a pair of context switches: swap the registers, swap the stack, change the TLB mappings, on some architectures flush the cache. Even the fastest system calls (Linux on amd64) take a thousand clock cycles or more.

<comment><USER5> Technically, a system call (on i386) is only changing CS, EIP, and ESP. You don't have to change CR3 or flush the TLB. "Swapping stacks" isn't expensive.

<comment><USER6> It's a thousand clock cycles more than a function call (seriously, I'm not making this up: time it sometime). I guess whether that is "expensive" or not is context dependent. For some applications (e.g. database servers) that make lots of random access reads from large files, using a mapping can be overwhelmingly faster.

I guess I'm stunned that this turns out to have been such a controversial notion...

<comment><USER5> Can you be specific about which part of the system call you're talking about? Because you said "swapping the stack" (which doesn't take a thousand clock cycles) and "flushing the TLB" (which doesn't happen in OSs where the kernel occupies a permanent part of the VM address space).

I'm sorry, this isn't controversial. All I said was, "mmap isn't faster than read in typical use cases". But then we all got really specific talking about ESP and CS and CR3 and now we have something to go back and forth on, which is kind of fun, and I might learn something new. Didn't mean to snipe at you.

<comment><USER6> To be clear: I didn't say "flush the TLB". Nonetheless unless you happen to be lucky and have those kernel mapping in there, those TLB entries need to be faulted in. That's expensive. Likewise the new stack isn't in L1 cache and needs to be read in from main memory. Likewise the kernel code to execute the handler needs to be read into the instruction cache, etc...

Given that main memory reads are pushing 100 cycles on a modern box, all those things add up. A context switch (my usage: meaning a bounce to a non-local, non-current execution environment) is really expensive.

<comment><USER5> Come on. Userland code constantly blows L1 cache. Almost any library call will churn the icache. For that matter, any memory access can collide the TLB. None of those things are syscall-specific. If you were concerned about L1 and icache, you needed to write your code meticulously to accomodate them anyways.

Yes, cache is important. But there's a world of difference between the "flush the caches and the TLB" behavior that system calls used to incur and the "expensive relative to local variable access" behavior we're talking about here.

"A bounce to non-local, non-current execution environment" literally doesn't mean anything. You could be talking about the CR3 change that swaps page hierarchies, the CPL3->0 change that allows privileged instructions, the CS change that got you there, or even the ESP change to "swap stacks". Which of these are expensive?

I'm chasing you down because it's fun, not because I think you don't know what you're talking about.

But, let's make this relevant: if system call overhead is drowned by disk I/O overhead, then one argument for mmap goes away.

<comment><USER6> Why do you insist on making this a flame war? Sit down and write a program that makes 10M trivial system calls (getpid() is a good choice) and one that calls a function to return a constant integer 10M times.

I'm sorry, but you seem to have a _wildly_ inflated idea of the speed of system calls on modern OSs. The real world just doesn't work like that. This is my last post on this thread.

<comment><USER8> I did that a few months ago (<http://boston.conman.org/2007/11/30.1>) and found some surprising results (<http://boston.conman.org/2007/12/02.1>)which showed that using getpid() wasn't a good test of system call overhead.

<comment><USER5> That is a really nice catch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >The old adage (not mine) is that 99% of the time operating system bugs are actually bugs in your program, and the other 1% of the time they are still bugs in your program, so look harder, dammit.

I agree in general, _but_... I have run into a few platform bugs in my time. For example, at one point realloc in the standard C library that came with Visual Studio would break if you (IIRC) allocated a bunch of blocks that were over 16k, and realloced them to be smaller than 16k. And I had to figure that out the hard way, because the bug was making our code crash.

Also, on most game consoles, I'd say about a quarter of the time you _think_ something is a platform bug, it really is. Seriously. Compiler bugs and SDK bugs just aren't all that uncommon there.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Now, since you're not a PhD student, you like money, so this is bad." - great!

</comment><comment><USER11>
      Remember that the very first thing you do, when looking
      at any bug, before you even start thinking about it, and
      long before you look at your code, is replicate it. You
      can't debug what you can't replicate, and user reports
      are usually lacking in some details that your trained eye
      will catch.

So if you don't have a repro, you don't investigate the bug? Not a good way to treat your customers.

<comment><USER12> I think you're reading it a bit too extremely.

His point is that you always try to reproduce the bug before you assume you understand it.

His comments don't say anything about what to do if you're unable to reproduce. He's just suggesting in which order he thinks you should take certain actions.

It's altogether too easy to jump straight to a patch, submit it, and miss the forest for the trees because you never actually went through the use flow and realized you were patching a symptom, not the underlying problem.

<comment><USER11> It's still a dangerous path to go down, at leat in systems software. If your system collapses after 48 hours of stress load, what do you do then? How about 48 days? Still looking for repro? What if customer can't or won't hand over the data?

One will do well to learn debugging things from least amount of information - log files, crash dumps etc. Doing this consistently even for the easy bugs with repro will teach developers to put more information into log files and make data structures easier to discover within dumps. Then once hard problems come you will be ready.

<comment><USER12> I understand your sentiment but frankly I disagree.

Your first paragraph presents a straw man. Sure, in extreme cases, reproducing a bug is not mandatory. Again, the author does not claim that reproducing a bug is mandatory, but rather that it is a useful practice.

It is not a virtue to try to base your work on the least amount of information.

You say that "when the hard problems come you will be ready". But really when the hard problems come you will look at them assuming that the logged information is enough to solve them. No programmer can know ahead of time what information to log, so by purposefully blindfolding yourself from experiencing the bug directly, you might miss the bigger picture.

Indeed, I can't think of a reasonable logging mechanism that the author could have thought of ahead of time that would have helped with this particular bug. Emphasis on "reasonable".

<comment><USER11> Rather, when the hard problems come the logged information will be the only thing you will have. Eventually you wil solve all the easy problems with repro, and you will only have hard problems left. It's not a hipotethical, that is actually one step in evolution of systems software.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


JStat: Statistical JavaScript Library - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/08/jStat <comment><USER2> Wow, this looks really cool; I'm definitely going to play with this. Has anybody used it for anything yet? I'm wondering what the speed is like. Since it's pure javascript, I'd imagine it would be quite a bit slower than R. However the demo seems quite responsive, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

</comment><comment><USER3> Direct link to the jStat site: <http://www.jstat.org/>

      jStat is a statistical library written in JavaScript that allows you
      to perform advanced statistical operations without the need of a
      dedicated statistical language (i.e. MATLAB or R).

</comment><comment><USER4> jStat seems much more comprehensive stats-wise than other js libs. Lacking docs, the source is well organized and readable: <https://github.com/jstat/jstat/tree/master/src>

For a few stat functions more, check out Jason Davies' science.js, which was extracted from d3.js: <https://github.com/jasondavies/science.js>

For basic stats and math, MooTool's Array.Math has some nice functions: <http://mootools.net/forge/p/array_math></comment>


Simple rules for good typography - <AUTHOR> http://www.freddesign.co.uk/2009/12/archive/rules-for-good-typography/ <comment><USER2> _Bullet points, should ideally be in the page margin. Not indented._

Really? To me that's "ugly", as in "that's not how it looks anywhere, so it jumps out at me". The reason given in the linked text seems to be a design one ("it looks ugly") and not something to do with usability (which is a major goal of typography).

<comment><USER3> The description in the article makes both look ugly, because there isn't uniform line height. This might at least provide a slightly better visual comparison:

          This is a paragraph of text, and it
          continues onto the second line here.

           - This is one bullet
           - This is a second bullet
           - This is a third, longer bullet.

          And it ends with a final paragraph.

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

          This is a paragraph of text, and it
          continues onto the second line here.

        - This is one bullet
        - This is a second bullet
        - This is a third, longer bullet.

          And it ends with a final paragraph.

<comment><USER4> Independently of line height, it still looks much better indented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please don't use underlines as emphasis on the web. That's just confusing. Underlines should be used for links, nothing else. I think that should be self-evident but some people still get it wrong. Clicking on underlined words – expecting further explanation or additional material – with nothing happening always makes me sad :)

(As an aside, I personally don't like underlines even in print. I much prefer the subtle use of italics. But that's very much a question of taste.)

<comment><USER6> Most style guidelines strongly recommend against using underlines in print. Underlining used is for emphasis in handwritten material, because it's difficult to hand-write italics, much less bold. In a printed context, it just looks... unprofessional.

Of course, this is a stylistic preference and not a normative linguistic imperative, because I detest such things. But it's a very common one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Kerning is the spacing between letters. Again, like leading this seems like an obvious one, but still needs careful attention. Consider if your typeface generally needs spacing out more, or if it looks better with tighter kerning._

It sounds to me like the author might actually be talking about _tracking_ , rather than kerning. From wikipedia: "While tracking increases the space between characters evenly, regardless of the characters, kerning increases the space based on character pairs".

<comment><USER8> The author is definitely talking about tracking. Kerning has to be done within the font/typeface itself, and yes the standard web fonts in major browsers/OSs are kerned.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning>

<comment><USER9> But his example is two letters, rt in Helvetica. Perhaps he's referring to create text as an image for headings (bleurgh!) like in his very ugly background graphic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fully-justified text can actually be more readable than ragged-right (although ragged-right is definitely better for some contexts like narrow lines, and can apparently help readers with dyslexia). I believe this is because justified text makes it easier for the eye find the end of the next line and then track back to its start. Here's a reference to one study in which justified performed better than ragged-right (there are others too):

<http://eserver.org/courses/w01/tc510/hades/kaltenbach1.htm>

The advice to use ragged-right is almost always correct on the web, where it's not generally possible to reliably hyphenate or manually typeset your pages. But in print I would use justified text more often than ragged-right. There are reasons that almost all books and newspapers are set justified.

<comment><USER11> You can do a lot better hyphenation than most people realize.. e.g. <http://code.google.com/p/hyphenator/>

<comment><USER12> The main problem with something like hyphenator.js is that to do a proper job, you first have to detect the language. I can't read Polish, but I imagine trying to hyphenate Polish text with an algorithm designed to work on English wouldn't work well at all, and ditto the reverse.

<comment><USER11> If that's the main problem, then I've got to use it more often!

I'm guessing most websites know what language they're serving up.. and for those that don't, you can detect it reasonably well in javascript too (e.g. <http://whatlanguageisthis.com/>). I'm guessing the cost of misidentification is a minor one, and if it's not, it seems easy to add a confidence output to a language identifier.. just don't hyphenate when you're not sure.

I would've said the main problem is you add a big JS file to your requests, but my web ideas are probably stuck in 1994.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel as if the trend in type size for body text is shifting towards larger text. I just see it happening all over the internet on websites I visit. A few years ago, 10-12 pt used to be the norm, but now I often see 14pt being used.

<comment><USER14> Monitors have a much higher resolution these days. When a few years back, 1024x768 on 17″ (75dpi) was the norm, nowadays 1680x1050 on 22″ (90dpi) or 1920x1200 on 24″ (~94dpi) are mainstream. (I'm even at 125dpi with 1280x800 on 12.1″)

No wonder a larger font size is needed to get the same experience as a few years ago. I find myself scaling the font when reading longer texts, because too many fonts are just too small.

<comment><USER15> Decreased readability is a subtle byproduct of the increasing number of monitors, as well.

I have three monitors, and because of how they're arranged, the distance from my chair to the monitors is 3-4" back from where my single monitor used to be. 3-4" makes a noticeable difference.

Before that, I had a huge CRT monitor, which sat closer to me by necessity because of the tube size. Without the tubes, we push monitors back to free up desk space. This also increases the distance from your eyes to the monitor.

Lastly, there's the issue of laptops versus desktops. What is comfortable for me to read on a laptop sometimes looks microscopic on a desktop. If you design web sites on a laptop, make sure you check the look on a desktop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe I'm getting older, but I much prefer a font size larger than 10-12pt.

<comment><USER17> For the web, I strongly agree. I like to site back, a few feet away from my monitor, when the font is 12pt or any less I have to lean in.

13-14pt are nice, and there a bunch of sites with body copy set in 15pt+.

It's easier to create a visual grid with smaller font blocks tho. But.. that just benefits looks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe it's just me, but that blog doesn't look right unless the browser is > 1600px wide.

Anyone have a simple rules for good web design link handy?

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting that he suggests no more than three fonts; the rule when I was poking around was more like two, one for headlines (if you must) and then a good proper body font for almost everything.

<comment><USER9> What about blockquotes/pull quotes and the like?

<comment><USER19> I usually set those in the body text in italics or something, perhaps with the display version of the typeface if I am so fortunate. But I guess that's not the way people do it these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good post! When you think about it, most of these are brain-dead and so intuitive, that you'd think everyone follows them by default. Often, I see over-use of emphasis (italics, bold, or underlined) and abrupt font size changes without reason.

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems like there is a contradiction. What set of font sizes meet the two constraints (3-4 different font sizes and size them according to the Fibonacci sequence / Golden Ratio) and look great on a web page?

</comment><comment><USER22> The fibonacci sequence sounds good in theory but I can't imagine this actually looks nice in print. Or notably more 'natural' than using standard sizes, for that matter.</comment>


What makes a great developer? A story of an extraordinary blacksmith - <AUTHOR> https://quickbirdstudios.com/blog/the-best-blacksmith-developer/ <comment><USER2> This article seems to be more a series of backhanded complaints that managers make about software developers rather than any sort of useful comparison. Any software developer who routinely had requests that were analogous to "make 100 swords" would undoubtedly kill themselves immediately. I mean, that's not really true; there's always a market for software developers who are expected to churn out the same program that they've written before (program, website, crud app) with slightly different branding. But it would be a stretch to call such a person a "great developer" unless they built a framework that would allow them to create each one while barely lifting a finger.

Here are the points in the article, translated into whining about software developers:

"He Loves What He Does" == "Why are good developers expensive?"

Curiosity - "If a craftsman does not love what he does, he is usually working for money or prestige" == "I should not have to pay a developer very much money"

Creativity - "The best ideas come when you walk home from work and your brain just cannot stop thinking about the exciting problems you are working on." == "My developer doesn't think my ideas are exciting"

Long-term motivation - "His motivation comes naturally the process of building and creating new things" == "I should not have to pay a developer very much money"

"He is humble" == "Why do my developers think they're smarter than me"

"He is courageous and honest" == "Why can't my developers give me good estimates for how long things will take"

"He is a team player" == "I want my developers to be instantly replaceable with another developer"

"He is extremely customer-focused" == "Why do my developers keep saying that my ideas are bad?" and "Why can't my developers give me good estimates for how long things will take"

<comment><USER3> > backhanded complaints that managers make about software developers

Bad managers, I'd say.

<comment><USER4> Agree. Good managers are still relatively rare, even given all the attention being paid to improving management in tech lately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't help feel that this is quite misleading - let's take a bunch of concepts we happen to like about our software team and project them onto a 17th century craftsperson.

I mean, you can construct a picture of such a blacksmith being Mr Super Customer Focused, sure, doesn't really make it true though? Why add in such an extra layer of distraction when you can just, well, describe good software team members?

<comment><USER6> Right, I was expecting an account of an actual blacksmith.

I'm pretty sure priorities in the 17th century were not the same as they are now and people had a totally different perspective on work.

<comment><USER7> And strong arms too. A smart black smith with weak arms/shoulders/wrists would under-perform one who didn't. And the tools were a) quite simple, b) they wouldn't change every 3 years and would last a generation. The comparison to the software craftsman is quite silly, I agree

<comment><USER5> Yeah I thought that too - 30 years of fine tuning one's horseshoe shaping skills is admirable, but it's wildly different to the "constantly learning new things" narrative.

It's a shame, I did quite enjoy the "our sword guy let us down" cartoon!

<comment><USER8> _cough_ don't ask a Blacksmith to shoe a horse.

<comment><USER5> Sounds a sensitive one :-) Technically I meant making them not fitting them, but mea culpa, the whole horseshoe area is not my domain so I'll watch my step!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never met a blacksmith, but I've met people in similar jobs (welders, etc) and I'm not sure I'd describe them as having "fun and joy at his craft". The best ones make it a point to be good at their work, for sure, but they make it a point to do their best at everything they do. I've met people at the top of their game who have won awards for their work, who tell me they have no passion for their profession. It's just what they happen to do for money.

I'm probably reading too much into this, like someone complaining that computers in a Hollywood movie are not technically accurate. Bloggers have re- invented fables, only this time with medieval trade unions instead of animals.

Aesop got this right. Nobody thinks he's making a judgment on the work ethic of tortoises. You use animals in morality stories for the same reason programmers use "foo" and "bar" in sample code. Write about blacksmiths and you risk naive people like me thinking that you actually mean a real blacksmith.

</comment><comment><USER8> Actually "Blacksmiths" don't forge swords or shoe horses - there is a whole hierarchy of smiting trades in the European tradition.

I bet Masamune (considered the best sword smith in japan) had an amazing wait list and you probably had to know some one to even get on that list.

</comment><comment><USER10> So, this person is:

\- Curious

\- Creative

\- Humble

\- Communicates well

\- Sees the big picture

\- Teaches others

\- Honest

\- Brave

That's not just a good programmer, that's a good person to have on your team regardless of her/his responsibilities.

<comment><USER11> True. Also I want to point out some basic math, if the traits are independent, the odds of finding a person who is more of each of those traits than average i.e. > 5 / 10 on each is 1/2^8

So roughly 1/256 people will have all of those traits more than average. This on top of hopefully being able to program.

<comment><USER12> On top, you'd hope the respective manager is matching the engineer's traits, if not exceeding them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't really get the point of this article... Especially on hn. To me it sounds very passive aggressive to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER14> "He is a team player". Do you ever seen a _team_ of blacksmiths forging a sword ? IMHO a blacksmith is the figure more distant than ever from the perfect team member. Do you know what a team member looks like ? An assembly line worker. But who want to be an assembly line guy ?

<comment><USER15> team striking is a thing... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YslKzxLF8Uw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YslKzxLF8Uw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So.. What are they trying to stealth-sell here?

<comment><USER17> Looks like just themselves -- a team of developers I guess. Or horseshoes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I see they repeat the myth about a great developer being ten times as good as a mediocre one, even though the actual reference they point towards in support of that statement disagrees with them.

<comment><USER19> I know that this is not a myth because I have seen it. Just today I saw someone reviewing some piece of work that had taken another developer two weeks to implement, throw it all out and solve the same problem with only a few lines of code.

The speed improvement isn't like, "This person can type 10 times faster than everyone else", but more like, "This person doesn't get stuck or waste time chasing dead-ends".

Possibly your code-base needs to have more than a certain level of complexity before developers start getting stuck like this.

<comment><USER20> > piece of work [...] two weeks to implement, throw it all out and solve the > same problem with only a few lines of code

I've been in similar situations and, invariably, the "few lines of code" is inscrutable nonsense that no-one else will be able to maintain (and often even understand.) I can write obtuse one line "clever" hacks to solve problems but I'm keenly aware that a) I'll have forgotten how it works in an hour and b) some poor bastard (which might well be me) will have to maintain it for N years after I'm gone.

<comment><USER21> Right, and the product owner will expect all future maintenance to be done as quickly as the one-line clever hack that took 15 minutes but didn't encompass the edge cases.

<comment><USER11> Some 10x engineers just say "No" to product owners. If you let a product owner to convince you that you need an .xls export rather than .csv for internal use (this is a real-life example!) you may add a week+ of work/maintenance versus the time it takes me to explain "no."

<comment><USER20> > an .xls export rather than .csv for internal use

Presumably this was a trivial data dump and not something like a report that could have benefited from, e.g., embedded formulas, multiple sheets, etc.? (I've produced exports with the latter and the enhancements were greatly appreciated over the plain old CSV export.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Open Letter to ICANN on the TLD.js Movement - <AUTHOR> http://wewantjs.org

<comment><USER2> Just make sure that only _javascript_ projects get a *.js domain. Not coffeescript, emscriptem or clojurescript (sorry to emscriptem and clojurescript because I'm lumping you in with the only community actually guilty of calling their projects .js when they should be something else.

</comment><comment><USER3> The font is really gruesome. Looks like a modern version of comic sans.

Use stuff like this for headers, never for whole paragraphs of text.

</comment><comment><USER4> ICANN is already accepting applications for whatever TLD you want to create. You don't have to be a country to get one. So what's the point of this "petition"?

I'm guessing that the goal is somehow to bypass the hefty fees that ICANN charges on anyone who applies for a new TLD. If so, why not just say that that's the objective, and skip the nonsense about JavaScript being a nation with billions of lines of virtual GDP?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Two-character ASCII strings are not permitted, to avoid conflicting with current and future country codes based on the ISO 3166-1 standard."

See <https://github.com/ozten/TLD.js/issues/8>

<comment><USER4> Ah, I see. I wish they made this clear in the landing page.</comment></comment></comment>


API flaws said to have left Symantec SSL certificates vulnerable to compromise - <AUTHOR> http://www.csoonline.com/article/3184897/security/api-flaws-said-to-have-left-symantec-ssl-certificates-vulnerable-to-compromise.html <comment><AUTHOR> All the news about this seem to be come from this facebook post: [https://www.facebook.com/cbyrneiv/posts/10155129935452436](https://www.facebook.com/cbyrneiv/posts/10155129935452436)

There is some discussion here: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.security...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.security.policy/CEww8w9q2zE) Which also includes a detailed comment from Tarah, the Principal Security Advocate and Senior Director of Engineering at Symantec Website Security.</comment>


In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism - <AUTHOR> http://m.inc.com/run_biz/16850/ <comment><USER3> If you have less to lose, you're more willing to take risks.

Thus having the government take care of basic welfare and health care benefits frees people to be entrepreneurial, in a sense.

Compare to the US, where people are tied to a job based on the benefits they have through that job, and before the health care legislation's removal of preexisting conditions clauses, if you had a medical condition and lost your job, you could very easily end up in financial distress.

Personally, I would have transitioned to being independent a full year earlier if it wasn't for health care coverage issues.

<comment><USER4> But if you have less to win, why should you take risks anyway?

<comment><AUTHOR> Speaking as one who has started several start-ups in Norway, I'd say: there is still quite a bit to win, there is much less risk, and at the end of the day, we're not really in it for the money, are we?

<comment><USER5> "Speaking as one who has started several start-ups in Norway, I'd say: there is still quite a bit to win, there is much less risk, and at the end of the day, we're not really in it for the money, are we?"

That last part makes me think that you aren't really making that much and justifying it by saying: "we're not really in it for the money, are we?".

Everyone is in it for the money. Money means freedom. Freedom from governments and your boss. If you aren't in it for the money, start a non-profit.

Here is a list of the largest 500 companies in Norway (with gross and net revenue):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_companies_o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_companies_of_Norway)

Those numbers look pitiful (I'm not sure what the actual dollar amounts are, but I'm just comparing them based on percentages). Having health insurance to fall back on does help with starting a company. But once you get the company established, the amount of taxes you will be required to pay for employees and other things will outweigh any benefits you received initially.

<comment><USER6> > Everyone is in it for the money. Money means freedom. Freedom from > governments and your boss.

No, everybody is _not_ "in it for the money". You said it yourself, actually: most people are in it for the things that money allows them to do. That is a very important difference, and it's one that a lot of people forget about.

Here in the US, a lot of the things from which we'd like to be "free" from (living in fear of health care-related bankruptcy, having to beg a boss for an extra week of vacation, being limited to absurdly short and unpaid (ma|pa)ternity leave periods, etc.) come with a hefty price tag, and as such are associated with (and often thought of as proxies for) having a lot of money.

In a place like Norway, many of the things that that we Americans see as perks afforded to only the wealthiest of individuals are instead thought of as baseline facts of life.

Is it so surprising, then, that people whose world-views are shaped by such a system don't have the same difficulties at disentangling financial cause and effect that we Americans have? They say that "past a certain point, money's just a way of keeping score," and it sounds to me as though that point is a lot lower in a place like Norway than it is here in the US.

As an experiment, let's try formulating it (semi)-logically (it's been a while since I had logic, so if I'm getting this wrong, please let me know):

        if (has lots of money) -> (freedom from financial catastrophe, and lots of social perks)

In the US, the inverse is true:

        not (has lots of money) -> not (freedom from financial catastrophe, lots of social perks, etc.)

Because of how our system is set up, the converse is also typically true:

        if (freedom from financial catastrophe, lots of social perks) -> (has lots of money)

This leads us to conclude that there's an inevitable relationship between having lots of money and having the freedom that you talk about.

In Norway, however, the system is different, and it doesn't sound like the aforementioned inverse relationship between money and freedom is true: since you can have the freedom from healthcare-related financial catastrophe, a decent vacation policy, educational benefits, etc. all without having tons of money. Since there are different "givens", it's not surprising that Norwegians have arrived at different conclusions and attitudes towards money. QED?

<comment><USER5> "No, everybody is not "in it for the money". You said it yourself, actually: most people are in it for the things that money allows them to do. That is a very important difference, and it's one that a lot of people forget about."

You need money though. So directly or indirectly, money is always a factor.

"since you can have the freedom from healthcare-related financial catastrophe, a decent vacation policy, educational benefits, etc. all without having tons of money."

Well, you had that money, it just went to the government instead of your pocket. The choices you could have made with that money are now gone. Once you are an established company in the US, you could afford those benefits yourself (which is more efficient because rather than paying for all healthcare, you can figure out what will work for your company).

For many non-web related business, it will make it that much more difficult. If you need to spend money on physical goods and your profit margin is razor thin, huge taxes aren't going to make it easier. If you have a business that doesn't scale well with one person (IE: a tech business where you need to hire more employees quickly), the increased employee taxes and requirements might make it an impossibility to continue (if you have no funding).

So, it might help with web businesses that can scale well with one employee or ones that are funded by VC. I wonder how many people are actually bootstrapping a company there.

"Since there are different "givens", it's not surprising that Norwegians have arrived at different conclusions and attitudes towards money. QED?"

Norwegians now have a sense of entitlement. It all depends on what you want. If you want an easier start, but have your overall potential income limited, start a company in Norway. If you want a riskier start, with less limits in the long-run, start your company in the US.

I still have to wonder. If this was such a great system, why aren't more people starting companies? There is no risk, right? Why isn't Norway the center for startups?

<comment><USER6> > Norwegians now have a sense of entitlement.

You say that like it's a bad thing. One could say that us Americans have a "sense of entitlement" about things like clean drinking water, functioning emergency services, and a publicly-funded education system; alternatively, one could just as easily say that we have a set of baseline expectations about the sorts of things that a modern society is supposed to provide to its citizens (in exchange for taxes, etc.).

It sounds like Norwegians have a different idea of where that baseline should be.

> It all depends on what you want. If you want an easier start, but have your > overall potential income limited, start a company in Norway. If you want a > riskier start, with less limits in the long-run, start your company in the > US.

OK, fair enough, but again- remember _why_ it is that you care one way or the other about how big your "overall potential income" is. There comes a point where you've got enough to live luxuriously, have all your material wants satisfied, and basically do whatever you want on a day-to-day basis- is there a point to accumulating more than that? From the article, and from what other posters on this thread have said, it sure sounds like the "limited" potential income level in Norway is still quite high, by any rational standard, so what does it matter? After five or six million dollars per year, would an increase actually impact your life in a noticeable way?

By the way, I'm speaking from a strictly pragmatic standpoint here, not an idealogical one- some people see this as a moral issue, and that's not where I'm going here. I'm basically saying, "if my income is X millions of dollars, why do I care if the government takes half of that and I only have .5X?" Especially since I know that, by giving up that money, I'm ensuring that my neighbors and employees don't have to worry about medical costs and will be able to retire comfortably? Past a certain point, can you really spend more? And if you do, will it make you happy?

Of course, I should point out that this is all very easy for me to say, seeing as I never have and probably never will earn enough to face this question personally. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were rich, who knows.

<comment><USER5> "You say that like it's a bad thing. One could say that us Americans have a "sense of entitlement" about things like clean drinking water, functioning emergency services, and a publicly-funded education system; alternatively, one could just as easily say that we have a set of baseline expectations about the sorts of things that a modern society is supposed to provide to its citizens (in exchange for taxes, etc.)."

Having basics is a good thing (clean drinking water, police/fire). Too many of these things means there is less freedom for the people putting money into the system and less incentive for the people utilizing these services to get a job. There needs to be a balance. Too little or too much is a bad thing.

"OK, fair enough, but again- remember why it is that you care one way or the other about how big your "overall potential income" is. There comes a point where you've got enough to live luxuriously, have all your material wants satisfied, and basically do whatever you want on a day-to-day basis- is there a point to accumulating more than that?"

Like I said, it's not just me. With more money, I can help friends, family, and anyone else I choose. I don't want the government deciding what do do with my money. I also enjoy the freedom. It's something you seem to have trouble understanding.

"From the article, and from what other posters on this thread have said, it sure sounds like the "limited" potential income level in Norway is still quite high, by any rational standard, so what does it matter? After five or six million dollars per year, would an increase actually impact your life in a noticeable way?"

Why does it matter to you? It's my money. 5 or 6 million per year really isn't that much anymore.

If I am limited to this, I probably would just keep the money in a bank. Otherwise, I might try to invest in other businesses and or start another one. One leads to more jobs and an improved economy and the other doesn't.

"Especially since I know that, by giving up that money, I'm ensuring that my neighbors and employees don't have to worry about medical costs and will be able to retire comfortably? Past a certain point, can you really spend more? And if you do, will it make you happy?"

The US already has Medicade and Medicare. Over 70% of people are covered in some way or another by their employer.

You haven't talked about the negative effects of a socialized healthcare system and you are trying to use sympathy to get me to agree with you. Healthcare is a finite resource. We need some way to limit usage. There needs to be a hybrid system in place that limits total visits per year (and charges fees after that) or it will eventually collapse. Unlimited anything is a bad idea.

I also think that people that engage in risky behaviors (smoking, drug use, etc) should have more money taken out in taxes. It's not really fair that I, a person that doesn't engage in that behavior, has to pay for your poor life choices.

<comment><USER6> > Having basics is a good thing (clean drinking water, police/fire). Too many > of these things means there is less freedom for the people putting money > into the system and less incentive for the people utilizing these services > to get a job. There needs to be a balance. Too little or too much is a bad > thing.

I agree with you 100%. I also think that it's an area that people (and countries) can and do have reasonable disagreements regarding where that balance point should be.

> I also enjoy the freedom. It's something you seem to have trouble > understanding.

No, believe me, I understand; I think that you and I place different value on that level of freedom. For me, the freedom isn't _necessarily_ an end in and of itself- it's one of many different means to an end. In other words, the freedom isn't valuable; it's what that freedom allows us to _do_ , and how it allows us to live our lives, that's important.

Furthermore, I think of freedom as a vector, not a scalar- there are multiple dimensions to it. Simply talking about "more" or "less" freedom isn't very meaningful. Sometimes, trading one kind of freedom for another makes sense. For example, I generally try and follow traffic laws when driving. This is a constraint on my freedom to drive as fast as I want, wherever I want. However, by accepting this constraint, I experience a net gain in total freedom (i.e., the magnitude of my freedom vector increases overall), since by buying into the system of traffic laws, I get to enjoy a traffic and road system that lets us all have cars and use them to go wherever we want to go without having to worry (too much) about somebody driving the wrong way down our lane of traffic, and so on. I value that quite a bit- enough to follow rules that are sometimes suboptimal, or downright annoying.

Personally, I would feel a lot more free and happy if I knew that my friends all had health insurance, and there have been times in my life when it would have been very nice to be able to find a different job without worrying about what the effects would be on my partner's access to health care. I also feel like the overall societal benefits to _everybody's_ friends having health insurance and what-not would result in a net increase in the magnitude of my personal freedom vector, to the extent that I'm willing to accept a hit to one or another of my vector's dimensions in terms of paying higher taxes, etc.. Obviously, you disagree with me on this count, and that's fine- but let's make sure we understand precisely what it is that we're disagreeing about.

It seems to me that one way to think about our difference of opinion is that, when you and I calculate the magnitude our freedom vector, we're placing different weights on the various dimensions--- in other words, some dimensions are more important to you than others. Heck, we might even be calculating our freedom vectors in entirely different spaces- our dimensions themselves might be different, which would make it very hard to compare how you think about and value these things to how I think about and value them. Can you tell I'm in the final throes of dissertation writing? :-)

> Why does it matter to you? It's my money. 5 or 6 million per year really > isn't that much anymore.

Well, it actually doesn't matter to me personally; I just have a hard time getting my head around the concept that, past that point, another million would have any net effect on my personal happiness level. However, as I said before, this could totally be an artifact of the fact that I'm not in that position. Maybe if I were, I'd feel differently. Note that the exact amount isn't really so important- just the idea that there's a point past which it doesn't matter. Maybe the real point is 10 million, maybe it's only 1 or 2. Obviously, it'll be different for everybody, but I don't think it'll differ by all that much, once all is said and done.

BTW, I disagree that 5 or 6 million/year "isn't that much anymore." First of all, in most of the world, that's such a fantastical amount that you might as well as be talking about being paid in unicorn horns; however, we're not talking about living in Botswana- we're talking about living somewhere like the US. So, here in the US, 5/6 m/year is way more than enough to live in incredibly decadent luxury in any city in the country. I suppose it might not enough to actually own and operate a private jet, but it's certainly enough for NetJets; it's probably not enough to buy one's own island, but short of that sort of thing, I'm having a hard time imagining something I'd like to do that I couldn't do easily on that kind of income.[1] Again, maybe my imagination is too limited, here, but I kind of don't think so- I've certainly got a taste for creature comforts, and enjoy luxuries as much as anybody else. Remember, I'm not saying that people shouldn't earn tons of money- just that, after a point, what does it matter? And, if it doesn't matter, why not use it supporting a system that efficiently makes life comfortable for people that don't have as much as you do?

> The US already has Medicade and Medicare. Over 70% of people are covered in > some way or another by their employer.

First of all, that still leaves 30% of the country that isn't covered, which is way too damn many. Second of all, what most people call "Medicaid" is actually a patchwork of different programs that vary widely in terms of coverage requirements and services from state to state, and is far from an ideal system, although it is better than nothing. As to the fact that most people who are covered are covered through their employers, doesn't that strike you as a major dent in their freedom? How many potential entrepreneurs do you think don't bother simply because they can't risk losing their (or their family's) health insurance? In my mind, this represents a major hit to personal liberty, and as such seems like exactly the sort of thing that a system intent on maximizing individual freedom would be attempting to fix.

> You haven't talked about the negative effects of a socialized healthcare > system and you are trying to use sympathy to get me to agree with you.

Well, I haven't talked about it, because I didn't see it as relevant to the discussion- most of the rest of the world's countries employ some form of government-funded universal healthcare, and even though there certainly are negatives, I gotta say- I've traveled a fair bit, and due to my work, wherever I go I end up talking to people about healthcare. I've never- not once- heard somebody tell me that they'd rather have the US's system than their own country's, even if they've spent the last half-hour enumerating their system's problems. That says something, in my mind. Furthermore, there are a lot of different kinds of "socialized healthcare systems." Some of them have usage limits, etc.; some are surprisingly market-driven (e.g., Switzerland). That's not really what we're talking about, though. No system is going to be perfect; the question is whether a government-run system that guarantees a certain level of coverage to all citizens would be better or worse than our current system (or lack of system).

> Healthcare is a finite resource. We need some way to limit usage. There > needs to be a hybrid system in place that limits total visits per year (and > charges fees after that) or it will eventually collapse. Unlimited anything > is a bad idea.

All 100% true points. "Rationing" is a really dirty word when it comes to health care, but it's an absolute necessity, if for no other reason than resources are ultimately finite. Right now, one of the ways we limit usage is by limiting access, which I personally view as unjust. If everybody had equal access, maybe we could figure out a better way (not bloody likely, IMHO, but it can't be worse than what we've got now). Note that I'm personally extremely pessimistic about health care in the US, even if we somehow were able to get a better system into place, but I don't think that means that we shouldn't try.

At any rate, this is all kind of off-topic from our original discussion.

[1]: Exception: massive-scale philanthropy, along the lines of the Gates Foundation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

Norway don't say yes to socialism they say yes to social welfare in a different way than in the US.

So do Denmark (where I am from) and Sweden.

Yes the taxes are higher (up to 60% in Denmark with a progressive tax system) and about the same I believe in Norway.

But it's not like everyone walks around an love it. In fact there is great opposition to the level that taxation have gone to. In Denmark it's an election year and several social welfare benefits plus income tax is being discussed as the main theme.

But all this doesn't really matter cause the US have something that neither of the Scandinavian countries nor any other European nations have.

They have a big ass market and one language.

Europe is a huge market (around +400 Million no?) but most countries (unlike Scandinavia) don't do well with english so there is no unifying factors that allow for the kind of scalable business that can be created in the US (at least not as easily)

There are many problems with the kind of social welfare models and lack of aspiration is actually one of them. People don't try as hard and because they pay high taxes they come to expect A LOT from the government.

I have lived in the US for enough years to know that there are many things that the US should envy from the Scandinavian countries. But the start-up environment is not one of them.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for setting the record straight on this. I'm Norwegian, and this is exactly what I would say about this. There are many things we do in Scandinavia that should be copied in the US, but start-up culture and small business is not helped along by the tax system and social services/benefits. In fact, the progressive taxation alone incentivizes everyone to _not_ earn more than about 100000 USD a year (if you work harder to earn more, taxation is about 45% on the marginal income).

There are "official" (state-sponsored) investment companies, but they are incredibly risk-averse and never invest in anything halfway radical. Private financing for computer startups is nonexistent.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Private financing for computer startups is nonexistent._

Really? I've never had problem with this. Nor have I felt the tax system has disincentivized my income (which is well into the top bracket.)

<comment><USER8> What sort of startups/work have you been doing? When I'm talking about disincentivizing, I just mean that making the conscious decision of working more seems like a no-brainer. Your personal reasoning behind this may be different, but overall, fewer people will do this if they only get paid for 70-80% of the extra hours than if they get paid for all of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? You think there is a linear relationship between tax rates and hours worked? It's never worked that way in my experience, either as an employee or as a founder.

As an owner, you don't get paid for hours, full-stop. You get paid for outcomes. I don't know about you, but if the government raised the corporate tax rate by 5%, that would have no bearing on my desire to have my company succeed.

The same holds true, ceteris paribus, for my years as an employee. I worked hard (and a lot of hours) because I enjoyed what I was doing, and wanted the company to succeed, even if my income was divorced from the hours worked--as it was, most of the time, as a salaried employee. In other words, I got paid _zero_ percent of the "extra hours", and yet still worked them, gladly, for other reasons.

Naturally, YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought this line was particularly telling: "Although America remains near the top of the world in terms of entrepreneurial aspirations - that is, the percentage of people who want to start new things-in terms of actual start-up activity, our country has fallen behind not just Norway but also Canada, Denmark and Switzerland."

Yet any mention of figuring out what they're doing right (and what we're doing wrong) is SOCIALISM

-

Reading this also reminded me of an interview I'd heard a few months ago: [http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/29/pm...](http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/29/pm- zombie-economic-ideas-still-among-us/)

 _QUIGGIN:_ After I wrote the book, I saw the movie "Zombieland," and rule number two is double tap. You always have to hit them twice. I talk about the trickle down theory, that when you help the rich that helps everybody. I think a theory so convenient to powerful people is never going to be cured permanently.

 _RYSSDAL:_ And the theory about trickle-down economics is in some way coming back to the United States in this debate we're having about the Bush era tax cuts.

 _QUIGGIN:_ Absolutely. It's suggesting that keeping on giving tax cuts to the top 1 or 5 percent of the population is going to help everybody else. The evidence is very clear that that's not the case. That the vast majority of benefits of economic growth have gone to people in the top 10 percent of the income distribution. Within that 10 percent, the top 1 percent has done much better than the remaining 9 percent, and within that 1 percent, the top tenth of a percent has done even better.

-

Moral of the story?: We've been had.

<comment><USER10> Please stop pointing to successful market economies and calling them socialist.

In some ways Switzerland is a libertarian tax haven and really makes the US look socialist.

Switzerland, Canada and Denmark are more economically free than the US according to this: <http://www.heritage.org/index/>

Just because there are some very rich people in the US, it doesn't mean the average person would be better off in a socialist country such North Korea or Cuba.

<comment><USER11> It is possible for countries to be both more socialist and capitalist than the USA.

If there is a lesson to be had from Scandianvia it is that cpaitalist is a way of earning money, and socialist is a way of spending it.

Both dials can be turned up at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article rings true to me. I've lived and worked in Norway for a successful startup (FAST Search, later bought by Microsoft) above the Arctic circle. It's a lovely country, the startup did feel like a family (in fact, many brought their kids to work), we worked and played hard, etc. I paid 50% tax and $15 for beers and was more than happy to do so as well–the taxes were well used and having an entire population, rather than a small circle of friends with a high standard of living was so much more fun.

</comment><comment><USER13> Norway is not a socialist country.

Social democracy != socialism.

<comment><USER14> It's all in how you define a term, but traditionally Norway is a very socialist country - The major businesses were owned by the state, and while that has changed, the government does still hold large stakes in telecom, oil, and transportation companies. Private businesses also generally have a much flatter hierarchy than you find in the US, and income distribution is much more equally. And, of course, the member parties of the ruling coalition consider themselves to be socialist parties.

<comment><USER13> Of course you can slice the definitions in different ways, but the common definition is that the capitalist ideal of all means of production being in private hands and socialism is the opposite of that - they are all in public hands. Norway is a mixed economy. I think that the USA and Norway are not at the poles of that continuum but much more close together, especially given the Fed's recent acquisitions.

<comment><USER14> Actually, I think the way the US and Norway handled the crisis helps to show how different they are.

Norway stepped in much more quickly, even though the risk was much less compared to the US (Norway had already placed stricter controls on banks due to the crisis they had in the late 80's and early 90's). While the Fed did step in in the US, they were more concerned with pumping in money rather than trying to fix the underlying cause of the trouble - because, after all, telling the banks what to do would be "socialism", which is why there is still so much uncertainty in the US right now.

Obviously not everything in Norway is perfect, but taking everything into account - the 3.1% unemployment rate just one example - I certainly have no desire to move back to the US anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wheras in enlightened california, we only pa a measly 40% of our income in taxes.

<comment><USER9> _The first thing I learned is that Norwegians don't think about taxes the way we do. Whereas most Americans see taxes as a burden, Norwegian entrepreneurs tend to see them as a purchase, an exchange of cash for services. "I look at it as a lifelong investment," says Davor Sutija, CEO of Thinfilm[...]._

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. I've been living in Norway for over a decade, and I've never heard _anyone_ complain about their taxes, or paying $9/gallon for gas.

<comment><USER16> I'm not from norway, but here's a few articles I found in a minute of searching:

* [http://www.newsinenglish.no/2010/08/24/more-tax-trouble-for-...](http://www.newsinenglish.no/2010/08/24/more-tax-trouble-for-the-government/) * [http://www.norwaypost.no/news/higher-taxes-for-many-pensione...](http://www.norwaypost.no/news/higher-taxes-for-many-pensioners.html)

I assume these don't represent the general view, but it does show that at least some people in norway dislike the level of taxation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure they exist-- I just haven't crossed paths with any, in 13 years here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Norway would have a lot more trouble saying "ja" to socialism if it didn't have so much oil. That's what makes the whole thing seem like such a good deal - you're getting more than you're paying in.

<comment><USER18> Aw come on, Norway has oil and it is small, but was social-democratic long before any oil, and both Denmark and Sweden have built successful welfare safety nets without relying so much on a natural-resources windfall.

<comment><USER10> Sweden is a big industrial nation. The relatively free market system allowed them to flourish.

In all of the Scandinavian countries the welfare state really didn't start until around the 1960s-1970s.

The government programs have only been possible because of the successful private economy to pay for it, just like in the US.

Although Denmark doesn't have the massive oil wealth that Norway does, there is still some and enough that Denmark is a net oil exporter. And the Danish state gets billions of kroner from oil each year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of course Norway's way of doing things could work in the United States - <USER2> the typical American had the underlying culture, beliefs, and attitudes of the typical Norwegian.

Since they don't, and cultural change is the sort of thing that happens incrementally over a generation or more, there's no plan of action to be gained from such articles - they're valuable because they teach us a bit about other cultures, but trying to use them to make political points is silly.

<comment><USER20> How do you think these generational changes occur to begin with? Education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bloody good on Norway. Now if you want Norwegian taxes or the Norwegian government, move to Norway. I'll take the American moral view on taxation, and fight taxation tooth-and-nail until I die, regardless of the pragmatics of it. It's about choice, and freedom, not the actual dollars and cents.

Come up with a scheme that moves functions currently executed by the government into a privately run, voluntary collective, and chances are I'd join it, participate, and pay as much as - or more than - I do now. But if you use the hammer of government force to mandate participation, I - for one - will never accept it as just.

<comment><USER22> Norwegian examples simply aren't applicable to the rest of the world. Here in the UK we are often compared to Norway, since we are both North Sea oil countries. Well, Norway makes _20x_ the oil revenue per head of the population than we do. That covers up a an awful lot. We don't have the luxury of economic inefficiencies that Norway can get away with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article implies that most people in Norway believe that individual rights are less important than the average welfare of all individuals taken together and that personal lives are less important than the well-being of the collective. This is quite logical, because it is the acceptance of this view of the world that makes their system possible.

A similar view is at the root of most governments around the world today and it certainly underpinned the socialist/communist block in the 20th century, though to a different degree. The United States has been a notable exception.

But let's focus on Norway and the idea that it can serve as a model. To take a small example, who believes that a skilled doctor is genuinely happy to have half of his income taken away by law and given to the janitor of his hospital, so that the latter receives the roughly same pay? Well, the surveys say that the level of happiness in Norway are very high, so the doctor must be happy. Happiness measures aside, does that make sense? Is the doctor genuinely happy or has he been told by generations of intellectuals what he should feel happy about and what he should feel guilty about? This is a question that everyone who nominates Norway as a model for the US should answer logically.

<comment><USER24> A bit of anecdotal evidence from a Norwegian citizen to counter your "doctor vs janitor" argument: I'm more than well aquainted with a doctor and she is more than happy to pay her taxes, in order to benefit the rest of society.

You should also know that even though the tax system in Norway works to even the footing of different posed people financially, it does not wipe out the class difference between a janitor and a doctor. Their net income will still differ by quite a bit (up to 400% at least).

The benefit here is that someone who is considered poor, and would perhaps be forced to live in the street, and only serve to increase the crime rate, will instead recieve help. And the doctor can sleep peacefully at night knowing that the police is out protecting. The hospital emergency staff is ready to recieve the next cardiac arrest patient, the road will be cleared from that heavy snow fall during the night, the list goes on.

In my view the philosophy of the Norwegian tax models is less worries == more happiness, and that is exactly what this model offers for everyone included.

On the other hand its very easy to paint a rosy picture of Norway in a case like this. Mostly becasue US is so easy to outcompete on many of the issues directly involved. Crime rates, mortality rates, helthcare and so on. Norway does of course, like any country, suffer from several political problems. Spending, immigration and government control is perhaps the most fleeting issues right now. But they diminish substantially compared to the issues the US has to face the next decade. And perhaps even worse is it, that the political environment in the US seems allmost hopeless. With the country polarized into two extremes. In Norway the debate is still very much alive around all of these issues. In the US you can quickly get yourself into a place you dont want to be by just shifting your perspective slightly.

Ok now i gotta stop. Let the bashing commence. :P

<comment><USER23> Fundamentally, it comes down to the questions "Do you have the right to keep the fruit of your effort? And do you have the right to dispose of it as you see fit?"

It appears that your acquaintance agrees with having her government take away part of her income and give it to the janitor. She accepts the janitor's claim to part of her property as the janitor's right - i.e. the janitor does not owe her any gratitude, and her act is not a voluntary act of benevolence - she is simply giving him what is already his due.

So where does this right come from? The janitor's need. The question here is whether need can give rise to a legitimate right.

You say that your acquaintance thinks that her giving away part of her wealth helps prevent poorer people from becoming criminals. And that this danger gives them the right to claim part of her wealth. But if you extrapolate this thinking further, you'd get people keeping others hostage by means of a threat - i.e. if you refuse to share with me what you earned but I didn't, I'll turn into a criminal and hurt you. This way of thinking about rights is very dangerous.

My view of happiness is simply the achievement of your values, which you have defined consciously and rationally and which do not infringe on the rights of others. The questions for your acquaintance are "Is she feeling happy because she can buy a protection from criminals", or "Is she feeling happy because she truly loves all her fellow citizens (known and unknown, good and bad, lazy and hard-working)?". Regardless of the answer, the more important question is: "Why does she prefer a situation where she is given no choice, no right to refuse to give away, to a situation where she could give away voluntarily, as an act of kindness?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Norway is successful because of the oil and gas resources here. This makes the economy boom, and is why the welfare state and social democracy works so well. I still think the US has a far more competitive start-up environment. I'm from Norway, by the way.

<comment><USER11> Norway saves the oil income in an oil fund. The rest of Scandinavia gets the same results with no oil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One swallow does not make a summer, and one happy entrepreneur does not equal a system which produces a lot of new companies.

Norway is a nice place and the culture and beliefs of the people mean that they have decided as a country to opt for a high social safety net and associated high taxes.

But trying to extract a hypothesis that somehow high taxes and social safety nets are somehow good for starting up a business is, well, stretching it somewhat.

Perhaps one of the reasons this guy found success is that so many of his countrymen can't be bothered because the extra effort isn't worth it. He clearly is motivated by more than money, so high taxation doesn't affect him much. So you could say Norways taxation system encourages people to build family style companies, and only suits entrepreneurs who aren't money-driven. That's an equally valid conclusion to draw from the article if you ask me.

<comment><USER11> The fact that Norway, followed by Denmark, has the highest rate of strtups in the world, according to the article, would seem to argue against the "one swallow" theory, and indicate full summer.

And it is not reasonable to assume that his countrymen can't be bothered when they are the most prolific in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The title is an oxymoron. With socialism, you don't have private ownership of the means of production. Thus you cannot have start-ups with socialism.

<comment><USER27> The base definition of socialism is "worker ownership of the means of production and distribution". Some interpret this to be state or public ownership, but others see worker co-operatives, collectives and federations to be socialist formations which can operate within a market. Syndicalists, market socialists, etc. would fall under this definition.

<comment><USER28> _The base definition of socialism is "worker ownership of the means of production and distribution"._

So, any system where people who work are free to buy shares in companies then?

<comment><USER27> Not that simple, no. Profit-sharing is not the same as worker ownership, since if shares are available to non-workers, then it's not a socialist system. Also, if workers are required to "buy in" to shares, instead of collectively owning the results of their economic organization, then that is not socialism either.

What you're thinking of is still capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The real problem is the high cost of health care. This article argues persuasively that it's government interference in the sector that has caused the enormous costs:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how- amer...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american- health-care-killed-my-father/7617/)

</comment><comment><USER30> My God, where to begin on this unnecessarily provocative link-bait fuckup of a story.

"This is particularly surprising, because the prices Dalmo pays for government services are among the highest in the world." >Of course, the country has some of the highest wages in the world so nursing is naturally not as cheap as in Nepal.

"The capitalist system functions well," Dalmo says. "But I'm a socialist in my bones." > Let's put some context on this. Imagine a Norwegian magazine travelling to Alabama, interviewing an entrepreneur who also happens to be a Tea Party member. The point is that the vast majority of Norwegians do not identify themselves as socialist in the American sense of the word. The word lost its meaning in the late 70s, when labor sobered up and realized it needed to export, since then Norway has had moderate European taxes.

"This is a place where entire cities smell of drying fish—an odor not unlike the smell of rotting fish" > What?

"and where, in the most remote parts, one must be careful to avoid polar bears." There are no wild polar bears in Norway. There are polar bears on arctic island owned by Norway.

"The food isn't great." > The food in northern Europe isn't the most exciting.

"It ranked third in Gallup's latest global happiness survey" > Define happiness. It's also the country in the world with one of the highest suicide rates.

"Bear strikes, darkness, and whale meat notwithstanding, Norway is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home." > Alligators, heat-waves, and death-valley notwithstanding, the US is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home.

"The unemployment rate, just 3.5 percent, is the lowest in Europe and one of the lowest in the world." > Thanks to how Norway actually measures unemployment, by declaring long-term unemployed people sick.

"There are no private schools in Norway" > Incorrect, there are many private kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools and private higher-eds in Norway.

"The problem for entrepreneurship in Norway is it's so lucrative to be an employee," says Lars Kolvereid, the lead researcher for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in Norway." > I included this statement because it's TRUE, and because I was delighted that the author finally decided to interview an expert.

"Kenneth Winther, the founder of the Oslo management consultancy MoonWalk, regaled me for hours about the virtues of Norway—security, good roads, good schools." > Norway is a very safe country, but it has terrible roads and its schools are mediocre at best.

So in summary, what's wrong with this article? Remember that assignment you got in college, where you were supposed to pick a side in the abortion debate and argue for that side? You pick a thesis and then you selectively cherry- pick facts with the occasional intermittent concession to the opposite side as a rhetorical device. The problem with this story isn't that it presents wrong facts, it's that it presents a highly skewed picture of reality. In fact, this is why I have stopped reading magazines like Time, Newsweek, Bloomberg business review and last but not least Business Week. These days I only read the Economist, which is the magazine that seems to care more about reality than making a provocative point. Pick any story in the Economist and you'll find that the ingress usually has the format "While event X may be positive Y, it also may have a downside Z".

<comment><USER31> Let's also not forget the fact that Norway is a very oil-rich country which brings a huge degree of wealth into the economy, and this skews the image considerably. You might have noticed that the guy the article talks about got rich selling stuff to -- guess who? -- the Norwegian oil industry.

The number of startups in a given community doesn't causate a great entrepreneurship scene. By that metric Norway could just give every team that's interested 50k dollars from their oil, call them a startup and automatically have a more vibrant startup scene than Silicon Valley. Troll economics, anyone?

People also overestimate the degree to which the US is capitalistic. Government spending in the US is now around 40%, with the free-market days of the pre-WWII era long replaced by a heavy-handed state that has never shrunk meaningfully. Maybe we Scandinavians run our bloated government bureaucracies more efficiently in our comparatively small, historically homogenous societies, but they're certainly not the reason we're rich. We're rich because we've been relatively free and capitalistic for a long time, also historically enjoying relatively low political corruption and a strong rule of law. At least that's the picture as I see it, being an Icelander that has lived and worked in Denmark I feel I grok the way these relatively small communities of my kinsmen work on a gut level.

One more thing: New Hampshire is one of the richest states in the USA, has about the same population as Norway and has a higher GDP per capita. If we're going to compare the US to Norway (one of the richest European countries) while excluding other much poorer countries from the equation, we should also compare New Hampshire to Europe to put things in proper perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Funny that in the information era one can learn from mistakes of others, yet many people don't do this.

As someone who lived half of a life in a country which was an experiment on socialism, I wish them luck. And I wish they regain their senses. Quickly.

<comment><USER23> Very true. Many refuse to think logically and accept whatever happens to be the fashionable idea of the day. My family and I also had to witness a similar experiment. I join you in your wishes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> In USA, start-ups say yes to DoD money...

</comment><comment><USER34> This was posted 9 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2124799>

I do congratulate you on linking to the mobile site to bypass the url conflict, that is pretty smart.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was inadvertent, not clever. The person who sent me the link did it via mobile phone, so he used the mobile link, and I didn't see it when it was posted previously.

<comment><USER35> I enjoyed the lean layout and thought you had chosen the mobile version for that purpose.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to get Blessed to render to the DOM? - <AUTHOR> I'd love to be able to take advantage of Blessed's (https://github.com/chjj/blessed) terminal capabilities in the browser, perhaps with Xterm.js (https://xtermjs.org/) or something.
Has anybody made this happen yet?
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Context: I'm building a roguelike ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike)) and would love to be able to take advantage of Blessed with react-blessed ([https://github.com/Yomguithereal/react- blessed](https://github.com/Yomguithereal/react-blessed)) to render everything.

If I can get Blessed to render to the browser, perhaps I can use that as a renderer for react-blessed. That way I can build an entire terminal interface in React. And even if that didn't go through, I'd at least be able to write a custom React renderer to take advantage of Blessed's window functionality and stuff.

If all that fails I'll just have to write a Blessed-lite layer for XTerm and then write a custom React renderer for that.</comment>


CMU Dean Andrew Moore to Lead Google Cloud AI; Fei-Fei Li Returns to Stanford - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/syncedreview/cmu-dean-andrew-moore-to-lead-google-cloud-ai-fei-fei-li-returns-to-stanford-3a993110f6cb <comment><AUTHOR> Though both schools have just as good talent with Moore being an excellent choice, it's sad to see that Fei-Fei is leaving.</comment>