Boeing 747s are back in demand as workhorses of global shipping - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-16/boeing-747s-given-up-for-dead-find-new-life-in-air-cargo-surge <comment><USER2> Economically, older cargo types can make a lot more sense than a new plane. With the 744 no longer in production, a used model with another 15 years of use at $50mn is a better investment than a new 748 at its $400mn list price. Well-capitalized wet lessors like Atlas can afford to invest in new frames, but if you're a startup or a primarily passenger airline looking to branch out into a few cargo routes, you can't necessarily afford to buy new.

A similar trend occurred with the MD-11. Only a hundred or so frames exist, the last one built in 2000. As a passenger airplane, it was not great: high deck angle in cruise, noise, and of course poor fuel burn compared to projections. But for freight, its nearest competitor is the 77F. A few years ago when I was looking into this, a used MD11 frame would go for around $3mn. With a D-check you could have it flying again for an all-in cost of maybe $10-$15mn and it would last another 10 years. The 77F lists for around $200mn. Thus, even though the M11F is far less efficient than the 77F, it would be 10 or more years before the fuel costs would make up the difference in initial outlay. This is why the MD-11s are still flying.

Passengers prefer new planes, but cargo doesn't complain!

<comment><USER3> Overnight cargo carriers like FedEx additionally have economics that make this worthwhile. Those planes might typically make only two flights in a day, one to a hub in the evening and one from the hub in the morning.

The efficiency of modern planes is only worth the price if you fly them constantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Suitability for conversion to freighter service was actually one of the original design goals for the 747! But back then, the assumption was that passenger airlines would be transitioning not to twinjets but to supersonic planes.

<comment><USER5> Also airlines are moving from the hub and spoke model to the point to point model. So the need for 747's and especially A380's for passenger service has gone way down. Plus both those planes just aren't as efficient as twinjets. In fact, it was partly the high fuel consumption of the early 747's that eventually led to Pan-Am's bankruptcy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wendover Productions did a great video YouTube on overnight shipping that goes into the use of old planes for shipping cargo. [1] . The short version is that cargo planes spend most of their time sitting around, usually much less time than an equivalently sized passenger plane.

[1] [https://youtu.be/y3qfeoqErtY](https://youtu.be/y3qfeoqErtY)

<comment><USER7> Although due to its size, 747F are usually used at a higher percentage of the time. The large freighters (7437, 777) are mostly used between hubs and for long-distance routes. That's why having fuel efficient planes (e.g. 747-8) makes sense.

What Wendover describes are cargo planes serving hubs, those often only fly 1-2 returns a day, so having a very cheap plane with higher consumption is worth it (e.g. A300).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also four engines are a must if you operate long haul from hot and high airports like Mexico, Bogota or Quito. Due to engine failure performance requirements a twin engine needs to cut back almost half the traffic load(cargo and passangers) to be able to take off within the tables.

Once they have to retire 747 and A340 airlines din't really know what to do in those airports. New hot and high versions of the twin engines are being studied, but they have failed to meet the expectations previously.

<comment><USER9> I love how planes like the 747 can attach an extra engine to ferry it around.

[https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2016/0...](https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2016/01/62014_1283325243.jpg)

<comment><USER10> Is there an attachment point on the other side as well? Being super-cynical, I can't help but wonder if these attachment points were also added just in case existing fleets of 747s were pressed into service as long range bombers...

<comment><USER11> I was once in the back of a 747, on the left side, when I noticed that the inboard flap section was jiggling about, even though it was retracted. I tried to remember if that was normal, and was about to get up and look at the other side, when the captain announced that any turbulence we might notice was on account of the extra engine under the wing, being ferried as a replacement for a failed one.

A question, for anyone who knows about these things: when an engine is being ferried like this, are the fan and compressors locked in place, or allowed to spin in the airflow? I would have thought that locking them would impose unnecessary loads on those parts and create extra drag and turbulence, while allowing them to rotate would require lubrication?

<comment><USER8> Some information here: [http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=421613](http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=421613)

Really interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fun fact: The loadmaster and maintenance workers on Flexport's 747 freighter fly back and forth on the plane 20 days per year, sleeping in the old first class seats in the upper deck. That is real skin in the game.

The plane began service as a passenger plane for Japan Air in the 90s. I better its safer than most modern planes with those guys living up there taking care of her.

<comment><USER13> Cargo planes are generally less safe than passenger planes, this is due to factors like the pilots (less money for cargo pilots) and the hardware they're flying (older disused passenger planes being flown cargo).

Fun fact: NCR flight 102 had the loadmaster on board, but is probably one of the most spectacular caught on camera crashes of a 747. (It's the one where it looks like it falls out of the sky on take-off) It was also most likely the loadmasters fault. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flight_102](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flight_102)

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/14/birmin...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/14/birmingham- ups-crash-sidebar/2654017/) >"have a somewhat higher accident rate than passenger aircraft,"

<comment><USER14> Re: cargo pilots earning less, is that true? I'm in Memphis, and all the Fedex pilots I know make a ton of money. Most are ex-military. Most of the planes are definitely older (DC-10/MD-11s trijets!) but they are being aggressively phased out for new 777s to save on fuel.

<comment><USER15> My understanding based on what I hear from friends in the industry is that this is definitely not true, especially earlier on in a pilot's career. If one plays their cards right, you can make a good deal more as a 'cargo dog' pilot when you're young, compared to working for a regional or non-major airline, which is where most younger passenger pilots begin their careers. However, the disparity in pay can be more pronounced later on, as senior pilots at the major airlines can in many cases make much more income, or have a much better work-life balance.

<comment><USER14> Did a little googling as I was curious, and sure enough, wow Fedex pilots are well paid. Also, I know that while Fedex pilots typically fly overnight, its only a few times a week and they have the ability to be around for daytime events. One of my lacrosse coaches in high school was a Fedex pilot, and he seems to do quite well while being available to arrange his schedule. All-caps emphasis mine below, Fedex is dramatically higher.

"According to Memphis newspaper The Commercial Appeal, pilots flying for FedEx earn closer to $234,000 a year ON AVERAGE -- 90% more, to carry boxes from Point A to Point B, than the folks flying actual human passengers make. [https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/09/05/pilots- are...](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/09/05/pilots-are-about-to- get-a-10-raise-what-you-need-t.aspx)

"Salaries at Delta Air Lines Inc range from an average of $42,495 to $144,385 a year. Delta Air Lines Inc employees with the job title Airline Captain make the most with an average annual salary of $188,104

[https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Delta_Air_Line...](https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Delta_Air_Lines_Inc/Salary)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Was listening to Bloomberg Radio this morning and Tom Keene brought this up randomly...I was surprised to hear only ~1500 were ever built; seems like a low number for a plane that's been around since the 1970s. One thing I have always wondered about tho is, where are the relatively short domestic route (2-3 hours) where a 500+ person 747 would make sense? It's almost like airlines need the inverse for which this plane was made. Same goes for the A380.

<comment><USER4> > where are the relatively short domestic route (2-3 hours) where a 500+ > person 747 would make sense

SE Asia and Japan, mostly. The 747 was never intended for domestic US routes - Pan Am, the launch customer, only had international routes.

<comment><USER17> On a related tangent, there was a general expectation that the A380 superjumbo would find a lot of customers on core domestic routes between Chinese and Indian megacities like Beijing-Shanghai, Mumbai-Delhi, etc. Aside from the odd filler hop between long-haul flights, this has entirely failed to materialize: there's tons of traffic between these cities but the vast majority is single- aisle 737/A320.

<comment><USER7> It's similar to NYC-LAX or NYC-SFO. Airlines realised that passengers prefer 10 flights a day with a small plane rather than 4 a day with a large plane. Boarding/deboarding is faster on single-aisle planes and it gives more flexibility on travel times. Operating costs for large planes are also not lower, as long as you can get landing rights. So apart from a few overcongested airports (e.g. London Heathrow), there's really no reason to use a large plane if you can use a small one instead.

<comment><USER18> But the amount of gates is pretty much fixed. As Asia becomes richer you can see large populations now demanding seats. Perhaps the A380 was built a few decades too soon...

<comment><USER19> Maybe in a lot of US/European airports that originally date from the first half of the 1900s, they're too close to the city center and don't have enough land to expand. Even then, they seem to be regularly able to find ways to get more gates in renovations (ex: Newark/EWR's Terminal A replacement is going to have the ability to be expanded for 12 more gates). I'm sure there's an upper limit, but plenty of those older airports can find space for more gates in modern redesigns.

Most of the big modern airports were built with massive expansion in mind. Well outside the city centers and with large land areas that they already own (and so won't be developed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not an aeronautics expert, but my understanding is that the 747 design sits on a local maximum, with regards to figures like wing loading. The A380 deliberately gets bigger by aiming for a less ideal design. Its wing loading is a bit high. I suspect that this tends to make it less suitable for cargo than the 747.

<comment><USER21> Wing loading is a complicated thing... higher wing loading will increase takeoff and landing speeds a little bit, but it also generally makes for a smoother ride in flight.

<comment><USER20> Smoother ride isn't as high a priority for cargo. Better fuel efficiency and ease of operations are more important there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> makes sense...economical decision.

<comment><USER23> As long as fuel prices don't jump, right? What a crazy business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what's the carbon footprint per kg compared to a boat?

<comment><USER25> you probably want per kg per mile since takeoff is going to disproportionately affect emissions on shorter flights.

<comment><USER24> fair enough

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The title is a bit clickbait-y: passenger 747s _were_ retired by the US airlines last year, and are not coming back. Passenger to freighter conversions (the BCF, Boeing Converted Freighter) are also not restarting. And, it's highly unlikely there will be any new passenger 747s manufactured.

<comment><USER27> The headline isn't really wrong. According to the article, they're not being retired at the rate which seemed likely--because of freighter demand (at least so long as fuel prices stay relatively low). But, for someone no familiar with 747s, the headline does seem to imply that this unexpected use was discovered for them--which, of course, isn't the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> An air cargo surge is just what we need when the planet is warming at unprecedented rates and we have just crossed the 400ppm boundary...

<comment><USER29> Planes are an easy target because they're so big, but the industry as a whole is hyper-focussed on efficiency. If you want to rail against emissions, don't look at the plane, look at the endless procession of single-occupancy 2 ton cars the plane is flying over.

And you can get a _lot_ of parcels on a plane like the 747F. Amortised by unit the emission numbers are in fact very good. It's almost certain that your last fast food run or uber trip used much more gasoline than it took to get your last parcel all the way from China.

But why let the facts get in the way of some good old righteous outrage!

<comment><USER28> You're comparing things that aren't comparable. Of course single occupancy cars are inefficient, but that shouldn't obscure the fact that long distance transportation is a major source of emissions that should be severely limited. The fact that the industry is efficiency focused is also irrelevant at best, because they are high emitters in spite of it.

<comment><USER2> Airplanes account for 5% of global emissions. Ground transport, 40%. Presently, the low hanging fruit is ground not only because of its much larger share of emissions, but also because transitioning to renewables is easier (at least today) for road than air vehicles.

Noone is going to "severely limit" air transport due to its emissions. Doubling the cost of oil, maybe, but not emissions.

<comment><USER30> Ironically a heavy push to electrified cars would reduce demand for gasoline, potentially dropping the price of oil and saving money for airlines and reducing ticket prices. The final result would be increased air travel and CO2 emissions from air travel.

Overall still a win for the environment, but not as much of one as people would want.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Free API keys for company data in the UK - <AUTHOR> https://www.duedil.com/blog/introducing-the-api-portal <comment><AUTHOR> Duedil are offering free API keys for fetching company and director data in the UK. API docs look pretty nice and descriptive [https://www.duedil.com/api/docs](https://www.duedil.com/api/docs)

</comment><comment><USER2> hmm...will definitely give this a try. Especially the access to the FS might come in handy</comment>


Execs Of Sequoia Funded Guruji.com Arrested Over Alleged Copyright Violation - <AUTHOR> http://www.medianama.com/2010/04/223-execs-of-sequoia-funded-guruji-com-arrested-over-copyright-violation-in-india/

<comment><USER2> Why is it relevant that they are sequoia funded? This story is mostly India- centric, so it doesn't look like that has any bearing on what this is all about.

If anything it will at least assure that they'll have pockets deep enough to defend themselves.

Also, does a copyright violation warrant an arrest of the executives of a company?

<comment><USER3> When your Sequoia funded, you're held to a higher standard just b/c of the pedigree of the firm (at least in my perception). Also, big names in headlines garner more clicks.</comment></comment>


Strongbox: a secret manager for AWS - <AUTHOR> https://schibsted.github.io/strongbox/ <comment><AUTHOR> Strongbox is a CLI/GUI and SDK to manage, store, and retrieve secrets (access tokens, encryption keys, private certificates, etc). Strongbox is a client- side convenience layer on top of AWS KMS, DynamoDB and IAM. It manages the AWS resources for you and configure them in a secure way.

Strongbox has been used in production since mid-2016 and is now used extensively within Schibsted.</comment>


DropCam raises $6M for video monitoring and cloud streaming service - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/21/accel-leads-6m-round-in-video-monitoring-and-cloud-streaming-service-dropcam/

<comment><USER2> Congrats guys, this is great news!</comment>


The Quants Are Taking Over Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2016/08/17/the-quants-are-taking-over-wall-street/#530a21f56ea7 <comment><USER2> I hate Forbes' site so damned much. Every article has a damned landing page. Like we want to look at their advertisements and quotes. Pisses me off.

<comment><USER3> I'm starting to think websites like Forbes exist for the sole purpose of displaying advertisements. Like a billboard, but surrounded by useless chunks of text.</comment></comment>


Thoughts after taking the Deeplearning.ai courses - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/thoughts-after-taking-the-deeplearning-ai-courses-8568f132153 <comment><AUTHOR> Not by me, but interesting.</comment>


Google Search Appliance - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance <comment><USER2> These are based on the Dell PowerEdge R720XD. They often show up on ebay and when flashed with stock Dell BIOS they still make for very capable homelab servers...</comment>


Unicorn: a simple and flexible abstraction of BigTable-like databases - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/haifengl/unicorn <comment><USER2> Not to be a stickler about name collisions, but Facebook wrote a research paper about a graph database called Unicorn back in 2013:

[https://people.csail.mit.edu/matei/courses/2015/6.S897/readi...](https://people.csail.mit.edu/matei/courses/2015/6.S897/readings/unicorn.pdf)

This appears to be unrelated, which is somewhat unfortunate.

<comment><USER3> I wish there was some sort of social agreement to name projects new words, or combined words.

We're overloading the english language so much. In 100 years it's going to be impossible to search for anything, as every word and phrase will have a million products and projects attached.

Didn't the original MIT hackers take pride in coming up with clever and unique names? what happened to that? I'd even settle for names like "elinks"

<comment><USER4> Search engines will just need to take context into account, I remember a lot of confusion between searches for Cisco IOS versus Apple IOS back when IOS first took on the name, but with a few keywords to provide context, now it's pretty easy to get relevant results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How would I use this if I have graph data that's described in terms of its edges, not its nodes?

The N-Triples and DOT formats would be examples of graph data that's structured like this: you just list the edges as the pairs of nodes that they connect. The nodes don't necessarily have any properties, they're just implicitly created by edges. I could describe

        a -- b
        b -- c
        b -- d

and nodes "a", "b", "c", and "d" would implicitly exist.

I ask this because the documentation involves programmatically creating nodes, storing them in local variables, and referring to them when building edges:

        gods.addEdge(jupiter, "father", saturn)
        gods.addEdge(jupiter, "lives", sky, json"""{"reason": "loves fresh breezes"}""")

If "jupiter", "saturn", and "sky" weren't previously declared and stored in local variables, how would you do this?

The documentation on the GitHub page is reasonably extensive, but it doesn't even say how to get an existing node without creating it, and certainly doesn't say how to create an edge in an efficient way that is independent of whether its nodes have already been created.

I've also run into a similar problem trying out the new version of OrientDB. They have a fast importer called ETL, but all the documentation for it assumes that you're mostly concerned with importing nodes and you're only using edges to represent SQL-esque relational data. I'm not trying to shove relational data into NoSQL for the sake of NoSQL, I actually have a large graph. Importing serialized graphs into a graph database seems to be a pretty neglected use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> In most graph database, you find a vertex by filtering its properties, e.g. Gremlin graph query language. In Unicorn, you can do the similar with document vertices (it is, a vertex corresponding to a document in another table/collection). This is probably very nature in a business application. However, it is not very useful in your case as your vertices are abstract without any properties.

I guess what you want is some large scale graph analytics, which I suggest Spark GrpahX or other distributed graph computing engine.

Unicorn is designed for property directed multi-graphs.

<comment><USER5> I would say that what I _have_ is a property-directed multi-graph, as I understand it. It's just that the properties are on the edges, and the nodes have no properties except for their ID.

The graph in question is ConceptNet, which in the version I'm working on has about 10 million edges and 3 million nodes. Let's be clear that, in computing, "million" is not a large number. I only said "large graph" to clarify that it's not a small toy graph. The data needs to be imported with some degree of efficiency. But I have a 3TB hard drive and 16 GB of RAM, and both of them can spare a few gigabytes for this task.

Before you throw me into the tarpit of distributed computing, like every other graph-DB provider does as an excuse for their terrible inefficiency, I would like to know if your graph database is appropriate to use with reasonable- sized graphs that fit easily on a single computer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out this script [https://github.com/haifengl/unicorn/blob/master/shell/src/un...](https://github.com/haifengl/unicorn/blob/master/shell/src/universal/examples/dbpedia.sh), which loads dbpedia graph into unicorn. You should be able to load ConceptNet without minor modifications. Later, you can refer a vertex by its string id.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While people seem to mostly tinker with the name in the comments I'd like to say that this looks like a really interesting project!

Would you mind to give us a little more background with regards to how this has been initiated, what your motivation was to write something new?

Given that you have an interesting vita ([https://www.linkedin.com/in/haifengli](https://www.linkedin.com/in/haifengli)) and a lot of people are interested in the graph database space I'd assume that people what be interested in your take on: The graph landscape, why for example haven't you joined the effort of Neo4j, ArangoDB, Titan and the likes. Is Unicorn already older than these systems? Why have you decided to open source now? Why is this linking to a fork originating at ADP while you are obviously a member of ADP and what is ADP about? Questions over questions which IMHO should be answered so that people like myself, who are impressed by your work, get a better chance where this massive effort comes from to better estimate how long this is going to stay around.

However: Thanks for open sourcing, posting and giving us a chance to play around with this...

<comment><USER6> Ok, doing a little research about ADP I realize that this is quite a large company. Sorry, I didn't knew it (am from Germany). But this would make it even more interesting how unicorn is used at ADP and if this already is a reference with regards to the scale of larger installations of Unicorn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> given the context of today, find the name rather unfortunate

<comment><AUTHOR> It is true. Unfortunately, the project was started several years ago and had nothing to do with the startup world. I would like to complain that VCs destroy another nice name with their hypes :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> does it web-scale?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is on top of hbase, Cassandra, or accumulo. So yes, it is web scaled.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I distinguish the fourth from the third of these? - <AUTHOR> There are (at least) four types of interfaces that occur in programming.
Type #1. Command line. "foo --bar --baz". You step into the program, and then step out of it.
Type #2. REPL. You step into a program, do something, then it does something back in a sequential manner. You exit it when you want to.
Type #3. Word processor. The same as Type #2 except the REPL happens in real time instead of sequentially.
Type #4. GUI.
How do I distinguish the fourth from the third of these? <comment><USER2> I believe "word processor" refers less to wysiwyg and more to the technologies behind Siri and whatever other real-time voice input technologies are out there. No GUI needed.

GUIs usually have things you point and click, and by definition need a screen monitor of some type. The other, you simply talk to.

The list skips autonomous sensor, but I think they are common enough to warrant inclusion. We recently saw two Boeing disasters in a row resulting from autonomous sensor failures.

</comment><comment><USER3> GUI stands for Graphical User Interface, emphasis on Graphical.

If it's in a text buffer it's a TUI, text user interface.

I mean you could get pedantic about these things, but basically if it's rendered with a graphic framework, it's a GUI, whether it's CPU, deferred or immediate, or GPU rendered.

<comment><AUTHOR> So GUI is a REPL but with graphical components instead of text buffer. This is what I suspected, but I wanted to make sure.

<comment><USER2> Its a multiply-persistent repl. For example, clisp is a lispy repl. Scratch is a lispy gui.

Both repls and guis have text buffers. But guis are an order of magnitude separated by their presentation layer.</comment></comment></comment>


People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-mcmaster-report-1.5485729 <comment><USER2> This is very misleading reporting. First: All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. So how about this one? From actually reading the study's conclusion:

> Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the > pilot (17%)

So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor market when its a short-term study is huge.

For the ~10% figure, Chris Stucchio has a fairly succinct roundup of the work disincentive of other studies so far: [https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2019/basic_income_reduces...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2019/basic_income_reduces_employment.html)

<comment>

Personal opinion: If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster. In UBI long run, the children of parents who have _never_ worked are probably going to be at a large disadvantage. I think its already a problem _today_ for children of SSI recipient parents (even compared to children of SSDI parents), but its not easy to prove.

<comment><USER3> And this is a very misleading summary of the results.

Here are some actual quote from the study:

> Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from > employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to > unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot > with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified > workers.

Almost half of people who stopped working did it in order to train for a better job. That's great!

> most of the respondents who were unemployed during the pilot reported > experiencing health issues that made it difficult or impossible for them to > work.

Receiving BI allowed sick people to not be forced into work to pay for a basic existence? That's great!

Take into account those two factors and almost no able bodied, employable person opted to not work.

Sounds like a success to me.

<comment><USER4> The point of UBI is not to fund people's vanity adventures in education. It's to support people who would otherwise be starving or homeless without a job.

Regarding "sickness", the severity is important to know. If UBI enables people with slight depression issues to just give up working entirely, UBI could be entirely counterproductive by accelerating depression's spirals of inactivity.

And this completely ignored the issue of inflation that comes with society wide UBI.

The whole notion of UBI is nonsense. Rather than throwing money at people to spend on broken institutions like Education and Healthcare, let's reform these institutions in the first place to make them more affordable and effective.

<comment><USER5> So, education is a "vanity adventure"?

Perhaps if you're a person who looks at your cleaners or servers or cashiers as people with no potential for self-betterment; as people who are unable to expand their horizons.

Ugh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The issue I see with basic income is that most money is spent on housing and health care. These two things are supply constrained so it's more of an auction for who can afford them.

With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things.

This problem wouldn't appear in a study that distributed to only some individuals.

We need to solve the regulatory or otherwise organizational problems of these things to provide real relief. Throwing money at the problem will just move money to a few hands.

<comment><USER7> > With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things.

The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of _anything that causes the poor to have more money_. Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it's true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa.

Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they're _independent_ problems.

On top of that, you're assuming the UBI actually results in the poor getting more assistance rather than merely different assistance. Right now there are explicit subsidies for housing and healthcare. If they get replaced with a UBI in the same amount, maybe people just use it to buy housing and healthcare anyway -- but maybe some of them don't, and that causes those prices to go _down_.

<comment><USER8> Problem is the lack of colloquial objective definition of "poor".

The US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes. The US's vast welfare/entitlement system ensures few indeed net less than that line, shoring up their shortfall with trillions of $.

What constitutes "poor" keeps shifting. There will always be a bottom 10%. There is ongoing increase to the standard of living, instilling a sense of "nobody should go without X" (when X didn't exist not long before, broadband internet being the latest). Affordable housing gets overrun by population growth & attracting mobile opportunity-seekers, living space naturally going to the highest bidder; property taxes being a thing, there is no recognized natural right to real estate. Health care relentlessly advances, new lifesaving care objectively costing a great deal ... vs a public sentiment of a right thereto.

We need an objective redefinition of "poor", predicated on a baseline of nutrition, housing floorspace, basic tools (stove, disposal, etc), care (minimum optimistic odds of longevity), information access, etc and an understanding that the baseline cannot be shifted - that those doing better are _not poor_ , that accessibility thereto is largely attainable (whatever the sociopolitical system), and acknowledgement that when/if all are above that line, poverty services are officially out of a job.

As it stands, "poor" is a moving target for which a great number of people have a vested interest in covering a consistent, if not growing, population.

<comment><USER9> > As it stands, "poor" is a moving target for which a great number of people > have a vested interest in covering a consistent, if not growing, population.

Nearly all Kings and Emperors were 'poorer' than most Westerners under the poverty line of today. They had no refrigeration, antibiotics, electricity, etc. But we still agree that there are 'poor' people today, and I think we're correct to say so. Yes, it is a moving target, and thank God that it is such. If 'progress' means that we have to drag the least lucky of us up to levels of decadence that Cesar could never have though of, I'm more than on board for that. Quibbling about the exact definition of poor for all of time is useless. Charge ahead, have the 'poor' of our grandchildren's time be the wealthy of today.

<comment><USER10> I find this trope of Kings/Emperors being "poorer" than most people today, to be an extremely annoying trope. This trope is purely a rhetorical device used to justify inequalities, because "look you have a cell phone and infinite McDonald's deliveries on Seamless, you're richer than a King of old!" Meanwhile you're shackled to your job, shackled to your location, shackled to your apartment/mortgage, shackled to your debt, etc.

<comment><USER8> I find the annoyance annoying, overlooking how "poor" has been lifted to heights unthinkable not long ago - and prompting my earlier comment. Those who have had cellphones for all adulthood don't grasp how limited much was not long ago; methinks many need a reality check on what basic living entails (I grew up with wood heat, no A/C, significant homegrown food, walk 2 miles in a blizzard for help when car slid into a ditch, hand-typed individual copies of resume, etc). Most "shackling" is for want of imagination to do, not resources/opportunities. I'm deeply concerned that so many think they're "poor" when they do in fact have far more resources & opportunities than "rich" (or at least "middle class") did not long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From my personal point of view, basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc.

Because in the current economy, a lot of people have to work unreasonable hours, multiple jobs, and have all people in a family work to make ends meet, at the cost of personal health and well-being, personal time, having children at all or having more children, getting married and buying a house, etc.

Right now I'm stressed because I'm earning less than I spend, my girlfriend is stressed because she doesn't have a job yet and due to personal reasons may find it hard to get, keep, and work enough hours at a job, etc. If she earned a basic income we'd be out of the woods already. If I then also earned one on top of my job we'd be VERY comfortable.

(And keep in mind I would already pay for both of our basic incomes through the income taxes I'm paying at the moment. I'm happily paying taxes because other people paying taxes put me through college and into my current job)

<comment><USER12> People should fear being destitute its the natural human condition. Learning skills is the only way to make wealth.

<comment><USER13> No person who was born rich has to learn skills to avoid destitution. And poverty isn't the natural condition for humans any more than it is for cats, or any other animal.

<comment><USER14> I'm guessing you don't know many people who were born into wealth.

The skill that they must learn is how not to lose the money.

This skill is difficult to sustain over more than a generation or two — grandparent earns it, parent might keep it, child usually ends up destitute both in terms of financial capital and social capital.

If the "child" in this scenario is lucky, they have some social capital that will save them, and their branch of the family tree is at an inflection point.

Seeing a family self-destruct like this is tough to watch and surprisingly common within that class of people.

<comment> munk-a That skill is so trivial to learn compared with the skill of surviving and building up income from nothing.

Rich people literally just need to not be complete idiots - if you've got 300 million in the bank put it in some low interest stable investment and you'd be able to live off the investment earnings alone. There, I just explained all the life skills you need as a rich person - there is no equivalence between the road the rich and the poor need to walk to survive.

<comment><USER14> I am guessing that you do not know many people who were born into wealth.

There are existential questions that gnaw at some of these people that hinder them from taking the seemingly simple path that you have presented.

I would also argue that it is not as easy as you would think to park millions in some "low interest stable investment" that also does not have substantial (for generational wealth) counter-party risk.

> there is no equivalence between the road the rich and the poor need to walk > to survive

I agree with this, but I think you are being overly dismissive of the skills that someone born into a wealthy family needs to keep that wealth.

It requires a healthy amount of self-awareness among other things.

<comment><USER15> I literally cannot believe you are seriously making this argument.

<comment><USER14> I have seen too many people who were born into wealthy families, "have it made", and yet totally self-destruct in ways that I am not sure I would wish on my worst enemy.

I think another perspective on this issue is worth making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The three-year, $150-million program

Three year. Would you quit your job, and move somewhere cheaper if you knew the money will run out after three years, and you'll have a three year gap in your CV?

Are there really no lottery winners winning lifetime monthly payouts to study?

Because, if you gave me 5x average earnings for three years, I wouldn't quit my job. But if you guaranteed the money for the rest of my life, i'd pursue different activities (fun, good for me, but non-productive for society).

<comment><USER17> > non-productive for society

Why? I feel like a lot of people want to do things that are productive for society, that we have too little of right now. Things like producing art of all forms, building things, increasing their level of communication with those around them, participating in community events and activities, etc. Sure, these things aren't economically productive, but they're still productive for society, which is the gap that I'd like to see filled, whether by UBI or other forms of providing more security for the general population.

<comment><USER18> >Why? I feel like a lot of people want to do things that are productive for society

Most of the things that are productive for society require study and practice of skills that aren't particularly interesting to the vast majority of people.

>Sure, these things aren't economically productive

The vast majority of things that are productive for society are economically productive. That's why people pay for things.

We don't need UBI to go toward funding artists and musicians. That's a waste of resources. Particularly considering that far too many people are likely to choose the easy way out, pursuing "what they love", i.e. soft skills like art and music. You also drastically underestimate the number people who are perfectly content with doing drugs and watching TV/playing video games all day.

Unfortunately while resources are scarce, human nature is such that people require incentives to do the things that need to be done.

<comment><USER19> As a slightly different kind of counter-example, see this recent post about "hard problems": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425745)

IMO, UBI can actually encourage innovation and productive work, on "hard problems" that are not economically viable in a short-enough time-frame or lucrative enough for VCs, but for which society would certainly benefit from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I want UBI and a 30-32 hour work week, so I guess I'm proposing a 20% "disincentivization".

Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? What's the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don't need but we bust our humps for anyway? At this point, more robots don't mean more of the stuff we need. they mean more stuff we _don 't_ need.

<comment><USER21> > Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad?

Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate.

> What's the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don't > need but we bust our humps for anyway?

People dropping out of the workforce doesn't reduce the demand for those goods and services. In fact, giving people free income might increase the demands for goods and services as those people would have extra disposable income.

<comment><USER22> So why don't managers and administrators work to produce things? They seem capable of labor, and they're paid extra, but they work less. Why?

Edit: You downvoted me within a minute of my posting. I asked two questions. If you can't answer them, then it is because you fear their answers.

So let's answer them! Managers and administrators don't produce things because they claim that their positions allow them to optimize labor. Specifically, their bonus pay is based upon the idea that management and administration increases output _proportional to their efficacy_. It follows that we should _measure_ the output of management practices, and compensate managers according to their actual impact.

<comment><USER23> >So why don't managers and administrators work to produce things? They seem capable of labor, and they're paid extra, but they work less. Why?

Management and administration is a skill that not everyone possesses. There are such things as good and bad managers. Just because the work they do doesn't directly output a tangible product doesn't mean it's not valuable. Additionally, it's typically a position with more responsibility as well as accountability which tends to reflect in higher pay. That's not to say it's a perfect system but this is generally how it works.

As for working less, unless you mean they do less physical labour than the people they manage, they often work more. It's unfair to say managers work less because they do management tasks rather than the work their subordinates do. In virtually every job I've had, the more senior the manager, the more hours they worked. Retail especially.

>So let's answer them! Managers and administrators don't produce things because they claim that their positions allow them to optimize labor. Specifically, their bonus pay is based upon the idea that management and administration increases output proportional to their efficacy. It follows that we should measure the output of management practices, and compensate managers according to their actual impact.

They don't just claim their positions optimize labour, it actually does optimize it. I don't understand where this idea that managers are merely irrelevant middlemen who have no impact on the people they manage comes from. Companies seek profit and have no desire to pay people simply for existing, especially if they do not meaningfully contribute to the bottom line. Managers are hired exactly because they do affect the bottom line in a sufficiently meaningful way to justify their presence. And, as with almost any other job, a manager that fails to contribute will be replaced much like any other underperforming employee.

That isn't to say there isn't a thing as too many managers or levels of management or even bad managers that do not get fired, but to sweep them all aside as irrelevant is simply not a realistic interpretation.

<comment><USER22> > Additionally, it's typically a position with more responsibility as well as > accountability which tends to reflect in higher pay.

Who has more responsibility for cooking your burger correctly, the cook or the manager? Who has more responsibility for measuring before cutting, the carpenter or the architect? Who has more responsibility for not leaving PII all over service logs, you or your team leader? I would politely suggest that there are _different_ responsibilities for managers, but not that this somehow removes responsibilities from laborers.

> It's unfair to say managers work less because they do management tasks > rather than the work their subordinates do. In virtually every job I've had, > the more senior the manager, the more hours they worked. Retail especially.

My former CEOs have had enough spare time to show up in the tabloids because they can't stop having sex with their employees or making questionable business decisions with authoritarian governments. I don't have time for sex with my coworkers. Perhaps team leaders or low-level managers have to put in hours, but administrative management definitely does not.

> They don't just claim their positions optimize labour, it actually does > optimize it.

In my lifetime, Linux was born and became not just a serious competitor to proprietary kernels, but supplanted them. Thus, the FLOSS model of a massive global commune of public-domain information and tools is a viable contender, able to compete with any corporation.

When I contributed to Linux, I reported to one of the subsystem lieutenants, and my code was reviewed by them and other contributors to the subsystem. For no money whatsoever, they advised me on which parts of the subsystem were worth contributing to, which outstanding tasks were too hard to tackle, and which documentation to read.

Also in my lifetime, Wikipedia was born, supplanting many proprietary encyclopedias within only a few years, and today it is another shining example of the triumph of the FLOSS model.

When I contributed to Wikipedia, I just did whatever I wanted. Whenever something looked like it could be improved, and I had the time and energy to improve it, I did what had to be done to make things better. If people disagreed, they could undo what I did; if I disagreed with them, then there were community arbiters who could negotiate a solution.

So, like, do managers _actually_ optimize labor to the point where they earn their keep? I can't tell, and I think that we ought to measure.

> I don't understand where this idea that managers are merely irrelevant > middlemen who have no impact on the people they manage comes from.

Oh, it's worse than that; the typical manager has a net _negative_ impact on their direct reports, from what I've seen.

> And, as with almost any other job, a manager that fails to contribute will > be replaced much like any other underperforming employee.

I no longer believe that you have been gainfully employed in a corporate hierarchy. This line gave you away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't think this fits the definition of basic income.

> Whatever income participants earned was deducted from their basic income at > 50 per cent

That is equivalent to a massive 50% tax rate on every dollar earned. It seems to me the whole point of UBI is that its universal and not conditional on how much you earn otherwise.

<comment><USER25> How do you expect UBI to be funded? Either taxes or wars, and we haven't invested very much in our army.

<comment><USER24> UBI would be funded by taxes, duh.

But the funding mechanism isn't at issue here. The point is that for every dollar earned the participants lost 50 cents due to a decrease in support from the basic income. That's a massive disincentive to work.

<comment><USER25> Any practical UBI will require a large increase in taxes. If this isn't an income tax, it will be a payroll or sales tax, which both have a similar effect. A UBI pilot needs to model that tax just as much as the actual money transfer. If a practical UBI system contains a "massive disincentive to work", a model of such a system should contain this as well.

<comment><USER24> You make a good point, a good UBI pilot would incorporate the necessary tax increases.

But that's not what this study did. Crucially, the disincentive to create only applies to low income earners. Under, UBI everyone pays the taxes and thus everyone gets that disincentive to work. If we want to see what UBI would do, we should actually do UBI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > The project worked by recruiting low-income people and couples, offering > them a fixed payment with no strings attached that worked out to > approximately $17,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples.

Why discriminate so heavily against couples?

It creates every incentive to lie about your relationship status. Or to avoid sharing a household altogether, creating greater economic inefficiencies and less built in social support of having a partner.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, that's a means test and breahes the "universal" principle.

<comment> 52-6F-62 The program was never a universal basic income, just a basic income pilot.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My issue, and I only have one, with these pilot projects for basic income is that its not realistic. The people in the project know that it will end at a fixed time, so their actions are different compared to what would happen in a BI/UBI system.

<comment><USER29> We already have a pilot project - the Alaska Permanent Fund, it's been running since 1976.

<comment><USER30> This is very true. Honestly asking: Is it working? I haven't seen lots of data on the topic. I also know the climate and endless day/night issues weigh into this too. I'm curious if academia sees this as a success or not.

<comment><USER31> It's a pretty dismal failure if you compare it to the alternative approach, which is saving the oil revenue for a rainy day.

Norway has saved up $195,000 per citizen. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway)

(Alaska's dividend is also a pittance that likely doesn't even start to offset the higher cost of living there. "Basic income", it's not.)

<comment><USER32> If people wanted to save, why wouldn't they do so privately? (And if they don't want to save, why should the government force them? Isn't a democracy supposed to reflect what the people want?)

Btw, the Norwegian model is partial about avoiding 'Dutch disease'. That's why they invest the money abroad. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease)

<comment><USER31> > If people wanted to save, why wouldn't they do so privately?

The "why" is complicated, but the "they generally don't" is not.

> Isn't a democracy supposed to reflect what the people want?

People wanted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, etc. There aren't many pure democracies out there as pure mob rule isn't super awesome in the long run.

Alaska's dividend is particularly odd given they were proposing 40% budget cuts to the state university system recently in order to keep the fund payouts up.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alaska-politics/deep- budg...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alaska-politics/deep-budget-cuts- put-university-of-alaska-in-crisis-mode-grappling-with-survival-idUSKCN1UH2H0)

> Dunleavy, who took office in December and is an outspoken supporter of U.S. > President Donald Trump, has called for major cuts in higher education, > health care and other social programs as he pushes to sharply raise the > annual oil revenue dividend that Alaska pays to nearly every state resident.

<comment><USER32> In general, just giving people money should be the null hypothesis for how to spend, and any government spending programme should be measured against this 'placebo'. Instead of against the weaker standard of 'does the spending do any good at all?'

I have no clue whether those programs he wants to slash are any good or bad.

Higher education is mostly a signalling game. So very useful for individuals to spend on; but a zero sum game at the level of society.

> People wanted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, etc. There aren't many pure > democracies out there as pure mob rule isn't super awesome in the long run.

I'm not a fan of democracy either. But lots of people are. And it beats some of the alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 There is a lot of misunderstanding in this thread, and a lot of strong opinions.

"UBI" is mentioned repeatedly, but this wasn't a UBI program.

The intention of the program was looking to replace our existing welfare and many Ontario works programs.

Instead, the incoming government (after campaigning on completing the pilot) canceled the program unilaterally, and is looking to outsource our welfare payment programs to foreign companies.

Please read a summary on the program:

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

</comment><comment><USER33> The basic income experiment improved motivation to find a higher paying job for both employed and unemployed members but

> almost three-quarters of the respondents who were employed six months before > receiving basic income were still working while receiving basic income. > Nearly 80 percent of the respondents who were previously unemployed remained > without work during the pilot. About 20 percent found employment.

So the majority of unemployed people stayed unemployed. Of the people employed prior to the pilot, about 23% became unemployed although in some cases it may have been to pursue more education.

> The unemployed group were three times more likely to report their general > health had declined during the pilot as compared to the employed group.

The majority of the unemployed group reported improved general health but a significant portion of the unemployed group became worse off during the pilot.

The majority of participants did report improved well-being through a survey. The survey asked questions about general health, mental health, and financial well-being among others.

If the cost was $150,000,000 for 4,000 people for 3 years, the cost per year should be approx $50,000,000.

The articles states there are 2,000,000 people in poverty in the Ontario province so this program, if scaled up to all those in poverty, would be expected to cost $25,000,000,000 per year from simply scaling up the cost 500x.

</comment><comment><USER34> These studies feel like "free energy machines" that totally work as long as they are plugged into a wall socket, that is: as long as the budget doesn't come from the system itself, you're not testing under anything close to real world conditions.

Otherwise, the results aren't surprising to me. I know very few people that wouldn't keep/be working if they had a UBI (and the ones that wouldn't aren't really working now), but I also know very few people that would keep their current job. UBI, if sustained and sustainable, should work similar to a roaring economy with full employment in that regard: if you want somebody to work in the sewers or garbage collection, you'll have to pay them well.

</comment><comment><USER35> I really, really like the idea of UBI. However, some napkin math:

In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many rich people are there to tax?

<comment><USER36> Doesn't Alaska have basic income? How do they afford it?

<comment><USER37> Possibly a simplified answer, but the way I understand it is that the citizens own the oil rights, and get a cut.

<comment><USER36> That's way it's funded just Norway funds their social programs from oil revenues and tosses the extra in their sovereign wealth fund like Saudi Arabia. Alaska is listed on the wiki page for basic income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The ... program was scrapped by Ontario's ... government in July. ... > minister Lisa MacLeod, said the decision was made because the program was > failing to help people become "independent contributors to the economy."

Basic income is supposed to help people cover their basic needs, not to make them "independent contributors to the economy".

This is doubly the case when we remember that doing volunteer work, social/community organizing, (non-commercialized) art - is not even counted as part of "the economy".

Also, if you're an employee - becoming an employee or continuing to be one - you're not an "independent contributor to the economy". But the vast majority of"contributors to the economy" are wage workers, not independent tradespeople.

</comment><comment><USER38> "nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income." So can we infer that 25% of those working chose to actually quit full time? I think it's safe to say this much reduction in labor availability is not the result the government was hoping for. The state is right, maybe not to call it off prematurely but if these figures would have been the same after the trial the conclusion would have been: they need to look for another policy. A good 'normal' social security policy would result in 0 people quitting and a lot of people getting employed. That's the kind of result the government should want to see before even considering a change.

<comment><USER39> I really don't like using employment as the only valid measure of success. See also David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" essay.

Government could always create jobs, directly or indirectly, and force the unemployed into them, producing something for which there isn't really a demand.

Why were those people quitting their jobs? What were they doing instead? Were they better off? How much did it cost to get those improvements, compared to other ways to get them?

<comment><USER38> People quitting their jobs means a not-quite corresponding economic decline because labor productivity can't change in the short term (not quite because these are lower-productivity jobs). Which means less taxes and thus less money to fund programs like this. But more importantly in an import-free economy, less stuff gets produced so everyone would have to make do with less. That's why it's generally considered important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wish the report broke out the family health benefits based on if the participant gained/lost work did/didn't go to school. (edit: Also provide a category for those that were too ill to work to begin with.) From the conclusion:

>As for the labour market participation of survey respondents, over half indicated working before and during the pilot (54%) while less than a quarter were unemployed before and during the pilot (24%). Slightly less than one- fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%) and a smaller number reported not working before but finding work during the pilot (5%). Just under half of those who stopped working during the pilot returned to school to improve their future employability (40.6%).

>Those who were working both before and during the pilot reported improvements in their rate of pay (37%), working conditions (31%) and job security (27%). The entire survey sample reported other work-related improvements such as searching more easily for a job (61%),staying motivated to find better employment (79%) and starting school or an educational training program (26%).

[https://labourstudies.mcmaster.ca/documents/southern- ontario...](https://labourstudies.mcmaster.ca/documents/southern-ontarios- basic-income-experience.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm not optimistic about basic income for the average person.

That said, I know that if I had basic income, I would spend my time building things for the world. There are lots of side projects that I have worked on or want to work on, but simply haven't been able to get them off the ground because I don't have the time to dedicate enough mental energy. There's too much at stake for me to compromise my current job to work on something that may or may not succeed. I could work on projects after hours or during the weekend, but I've found this to be too spiritually exhausting and simply impractical; I have a hard time maintaining momentum if I can't dedicate more than half my time to something.

If I could get by with the basics and not have to be employed, I could actually get something done that not only might help the world but employ others.

<comment><USER42> I would think that thousands of people like you trying to build something innovative and new would be well worth the investment in those who try and fail or those who are content to "waste it away" (spending their UBI and doing nothing else is still creating economic activity).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> As others have said this study doesn't have enough data to be conclusive. So most people, including me, comment based on which of the following we believe in:

1\. People are inherently lazy. UBI will encourage them to do less. 2\. People are inherently interested in maximizing their potential. UBI will enable them to do more.

I couldn't find any social science research on which of the above is more true. But if we could tell maybe that can help us guess at how many UBI recipients will abuse the system as that seems to be the main concern around UBI.

</comment><comment><USER44> Couldn't you consider older people living on Social Security to be somewhat of a UBI microclimate? I'd imagine you could learn a lot by sending the same questionnaire to them. A lot of the mental factors are the same: desire vs. ability to work, the changes in routine pre and post income, etc.

Also, I wonder if we had UBI there would be facilities that would take care of you if you turned over your income check to them in the same way that some nursing homes do. One wonders how different this would be than a minimum security prison....

<comment><USER42> We already know that social security greatly reduces poverty [https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social- securit...](https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-security- lifts-more-americans-above-poverty-than-any-other-program)

It's just hard to maintain from a balanced budget perspective.

> One wonders how different this would be than a minimum security prison....

The difference is that hopefully you could leave anytime and go to the facility across the street if it has better perks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Basic income makes sense to me as a more effective implementation of welfare, but I personally strongly prefer the negative income tax implementation: [https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/negative- incom...](https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/negative-income-tax- explained)

That seems to address many of the concerns that people are raising in this thread. Namely, it doesn't require you to work, but ensures that you never have a disincentive to work either.

<comment><USER46> Mathematically they're entirely equivalent.

Although I'd be inclined to agree that negative income tax might be the better model, as it gives the most direct control over the net-income vs gross-income curve, and it's the properties of _that_ curve that drives people's behaviour.

For instance the steepness of the curve indicates how much someone is incentivized to earn more (ideally you'd want this to decrease strictly monotonically as people earn more, but somehow this is rather controversial). And its curvature dictates whether a stable or unstable income incurs more tax (this property doesn't seem to be used much but it's still interesting).

One of the problems with income dependent welfare is that it messes up the lower end of the curve, making its slope smaller or even negative. In the worst case it provides a financial barrier to people on welfare to re-enter the work force.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The problem is not the productivity of those on UBI, the elephant in the room is the ideology of humans on this planet who are forced into labor for survival vs those who are percieved as having a free ride.

That schism will exist for any set of parameters and methods of rolling it out. It will not solve class imbalances, it will make them painfully clear.

E.G. for those of us who have wealth, own houses, etc, UBI will make having a job seem like an optional folly to a person with debt and rent to pay. We really don't want a society like that.

</comment><comment><USER48> The problem I have with all of these studies is that they only look at the receiving side of the equation. In other words, their experiment is not a closed system where their subjects have to also provide the free money to each other, which is what UBI proposes.

The results therefor are completely uninteresting -- do people's quality of life go up when you just give them free money, no strings attached? I would certainly expect so! I don't think this is news to anybody. But what about the people paying for the UBI? If their taxes have to go up 3%.. 5%.. 10%.. whatever it is, then any respectable study of the affects of UBI has to at the very least take into account the negative affects on the paying population, if there are any. Otherwise, the conclusions we draw are probably going to be disastrously wrong.

An other way of thinking about it is with a thought experiment. If scientists didn't consider the full affects of their experiments on the entire system as a whole, then they could easily show that entropy decreases over time, or that momentum or energy or mass are not conserved.

So, I'd like to see a study where participants are divided into payers and recipients. Perhaps, 90% are payers and 10% are recipients, and we track not only the benefits in lifestyle that the receiving 10% enjoy, but also look for any drops in quality of life suffered by the 90%.

</comment><comment><USER49> People actually enjoy being useful. We actually enjoy work which preserves dignity and has visible benefit.

This idea that people only do work because they must is flawed. Most citizens are happy when they are doing a reasonable amount of work.

Basic Income is crucial because not all useful work is fairly paid. From parenting to housekeeping, (early) innovating to art - so many beneficial activities suffer because the stress of financial security grinds them out of existence.

</comment><comment><USER50> None of these empirical studies are useful for broad policy decisions. This is a bit like linear regression, there are to many dimensions each matters differently and the same classifier will not hold true if you add more dimensions randomly or remove few.

There is no "core human trend" to all this that will get revealed only by empirical studies but not by logic. (Empirical studies are useful to judge say whether vaping actually makes us more healthy on average. Smoking is so irrational at some level that no amount of logic can help us predict how people behave.)

The economics logic is pretty clear. People will react to incentives. But there is no hard formula that we can apply. Raising minimum wage by few cents will not cause job loss but increasing it by few dollars will. But if you make minimum wage around $100 then whole industry might go underground and no effective jobless but for in government record keeping.

I think effectiveness of UBI will be useful only if we perform far too many experience under far too variable circumstances and then understand the broader trends.

</comment><comment><USER51> People interested in this UBI should look at the Canada Child Benefit (CCB).

It has been described in many ways, but it is essentially a basic income for children (or the parents of children).

It is means tested, which allows for the program to be really generous to low income single parents with young children.

The effect has been a dramatic reduction in poverty -- especially child poverty-- in a couple of years. This is an example of a modest government intervention that will have massive positive impacts in the lives of these families.

More info: [https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/trudeau-s-child-benefit-is- helpi...](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/trudeau-s-child-benefit-is-helping- drive-poverty-to-new-lows-1.1220332)

CCB Calculator: [https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/child- famil...](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/child-family- benefits/child-family-benefits-calculator.html)

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm glad there are experiments like this actually happening for any amount of time. It would be great to see the experiment run it's full course, but it's maybe more surprising to me that it got funded, rather than that it got cancelled. Thinking about how contentious and political funding can be for things we know we need, like schools, it's not very surprising that something expensive and not 100% required ends up on the chopping block.

What do you think it would realistically take to be able to fund UBI (or other experiments) without running the risk of being cancelled? How could it be set up so that next year's political opponent doesn't have the ability to axe a project to make themselves look good?

</comment><comment><USER53> If you raise the bar by $x across the board then doesn't $x gradually becomes the new bottom? If we give everyone $50k / year tax-free, would that just make $50k the new $0 relative to cost of living? The effect being the same as a progressive tax (those who make far more are far less impacted).

If it is basically the same as a progressive tax, then it does strike me as a much simpler way to implement it (instead of complicated varying brackets). However adding it on top of an existing progressive tax scheme is adding another point of complexity right?

Maybe replacing progressive taxes with a flat tax and then adding UBI would be a better / simpler approach.

<comment><USER42> The Harvard economist Greg Mankiew has a talk where he shows how a UBI + flat tax could behave the same as a progressive tax + phased out UBI: [https://taxfoundation.org/universal-basic-income-ubi- means-t...](https://taxfoundation.org/universal-basic-income-ubi-means-tested- transfers/)

<comment><USER53> Seems like it would be more clear and fair all around to have flat tax + UBI so we aren't mixing solutions to different problems.

Rich and poor probably utilize public services around the same amount (roads, police, hospitals, fire departments, etc.). (I'm sure there are counter arguments to this, but if public services we're good enough, can we assume this?). So a flat tax would be fair. It potentially disincentives better public services in more wealthy regions if everyone pays the same (again, sure there are some counter arguments, but it would be better right?).

Then adding UBI is clearly for the purpose of distributing some of the wealth that our society has allowed to be created back to the people in a non- prejudiced way. UBI would have to keep pace with inflation of course. A fixed "thank you for making our rich country work and for buying crap even if don't need it" that everyone gets doesn't seem too controversial.

Other than accountants, tax lawyers, and offshore havens, who gets hurt?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think it's important to study the details of different implementations before making any conclusions, positive or negative, about basic income. Yeah, one of the challenges with a test like this is knowing there's a finite end date.

Another aspect that is often ignored in these discussions is the question of whether recipients continue to be eligible for basic social safety net type of services. I've heard the libertarian approach to basic income is essentially a replacement for the services we consider "welfare", and that's what we're seeing out of the proposal in California where recipients receiving other assistance would be ineligible for this kind of income. Medicaid, for one, is a strike against eligibility.

I haven't looked into Ontario's test in detail, but I doubt the recipients gave up their single-payer healthcare to receive basic income. Also makes me think that BI is only so popular because we rarely dive into the details of what happens to existing social programs, a question that will surely turn the UI/BI discussion more divisive.

</comment><comment><USER55> One argument I never see in UBI discussions is that some people are just bad with money. If you give more money to someone who doesn't budget, save, live within their means, etc, it won't help. There are people who spend beyond their means and then get payday loans. So while it would help some people who would spend wisely, many would not.

You would have payday loans 2.0 where people would borrow against future UBI payments, spend on non necessities, and then be in an probably worse situation compared to the people still receiving UBI.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think a good iterative solution is to keep pay the same but change all laws to pivot around a 32-hour work week instead of 40. This will force employers to hire more people or pay more over time for any work past 32 hours. I think UBI is an extreme solution to the problems that globalization and automation presents. It's better to spread the existing labor. After a certain point we could move down to 24 hour work week finally down to a UBI model when no labor is required.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'd be interested to see what would happen in the tech world if there was a UBI. How many more startups would there be if people could survive on a UBI.... it's essentially like having an unlimited runway to get startups off the ground. Not the "we are going to disrupt entire industries and make billions" type of startups most likely, but still, worthy startups creating chunks of software for smaller markets that take longer to monetize

</comment><comment><USER58> Everyone is talking about "receiving money with no-strings attached" however there is a huge string attached, and everyone knows it very well, especially the researchers, and that is the experiment will end.

This means that the experiment is temporary whereas real UBI would be permanent. A temporary experiment where everyone is aware that it will end cannot simulate the same changes that a permanent experiment would do. But I guess that wouldn't be an experiement anymore.

</comment><comment><USER59> Very promising to read this. Feels like many more studies needed and more data to be collected in order to figure out what is indeed effective and what's not.

Just like the early hype with microfinance decades ago - there was an initial hype cycle, then broader cynicism in the academic community, and ultimately, a data-driven informed understanding of what in fact works (on a more nuanced level - by country, income levels, program design, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER60> Totally off-topic so totally relevant: this is the kind of topic for which I wish each comment had its author's age, location and income displayed.

</comment><comment><USER61> 2 thoughts: * Only ~200 people out of 1000 completed the survey. Many of these people were found by the researchers, so there's likely bias (given the nature of the report) * Basic income's benefits will eventually go away in a society with easy access to credit. Similar to comments by throwaway13337.

</comment><comment><USER62> Shouldn't it be obvious that the people receiving money would become healthier and happier? The question is whether they become healthier and happier enough to offset the cost of making them that way. Are they the best use of that tax money? What's the lifetime return on investment?

</comment><comment><USER63> If you want to make UBI a reality, instead of just talking about it for 50 years, we have to do it from the bottom up.

I supported Yang, my company Qbix even built [https://yang2020.app](https://yang2020.app) for him. But he didn't get anywhere.

We have a project to build UBI from the bottom up, using cryptocurrencies for communities - including local townships and cities like Stockton. Local currencies already exist, including casino chips, disney dollars, berkshares, bristol pounds etc. This just puts them on a blockchain (actually, a new architecture we designed that's far faster than blockchain).

If you are really interested, or want to get involved in some way to make it a reality, I suggest to do the following:

1\. Visit [https://intercoin.org/feature/ubi](https://intercoin.org/feature/ubi) and fill out the form

2\. Visit [https://community.intercoin.org](https://community.intercoin.org) and participate

Or if you are a Javascript developer, contact me. My email is "greg" at that domain, intercoin.org

<comment><USER64> What's to stop UBI from eating into other welfare checks? Or what's stopping renters from simply raising rent 1000 dollars?

<comment><USER42> > from eating into other welfare checks

I think that's the point for most UBI proposals. The most cash-like welfare programs are TANF and SNAP, they pay out on the order of $250 (depending on state), are temporary, hard to obtain, always under danger of being cut, etc.

UBI is an appealing replacement that's universal (more resistant to cuts because it's more popular), pays out more, has no discontinuities which result in welfare traps, etc.

The goal should not be to increase welfare recipients but to increase quality of life and social outcomes. For instance a jobs program like the Green New Deal would probably "eat into welfare checks" as people become ineligible through earnings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Like the brilliant social engineer Jacque Fresco said, we should just give everyone what they need to live for free in what he called a Resource Based Economy. That is even better than giving them money. I highly recommend his book "The best that money can't buy".

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm not sure anything was proven about people continuing to work during a temporary basic income study. If the basic income provided is temporary as part of a study, why would I leave my job when I know I'm going to need the income from my job after the study is over?

</comment><comment><USER67> Why is there a focus on people working at all? I thought one of the reasons UBI was so interesting is that people who are stupid, lazy, incompetent or just too obnoxious to work in customer service can stay at home and out of my way.

</comment><comment><USER68> More than universal basic income, I would love to also see universal basic services. A guarantee of some sort that the basic income will cover a bundle of basic things such as housing, transport, food, healthcare, utilities.

</comment><comment><USER69> Well I for one voted for Andrew Yang. #CouldhavehadYang. Still, we need more of these pilots, but unfortunately pilots limited in geography, time, and universality cannot capture the knock on effects of a universal UBI.

</comment><comment><USER70> This misses the point entirely. UBI is the democratic socialist version of The Great Leap Forward. Its an attempt to better human existence via direct government intervention, something which rarely works as intended (assuming you're counting net gains). I'm pretty pragmatic, (and libertarian) so if we're going to start down this path let's skip the faux capitalism and get straight to the bread and games part. The government _already_ has a near limitless amount of power to effect changes in the economic structure of the country, and this is where they've gotten us. Going further down that path seems a bit daft.

I realize part of this problem is that we've moved into being a post-frontier world, where there are few, if any, places left where people can go to govern themselves, but I don't see why the lack of empty unclaimed space should lead to the government taking money from some citizens to buy the loyalty of other citizens.

</comment><comment><USER71> As a side point - whatever happened to the YC research basic income study? After great fanfare 4 years ago, it's been very quiet the past year.

</comment><comment><USER72> Thanks, please give me my money, I will settle in Thailand and will never work again. I'd rather learn Chinese or violin or read books.

</comment><comment><USER73> The end does not justify the means. Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified. Tax-funded UBI is theft, slavery, and extortion.

However, if a billionaire wishes to privately sponsor UBI, this is a completely different story in charity and example that should be regarded. It's important to differentiate between the two, but unfortunately most UBI schemes refer to extortion, not charity.

<comment><USER74> > Tax-funded UBI is theft, slavery, and extortion.

Our law creates both property rights _and_ taxes. Taxes aren't theft because, by law, that money is actually the government's property. If you want individualistically overrule our law to make taxes theft, I might as well do the same to make your property mine.

<comment><USER75> The notion of property rights is not created by the law, but a law of nature, a concept intuitively understood by human beings. The same goes for theft. The law only _adopted_ these concepts, but it _created_ taxes. It is not intuitively obvious that some entity is entitled to a percentage of the money you're earning.

You can change the law any way you want, but you're not changing the underlying laws of nature, and they allow you to make a case that taxes are theft. Whether that's actually true is then of course debatable and depends on a lot of variables, but saying that someone else's property should arbitrarily be yours immediately contradicts those fundamental laws.

<comment><USER74> > The notion of property rights is not created by the law, but a law of > nature, a concept intuitively understood by human beings. The same goes for > theft. The law only adopted these concepts, but it created taxes. It is not > intuitively obvious that some entity is entitled to a percentage of the > money you're earning.

Nope, sorry. You might be on to something if you limited yourself to the "foreign relations" of a community, but we're talking about _intra_ community relations here. If you're looking for laws of nature, _socially obligatory sharing_ is far more fundamental and important than any primal notions of exclusivist private property and theft.

Concepts like private property, theft, _and taxation_ do have primitive antecedents, but you're guilty of anachronism if you think those antecedents make some modern ideological notion a kind of fundamental law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> So most people 'kept working' but 25% quit, I think that kind of validates that a lot of people will quit, which is the concern. 25% is a lot. It'd be interesting to see numbers from those who were not employed, i.e. how many gained employment.

The bits about 'having to drop future plans' isn't fair. Of course, people will have to adjust after losing a major source of income.

<comment><USER77> to be fair, a lot of people are stuck in jobs that don't give them the benefits they want, don't pay them enough, or just don't suit them very well but they can't quit and get a new job because they aren't paid enough for that. UBI gives people a chance to quit and not immediately be on the streets. This also creates more competition for employers to win over employees instead of creating wage-slaves. I doubt that's what everybody who quit here did, but it is part of the idea of UBI.

<comment><USER76> "don't give them the benefits they want, don't pay them enough, or just don't suit them very well "

80-90% of the population would fit into this category.

You are not entitled to social services because 'you don't like your job'.

<comment><USER42> Yea the basic income in the study seems to be means tested so it might incentivize people to quit.

Just want to point out that a universal income would be constant regardless of job held, so there's no incentive to quit. If the UBI amount is tuned correctly, then those who don't have a job can subsist long enough to find a better job, which I'd posit is a net boon for our economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> relevant: [https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lac...](https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lack_of_character_it_s_a_lack_of_cash?language=en)

</comment><comment><USER78> I wouldn't keep working on basic income. I'd stay home and play videogames.

</comment><comment><USER79> Are trust fund kids an example of what happens when people are given an unconditional income?

<comment><USER80> No because their income it not Basic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Alternative headline:

25% of people receiving free government money quit their jobs

</comment><comment><USER82> >The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income.

In other words, over 25% of them stopped working. This is a pretty big contradiction to the title.

</comment><comment><USER83> How long did this run?

<comment> 52-6F-62 Not even a year! It was scheduled, funded, planned and then cancelled by the newly elected provincial government after they campaigned on keeping the program to its completion.

It was designed to run 3 years, and people had barely begun implementing the plans they wanted over that time.

IIRC some had taken the money and used it to improve their current lives, others left jobs to pursue schooling or start businesses. Those plans didn't get to come to fruition because of the drastic about-face by the gov.

A summary on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Project)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> alternative headline: 25% of workers quit their job after receiving free government handouts

</comment><comment><USER84> Things like Kubernetes probably exist to employ engineers to have to do something and to contra basic income.

</comment><comment><USER85> No one seems to address the idea that coercion is necessary to force people to pay for this, something i do not wish to do, and many people feel the same. It has already been shown this disincentives work, Those of us that do work and are taxed to pay for the already massively wasteful welfare state resent being enslaved even further to pay for the errors of socialist re-distributive schemes.

<comment><USER42> You're already being coerced to pay for social services, I wouldn't compare UBI to an anarcho-capitalist paradise, but the current situation, and many UBI proposals are much better than the status quo.</comment></comment>


NameCheap.com massive spam with link to IP: 22.214.171.124 - <AUTHOR>

I've been dealing with NameCheap.com for over a two weeks regarding there IP address being used within spam emails like below. Does anyone know how or who to contact to shut down that IP or report NameCheap for not doing anything?
http://i.imgur.com/UOiho58.jpg http://i.imgur.com/iU8yrAZ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/vpbkEOm.jpg http://i.imgur.com/iD0iJWo.jpg
These are their canned responses when emailing firstname.lastname@example.com about the issue:
1. As the reported server is used solely for forwarding purposes, which is not the abuse itself and there is a lot of legitimate traffic, we cannot disable it.
2. However, as we can see the domain name is listed in SpamHaus DBL. Since we consider SpamHaus to be a trusted organization, we opened a case regarding the domain name. Please allow about 48 hours for our further investigation.
3. While the domain names reported are registered with Namecheap, they are hosted with another company. So we cannot check the logs for the domains and confirm if they are involved in sending unsolicited bulk emails.
Thanks for the advice! <comment><USER2> It is their IP because they're doing domain forwarding (via HTTP headers). Someone registered a domain with Namecheap and Namecheap offer free web- forwarding (as opposed to setting up normal A records and pointing at a web server directly).

So as they themselves told you, no spam or phishing content is being hosted on a Namecheap server. They could stop forwarding, but since the spammers are paying them to do that (and nothing about the forwarding is inherently illegal in its own right) that is a grey area.

Ultimately why don't you contact the actual host of the sites rather than picking on Namecheap randomly? Seems like domain forwarding is barely involved in the whole thing. You bring up the IP like that is meaningful, if you actually visited the links you'd see that all that IP does it give you a HTTP redirect.

They would be no more or less involved if the client had just used A records or CNAMES.</comment>


Ask HN: How come hardware engineer's salary is declining? - <AUTHOR>

As a software engineer hardware always looked hardware. And for years the salaries of HW engIneers was higher. Now it seems that not only is HWE salaries are declining but also that SWEearn more. Is there a smart explanation for that? <comment><USER3> There are simply less jobs. Hardware companies generally were founded in the 80s and before - and are virtually spinning the same product today. Rather than taking a brilliant new idea, they tweak a legacy product. This doesn't require attracting that many good engineers. You just need a few, and the rest get shuttled into support positions. It's not all their fault though - <USER2> software you can hope for a hit on a young engineers energy and hipness. In hardware you get to pay for an enormous investment and experience matters. Innovation doesn't pay off as much, because of the cost and the prevalence of fast-follower low cost copy cats. Whereas in software being first pays off to capture the users. For a hardware product a consumer considers price first.

<comment><USER4> Another way to interpret this comment is that NRE is high so no one innovates. And NRE is high because no one innovates in making NRE not high.

Sounds like space flight to me.

<comment><USER5> NRE?

<comment><USER3> Non-Recurring Engineering (cost). It's a common acronym for manaufacturing, meaning any upfront design costs. Often a fee attached to a custom product.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! I should have been able to infer that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The culture of hardware engineering stayed stuck in the bottomless pit of proprietary design and secrecy. Engineers come into bloom between 15 and 22, and if they don't have open access to information, it just won't happen. I have a feeling we will see a resurgence in hardware soon though, with things like the Raspberry Pi and Arduino setting teen hardware junkies' brains alight...

</comment><comment><USER7> Speculation: we're part of the general economy. Corporations and wealthy individuals are getting better at keeping more of the money they make, partly by hiring less of the general population, partly by government tax breaks, and partly by offshoring their cash.

That leaves a smaller slice of the pie to be directly shared with us and the general population, and it also means that less money is circulating through the economy. Less money, less Slurpies consumed, less Slurpies sold, fewer jobs and smaller salaries, less demand for everything. I think.

<comment><USER8> Spot on. Outsource everything, pay less, keep more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How large is your sample to draw those conclusions?

But I'd say it's because the hw eng that belong to unions are all retiring/dying.

<comment><USER10> Its REALLY easy to hate unions, because they seem like money-grubbing fools on TV. However, as a young engineer at a Major DoD contractor back in the day, I shook my head in wonder at what the unions had clearly done for us in beating our path to more money (never been a union member, btw).

Our culture today despises unions to our detriment. Bargaining power isn't inherently evil! BUT, I would argue by anecdotal observation that it turns out that the more that said bargaining power concentrates wealth, the more evil it actually is.

<comment><USER9> To have any bargaining power you need either unions or open salary information.

We have neither. That's why it was so easy for someone without scrupulous like jobs to drive salaries to wherever he wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hardware gets more and more "exchangeable", abstracted and virtualized. It doesn't matter as much as in earlier years if your platform is a Intel x86 with AMD GPU or a AMD x86 with NVIDIA GPU, where you needed HW-near experience for development.

Modern OSes are a layer of abstractions, and each layer reduces the cost of implementation of software.

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't forget that many large-company positions - HW or SW - are being filled in design centers in India, China, E.Europe and elsewhere. Yes, there is an income difference. But their economies are pumping out hundreds of thousands of engineering grads. And HW design in the U.S. is definitely seen as less glamorous.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hardware is getting commoditized and software is taking over the world.

</comment><comment><USER4> Aside from the business cycle reasons - Being a young chip designer, I'm severely disappointed in the hardware engineering culture. It is too hard to get ideas through anyone who is over 35 years old. Everyone thinks Perl is really great and Verilog is good enough. Even though both suck.

Basically, the older generation has killed the industry. Much like they did to aerospace.

The HW engineering firms should be leveraging SW open source projects and adapt them as needed. For example, why have an in-house Perl scripting framework on top of Verilog. Use Django or something similar instead.

The industry is too risk averse and overall poised.

<comment><USER12> As an ex-program manager on major chip projects, I would be astonished if open-source alternatives exist for major design tools. GMs can complain all they want about seat license costs, but they will stick with a proven tool until somebody proves they can meet the same quality metrics.

<comment><USER4> That is what I'm complaining about. HW engineers are excellent at hardware concepts. Terrible at other trends.

Why did IBM give the operating system business to Microsoft? An attitude problem. Why is HW consistently a shrinking industry? An Attitude problem. Open source nothing. Keep using the same technology as 1980.

"Oh, what the hell, our salaries are going down?" "We can't keep up with project schedule because we're using the same concepts as we did on exponentially less complex chips 20 years ago? It's not our fault."

It's an attitude problem. HW isn't the big brother it used to be. It's the little brother. It needs to look at what big brother software is doing to be so successful. And copy it. Open source tools/languages. Leverage existing software projects instead of inventing our own everything. Companies need to sponsor these tools/give-back to these projects.

Stuck with (System) Verilog? Fine. What would software do. Create a framework on top of old technology (HTML/Verilog) to make it less painful (like Rails). Create a language that interacts well with the old language (Java/JVM/Scala/Closure).

Down vote me all you want for my surliness. It's true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its a gold-rush to write mediocre software to get millions in funding and eventually be acquired. Rinse and repeat.</comment>


A.nnotate.com – annotate and export PDFs - <AUTHOR> http://a.nnotate.com/pdf-annotation.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Submitting because I was very impressed with this tool. It's worth logging in - the interface and features are much better than the limited website suggests.

Also submitting though because the actual marketing website almost completely put me off at first - I nearly clicked away instantly. This shows that a great tool with a great UI can really suffer if its marketing materials aren't up to scratch.

I get that disliking a site design is a matter of preference, but the difference between the two halves is remarkable. Given that both are web-based I'm not even sure how this can happen.</comment>


Amazon: More aggressive than you think. Map of acquisitions & investments  - <AUTHOR> http://www.meettheboss.com/amazon-acquisitions-and-investments-zappos.html?

<comment><USER2> Cute design ideas still require some semblence of competent execution. The "lines" are completely random. Of course they're going to be arbitrary, but at least try to be thematic about it.

It's missing the AbeBooks acquisition, which is a hell of a lot more relevant than most of the stuff that's on here.

Investments are not acquisitions. Amazon had a significant investment in BillMeLater, but eBay still was able to acquire it. Oh, they missed that one too.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. This is a singularly bad design.

They invested in Delicious too, but probably too small to show on this chart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks incomplete. I used to work for Amie Street, a startup whose series A was financed by Amazon... and it doesn't show up on the map.</comment>