Why we should give free money to everyone - <AUTHOR> https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/31639050894-e44e2c00 <comment><USER2> The most important lesson that we should draw from experiments like Mincome is that _we need more experiments of this type_.

Dauphin, Canada was one town in one country in an era that is now forever gone. Since 1973, the politics has changed, the economy has changed, and culture, religion, ideology, and (of course) technology have also undergone tremendous changes. The Internet alone should be a total game changer. Mincome serves as a good anecdote and inspiration, but it is largely meaningless to argue (for|against) basic income based on that data alone. We need more data points, and we need them to be more up to date.

Because right now, all we have are a precious few data points from 40 years ago and/or from the other side of the globe, and a bunch of hopeful statements that haven't really weathered any test of evidence (e.g. economic efficiency will increase, or not; people will be happier, or not). Without solid evidence, statements like that are little more than expressions of ideological preference, both on the left and on the right. </edit>

The experiment should be repeated, as many times as possible, in various times and places, and for longer durations (5 years, 10 years, 20 years, long enough to study a generation of children who grow up under the scheme). Accumulate enough data to support arguments (whether pro or con) that are based more on actual evidence than on anecdotes and ideological assumptions.

Will it be possible to implement a basic income of $20,000+ per year in the United States in 2014? Absolutely not, the political environment is not ready for it. But will it be possible to run basic income experiments on a smaller scale (Vermont, are you listening?) throughout the next two, three, four, five decades? Of course it's possible, and at the end of it we'll be a lot more capable of 1) making informed decisions and 2) squashing the opposition. It doesn't matter whether you support or oppose basic income today. Show me data or GTFO.

<comment><USER3> I'm generally against the notion of a basic income, as I believe that if you remove the incentive to work to survive, vast swaths of people will simply choose not to do anything, but I am certainly not against the idea of trying it in small experiments and seeing what happens.

And as for these experiments, I wonder how many of the test subjects were low- income prior to the introduction of basic income?

The fear isn't that people with a so-called 'Protestant' work ethic will stop working, is it? The fear is that if we implement a basic income in the USA, that, well, to put it bluntly, blacks and latinos, and, to a lesser extent, whites will simply stop working.

If you want to get better data, and more specifically, if you want to alleviate the concerns that most people have with a basic income, give a poor black or latino community a basic income and monitor what happens. If the experiment turns out to be a success, do it a couple more times, each time in different locales across the country. That's the data you need if you really want to make a basic income a political possibility. Everything else is just half-measures.

<comment><USER4> > The fear is that if we implement a basic income in the USA, that, well, to > put it bluntly, blacks and latinos, and, to a lesser extent, whites will > simply stop working.

That's ridiculously racist. Poverty being tied to race doesn't necessarily have to do with innate work ethic.

<comment><USER3> You're right about the second statement, and quite wrong about the first.

Poverty is tied to race because race is tied to subculture. Work ethic is no more a racial quality than is the propensity to dance like a fool (edit: by this, I mean white people dancing like fools) or to enjoy eating burritos. But it is well known that the so-called 'Protestant work ethic' is a strong component of white American subculture, whereas it exists less strongly in the black subculture. Other races (such as Asians and Jews) have similar cultural values which encourage a strong work ethic. The American black subculture, on the other hand, does not seem to instill nearly as high a value on hard work in its children as do the others. On the contrary, the system is perceived as being a white construct, and black children who are perceived as trying to join that system are often shunned for 'acting white.' That is not a racial issue, it's a cultural issue, but its genesis has no bearing on the final result where basic income is concerned, at least not in the short run. I do think that the black subculture is beginning to appreciate the value of hard work more, but according to the data, it still has a ways to go.

Latino subculture as it exists in the USA is similar, but perhaps to a lesser extent.

If you think that's a racist statement, I suggest you look up the definition of racist, remove your emotions and preconceived biases from the issue, google some things ('acting white', 'black work ethic', etc) focus on what I actually said rather than reading between the lines, so to speak, and reevaluate accordingly.

<comment><USER4> You're saying a black person who grows up in a white subculture then is less at risk of poverty? I call bullshit on that.

It doesn't matter what subculture you grew up in or are exposed to. It is what other people perceive of you that influences the likelihood of you falling into poverty. Skin color has a lot to do with that. Maybe the reason black people don't appreciate the idea of hard work is because no matter how hard they work, they don't come up ahead?

By subscribing to the idea of these subcultures being responsible for work ethic, you're still placing work ethic innate to the race - and that's flat out racist.

And for the matter of preconceived biases, I'm not the person coming into this suggesting that certain cultures have work ethic issues.

<comment><USER3> >You're saying a black person who grows up in a white subculture then is less at risk of poverty? I call bullshit on that.

Do you mean they're less at risk of poverty than a black person who grows up in typical black subculture? Of course they are.

[http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/rich-black- flunking/Co...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/rich-black- flunking/Content?oid=1070459)

Allow me to give you a little insight into my insight. I live in the ghetto, in a place that is 75% black, in the deep South. I grew up here, I still live here, and I know the people. They're typically good people, but as a whole, they don't have the same mindset about work, about frugality, about financial success that your _typical_ middle class white guy does. And the reason isn't that they're black per se - it has nothing to do with their skin color, with their race. It does, however, have everything do with their culture, and it's not racist in the slightest to acknowledge that! If you don't acknowledge a problem, how can you ever hope to fix it?

Allow me to enlighten you a little bit. A people are brought to a foreign land and forced to work. Their culture that they knew is destroyed, so they build another one, but as any people who've been subjugated will do, they develop a strong resentment towards those who subjugate them and they integrate that sentiment into their new culture. They see the entire establishment as the creation of their oppressors, of their _enemy_ , and for a long time, they were right! Post-slavery, racism was rampant, and it was damn hard to be a black person in America. I don't blame them one bit for initially thumbing their noses at the system that 'whitey' built, for telling us to fuck off, for generally believing deep down in their soul that white people were their arch enemies.

But times have changed. Yes, racism still exists (it exists everywhere, and is arguably the mildest in the USA, believe it or not), but post the civil rights movement and affirmative action, there is really no excuse for anyone - man, woman, white, black, whatever - to decide to be a leech on society. Well, outside of permanent disability, of course. Opportunity exists for everyone, and if you're a black person, it exists even more so for you. There are a plethora of excellent black-only schools which take low-income black kids who show a willingness to work hard to succeed. MIT absolutely loves to give free rides to the underprivileged minorities, as it improves their diversity figures, and the same goes for just about every college. We have a black guy as our President, for pete's sake. The difference was that his parents raised him to embrace the establishment, not to rebel against it. They taught him to follow the rules, to work hard, to join 'our' system and to change it from the inside, if he so pleased. And he did. A black guy.

Finally, acknowledging that a subculture is different from your own isn't racist. You're just a dumbass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get it. According to the article, Basic Income causes working hours to drop 9% in the American controlled experiment. They try to explain it away by acting as if 9% is small, and providing anecdotes suggesting in some cases it might be a good thing.

For comparison, the great recession resulted in a 3.4% drop in GDP. Now, a 9% drop in work will result in less than a 9% drop in GDP (wealth is increasingly produced by machines, not people, resulting in a lower labor share of income), but even so, 9% is big.

By the way, as I always ask when this topic comes up, can someone link to actual studies? I.e., hard data rather than an innumerate reporter breathlessly advocating a proposal because it sounds cool?

Incidentally, a back of the envelope calculation ([http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic...](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic_job.html)) suggests that it would be vastly cheaper to adopt FDR's employer of last resort policy. If we are going to adopt a radical overhaul, lets consider the full search space.

[edit: some sources about the third world are cited on the right, not the bottom, and I missed them on first reading. Thanks davidx.]

<comment><USER6> that is a very narrow way to look at it.

the 9% 'drop in work' will be offset by the increase in consumption caused by a large range of people suddenly having more purchasing power,

businesses will have to increase production, and hire more workers to do so.

they will have to pay the workers more to entice them in, and provide better working conditions.

this will generate more work, and higher consumption.

<comment><USER5> We'll have less wealth created, but more people will be willing to spend money consuming it. All that means is prices will go up.

Your Keynesian story may eventually play out - the real value of the BI might be inflated away, resulting in people going back to work. Perhaps that will completely mitigate the problem, or perhaps it will merely result in a new equilibrium which only hax 0 < X% < 9% fewer people working. But why create the problem in the first place?

If 100 people produce 10 apples each, you have 1000 apples. If 9 of them quit, you have only 910 apples.

<comment><USER7> I think a more apt analogy is:

If 100 people produce 10 apples each, and 99 robots take over the job of producing apples, there will be 99 unemployed people with no money to buy your 1000 apples.

<comment><USER8> ... unless the owner of the robots who profits by selling all the apples to wealthy people in other countries is forced to redistribute the wealth in the form of a basic income.

<comment><USER9> In reality however, OWS and other activists are under surveillance to avoid exactly that outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's an idea: why don't we stop giving free money to the government instead?

If I didn't had to work half of the year and give ~40% of my income to a corrupt government I could have more money/time to invest and improve other people's lives directly, and a party wouldn't be able to manipulate the poor with welfare programs and stay in power indefinitely. The elite largely manages to avoid taxes anyway... the current system just slaves the workers in the name of good intentions, and is incompetent/corrupt at spending the money.

EDIT: For those who don't know, Brazil already runs a program like that since 2003. The government spends in that program about half of the budget estimated for public hospitals, roads, water and sanitation. It didn't changed the situation of the poor, public services are still crap (the only the poor have access to), there's no infrastructure to generate jobs where these poor people live. The end result is that we now have a portion of the population dependent on the federal government, and that's used to manipulate elections.

</comment><comment><USER11> We are already giving tens of millions of people free money.

Basic income is institutionalized poverty. It is a world where we purposefully place people in permanent poverty. Give them enough to survive but not climb out of their situation. Essentially paying them just enough so they hopefully don't try to take other people's stuff.

The danger is that far too many people will accept this standard of living. It removes a great burden from government when it realizes it can buy off people for a fractional amount of what it would take to raise them up. It also makes the "feel good" crowd happy as they don't have to do anything themselves but feel that because they paid taxes that they in turn somehow helped.

Sorry, seen too many on on SSI/SSID, section 8, and such, to believe that just handing money out helps. It simply stagnates far more than it will ever elevate. It might work in countries where your choice is a dirt hut, being dragged into some regional conflict, places where survival is questionable at best.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what the actual consequences of basic income would be, but at least this article references attempts at figuring out how such systems affect people. You're not bringing up any objections that aren't mentioned in the article.

And pointing to existing forms of welfare/social security misses the point entirely. Many who speak for basic income (including this article's author) argue that it's the heavy bureaucracy and stigma associated with such sollutions that cause people to be caught up in it.

<comment><USER13> > Many who speak for basic income (including this article's author) argue that > it's the heavy bureaucracy and stigma associated with such sollutions that > cause people to be caught up in it.

"Heavy bureaucracy" is a source of social cost, but neither it nor stigma are, as I see it, the real problem with means tested programs.

The real problem with means-tested programs is the perverse incentives of means-testing, which directly serve to inhibit people from progressing up the economic ladder by creating penalties for outside income (when, as is often the case, the programs have inadequate benefits to start with, this often _forces_ people into under-the-table work just to survive, which has negative cultural effects as it erodes cultural acceptance of the rule of law.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever."

— Bertrand Russell, "In Praise of Idleness"

If you agree, sign the EU unconditional basic income petition:

[http://basicincome2013.eu](http://basicincome2013.eu)

[http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/our_chance_to_end_poverty](http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/our_chance_to_end_poverty)

</comment><comment><USER15> No-one will oppose this more fervently than those employed on very good wages in the present system.

<comment><USER16> Why would they?

Personally, being taxed close to 37% (in Australia) already, I don't have any issues with my tax money being spent on that cause.

<comment><USER15> Because [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem)

The status quo - a large, expensive bureaucracy, employing many civil servants, social workers, etc - suits the interests of too many people.

Here in the UK we could sweep away the "welfare system", that spends nearly all of its effort making sure people get the "right" amount and replace it with some sort of basic income, for which we need 2 employees to maintain an automated system that pays everyone the same, a man to feed the dog, and a dog to bite the man if he tries to change anything.

<comment><USER17> Developed countries will probably eventually get some kind of basic income system but it won't be simple :) I'm sure it will be very complicated and there will be still lots of mean tested programs to accompany it to make sure a large bureaucracy is still required.

<comment><USER18> Then that system will be, by definition, not "basic".

One of the features of basic income is that it removes politics from poverty. If you have a system that is political, you have welfare in another form, with yet another name.

Basic income applies to the rich and poor alike, is identical for everyone, and carries no social stigma as a result, and offers no opportunity for political graft.

IMO that is why adoption is incredibly unlikely—politicians would need to approve it, and by doing so, they'd be putting themselves (mostly) out of a job. It seems extremely unlikely to me that will happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19>
      "The problem with socialism is that eventually
       you run out of other people's money"

                                -- Margaret Thatcher

<comment><USER20> Can't tell if sarcasm, considering that Thatcher's move was to privatise, until she ran out of public assets.

This pithy quote is also wrong because it assumes the economy is a zero sum game and misses the point that this article is trying to make -- that giving away money would be cheaper and have better results than the current system of welfare.

<comment><USER21> Blair and Brown in the UK demonstrated the truth of this quote and we and our descendants here will continue to pay the price for generations to come.

Clearly I'm a very bad person because if I were to suddenly receive a significant cash injection I'd lay down tools and disport myself with books, music and a spot of travel. Everyone to his or her own. However it's good to know that the rest of humanity are mostly above this kind of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Giving money to 13 people proves nothing, it cannot even be considered as an experiment, while giving money to a substantial percentage of population will result in a commodities price hikes or inflation.

<comment><USER23> It isn't, and doesn't claim to be, an experiment on the economic consequences. But it absolutely is an experiment on human psychology, which as far as I can tell is all it claims to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In general, it is basic human nature to be active and productive, and interact with and contribute to a society. The poor have that nature as well, and in most cases they are poor due to a lifetime of adverse family circumstances or perhaps one bad decision ( [http://priceonomics.com/what-its-like-to- fail/](http://priceonomics.com/what-its-like-to-fail/) ). They can then be trapped as poor simply from having no time to plan an exit and no runway to execute it.

My observation is that the 13 homeless persons in London found that having the cash gave them time away from the full-time activity of surviving so they could think, reflect and plan, and, it gave them the runway to execute their plan.

This concept of basic income has been occupying my thoughts quite a bit lately, particularly when I venture in to San Francisco. Each time I think about it, as a thought experiment before reading this article, I can see far more good coming from it than harm.

What I think, and seems to be supported by the article, is that giving (for example) $1,000/month to every adult in America would play out like this: A family of 4 would have $24,000 per year guaranteed income. If both parents worked minimum wage jobs earning another $16k each, and I do believe they would, they'd have a household income of $56k on minimum wage jobs. They could situate in a reasonable school district, afford to pay more rent for a safe neighborhood, afford reasonable health care and focus on raising their kids. The kids will do better in school, the family can feed themselves less unhealthy food, there will be less anxiety about the basics and less domestic conflict.

The studies in the article -seem- to support that outcome.

$12,000/year per adult not already on welfare or social security would cost about $2 Trillion per year. To put that into perspective, Social Security costs $1.3 Trillion in 2013. Cost of all social welfare programs was $529 Billion. The GDP came in at around 17 Trillion.

The US could afford it if we really wanted to. So what I'd like to hear are the counter-arguments. Is it inflationary? I'd say it has to be. Is it fair? If every American receives it, regardless of their wealth, then I don't see how it would be unfair. Is it realistic? It seems that the US was pretty close to something along these lines in the 60's and Obama finally got universal health care through. Perhaps it is realistic enough to at least put a true, modern pilot program in place and convince ourselves one way or the other. It really seems better than the alternative: Status quo for the homeless and the poor.

<comment><USER25> Most of the poor are renters. If you gave everyone $12k more a year, why wouldn't everyone's rent (and other expenses) simply rise by $12K?

<comment><USER24> I think the poor who felt trapped would be more likely to move than stay put. The incumbent landlords in poor neighborhoods would see a % of their renters move out, and a % of new renters move in, perhaps off the streets. We'd want to study the net effect of that.

Those who moved out would then be moving into areas with higher rents and mixing with those renters. So a dollar-for-dollar rent increase seems unlikely.

Some renters would find they now have enough income to buy a home and some would, vacating apartments for renters from poorer areaa.

Some home owners would find they have enough to afford a larger home and would move up.

But others would invest the new income, or pay for the kids college, or take more vacations, or buy new cars more often.

The economic impact is complex and unknown and needs to be studied. I happen to believe it is a worth an in-depth study and worth spending some of my paid- in taxes on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Do we not already do this to some extent with welfare? I know it's not optimal, and honestly, I tend to fall closer to the belief that if we are going to have welfare systems, they are more effective if you just give cash rather than the convoluted and easily gamed system we have now, so I see where this is coming from. To address worries about drug/alcohol abuse and the like, maybe some kind of system where you qualify for a bit more if you submit to testing or something like that? Not sure if it's workable or what externalities that introduces, but in general, giving more freedom to spend your safety net aid seems like a win to me.

</comment><comment><USER27> If we do implement a basic income and do away with other forms of welfare, how far will we go with the "doing away?" I assume we'd get rid of programs like food stamps and WIC. What about other forms of government welfare, like Pell grants? Student loans? Farm subsidies? Obamacare? There's a lot you could cut that would make this an easy sell for conservatives and/or libertarians. There's a lot that you could argue needs to be kept even though we've added basic income that would make this a very hard thing to sell.

</comment><comment><USER28> I imagine a problem would be to determine exactly what the level of this salary would be... Enough for an apartment? single room? Food and Clothing? Or would the economy evolve to make the values of money such that you can just live from the basic income?

What stops people from wanting more and more making just sitting at home gaming more and more attractive?

What would I do? Start working the absolute minimum to keep my house, feed my kids and start something or my self? How many people would do that?

</comment><comment><USER29> if i was given free upvotes, i would not just sit around and do nothing, i would upvote this article so much more!

<comment><USER29> my favourite line:

'Poverty is fundamentally about a lack of cash. It's not about stupidity,' author Joseph Hanlon remarks. 'You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have no boots.'

<comment><USER30> > Poverty is fundamentally about a lack of cash.

The more you know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The thirteen people seem to have been periodically checked-up on; they surely felt a bit of accountability as the subjects of an experiment. Give out "free money" on a large scale, and the accountable disappears; with it, likely the positive outcome.

</comment><comment><USER32> Yeah, but it's not about helping people - _it 's about sending a message_

(at least, in the US)

</comment><comment><USER33> The thing about basic income that doesn't make sense to me is how to set it. Basic income for someone living in rural South Dakota is going to be drastically different for someone living in San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is just insane. For a start exactly can you give free money to everyone, where exactly does it come from? The only source of money is other people. So you'd be taking away money from one group of people and giving it to others. You are discouraging the ones who get money from working because they get free money instead. You are discouraging those from whom you took the money because what's the point in working if someone is going to take away your money and give it to those who don't.

I don't just consider this unworkable, I consider it basically evil.

<comment><USER35> The question of where the money comes from is a valid one, and, perhaps surprisingly, your statement "The only source of money is other people" is wrong. To start with, read up on "money creation" and "fractional reserve banking."

<comment><USER36> Money is not wealth, money is the _representation_ of wealth. Creating more currency does not increase the value available within an economy. Creating more money without creating more value for it to represent just results in inflation.

A gallon of gas is (all else equal) worth about 20 minutes of mundane labor. Printing more money and legislating the gas station attendant's pay to $60/hour will just result in gas costing $20/gallon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> we should definitely find a way to get cash to the poor, but I think there may be private market solutions like a taskrabbit for social projects that employee the underprivileged to do social good financed by the wealthy.

<comment><USER38> But that's entirely against the point of the article! If you're employing people, they're not getting a chance to improve - just scrape by.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> There are 314 Million People in the US. We can't afford to give everyone enough money to have a meaningful impact on poverty. Seriously people, do the math! It's basic arithmetic.

In order for the welfare state to be effective, it needs to be targeted towards the people that need it.

</comment><comment><USER40> Read Von Mises!

<comment><USER41> Why?

What did he say that relates to a basic income and where can I read more?

(All I, and I suspect many people, know about him is that he is supposedly the correct answer to economics, promulgated all over the internet by crackpot^H^H^H^H^H^H^H idealistic libertarians.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> People get carried away with the idea of handing "free money" out to poor people, without realizing that there is _no such thing_. All money has to come from _somewhere_.

If a government is handing out money, there are three options:

      1) Money has been confiscated from other people.
      2) Money has been printed.
      3) Money has been borrowed.

That's it. Money always has to come from somewhere, and governments simply don't acquire any without _some_ consequences.

<comment><USER43> I fear you are labouring under a misapprehension. The "free" in "free money" refers to the fact that it doesn't directly cost the recipient anything. Like "free healthcare". Nobody is claiming that the government can obtain the money for free.

<comment><USER44> Actually, the article points out that the government might actually save money by giving it away for free, rather than implementing all sorts of complicated restrictions and checks and hiring people to enforce those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Ok, great. Since I belong to everyone, I will accept any "natural" amount of money from anyone. Thank you.

Find my paypal account in my profile.

<comment><USER36> There's the core problem: those pushing the "just give 'em money" idea always focus on forcing _others_ to give money ... they won't proactively act on their own opinions by giving away large sums of their _own_ money.

<comment><USER46> I support this, and I already give a good amount to charity and would definitely give to a government or private program that did this.</comment></comment></comment>


CaptureIn - passwordless authentication  - <AUTHOR> http://www.capturein.com/

<comment><USER2> Except for the 'revocation code' briefly mentioned on their FAQ page[0], this is likely just the same authentication scheme offered by Clef[1], with all the same inherent weaknesses.

The biggest weakness in these schemes is the inherent potential for a MITM to display the QR or bar code (I still don't think Clef actually displays what site you're logging in to on your phone, and even if they do it's vulnerable to visually similar URLs). The bottom line is the lack of authentication between the phone and the browser.

The on-device encryption is also useless because the key is such a short PIN.

[0] [http://www.capturein.com/FAQ.html](http://www.capturein.com/FAQ.html) [1] [https://getclef.com/](https://getclef.com/)</comment>


AWS Boilerplate - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apptension/aws-boilerplate <comment><USER2> Initial reaction to seeing HN showing me "AWS Boilerplate (github.com)" was I thought AWS had launched a new service and it was potentially open source.

Please consider renaming to something like 'Boilerplate for AWS' since it would avoid confusion that this is something official from AWS, and because such a name is less likely to cause trademark issues per the AWS Trademark Guidelines.

[https://aws.amazon.com/trademark- guidelines/](https://aws.amazon.com/trademark-guidelines/)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, my first thought was oh shit Amplify has been replaced here we go again.

<comment><USER4> Amplify is so shit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to work at a web agency, and my biggest impactful was without a doubt setting up something similar. Instead of starting from scratch at each new project, or copying config from another project, I wrote a "project generator" that asked you a few questions (Django or symfony? React or vue? NextJS? Terraform?) then generated a fully-configured project for you, including a staging and a production environment.

It's incredible how much time is lost on config: AWS is a big one, but having to configure Django, Black, Flake8, Webpack, ESLint, prettier, Typescript, Sentry, react-router... It easily takes days, and copying from other projects meant we were propagating some less-than-ideal setup.

Automating setting up a React-native app was clearly the most challenging, I don't work there anymore but I don't think it's a smooth process even now

<comment><USER6> This is why I love opinionated frameworks, why I love hand-holding tutorials, why I love abstractions. I don't like code. I don't like writing it, I don't like reading it, I don't like thinking about it. A mechanic doesn't love his crescent wrench, he loves working on engines. The wrench is just a tool. What I enjoy is the final product and seeing a project come together as time goes on.

"The right tool for the job" doesn't matter for most regular CRUD boring programming work. Django vs Rails vs a huge bundle of JS libraries cobbled together at random... for most programming work it doesn't matter. So why not pick the one that lets you get your job done the quickest and easiest?

I get nothing (nothing but added stress) from trying new frameworks and new libraries and new packages constantly. I want to learn the right way to do something and then get down to business. My boss and my stakeholders don't care what language or framework I'm using. The only consideration I need is "how quickly and easily can I get this done" and to be honest most of the time that's Rails.

These days I'm using AWS Amplify which is an opinionated framework for AWS serverless apps and that's all I really want... someone to make the "right" decisions for me so I can get _my own_ work done. Because my job isn't to pick languages and frameworks, it's to produce a finished product.

<comment><USER7> I feel the same way about rust's standard lib, which is pretty sparse compared to, say, python and go. Finding libraries for common tasks is the most stressful part of an otherwise stress-free language (first world problems, I know). I get that it's a trade off, and I get why the designers chose this path, but I would have preferred it the other way.

<comment><USER8> I use Go pretty regularly and I feel this. I had to choose a CLI framework and was bombarded by 10 different options all with wildly different designs to choose from. The flipside of this is Go's old errors library which lacked so much functionality that people standardized on an open source package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This could explain some of the "details" better.

"Backend" is a Django application - but not mentioned in the README, for example.

Also, what AWS services are being utilized? The Serverless stuff deploys to Lambda... that can be inferred, but the rest of it?

<comment><USER10> Additionally, it would be nice to see more details around security and operations.

What ports are opened? What roles are created? Is all traffic encrypted in transit? Is all data encrypted at rest? Etc. I could dig through the configs, but just a high level overview would be nice. Bonus points for a detailed threat model.

Operationally, how do I monitor this thing? How do I scale it? How is patching handles?

Just some constructive thoughts on areas that could be improved.

<comment><USER11> Those are all great points. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks super useful!

For folks who are interested in deploying their containers on AWS without "boilerplate", we also have a tool called AWS Copilot which can help simplify setup and management of all the container infrastructure you need :D [https://github.com/aws/copilot-cli](https://github.com/aws/copilot-cli)

</comment><comment><USER13> Shameless plug – I am building something similar to this for PHP with Laravel, Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, CI/CD, along with ready-made pages and tests: [https://nana-landing.netlify.app/](https://nana-landing.netlify.app/)

<comment><USER14> Looks solid. Are you using Nova for the backend?

Also, is this intended to be a thing you buy, fork, and make it your own? Or will it be more like a framework where customers receive updates to the core code?

<comment><USER13> No, I have built everything myself over the default Laravel setup. I have found myself doing this over and over again for new projects, that's why I decided to turn it into a kit that I and other people could just use.

This is going to be a fork and make it your own; once you get the code it's all yours. I may share security fixes as patch files maybe, but that'd be more of a manual work for everyone rather than an automated update mechanism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> AWS Amplify is in a similar space. It supports several frameworks and the development workflows and infrastructure management are built in to the project.

[https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/](https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/)

<comment><USER3> I urge fellow readers to try and plan out your entire app arch on Amplify before committing to it.

I have found it to be a pain in the ass because it tends to want to do _everything_ for you leaving assets/buckets/things like `aws- amplify-23094139-85-3981759387593745983475-us-east-experiment-project` all over your account. I have been using AWS for over 10 years, so I tend to like to keep a clean house and name most of my things, or at least have them follow a sane convention. I also like to know what is being created.

Oh and the dev/stage/prod branching strategy is a nightmare.

<comment><USER15> I've found that creating a new isolated AWS account works well for this type of issue. In AWS organizations you can setup the new account using "+" in your email address, such as {firstname.lastname@example.com. Then if you need to burn down everything and start over there is no impact or risk, and naming conventions are less relevant because everything in your "...+-example-project@" account is related to that one project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious to see if they improve upon the Rube Goldberg machine that is validating PRs with CodeBuild's lack of support for branches in 2020: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/validating-aws- codecommi...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/validating-aws-codecommit- pull-requests-with-aws-codebuild-and-aws-lambda/)

<comment><USER17> To the best of my knowledge most of the big shops are using "master ships everywhere, in-progress stuff is behind feature flags".

There are pros/cons to this of course, but if you're doing any A/B testing or bandit optimization you're kind of stuck with it in one form or another. If you're not doing any A/B or bandit then it's probably a young enough project that you can do whatever you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This looks interesting, nice work. For comparison, I created a full-stack AWS boilerplate with similar aims: [https://github.com/stackplanet/sourcestack](https://github.com/stackplanet/sourcestack)

<comment><USER19> Wow, looks great! Can I ask you which tool(s) have you used to make the architecture schema?

[1] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stackplanet/sourcestack/ma...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stackplanet/sourcestack/master/architecture.png)

<comment><USER18> Sure, I used Lucid Chart [https://app.lucidchart.com](https://app.lucidchart.com) which has a lovely set of "flat" AWS asset icons.

<comment><USER19> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My dream is to build something like this but in TypeScript, full stack. Using CDK for deployments, but also a really tight integration with higher order components. E.g. define a lambda handler and it automatically wires CDK code.

I guess kinda like serverless framework, but much less YAML and much more actual code.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, we often recommend using Serverless Framework and AWS CDK together. Serverless's strength is working with Lambda and API Gateway, but writing YAML for the rest of the resources is very cumbersome. So a good pattern here is to use CDK for the rest of your infrastructure, and Serverless for your Lambda functions.

In fact, we created a tool to do exactly this - Serverless Stack Toolkit (SST), which allows you to combine CDK and Serverless Framework - [https://github.com/serverless-stack/serverless- stack](https://github.com/serverless-stack/serverless-stack)

So you can do `sls deploy --stage dev` and `sst deploy --stage dev`.

<comment><USER20> Looks awesome and exactly what I needed. Will sign up tomorrow!

<comment><USER21> Awesome! I'd love to hear your feedback.

Feel free to send me an email anytime - firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not really sure who this is for. It seems quite complex and opaque, for anyone who is well versed in AWS infrastructure I think you'll spend more time untangling this tool and trying to extend it beyond the exact use cases the author thought of than it would take you to set an app up yourself using your preferred config management toolchain.

For anyone not very familiar with AWS infrastructure, this is a very direct path to being in way over your head with a bunch of infrastructure you have no idea how to manage once it's set up. You'd surely be better off using a more managed setup like Heroku, or taking the time to read some AWS tutorials and set up only the things that you need, making sure you understand the different pieces along the way.

It makes me think of the Standards XKCD [0], I'm sure this project started out with good intentions thinking that "working with AWS SDKs is too complex, we'll make a few simplified make command to rule them all" but all they've managed to do is make yet another, extremely limited, but still opaque and complex tool.

[0] [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is awesome. We used a serverless template from [https://www.tinystacks.com/](https://www.tinystacks.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Why does it use the Serverless framework AND the CDK?

As far as I know, they are both IaC frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER25> Anyone else feel like AWS's primary goal isn't actually to make money but to put us all out of a job, but it doesn't quite know how to do so

<comment><USER26> Not quite put people out of a job as much as have absolute control over their entire product. They're using the convenience and low cost business model to hoover up developers (who are taking the bait) while not realizing that they're becoming wholly dependent on Amazon.

Not just technically, but in terms of their mental model on how to build and deploy applications. Over time, "just use AWS" becomes the defacto "how do I build this?" answer until nobody really knows how to build and deploy an application without them.

It's damn clever.

<comment><USER27> Arguably what VB did to C/C++ developers ;)

<comment><USER28> Ah yes that ubiquitous Visual Basic.

<comment><USER27> Back in the days, it was as ubiquitous as AWS is today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is what happens when someone hears the phrase "one size fits all" and immediately thinks to themself, "Hey, I'M one size!"

<comment><USER30> Hey now, the very first word in the readme is "opinionated"; your comment was both uncharitable and misleading.

It's a helpful, opinionated boilerplate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nice. This boilerplate can really help people get started quickly. Well done :)

On a different note, recently I was looking to learn AWS concepts through online courses. After so much of research I finally found this e-book on Gumroad which is written by Daniel Vassallo who has worked in AWS team for 10+ years. I found this e-book very helpful as a beginner.

This book covers most of the topics that you need to learn to get started:

If someone is interested, here is the link :)

[https://gumroad.com/a/238777459/MsVlG](https://gumroad.com/a/238777459/MsVlG)

<comment><USER32> Your repeated promotion of this book in HN comments has crossed into spamming, and we're getting complaints about it, so please stop.

<comment><USER31> Sorry. I thought promotion of affiliate books was okay here. I'll stop it :)</comment></comment></comment>


Tracing JITs and Modern CPUs: Part 2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lukego/blog/issues/6

<comment><USER2> Is it a thing to blog with github issues now?

<comment><USER3> In theory blogging on github issues could actually be quite convenient.

\- Great(==standardized) markdown support.

\- Easy image support.

\- Uptime is someone else's problem.

\- Sending someone your blog also directly links them to your ~entire public codebase.

\- Builtin sane commenting system.

\- Can keep code beside the blog. Its aggravating to find a living blog that links to a dead code host.

\- Free with zero setup cost for everything above.

\- Not having to deal with ruby dependencies for jekyll...

Edit: You know, I think I'm going to host my blog in this manner. When writing the above list I realized I'm sick of having to handle each of those.

<comment><USER4> All of that works with hosting md files in github repo or in gists, but with them you also get a convenient version control system also known as git.

<comment><USER5> Even the wiki is a git repo, though there's no built in search like there is for repositories and issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (Seems like an "embarrassingly serial" problem -- a smarter lua could turn it into a single "set c = 1e9" instruction.)

<comment><USER7> It could, but then we're getting into hairy language definition issues: Does Lua specify at what point updates need to hit memory? And this example is perfect example of why a language ought to be explicit about such guarantees - in this case such a change would have observable effects. Changing observable effects in optimizations is dangerous territory even when it's well defined.

<comment><USER8> What's memory?

Lua's much more high level than that, and it makes no promises about timing at all.

<comment><USER9> That has nothing to do with high level, C++ for example also had no built-in guarantees for a long time. Making no promises about timing simply means that threading is either a non concept in the language (see C++ before 11) or the language declares everything to do with threading unspecified or undefined.

<comment><USER8> C++ has volatile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Forgive my ignorance, but when writing a sufficiently large program, why would looking into the generated assembly be of use to a programmer? Wouldn't this turn into an arbitrarily large amount of instructions to sift through just to measure performance?

<comment><USER11> You find the 'hottest' code (usually a loop, the code executed most) and examine very carefully the generated assembly for that and how it can be made more CPU/JIT/VM-friendly.

This is an optimisation you perform when a small amount of code is consuming the overwhelming majority of your software's execution time (code very commonly has this property, until it is profiled and optimised).

In addition, this case is for a high speed networking library, where every CPU cycle counts.</comment></comment>


Designing and Implementing a Domain-Specific Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8080

<comment><USER2> Whoo! More people proving Greenspun's Tenth Rule.</comment>


This brilliant tech pioneer had wealth and family. His suicide shocked everyone - <AUTHOR> http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/this-brilliant-ottawa-tech-pioneer-had-wealth-and-a-wonderful-family-his-suicide-shocked-everyone <comment><AUTHOR> I worked at BitFlash for a couple years. It was a wild ride for me as a co-op student at the time. I think many of us felt things were not quite right at the top, but accepted it because of the promise of Antoine's Midas touch. Surely there's a life lesson here about valuing human lives over capital.

And while some would like to reevaluate his accomplishments in this new light; but rather, I'd give his successes to him: he did still in fact achieve all that he achieved and that remains impressive.</comment>


Euclidean math *can not* be licensed - <AUTHOR> https://procedural.github.io/post/Euclidean-math-CAN-NOT-be-licensed/ <comment><USER2> Copyright is one thing, patents are another. I'm very glad we don't have software patents as a concept in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could I get a little more context here.</comment>


Ballmer is right: Microsoft should open more stores. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2011/04/07/ballmers-right-five-reasons-why-microsoft-should-open-more-stores/

<comment><USER2> The only reason I agree with this idea is because it'll finally give me access to someone in Microsoft to complain about how much their products suck. I'd call instead if it were only possible to find a phone number and get to speak to someone even though none of my MS gear is under warranty. I know, it's not fair to gripe to a lowly sales person or a customer service rep, and I normally wouldn't be "that person", but their products, in my opinion, have hit a new low of "unacceptable crap" rating.

I recently went to my local mall and saw one of their new stores. It's sad to see how Microsoft has become a phantom of a company. Their store, predictably, was two doors down from the Apple store. It was twice the space as if to show them up and it was laid out in the same way. Like Apple they also used a brand new picture logo, which unlike Apple's, failed to depict anything unique about the identity of Windows.

Microsoft has become a Tully's to the Starbucks: copying instead of contributing to the market something new and revolutionary. It's just sad. I think it's clear due to the diminishing quality of their products and their lack of real creative leadership when it comes to new products, that they really are just a ghost of their former selves. Eastsiders (the folk who live in Microsoft country) consistently seem to prefer Apple stores to the Window's store at a mall just 6 miles down from MS headquarters. That has to be a bad sign. I guess if they can't make it in technology-savvy markets, there's always the technology-backward markets that Microsoft can rely on...</comment>


Google halts new orders for 16GB Nexus 7, surprised by demand - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jul/22/google-nexus-7-16-surprise

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, the journalist who wrote this article also wrote a _terrible_ review of the Nexus 7 when it first came out slating the device with multiple inaccurate statements. He was roasted in the comments & had to append the article with a justification for his viewpoints.

I'd like to know what he thinks now.

Original review link: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/jul/13/google...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/jul/13/google- nexus-7-review)</comment>


We flipped our App to free and hit the top 10 in 24 hours (chart) - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/103716847685048716973/posts/eLbYZBye4Yb

<comment><USER2> Noticed this gem in the comments section "Robert Scoble - Or you could just impress the hell out of me, and I'll make sure Apple considers your app for Featured app of the week." No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Damn it. Caught. Clicked the link without realizing it was a Calacanis article. More and more I'm contemplating building the Calacanis blocker I've mulled about before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2613955>. The internet is becoming less safe every day.

<comment><USER4> Why are you bitter? The article provides actual numbers that may be interesting to many people writing iPhone apps.

<comment><USER5> not a hater but I think these type of results are the exception and not the norm. Calacanis is a huge influencer with a lot of tech followers on just about ever social site.

<comment><USER4> Actually I find it interesting (and in line with my experience). Your million followers only turn into a few hundre downloads? Anyone can beat that with motivated friends. It goes to put in perspective the influence of people like Jason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course you should add to your list of promotions: "Linked this article on Hacker News" :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> 1% conversion rate is ambitious for free-to-paid, especially when your downloads have spiked due to changing the price of your app to free.

Hope you are tracking user retention.

</comment><comment><USER8> What took you so long?</comment>


What is your programmer salary? - <AUTHOR>

I know this is a very sensitive topic and please feel free to anonimize or give a reasonable range.
Me: Sr. software engineer with 8 yrs of experience and masters in computer science.
Where: Big public software company (you probably heard of) making consumer products. Location: valley.
How much:150K salary + 5-15% bonus depending on performance
I understand sites like Glassdoor has lots of data, but curious how the Hacker news people are doing. <comment><USER2> 6+ experience financial software development (derivatives): 125k salary + variable bonus (20-50% of base) + benefits (dental/health/vision/insurance/various discounts).

BS in Computer Information Science from City College (2 yrs at Ivy League prior) Currently employed in finance as Senior Lead Developer + Manager in top 10 firm. Averaging 65hrs a week (no overtime) but have gone as high as 110hrs avg for a few months straight.

It was incredibly difficult to get where I am the way I went about it but not impossible. Get in the door, develop relationships with senior developers who will teach you more than any book or class, work the hardest and become the "best in class" and you will be rewarded handsomely. Took 200 resume sub missions, 50 call backs, 15 in person interviews (avg 8hrs per) before I got my foot in the door as a junior developer analyst for 50k + benefits in an excellent economy. Only the relentlessly tenacious who are willing to adapt will survive.

</comment><comment><USER3> 4 yrs exp working for a us company in Bangalore (India). Make around $1200 per month + 10% variable + Medical. this the avg sal for a similar exp in India. I have a masters from one of the top 20 cs collages.

</comment><comment><USER4> PhD. >4 years of development. 125K. No options, up to 5% bonus. NYC.

I feel I'm getting underpaid big time :( Looking for greener pastures as we speak.

</comment><comment><USER5> Currently making 120K + some stock options. Small startup in the valley. Fresh out of Masters. Worked for a year (as a researcher in a lab) after undergrad.

<comment><USER6> Do you think a master's degree was worth it, in terms of extra salary as well as in terms of general life experience?

<comment><USER5> For me, yes. I had an extremely shitty undergrad in EE. I wanted to do C.S. (to put it bluntly, I didn't know shit about programming) and Math and basically crammed in as much of a B.S. in Math/C.S. in those 2.5 years of Masters. Moving from being unemployable to employable is a definitely boost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sr. Software Engineer. 125K + 15k bonus. East bay.

5 years experience + BS from a top 10 or so CS program.

9-5 job. Decent sized company.

</comment><comment><USER8> You should probably include benefits then as salary doesn't mean much when you have tons of stock options.

</comment><comment><USER9> Zero (unemployed). CS graduate with experience in Linux and Windows Server, LAN and WAN administration, database design, web development, GIS. When I've found work it has usually been in the $12-$16/hr range; the most I've ever been paid was $25/hr, the least $8/hr when that was still above minimum wage. Location: SF Bay Area (Sonoma/Marin).</comment>


LinkedIn Profile Crawler API - <AUTHOR> https://nubela.co/proxycurl/linkedin <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone, I am product owner of Proxycurl and our new Linkedin here.

We love (big) data and crawlers at our company, and many a times, we have tried building products on top of big data that we have crawled. But one of the hardest thing to crawl is Linkedin. While we have the technology and crawling network to do it, most of our customers really wanted a turnkey solution at a price that scales.

Eventually, after losing many inbound leads due to the developers not being able to use our rudimentary crawling API, we decided to overhaul our API and build in a dedicated Linkedin API endpoint.

The hard thing about Linkedin profiles are that they really hate HTML markup. Or maybe it is intended that way to deter scrapers.

Most of their content are placed in  and later parsed using their frontend javascript code. This is a cat-and-mouse game between developers and Linkedin. Instead of fighting them one developer at a time, we think a managed service for Linkedin Profile crawling might be useful. Your thoughts?</comment>


The Chinese Billionaire Zhang Lei Spins Research into Investment Gold - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/business/the-chinese-billionaire-zhang-lei-spins-research-into-investment-gold.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> It would be great for China's economy and their cultural relationship with the world if the could start exporting technology in the consumer space. Much of America's cultural hold on the world is via the products they export. Such as the famous images of people in Japan going to KFC or finding McDonalds or Coca-cola everywhere was seen as a connection to the west.

Much of it is due to America's export on media (music, films, etc) which I doubt they will find much competition. But I am also finding myself watching many more Chinese films that are _good_ , and not just from Hong Kong but mainland China. They might be able to compete one day in the foreign films market such as the way France has in the past.

China has dominated the B2B world for a long time but I'm looking forward to seeing them take hold in a human-world. Which means they have to figure out consumer marketing, which is tricky, and probably will need to be sourced locally from the West.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there anybody collecting pain? - <AUTHOR> Reading HN I get clear that it is all about identifying and solving a common, and profitable, customer pain. Is there any website that serves as a communication chanell between potential customers and their common pains, and start ups that are working on the field? How do you get in touch with potential customer's pains? <comment><USER2> _How do you get in touch with potential customer's pains?_

Talk to anyone. Preferably, the kind of person who a) has money and b) wouldn't think something like "Hmm, something sucks in life, I think I'll go announce this fact on a social news service in the hopes that someone will solve it for $9 a month."

It really is that easy.

Here's something which will work for anything you care to learn about: "Hiya. I'm interested in your industry. Would you let me buy you lunch so I can ask you about your experiences in it?" Best $25~40 you'll ever spend.

<comment><USER3> This is fantastic advice. I have had lunches like this numerous times. They have been overall a very successful strategy. Sure, you will have a very small percentage that don't really provide insight...but that is well worth the cost. It is often important to preface the invitation with an assurance that you aren't going to try and sell them anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always wanted be live my life as a dilettante mainly for two reasons. 1) I'm genuinely interested in learning things that i find interesting as an outsider and would love to be taught my someone passionate in the area. 2) It would provide fantastic insight into their daily problems that usually could be easily optimised by someone with a programmer state of mind, perhaps spawning a business opportunity.

So yeah, perhaps run with that? Its one of the things i'll hopefully be doing in the next year.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hard to beat Twitter for finding what annoys people!

<https://twitter.com/#!/search/%22i%20hate%22>

<comment><USER6> Great suggestion. I just saw a tweet that's inspiring an app idea. Someone said, I hate long distance relationships, I bet you can make a app that makes LDRs feel a lot closer. Dunno how it would fare against pair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, there are offline meetings of this group at every bar closest to the office, Thursdays and Fridays.

Real pain can be found there Tuesday evenings

sadly none of the participants are likely to collate their pain on a website for you unless doing so directly helps.

<comment><USER7> Then again if desperate for ideas it probably would not hurt to visit that bar and ask.

IRS is unlikely to accept the bar tab as legitimate business expenses.

But then again the comment on Reading a companies complaints list is interesting - find the customer service mnager at big Corp and ask them ?

Hmm, might actually try that :-)

<comment><USER8> There's no blanket IRS rule against deducting a bar tab if it is indeed a "reasonable" business expense.

<comment><AUTHOR> This whole track points to a different thing, how sociable (or not) are we the developers, thanks for the comments.

The problem with the IRS is that "they" hold the definition of "reasonable", for a bar, tab? I rather swallow the cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this not what getsatisfaction.com tries to achieve?

</comment><comment><USER10> The pain with finding user pains is organizing. Everybody will talk/search things differently. Pains can also be slightly different but on the same topic. Then theres the marketing problem, finding enough users in a certain topic/pain to justify the pain. Consider how biased the content on quora is (relative to availability of content, not the content quality itself).

</comment><comment><USER11> You mean a single place where customers can complain about issues, and vote on what they hate most? Intentionally ask people what they hate, instead of asking what they want?

... I like the way you think. I very you could get more actually useful information that way. You get what problems you need to be solved, rather than what people THINK they want.

<comment><USER12> uservoice does this well

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea, but I need a better way to separate personal frustrations and rants, from real problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was <http://theinternetwishlist.com/> (not updated anymore) which still has some inspiring bits. Discussion forums are real, measurable kaleidoscope of popular pains.

</comment><comment><USER14> Don't forget "We feel fine" <http://wefeelfine.org/>

They suck up different feelings from around the web and displays them in a very interesting way

</comment><comment><USER15> This is difficult because when you're looking in from the outside you can't see the pain and problems due to all the complexity and context blindness.

The easiest way is to look to your own field or industry. This is somewhat difficult if you're a programmer but there are tons of opportunities even for us - just take a look at Light Table over at Kickstarter [1] for a recent example or the multitude of software development tools, libraries, addons and frameworks that put food on the tables of many developers [2].

But what if you don't have a field?

In that case you can deep emerge yourself in one. Pick an industry/sector where there is money and volume, lots of resource slack, where society's Big Huge Problems are solved, etc.

How to feel the pain? Start by reading periodicals and other publications. These tend to constantly write about current problems and future challenges/opportunities in a plain and easy to understand language.

Nothing beats going straight to the source so you might want to get in touch with practitioners and associations and pick their brains, follow them around at work, etc. It's important to reflect on the things you see, put them in a larger context, ask yourself how parts of a business could be improved (for a lightweight aid, use the business model canvas [3]).

Asking professionals what their problems are, however, is a problematic approach because practitioners often don't know what they know, what they don't know or the root cause of problems [4] [5]. Casual conversations can still give you valuable information and guidance. At the very least it contributes to giving you a better understanding of the context you're emerging yourself in.

Research papers can be useful because they are often problem-solution oriented, and even dedicate a section to Future Work. The research data can also be useful to build a convincing argumentation for any future solutions. The most exiting ideas tend to grow at the boundaries between different disciplines and where science meets art/entertainment, so any opportunity where you get to see your industry in a new or alien light should be cherished.

Colleges and other educational institutions tend to be the place where practice and theory collide, resulting in all kinds of wonderful ideas. Often these educational institutions have good relationships with commercial and industrial life and can tell you the pains of the industry.

Basically the more effort you invest in emerging yourself in a industry or specific sector and the closer you are to the knowledge, the greater your chances are to find the systemic problems on which you can build multi billion dollar businesses.

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

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_open_source_applicat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_open_source_applications)

[3] <http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table>

[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge>

[5] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment, this has been very illuminating, several ideas popup from here</comment></comment>


Blizzard passwords: not case-sensitive - <AUTHOR> http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5152409863?page=1#4

<comment><USER2> A year or so ago this was also the case with Facebook [0]. I believe it's a simple compromise between user experience and security. You can probably eliminate a large portion of user frustration this way. Before you instinctively respond with something like "but security should be the NUMBER ONE priority," realize that you're _always_ making a compromise between user experience and security, and in fact, the two aren't even orthogonal. You could require users to purchase and use biometric scanners to authenticate, but that would likely be very frustrating. Or, you could require users to use a 50 character password with tons of entropy, but that would probably just lead to users leaving, or (perhaps worse) writing their password on a note stuck to their monitor.

[0] [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-passwords-are- no...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-passwords-are-not-case- sensitive-update/3612) —Actually, Facebook wasn't completely case insensitive. It only accepts the chosen password and a version with every character's case inverted.

<comment><USER3> They gave a pretty good reason for that, case inversion occurs naturally if you have capslock on.

It doesn't make the password any less secure. (It's actually only one other password.)

They also allow you to change the first letter to caps, which accounts for phones that capitalise the first letter of every sentence you type.

<comment><USER2> > _It doesn't make the password any less secure. (It's actually only one other > password.)_

It _does_ make your password less secure, it's just that Facebook judged it an acceptable compromise between user experience and security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Try making your passwords longer instead of making them harder to enter.

That is to say "usingthisasapassword" is ~4 million times better than using "p4ssWOrd!".

</comment><comment><USER4> Actually, I don't see that as a big deal. Maybe it could be tweaked to have only the first one sensitive or try the all-caps/no-caps. But still, it's all in the length of the password. I prefer to have that rather than someone forcing me to use a 6-8 characters password with at least one cap, one special or any of this bullshit.

<comment><USER5> I would be _very_ interested, however, to know what this implies about the way they store their passwords. If, on submission, they normalise the case it and then hash it (and then for all checks, normalise the supplied pw)... then, it's still not really acceptable, but at least the password I've given them is encrypted.

<comment><USER6> Pedant alert! Hashing is not encryption.

<comment><USER7> Pedant alert, hashing is still a form of encryption. Take a look at what crypt(3) used to do ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find it funny how eager the community manager is to admit the flaw.</comment>


Stallman cancels Israel lectures due to Palestinian pressure - <AUTHOR> http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/free-software-campaigner-richard-stallman-cancels-israel-lectures-due-to-palestinian-pressure-1.364722

<comment><USER2> Hardly Hackernews (flag?), but here's RMS: [http://hamakor.org.il/pipermail/discussions/2011-May/002978....](http://hamakor.org.il/pipermail/discussions/2011-May/002978.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> He could'hv travelled at his own expense instead of making an issue out of it.

<comment><USER4> Travel Wants to be Free</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you use any dynamic firewall blacklisted IP address lists/services? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Yep, ipregistry.co threat data.

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: the user is the CTO of the ipregistry.co</comment></comment>