Gradify turns the most prominent colors in an image into a CSS gradient - <AUTHOR> http://gradifycss.com/ <comment><USER2> Really nice effect - I can see this being used on galleries / profiles, etc. What is with the weird scroll behaviour on this page, though? It will refuse to stay where I put it and keeps jumping to odd snap points after a few seconds. Annoying.

<comment><USER3> The hostile scrolling on the page makes it effectively unusable on mobile

<comment><USER4> This is why no one downloads the band _Hostile Scrolling_ 's app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was just excited when I heard Paint will build a gradient if you shrink a two-tone image to a pixel width and re-expand:

[http://www.instructables.com/id/Gradients-in-MIcrosoft- Paint...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Gradients-in-MIcrosoft-Paint/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you have permissions to use those images?

[https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/lightofthewild/5611692322/](https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/lightofthewild/5611692322/)

The left margin is broken on Chrome on iOS. [http://m.imgur.com/94fzJrc](http://m.imgur.com/94fzJrc)

The scrolling behaviour make the page impossible to use. The scrolling, and I say this as politely as I can, is fucking horrible and makes me want to smash my phone to little pieces.

Sorry for the negative tone. The actual thing looks cool. It'd be nice to see these gradients being used more often.

<comment><USER7> > Do you have permissions to use those images?

Wow, you're quite right - there's no attribution on any of the photos. Also, since they're re-hosted onto tumblr it's hard to tell where they came from.

It's possible that the author may have taken all of the photos themself, but unlikely given the example which you've pointed out. It's also possible that the author has sought private permission to use the photos, but you'd probably expect some attribution if that were the case.

<comment><USER8> I think it would fall under fair use. This is a demo for an open source project.

<comment><USER9> non-commercial use does not equal fair use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why does the page keep jumping around?

</comment><comment><USER11> You could blur the image as well. I have tried a similar approach with blur quite awhile ago: [http://www.cssdesk.com/VYN67](http://www.cssdesk.com/VYN67) Change the image URI to see it work on another image.

<comment><USER12> The point with this method is that the gradient acts as a fill before the image is loaded.

<comment><USER13> Which one could combine with blurring.

Progressive JPEG with a blur filter depending on how much has loaded yet?

That would be the best solution, probably.

<comment><USER11> It's an interesting idea to put into a JPEG decoder directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great idea!

Found a bug - it doesn't follow the "orientation" property of the image, resulting in photos and gradients that are rotated.

I don't do Python myself, but using PerlMagick, the fix is $magick->AutoOrient();

<comment><USER15> that property is non-standard. Many viewers don't respect it. So calling it a bug is a bit much in my opinion. More of an RFE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> To fix the horrible scroll (never, ever interfere with the scroll functionality!!!) add this in the console / scratchpad etc.:

window.addEventListener("scroll", function(ev) { ev.stopPropagation(); }, true);

</comment><comment><USER17> Is the author of this around? There's a rather prominent spelling mistake in the first sentence; it says "prominant" where it should say "prominent" :)

<comment><USER18> cheers for the heads up, spelling ain't my forte!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pretty!

Fix the scroll highjacking please.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice tool. Looking at devtools, it generates a gradient in each direction (left, right, top, bottom). Each of these gradients is a single color transitioning from fully-transparent to fully-opaque.

The algorithm looks to be breaking the image into the 4 quadrants and finding the dominant color in each quadrant (eliminating any shades that are too gray). e.g. to get the color for the left-to-right gradient, it finds the most dominant color on the right of the image.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is great for photos but not that useful with product images surrounded by white space as that white space becomes a colour.

<comment><USER18> actually has a minimum distance from white, white is accepted if there's literally nothing else

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Biggest site that uses this technique is pinterest. It's a pretty crucial UI "trick", especially over slow internet connections. A user's pinterest home page is mostly images, and if they didn't use this dominant color trick, the page would look awful until things loaded.

</comment><comment><USER15> > the 4 most common colors

maybe it would be better to weight pixels by the energy density of the image region so that backgrounds (sky, walls) don't dominate the resultant colors over the (usually more significant) foreground/detailed objects

<comment><USER18> I have a few todo improvements, but if you'd like to see this one tested/implemented, add as an issue on the github!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was going to implement this myself in the future as I need something similar. The main difference is that I thought of using an inline svg to have more flexibility in the way gradients look and are positioned.

</comment><comment><USER24> Tried it out on an image that would be used on a realtor website. Doesn't look too good in my opinion.

[http://i.imgur.com/WrbsRcM.png](http://i.imgur.com/WrbsRcM.png)

<comment><USER18> the js version (that example) isn't as good as the py version

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Would using a really large order polynomial be any more help? For example a 10th order best fit?

<comment><USER26> Larger order polynomials usually just give you more `swing'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why don't you just post the 5 or 10 lines of code you're using to create the effect?

<comment><USER28> They are one click away and more like 200 lines:

[https://github.com/fraser- hemp/gradify/blob/master/gradify.p...](https://github.com/fraser- hemp/gradify/blob/master/gradify.py)</comment></comment>


Scientists' warning on affluence - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y <comment><USER6> We already have the technology to build net zero carbon buildings. But the building trade is both notoriously conservative and extremely effective at lobbying to protect their profits (at least in the UK).

Superinsulated, almost airtight houses with ground and air source heat pumps and solar PV should be mandatory, as should banning of all in home boilers in new builds.

That's all easily achievable even without some of the recent novel inventions such as engineered wood: [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476)

We have to stop treating the atmosphere as a free line of credit with no limit that we can just dump all our externalities into, or we'll find out very soon that there is no such thing as an externality at planetary scale. We're all in the same hermetically sealed box, breathing each other's farts.

Sorry for the rant. It's hard to stop once the despair creeps in.

<comment><USER7> It's more cost effective to use solar hot water heaters than crazy amounts of insulation in a wide range of climates. Which is one reason regulations should focus on outcomes not methiods.

<comment><USER8> How do you measure the outcomes? It seems easier to me to change regulations depending to local climate.

<comment><USER9> In this particular case - taxing [carbon footprint of] electricity at source and letting the market do it's magic.

As a bonus point: taxes can be redistributed equally to citizens so it's revenue neutral.

<comment><USER8> I'm in favor of a carbon tax, but I believe it would need to be too high at this point to effect change with the necessary speed. Imo a combination of price signals and regulation is needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the article is right. Vaclav Smil has pointed out that today the share of fossil fuels, at about 90% of global energy consumed[1] is actually higher than in 2000, and falling at a snails pace.

There is a worrying trend emerging, fuelled by the tech industry of performative environmentalism that seeks to promise absolution like the church did by buying Tesla's and biodegradable cups while the real-world impact is marginal while leaving the fundamental flaws of the system untouched. We won't consume ourselves out of the doghouse.

Russ Ackoff in a great talk about systems thinking[2] once pointed out a few salient things

1\. Counter to intuition one does not improve a system by merely removing deficiencies. Doing away with what you don't want doesn't get you what you want.

2\. Incrementalism doesn't solve fundamentally new problems, rearranging deck chairs on the titanic is pointless, and people confuse efficiency with effectiveness. Doing the wrong thing right is worse than doing the right thing wrong.

3\. One must recognise that like an architect, a designer does not design rooms independently of the house. One starts with the house, and only changes parts as to improve the overall functioning of the system, never the parts alone.

This is what needs to be applied to modern environmentalism. Woke green consumerism and tech worship is useless. The entire global system needs to be redesigned, instead of trying to fix individual parts. We need to think in holistic terms rather than trying to remove individual problems.

[1][https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/meet-vaclav-smil- man...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/meet-vaclav-smil-man-who-has- quietly-shaped-how-world-thinks-about-energy)

[2][https://youtu.be/OqEeIG8aPPk](https://youtu.be/OqEeIG8aPPk)

<comment><USER11> I grew up in the 1970's when environmentalism was just getting started (I can recall the 4th or 5th Earth Day[0] being celebrated). Back then the concern was population growth[1] and the consumption of resources.

Fossil fuels were a major concern then as well, mostly because of automobile exhaust. During the current pandemic, people have posted before/after photos of their cities. But places like Los Angeles had smog so thick that the skyline was hidden[2]. Since then, better engine controls and catalytic converters have reduced emissions to amazingly low levels. If you're behind an older car that has a carburetor some time, you'll definitely notice the smell of raw gasoline. Imagine millions of cars emitting that!

There's no question that the more people, the more resources get consumed. However what is an important question is: Is world population growth exceeding our ability to engineer lower per-person resource usage? Right now, that curve has positive slope, and we need to get it to a slight negative slope, without losing the advantages of a technological civilization.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth) [2] [https://timeline.com/la-smog- pollution-4ca4bc0cc95d](https://timeline.com/la-smog-pollution-4ca4bc0cc95d)

<comment><USER12> > However what is an important question is: Is world population growth > exceeding our ability to engineer lower per-person resource usage?

That's a trick question. The answer is that human population increases by about 1.1% a year; and independently, individual human consumption increases exponentially as well.

The exact rate depends on the specific resource or commodity being consumed of course.

Now, you're right that technology allows individual things to be manufactured more effectively, with less waste. What you miss is that this causes people to buy a lot more things, so it more than cancels out.

I spent some time looking at this, and I found a few resources that had decreased consumption. Freon is the most obvious one, but it's important to notice that it was replaced by another safer but rather similar gas - <USER2> material consumption did not decrease.

Even things like biofuels - wood, dung, or other biological products that are burned for heat. They used to be nearly all the world's energy production - now they're a tiny part but on their own, their growth is now and has always been exponential. It's just that fossil fuels grew much faster - we never cut down on anything.

We need to use less of absolutely everything.

For us not to such the world dry, we individually and as a species need to decrease our consumption by as much an order of magnitude. If we are not to decimate our biosphere, we need both far more efficient manufacturing, but also _a lot less_ manufacturing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's sad to see something like this in Nature. Science can tell us what actions will lead to what outcomes, but it can't tell us what outcomes we should aim for. Different people have different preferences, and there's certainly no objective measure of the value of preserving the environment vs people's quality of life.

Trying to push a certain set of values like this risks giving science a bad name in the public eye, and making the public less willing to accept actual scientific facts. Because many people lack the ability to distinguish between facts and opinions in scientific publishing, so they just end up distrusting all science.

<comment><USER14> > Science can tell us what actions will lead to what outcomes

That's what this paper does.

It seems like you may have missed the part that this situation is not sustainable, as well as the prior science that establishes that quality of life depends on the environment, which is why many people care about phenomena like polution and climate change.

> Recent scientists' warnings confirm alarming trends of environmental > degradation from human activity, leading to profound changes in essential > life-sustaining functions of planet Earth

It's going to be hard to argue that the life-sustaining capacity of Earth is not a universal subjective value of all life but the paper isn't arguing the opposite anyway.

This paper simply identifies causes contributing to the unsustainablity of the current system and makes some proposals to mitigate or eliminate it. It's analyzing and providing options.

Make sure you understand what unsustainability means as far as consequences. Moreover, that's hardly a subjective value judgement. It's simply a measurable property of systems.

<comment><USER13> >It seems like you may have missed the part that this situation is not sustainable, as well as the prior science that establishes that quality of life depends on the environment, which is why many people care about phenomena like polution and climate change.

It seems you missed the fact that many people don't care about sustainability, and are unwilling to accept even a small reduction in quality of life in the name of the environment. Clearly their values differ from the values of the paper's authors regarding what is "necessary societal change".

>It's going to be hard to argue that the life-sustaining capacity of Earth is not a universal subjective value of all life but the paper isn't arguing the opposite anyway.

If we look at sustainability from the perspective of "preserving human existence as long as possible", then the only long-term solution is expanding to other planets/solar systems. The more limits there are on economic growth, the longer this will take. Similarly, life-extension technology will allow people to extend their lives longer; the slower the economy grows, the longer it will take to develop this. The paper didn't even consider this, or any other downsides of limiting economic growth.

>Make sure you understand what unsustainability means as far as consequences. Moreover, that's hardly a subjective value judgement. It's simply a measurable property of systems.

The language and tone used in the paper is not in the format "if we want to increase sustainability, this is what we should do", it's in the format "this is what we should do". For example: "economic systems that exploit nature and humans" \- that's clearly a value judgement, not science.

<comment><USER14> I feel like you didn't read what I wrote or the article: Life itself depends on sustainability.

> If we look at sustainability from the perspective of "preserving human > existence as long as possible", then the only long-term solution is > expanding to other planets/solar systems.

Or not have a system of infinite growth at all.

> The language and tone used in the paper is not in the format "if we want to > increase sustainability, this is what we should do"

It's literally what the paper says.

> "economic systems that exploit nature and humans"

This is also objectively measurable. They're talking about externalities. Is economics also a bunch of value judgements now too?

<comment><USER13> >Life itself depends on sustainability.

"Life" isn't a sentient being with values, people are. Humanity makes decisions based on some aggregate of the preferences of living humans. If most humans want to enjoy a good life now at the expense of the future environment, there's no objective standard to say they're wrong. It's a classic argument: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument) , as noted by Sextus Empiricus, the founder of empiricism. There's no way to empirically justify a moral judgement.

>Or not have a system of infinite growth at all.

This betrays a misunderstanding of what growth means in an economic context. If your barber learns how to cut your hair twice as fast, that's economic growth. If the paperboy adopts a more efficient paper route to deliver papers faster, that's economic growth. If enough paperboys adopt more efficient routes, that shows up in GDP growth.

>This is also objectively measurable. They're talking about externalities. Is economics also a bunch of value judgements now too?

Yes of course it is. It's based on utilitarianism ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism)), basically the philosophy that there is some quantitative form of value that we should aim to maximise. That's why there are different schools of economics: they disagree on the foundations.

<comment><USER14> > This betrays a misunderstanding of what growth means in an economic context.

Nope, you're just ignoring the limits of optimization.

<comment><USER13> We're so far away from those limits for them to be irrelevant to any practical considerations. Compared e.g. the performance per unit energy of the human brain to that of the best current CPU designs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between affluence and environmental impact recently. It seems that in general, the richer you become, the more garbage and pollution you tend to produce. I am far from being rich myself but compared to people from less affluent countries I have a lot of free income, and while I try to reduce my environmental impact I have to say it's worrying how much trash I have produced and how many resources I have used over the years: Electronics, furniture, clothes, travel, food, .... If I was more affluent this would only become worse I suppose.

I think the problem is that a rational person (in our current definition) is incentivized to spend most of the available income/wealth during his/her lifetime, so as peoples income grows they find new ways to spend it: Get a new car every two years, buy a weekend house, go on expensive travels, buy lots of expensive clothes or furniture, always have the newest tech gadgets, etc.. All this incurs more pollution and resource usage. I don't see how we can break this cycle without fundamentally changing our economic system, as right now almost everything is optimized to continuously increase output and create more consumption.

<comment> tokamak-teapot Also as humans get richer, they almost never consider themselves 'rich'. If you're born into affluence, it's almost impossible to comprehend this.

I've watched people living in a rich western democracy, who are rich by the standards of their host country, travel to India and see the grinding poverty of so many people's lives. Their assessment was not that they themselves are rich, but that those people are poor.

It's also incredibly difficult for those living higher up on Maslow's hierarchy to see that it's their entire level of society that is - <USER5> aggregate - a force for negative environmental impact. Individuals won't admit to this, and will instead say it's fine because they sort their recycling and only have one car and... but the macro scale is ignored because the self- defense mechanism won't allow it to be fully understood or admitted to.

Those who manage to admit and realise this is a problem may try to help - <USER4> at least not contribute - by doing their best, but usually this means keeping as clean as they can personally, while still taking advantage of most of the trappings of their bubble. Il not saying they're bad people or they shouldn't make an effort, but ten people picking up litter versus ten million dropping it is never going to work out.

<comment><USER13> >It's also incredibly difficult for those living higher up on Maslow's hierarchy to see that it's their entire level of society that is - <USER5> aggregate - a force for negative environmental impact. Individuals won't admit to this

Or maybe they just don't care? It's not exactly a stretch to imagine people value their wellbeing in the present over some impact to the environment. Most people don't even care about other people enough to give to charity, let alone care about the environment.

<comment> tokamak-teapot I'm sure if they were able to understand their own position - and had enough confidence that it was possible for them to contribute to realistic change for the better - that they would show that they do actually care.

Until there is understanding and some route to channeling the will of the larger populations of affluent societies, however, I think we are stuck in a downward spiral.

The only realistic scenario I can conceive of is that eventually enough damage will reflect back on the affluent to effect a change in mindset. I regretfully believe that the poor all over the world will suffer a great deal before this begins to occur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Model around consumption should get deeply revised if we want to leave the world in a good state for our children.

Refurbish rather than build new buildings

Build sturdy hardware with replaceable parts

Build from natural materials as much as possible, and invent a new concrete

Stop polluting by sprinkling deadly stuff to grow crops and make things

Develop recycling aggressively (98%)

Stop using oil derivates everywhere

Stop using nuclear fission as a power source

...

Problem is that it is antipodal with current economical growth models

<comment><USER17> You had me until "stop using nuclear fission..."

<comment><USER16> If everyone agreed on everything, the world would be less fun ! My main problem with nuclear fission is that we generate a lot of waste that is almost impossible to dispose of and very dangerous. We don't even know, in case of a civilization breakdown, how people would manage the situation if knowledge was lost. [0]

edit : ray of hope here [1b]

Currently there has been many accidents with nuclear power, and we don't know how to manage those. Fukushima is still releasing lots of radioactivity in the sea. Yet radio activity about this is close to zero. [1]

And new ways to tap into fission power (pressurized reactors) are dangerous and hard to build.

Yet, I shall agree with you, that there is no definite solution to the energy problem, consuming less would be a good start.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_\(film\))

[1] [http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13228942](http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13228942)

[1b] [https://futurism.com/the-byte/nobel-prize-lasers-destroy- nuc...](https://futurism.com/the-byte/nobel-prize-lasers-destroy-nuclear- waste)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Any transition towards sustainability can only be effective if far-reaching lifestyle changes complement technological advancements."

How can they possibly know this for sure? My intuition is that sustainable energy, over the long term, will lead to more consumption and improved lifestyles.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is not a good article and it has a very patronizing/inflammatory title. There is only 1 figure and that one is , if anything , hopeful. It shows that GDP growth has bent the curve of CO2 since the 2010s. They seem to be arguing about what was happening in the 20th century without taking into account current trends?

This is supposed to be a review, but it doesn't really review much, they make various statements with references, but they often do not state the facts which they are referring to. There are also grammatical errors

An example: > The positional consumption behaviour of the super-affluent thus drives consumption norms across the population, for instance through their excessive air travel, as documented by Gössling73.

That Gosling73 study is a 2017 study of 10 celebrities including Meg whitman, emma watson, felix von derleden and Karl lagerfeld (are these people considered influential?) Celebrities and the "affluent" are different things. Plus i believe most air travel in the past 10 years was "influenced" by middle-to-low income influencers on youtube/instagram/etc. Importantly, that paper presents conjectures but no data that people are actually following the flight patterns of celebrities.

> Whilst a number of countries in the global North have recently managed to > reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while still growing their economies30, it is > highly unlikely that such decoupling will occur more widely in the near > future, rapidly enough at global scale and for other environmental impacts

Why not? Every technology that the west built was quickly adopted by the rest of the world. What kind of inane/ahistorical statement is that ?

<comment><USER20> >Why not? Every technology that the west built was quickly adopted by the rest of the world. What kind of inane/ahistorical statement is that ?

Those countries pay high costs for their energy because their alternative energy sources are in no way cost competitive yet. They can afford those high costs. Less rich countries will never adopt fancy, expensive technologies if they're not cost effective.

India and most of Asia are building coal plants as we speak, because they're cost effective (to them). They've also, at most COP meetings, pushed back any initiative to tax carbon emissions, as they see that (probably justly) only as a brake on their development. Their social stability would fall apart quickly if they can't deliver the economic development.

For these reasons, the majority of future carbon emissions are projected to occur in Asia and Africa. There's very little Western countries can do, except some novel form of imposing their will on other countries, which would quickly and justly be denounced as neo-colonialist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> To highlight some important elements of their work:

A group of researchers, led by a UNSW sustainability scientist, have reviewed existing academic discussions on the link between wealth, economy and associated impacts, reaching a clear conclusion: technology will only get us so far when working towards sustainability—we need far-reaching lifestyle changes and different economic paradigms.

In their review, published today in Nature Communications and entitled Scientists' Warning on Affluence, the researchers have summarized the available evidence, identifying possible solution approaches.

"Recent scientists' warnings have done a great job at describing the many perils our natural world is facing through crises in climate, biodiversity and food systems, to name but a few," says lead author Professor Tommy Wiedmann from UNSW Engineering.

"However, none of these warnings has explicitly considered the role of growth- oriented economies and the pursuit of affluence. In our scientists' warning, we identify the underlying forces of overconsumption and spell out the measures that are needed to tackle the overwhelming 'power' of consumption and the economic growth paradigm—that's the gap we fill.

"The key conclusion from our review is that we cannot rely on technology alone to solve existential environmental problems—like climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution—but that we also have to change our affluent lifestyles and reduce overconsumption, in combination with structural change."

<comment><USER22> So there's a big question here (beyond the obvious, existential one) for the VC and startup community. What role do we play in all of this? Can we play a constructive role? What might that look like?

<comment><USER12> The picture isn't really so good for a lot of these startups, no.

You know it in your heart.

It's very unclear how an ethical person is supposed to be behave. If we believe that this huge machine is destroying the planet, surely we should stop participating in it - and yet if we do that, we become unable to support ourselves.

I compensate by trying to consume as little in my personal life, and trying to get jobs that aren't unethical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Other than the minor detail that only the affluent think about these problems, have the resources to solve them, and the spare time to do anything about them.

<comment><USER24> I've increasingly become convinced the environmental problem is really a socioeconomic problem. This is in some ways the point of the paper, but in other ways the paper misses the point completely, by focusing on affluent lifestyles rather than how to meet human needs in a sustainable way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't think we are competent to solve this when we can't generally trust each other to keep our word, and especially when we have rejected the specific advice of the planet's Creator. I realize many will think that is silly, but I have put reasons I think this, and why I believe this, in depth, at my simple site (no JS etc): [http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html) \-- for what it's worth. And why we can really be OK.

Edit: I think expecting honesty, penalizing the lack of it, (and probably the Golden Rule) are prerequisites to solving many things. Etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> No mention of reducing population growth. There never seem to be anymore.

The trajectory we're on is either toward ecological catastrophe or, if we manage to avoid that, a bimodal distribution of quality of life between an affluent few and the immiserated (if distracted) masses.

<comment><USER27> We're set to hit below replacement birthrates for most of the world, and those parts of the world, being the most developed, are the places that consume the most fossil fuels, among other resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> >It is clear that prevailing capitalist, growth-driven economic systems have not only increased affluence since World War II, but have led to enormous increases in inequality, financial instability...

Globally it's not at all clear there have been increases in inequality. When I was a kid in the 60s '3rd world nations' were impoverished going on starving, now they are mostly prosperous, have 4G, plenty of food etc. China especially was getting by on maybe $300/yr GDP and now has western style prosperity. The US may be more unequal but there is 90%+ of the world that is not the US.

It may seem nitpicking but it's basically an essay on economics and it makes me disregard the rest a bit when they get basic facts wrong. Also in terms of stability things have been fairly stable given the pandemic, fingers crossed.

Re affluence and the environment probably what we need is pricing for externalities in things like fossil fuels - people can be rich in non damaging ways - make artworks and sell them to each other for $1m+, build eco buildings, gardens etc - it doesn't have to be SUVs.

<comment><USER24> It's important to keep that in mind re: improvements in inequality, but at the same time, for example, there is a refugee crisis that's been steadily increasing over time worldwide in recent times. GDP per capita is not the only metric of inequality, nor is China the only exception to the US.

I basically agree with everything you're saying, I just think something is going on that's not nearly captured by a lot of traditional metrics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sorry, but this is a purely political piece of garbage.

It's full of claims unsupported by their data. For example, all their data shows population growth is a central issue but they focus on "affluence" and then they cherry-pick the (already affluent, saturated in consumption) first world to attack and suggest improvements for when the elephant in the room is the third world with its not exactly "affluent" but at least no longer starving population that is beginning to do what they suggest we stop doing. Then the typical radical left / eco-socialist "solutions" appear out of nowhere. It's disappointing that such political pieces are now in mainstream science publications (presumably because it's en vogue to kneel to the radical left...).

<comment><USER30> The same group of people were _obsessed_ with population growth decades ago, when the wrong kind of people were the ones having babies. That problem is solved, and so they have moved on to the next one, which is the pastoralization of the West. It's crazy, but the left has won every single battle it has fought. So, get ready...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The radical environmentalists (really, they're just marxists) finally starting to admit what they want to take from us.

</comment><comment><USER32> Here is a lifestyle change for you: 'A step farther out' by Jerry Pournell. Anti-humanism on nature.com rubs me the wrong way.

</comment><comment><USER22> So there's a big question here (beyond the obvious, existential one) for the VC and startup community. What role do we play in all of this? Can we play a constructive role? What might that look like?

<comment><USER33> The current Silicon Valley model of pursuing hyper-growth and aiming at making a few people (founders and investors) very rich is part of the problem, not the solution. However, a more balanced startup culture that focuses on people well-being and environment sustainability as their ultimate goals could be part of the solution if they manage to find a working model within the current capitalist framework. The problem is that such framework is intensively individualistic and, without Government intervention, creates the worst possible outcome from a sustainability point-of-view because it assumes eternal growth and results in the concentration of resources into only a few hands.

I would love to see a startup that focuses on making its customer's lives more fulfilling while at the same time less "affluent", which is possible to because after you have all your basic needs covered (food, shelter, medical care), no amount of money can make you happier... but small things, like a stimulating social life, or a sense of pride on what your work produces, definitely can. The founders of course, would need to be living proof that their startup delivers on that promise, so they wouldn't make a penny more than necessary to live a fulfilling life where most fulfillment came from bringing happiness to others. That's where I think this idea breaks down! I am sure there would be founders doing this if they thought they could make a billion $$$ first :D but if they could do that, the whole motivation for the project would've been undermined already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The paper would perhaps have a greater impact if I didn't have to google for the meaning of the word in the title ("affluence").

<comment><USER35> It's a common English word.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to package this algorithm? - <AUTHOR>

I have worked out a content extraction algorithm. Given any web pages, it will extract the contents while throwing away the ads, navigation bar, header, footers, etc.
Here is one way to package this algorithm into a useful website.  User will add url links via the website or by importing from a specified del.icio.us tags. The site will extract the contents from these links as a rss feed. User could subscribe to this feed in their mobile news reader.  We're thinking of making this a subscription-based service at $3.99/mo.  The target audiences will be the ones who will download mobile feed readers.
Benefits: 1. user could read 'pure content' from their phones, no ads, just the content.
2. the contents, with all related images, could be pre-downloaded into the feed reader. so whenever you got a minute or two, you could just pull out your phone and read.
Questions: 1. What do you think of this idea?  Good? Bad? Dumb? 2. Is the $3.99/mo priced right?
Thanks a lot, Alex <comment><USER2> "Wrapper induction" (Do a Google Scholar search for it) has been around for a while (Kushmerick, 1997). It's used by search engines, etc, quite successfully, but I don't know of anyone who is able to make a living selling it standalone.

Independent of that, I don't think it's enough of a value-add for me to pay for, plus, you're running into copyright concerns left and right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, our first customer, the one who licenses our core algorithm, had their processing efficiency boosted by 300% + just to use our engine as a pre- processor.

I'm aware of existing "Wrapper induction" papers. But they still keep lots of internal navigation links, most of which are navigation bars, etc. Probably for helping the indexer to use recursive PageRank algorithm to determine the weight for current page.

I am in the process of building a quick demo page for you guys to see the effect.

Thanks for commenting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Regarding subscription pricing, if you are going to charge and you want to keep the price under $10/mo, charge _at least_ $5.99/mo because a) you can get away with it, and b) $3.99/mo could make your product seem cheap. IMO $5.99 is close to the cost of a fast food meal, which most people don't hesitate when faced with.

I don't know how much thought you put into the $3.99/mo, but there is a lot of research out there that supports pricing higher for reasons none other than to create the perception of value. Interesting topic to look into, either way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Will definitely try an A/B test on the pricing to see whether that matters.

One question: between $5.99/mo and $30/yr, which one will you recommend? (There is intense computing power required here, so I'll definitely work out the equations. )

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You will need to be very careful about which sites you allow users to extract content from as many larger sites have TOS which prevent this type of activity. You could be opening yourself up to some nasty DMCA take down notices depending on how you plan on displaying/redistributing the scraped content.

</comment><comment><USER5> Instapaper.com does this, more or less. Their basic service is free, but they (he actually, unless he's expanded lately) sell an iPhone app with additional usability features and offline reading.

It's a really useful thing, but probably a bit shady in the legal area with ToSes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Instapaper.com does only the 'read after' thing with the algorithm part we're offering.

Say you want to read an NYTimes article on your iPhone, sure you've got the nice Zoom-and-Pan. But wouldn't it be nice if you could read any webpage in your favorite news reader with only the content, no ads, no header, no footer, no navigation bar? Only the content.

<comment><USER5> I do that all the time with instapaper? Have a look at their "text only" version of the articles.

<comment><AUTHOR> @m_eiman. InstaPaper.com does offer similar service, but not good enough.

Besides the small headaches, the text-version does not provide images. What's even worse is the lack of support other encodings. Try this one in your instapaper and you'll understand what do I mean: <http://news.sina.com.cn/w/2008-12-08/170516806326.shtml>

That being said, you do raise a good point: how much shall we charge for the consumer version? Maybe it should be free while the API should cost some money.

<comment><USER5> Speaking for myself and not for the general population, I'd say that you'll probably need to go freemium. A free basic service with for-pay extra features.

Maybe you could do what Instapaper is doing and charge for mobile software and not the service? Maybe let basic users store five or so pages, and let paying users keep as many as they want? I tend to put quite a bunch of pages in my instapaper queue before reading them all at once.

I guess you should spend a day or two to brainstorm a long list of features and let intended users rank them and tag them as "nice" vs "must have". Put the must haves in the free version, or most of them, and the nice ones in the paid category?

I have no idea what the usual way of dividing features between versions is, but putting the must haves in the free version should help build user base. And when you've started using it, those nice features might start looking tastier. On the other hand, if all your needs are taken care of in the free version you're not as inclined to spend.. Better ask someone who knows this stuff instead :)

$4 per month is more than I'd be willing to pay, and I consider myself fairly payment friendly - but I'm more in favour of one time payments than subscriptions.

<comment><AUTHOR> m_eiman, yes, yes, this is a very good idea. We're in the middle of putting up a site so that people like you could play with it.

stay tune.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know if this would make money as a web service, but I think you are right to try it -- it could work.

Personally, as a developer, I would be more interested in licensing the algorithm or code from you. In my case the potential use would be for a desktop application, that is closed source. Essentially it would be a filter for a local file search engine, which is part of a larger product. Would you be interested in this ? It would not be an exclusive arrangement, so you could continue to persue other revenue methods.

Also, I suggest that you test the algorithm to see if the amount of content stripped and tossed is a good identifier of spam emails, if the algorithm is fast enough it may have use for that.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you copy other peoples' content and host it from your servers, that's copyright infringement. It doesn't matter if you call it an RSS feed or if you just copy it exactly.

What you could do is offer people software that downloads web pages but strips the ads. This could be a neat feature of an RSS reader, or perhaps a plugin to another RSS reader, but I doubt you will be able to sell this on its own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, this makes sense.

Since the algorithm is the core, I would also consider wrapping it as a web service. Charge on API usage or license the technology.

The problem is, I don't have that much experience doing that. How can I find the target audiences? Also, since the algorithm is quite CPU intensive, how should I price the service? Add a markup to the average computing resources will cost?

I'm trying to put a demo page so that you guys can try it out. Stay tuned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like you're going to be violating some Terms of Service that users of a software like adBlock skirt because they're just private citizens.

Verdict: if your software is good, you'll get your pants sued off. But, I assume since you didn't post a link to a demo, you're a business guy with an idea and not much code. So I doubt you'll have many users, much less legal problems!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, this is an algorithm I wrote for a vertical search engine. I retain the rights to reuse it in other products I'll build.

I'm definitely not a lawyer. As for the ToS violation concerns you raised, since I'm not redistributing the content, am I still to be sued? The user just saves some excerpts for later reading. No?

Alex

PS. 'I assume since you didn't post a link to a demo, you're a business guy with an idea and not much code.'. Will you call Joel Spolsky a business guy? :-)

<comment><USER7> From your description it sounds like you _are_ redistributing the content:

      The site will extract the contents from these links as a rss feed. User could subscribe to this feed in their mobile news reader.

Having your website turn another person's website into an rss feed _is_ redistributing the content.

<comment><USER9> Isn't this exactly what dapper.net does? I've used it myself to create feeds for websites that are stuck in 1996 and haven't moved on to RSS yet.

<comment><USER7> I'm not very familiar with dapper.net, but it seems to be saying that content owners can use dapper to distribute their content, rather than allowing random people to strip ads out of anything. For example when I search for [colbert] on dapper.net it has little icons saying permission of the copyright owner is needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The hardest sell to make is a monthly subscription service. It's easier to sell yearly or one-time.</comment>


A/B test Facebook posts with Spark - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/30/naytev-wants-to-bring-a-buzzfeed-style-social-tool-to-every-publisher-with-spark/ <comment><USER2> I thought this was in reference to Apache Spark.

<comment><USER3> Is it using Apache Spark maybe? I'm confused, even their logo reminded me of Apache Spark in terms of color at least. There are other "Spark" projects out there as well.

<comment><USER4> Actually it's practically the SwiftStack logo reversed:

[https://swiftstack.com/](https://swiftstack.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apart from the name debacle I think what they are doing is fascinating. I imagine this would be immensely useful for marketing. Does anyone have an idea how they would be doing this? I suppose they would need data from previously posted facebook stories.

<comment><USER6> This is purely a guess, but I'd imagine they boost posts (aka pay to display a post to more people), and show them to people who already like the page to collect initial CTR/Like/Share stats.

Then take the winner of that test and post to the rest of the people who like the page, where "organic reach" takes over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The way this is described is kind of confusing, especially since "dark posting" isn't really a thing anymore (i.e. unpublished posts are simply just ads). Basically how the manual process works:

1\. Post several ads (which will show up in people's newsfeed's along with their friend's updates, Page post, etc) that mimics the exact phrase and imagery that you would otherwise put in your Page post.

2\. Create like 5-10 of them with different creative, verbiage, etc.

3\. Whichever ad gets the most engagement, you copy that ad to a Facebook post which does show up in a Page feed (and if you're lucky in people's newsfeeds). Hope it goes viral and you'll end up with clicks to your content.

Unless you have viral headlining and content ("30 things these 6 girls never thought was possible until now") this won't be that useful, as the cost/benefit of it probably isn't worth it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if FB will buy them or build this in themselves. Given the shift to charging for any sort of significant organic reach, it seems natural for anyone marketing on FB to want to do this since the posts they are putting out there are essentially ads this point, and should be tested as such to the extent possible with the tools available.

Having a native tool to do this lets FB assure people that they are getting the most bang for their buck now that they need to pay to play.

</comment><comment><USER9> They could have an an amazing project here but fail solely because their name is already used by much more well-known projects.

30 seconds of googling could have prevented this.

</comment><comment><USER10> As if it wasn't confusing enough with Apache Spark, there's Spark Framework ([http://sparkjava.com](http://sparkjava.com)) which also has an extremely similar-looking logo to this Spark.

</comment><comment><USER11> good luck to them on trying to rank for "spark", i have a hard enough time sifting through spark notes when looking for apache spark stuff.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not just write something that's worth a damn and isn't just filler?

<comment><USER13> I agree. I still understand exactly what 'dark testing' is. Is there an audience that sees the 'unpublished page post?'

<comment><USER14> You show multiple ads to a small selection of the facebook world, and then compare the performance of the various ads and select the best one for publication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I probably won't use an analytics product made by a company who immediately runs into a trademark suit because they're not familiar with one of the preeminent analytics solutions on the market.</comment>


Get Your News *Without* the Nonsense - <AUTHOR> http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=23d7515429544c1d0a6e97a6f25d7ed6

<comment><USER2> show the same result for any queries.</comment>


Google's AdBlockPlus deal will save them nearly $1bn per year - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pagefair.com/2013/acceptable-ads-soothe-google-pain/?cmp=17

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have any good data on the prevalence of ad blocking? The headline number in this article ($887 million) is a _pure guess_ , based on an estimate of 10% of users using ad blocking. They provide absolutely no evidence or reasoning behind this guess. End result: All of their attention-grabbing numbers are pure conjecture and speculation.

There must be users on here who run some high volume sites who can share what % of ads are blocked, surely?

(edit: the linked [http://blog.pagefair.com/2013/destructoid-not- alone/](http://blog.pagefair.com/2013/destructoid-not-alone/) does give more background into some sample sites and adblocking %s, but more numbers and real world data would be good)

<comment><AUTHOR> We're using 10% as a very conservative estimate actually. We've been measuring adblock data for 9 months now across several hundred sites, many of which are very large. The current average blockrate across all these publishers is 26.1%. These are the guys who are so acutely affected that they signed up to us in the first place, but it gives you a good idea.

A fair estimate of a minimum value is the block rate on sites that are non- techie, e.g., lifestyle (12% blockrate) and news (16% blockrate).

We'll be doing another post soon revealing all these numbers and our methodology in collecting them in detail.

<comment><USER2> Good point about the rate varying a lot based on the audience - I imagine that tech sites have it worst for blocking rates.

I wonder how the rates vary for tablet/mobile viewing? I'd guess fewer users manage to block ads on these devices?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, and blocking rates on mobile/tablet is very low, probably consisting of ISP-level adblocking. That will shortly change though - the adblock community is hard at work creating mobile versions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The first paragraph of the "recent study" you linked.

"In a poll commissioned by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), 92 percent of 1,000 Americans surveyed agreed that free news, weather, email, blogs and video content was either somewhat or extremely important to the overall value of the Internet."

What kind of category is "somewhat or extremely important" and how is 1000 people of undisclosed circumstances (other than being American) representative of people that use the internet?

The study that is linked from "the majority are not bothered by the static, non-intrusive ads" asks users of Mechanical Turk to look at an ad and rate it on its "annoyingness". Each user was paid 25 cents flat, and 2 cents per ad to a 172 ad maximum - so there's a $3.75 incentive maximum on completing the test will ratings on everything.

How annoying is any ad that you are being paid to stare at? That's missing the point completely.

I don't buy this sentiment that ad-blocking will be the end of the internet. Continued innovation on payment models, and content worth paying for is what we really need.

<comment><USER4> Content worth paying is what we really need? Then why we don't have it currently? As far as I know, nothing stop that kind of content to appear...

However blocking ad stop good free content to appear (maybe not much, but it still affected, unlike the type of content you want).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _"Less than 10 percent of the people polled would prefer an ad-free Internet > where users paid to access blogs, entertainment sites, videos and social > media sites, while 75 percent surveyed said they prefer the existing > Internet model where most content is free, but includes ads."_ – Amy > Gesenhues – Marketing Land

Marketer says people prefer marketing?

</comment><comment><USER6> Makes you wonder how much AdBlockPlus is making from their deal to unblock them. I would have asked for at least $200 million per year. It's amazing that this isn't considered extortion, but since it's not, I think it would make sense for some of the less popular ad blockers to join together and offer a similar deal.

</comment><comment><USER7> I believe this is what you find under the definition of "selling out" in a dictionary.</comment>


Slack Is Gossipy Email with Push Notifications - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-14/slack-is-gossipy-email-with-push-notifications <comment><USER2> Ironic coming from Bloomberg which is known among the financial services, as a joke, as the most expensive messaging system available.

I used to work for Bloomy for 3 years, and all the workflows for a Bloomberg employee are tied into the terminal, from email to chat.

That having said, I'm sure the person who wrote this article has never used Slack at work, and as a journalist he surely does not see the value added of being able to format code/send files/create polls as easily as slack allows you.

Comparing it to email is pure stupidity and displays a lack of understand of the product. But to be honest, I didn't expect more from Bloomberg Businessweek.</comment>


Freezing your credit is now free in all states under a new law - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/09/21/equifax-free-credit-freeze-new-law/1377815002/ <comment><USER2> Freezing your credit sounds scary, but I do generally recommend looking into it. I froze my credit awhile back now, long before the Equifax breach, just as a proactive measure. Better to do it _before_ your identity gets stolen.

Since the freeze I've opened up a few lines of credit (loans, credit cards, etc). It's not that painful. Most of the time you just find out which credit bureau(s) they're going to pull from beforehand, do a temp unfreeze, and then submit your application like normal. It takes a few extra minutes of your time, but is otherwise not a bother.

There have been a few instances where the companies I was working with were just ... incompetent and didn't know who they were going to pull their reports from. Yeah ... but in those cases I just submitted the application and waited for the rejection letters to roll in, which state which company reported a 0 credit score :P

Is it as easy as before? No. But how often do you open lines of credit or bank accounts? Not often. And I don't think doing those things should be easy anyway. The huge plus here is that you don't have to worry about identity theft like everyone else. I've seen too many friends and family go through identity theft now. It's horrific, stressful, time consuming, and seemingly endless.

And on the bright side, I think having your credit frozen is becoming more and more common, which means companies are getting more used to dealing with people who have them. So the process is becoming more streamlined over time.

Now the caveats. Yes, it cost me money. It may still cost money even with this new law; as a fellow comment points out you may still have to pay whenever you need to temporarily unfreeze your credit. And yes, it's a racket. In many ways it feels like a shakedown. But such is life. People cheat you out of your money every day. This wasn't a mountain I was willing to die on.

<comment><USER3> I'd recommend just actively monitoring your credit before going overboard and freezing it. There's a bunch of different free credit report apps that will send you push notifications the moment anything changes, and things like credit pulls show up almost instantly now. I get notified immediately if anything changes on my report via text, email, and push.

<comment><USER4> Better to freeze. Credit monitoring just gives you quicker notification that you've already entered a huge world of hurt. The fraudster has successfully struck, and now you have to go to work to undo the damage, which can be a years-long nightmare. ("Well, it shows here that you bought a truck and stopped paying. Not you, you say? Prove it! Oh, and until you do, don't expect to have good credit. Maybe never, actually.")

<comment><USER5> _Credit monitoring just gives you quicker notification_

Define "quicker."

I got the credit monitoring from Exerpan after its data breach.

Since then, I've had my credit run twice. Both times were initiated by me, so I know when it happened. Both times, I received a notification by e-mail SEVEN DAYS later, followed by a text message a day after that.

Seven days is plenty long enough to destroy someone's finances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The entire concept of "freezing" and "unfreezing" needs to go away. It should be inaccessible by default, except by a time-limited token generated by the person applying for credit.

<comment><USER7> I agree, but how should that person generate a token? A hardware device? What if they lose that device? Try and think of it from the perspective of someone who only uses their computer for facebook/banking/candy crush.

<comment><USER8> No computer needed: when you freeze your credit, the agency mails you a sheet of one-time-use codes. When you apply for credit, you give the bank or whoever one of the codes, and then cross it off of your sheet.

If you lose the paper, you have to go through a manual process to get a new one, the same as you would if you lost the PIN they give you now.

<comment><USER9> > If you lose the paper, you have to go through a manual process to get a new > one, the same as you would if you lost the PIN they give you now.

If an attacker has your identity then he might have access to that unlocking process. Thus, how does this strategy changes anything?

<comment><USER8> > he _might_ have access to that unlocking process.

Emphasis added. It stops the attackers that don't have this information, thus raising the bar. I'm not trying to invent a perfect system, just a better one that's practical to implement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fact that this cost consumers money is such an obvious symptom of a larger problem.

In case anyone hasn't seen this twitter thread before: [https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/906257077215133696](https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/906257077215133696)

The history of credit companies like Equifax are extremely dystopian. We should be working to find replacements for such systems.

<comment><USER11> We don't need replacements. We need to eliminate these companies.

<comment><USER12> I'm all for these companies burning to the ground (after the building has been emptied). I'm also all about a currency-less society.

But until we reduce scarcity to a point where that is possible, presumably lenders need some way to evaluate the "trustworthiness" of who they're lending to, yea? How should it be done? My first thought is an agency like the irs is set up to handle it.

<comment><USER13> Loans don't necessarily make things more affordable. If 'nobody' could pay 1+ million for a home in a major city then home prices would drop until people could afford them.

If anything credit agency's actively harm the middle class by allowing people to extract as much money from them as possible via higher prices.

Sure, business loans are very useful but they don't require credit agency's.

<comment><USER14> Prices can only drop so far, though. (Warning: completely hypothetical numbers inbound... they're just being used to illustrate the point, not for gauging real costs)

If a 2x4 costs $20 and you need 2000 of them to build a house, the house has to cost at least $40,000. And if pieces of siding cost $20 and you need 1000 of them, then that house has to cost $60,000. That's going to be hard to afford out of pocket. You can save the same amount of a mortgage payment every month, but you still need a place to live in the meantime so you're doubling your cost of living until you fork over the $60,000 in cash.

And you might say the cost of a 2x4 would come down too, but if a lumberjack is making $15/hr and makes one 2x4 every hour, then the cost of that 2x4 can only be $5 cheaper before that lumberjack is getting paid more than the value of his work. And you might say the lumberjack could get paid less, but at $15/hr he already needs to work 4,000 hours before he can afford to buy that $60,000 house (assuming no other expenses).

That's two years of savings before he can buy a house, with no money for food, no money for an apartment, no money for a car. If you cut his wages to make the house cheaper, now he has to work longer before he can buy a house. And since no one can afford the house anyway, he'll likely be laid off before he saves enough money because no one can buy the lumber because no one can buy the house built from it.

And of course, this is all ignoring that none of these businesses are making any money in this entire hypothetical situation. If we didn't have home loans, the cost of housing would go down, but it would still be completely unaffordable without a loan even if the builder was losing money.

<comment><USER13> Rather than paying less per hour or less for lumber people would end up with smaller homes. A 40k down payment on a 200,000$ house already pays for a significant structure. Not marble countertops, but perfectly livable if small.

Further, as the buyer would not have a mortgage they could upgrade from a 'starter' home. But, only if they actually felt the need and saved up even more cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't be necessary if we had a law that makes the banks liable for getting defrauded instead of the individual who's name, and other publicly available "secret" information, happens to be used to do it.

<comment><USER16> Banks are liable. If a fraudster steals someone identity and setups a bunch of credit cards and/or loans, the bank eats the loss. This is protected in contract law because the bank doesn't have a valid contract with the victim.

<comment><USER15> Are they held liable for the pain and suffering that ensues? Are they forced to fix the persons credit score? They need to be punished for it, not just eat the loss. They make up the loss by charging insane interest rates, late fees and service fees. There should be jail time and personal responsibility.

<comment><USER16> If you want pain and suffering. Have someone steal your identity when they get arrested.

I have had my identity stolen, I just disputed accounts on my credit report. It took me about an hour. The 3 credit cards companies and two cell companies lost about $25k total. If debt collectors call, tell them to prove the debt which they can't do so they go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You know what they should pass a law to do?

For you to set up a SECOND FACTOR AUTHENTICATION where you would approve before some new credit account is reported. Maybe even for a credit check.

      1. Apply for credit
      2. They check your report
      3. They make an offer
      4. You review the offer
      5. You endorse it
      6. They submit to bureau
      7. Bureau sends you a text
      or to their app om your phone
      with details of offer

You can endorse at step 6 by a cryptographic signature or at step 7 use Authy, text or the bureau's app.

How hard is that??? Seriously!! We have Google Authenticator for bank accounts but not credit bureaus?

It would be strictly opt-in so those who care about identity theft CAN make sure to prevent it.

<comment><USER18> Would it be possible to require the use of an OpenPGP or other actual cryptographic identity that matches a whitelist of keys I or a government agency provides for anything more major than a typical shopping trip to the grocery store / Costco?

Phone numbers and cell phones are too easy to have redirected; so an actual cryptographic ID is required. That's why I want the government to sign off on personal IDs when /they/ confirm my ID at drivers/identification license updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When will people realize that the whole idea of a "credit score" is _insanely bad_ \- just lend to anyone under the same conditions, do personal checks on case by case basis etc. There are parts of the world that have all regular financial tools like mortgages and all without the credit score part. Keeping a "score" is just a means of discrimination and oppression.

Yeah, credit will become more expensive, as _it should be!_ People should only lend money with verified collateral etc. And maybe it's not "fair" to lend anyone at the same rate, just as it's not "fair" to have "universal" health insurance. But you know what? F fairness! Nobody needs "fair", we need _systems that work_ , and do so _reliably_ and in _easily understandable ways_ , making the word a place you would want to live in.

We can afford to de-optimize some aspects of the economy in order to get a better quality of life with low stress and all. _Equality_ and _anonymity_ is what everyone needs more of, not "fairness" and invasion of privacy (aka "transparency"), with the former usually used to justify the latter.

<comment><USER20> So you think requiring someone to have _verified collateral_ to take out a loan is _less_ oppressive than allowing someone who doesn't have any collateral to use solely their reputation to borrow money very cheaply?

Your hypothetical system makes financial products only available to wealthy. That's pretty much the definition of oppressive. A system where more people have more access to more products is the fairer one.

Debt can be an important tool if used correctly.

<comment><USER20> And without collateral you clearly can't loan to _everyone_ because this is what happens:

Borrow money at 1000% interest

Don't make any payments. What are they going to do? Sue me? I can't pay, I'm in debt. Hookers and blow for everyone.

Borrow more money at 1000% interest. They can't say no!!! Debt for everyone!!

Make Payments? Lol.

Borrow more money. Don't make payments.

Borrow more money. Don't make payments.

Continue on forever. It's a money spigot.

Nobody would be willing to lend to anyone in this situation without serious collateral and only at very high rates and limited to low risk loans.

Reinstituting debtors prison would be the only fix for this problem. And that's 10000 times more oppressive than credit scores.

Don't lend to people in debt? Congratulations, now you're back to credit scores!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If my credit card company can call and text me while I stand at the Point of Sale for an high risk approval, why then can these folks not do the same.

It should be the default behavior.

Now the challenging and arguable more difficult thing would be debt collection.

Edit: The short answer is because the consumers are not the customers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Don't forget Innovis and CheckSystems. Great information here.

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/credit-freezes-are- free-...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/credit-freezes-are-free-let-the- ice-age-begin/)

<comment><USER23> There is also NCTUE

Freeze page - [http://www.nctue.com/Consumers](http://www.nctue.com/Consumers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Freeze cost is only one part. Not mentioned in this article are costs of temporary unfreeze. TransUnion used to/still does charge $10 for each unfreeze.

<comment><USER25> The article says unfreezes should also be free now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> >"Placing a freeze should be fast and relatively easy, although you will have to sign up for separate ones at each of the three credit bureaus."

This is so broken. Freezing your credit at one should automatically freeze your credit at all of them. This functionality already exists for providing a 90 day lock on your profile. Making people jump through 3 sets of hoops to freeze and unfreeze their credit is a joke. I'm guessing this was law makers capitulating to the will of the industry instead of the consumer. Sadly no surprise there.

>"If the credit bureaus cannot sufficiently verify your identity based on the information you've provided, you may need to mail in copies of your driver's license, utility bills or other supporting documentation to validate your identity and execute a freeze."

What constitutes "sufficiently" can be arbitrarily obscure. Examples of this include. The number of a landline you had 20 years ago, the zip code of a company that bought a now defunct company you used to work for. Your only recourse is snail male and making photocopies of sensitive documents and mailing them to a P.O box somewhere. These same "verification" systems also randomly report failure during the process leaving the consumer with no choice but to snail male.

"We want to make it is as simple as possible to access that freeze, but we want to protect you at the same time," Experian's Griffin said. "We need to strike that balance."

This is nonsense and nobody believes this for a minute. This shady industry finally got called to account albeit in a quite limited way and they will do everything possible to make this as inefficient as possible. There may be a law on the books now that they can't charge but there is no law that says these systems need to be maintained, verified to be working or efficient.

</comment><comment><USER27> Too bad this wasn't in place about a year ago when I was freezing my credit because of Equifax and getting temporary thaws to apply for a mortgage.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was able to freeze my credit w/ TransUnion and Experian easily this morning. However with Equifax I got a vague error stating that they could not process my request. After taking a look at the equivalent thread on /r/personalfinance I think someone may have preemptively frozen my account with my data that was exposed as apart of the hack. I guess I need to contact Equifax by phone now. A bit frustrating but locking down 2/3 isn't bad for 15 minutes of work.

<comment><USER29> Experian keeps asking me to pay for this feature. Where did you find it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What is the benefit of freezing your credit?

<comment><USER31> Somebody pretending to be you can't borrow money in your name.

<comment><USER20> They can, if the lender doesn't do a credit check, its just that most lenders won't loan to someone without first checking their credit file. Someone can run up medical debt in your name, since doctors don't do credit checks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can anybody explain what this is about and what a "credit report" is?

I've owned and used bank accounts and credit cards for my entire adult life, that is to say, several decades (in the EU) and I've never come across this concept.

<comment><USER33> I might be getting your question wrong here but have a listen to this podcast: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/10/06/556212654/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/10/06/556212654/episode-798-bad- credit-bureau)

I'll give you a quick summary version based on this though.

Business owners were looking for a way to tell if the person standing in front of them will likely pay them back. So Businesses go to companies like Equifax that try build credit reports on people and basically ask "can I trust john smith?". Essentially they're big time data brokers.

The thing is that when you created and owned accounts with banks and established credit cards, the whole time those banks were funneling your activities to companies like Equifax, who then build these credit reports against you. So even if you never interacted with them, your banks likely told them everything about you.

This kind of thing is something you only really find out about if you go looking for it.

<comment><USER32> Ohh... _that 's_ what Equifax does! I could never figure it out from the news articles. Thanks for the link, I'll listen to it.

You're right, I don't think I want to go looking into my own reports, until (if ever) I need to.

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you have kids, you might want to freeze their credit too. I listen to "The Perfect Scam" podcast, and they said that thief now prefers to steal kid or teenager identities since they can milk their account longer.

</comment><comment><USER34> Freezing my credit still allows it to improve based on my existing lines of credit, correct?

<comment><USER35> I have mine frozen and my credit scores on Credit Karma are still visible and change monthly. Credit Karma lists Equifax and TransUnion scores.

<comment><USER34> Perfect. I suppose that I will go ahead and freeze mine as I don't foresee any need to apply for credit in the near future.</comment></comment></comment>


Drchrono website redesign out today - <AUTHOR> https://drchrono.com/

<comment><USER2> great work.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope to god my doctor's office isn't using iOS to secure my medical data. Elcomsoft has a product out to bypass iOS encryption

These guys are releasing free software why the hell aren't they coding for android. Make your own stripped down android builds that are heavily focused on SECURITY then just port over all the medical billing tablet software. No telecom installed operating system should be trusted with holding confidential medical information when backdoors like carrierIQ were discovered.

Get android source for nexus tablets. Strip them down, include SEandroid modifications. Encrypt the device, write a small firewall program for it with notification should something go wrong (like bluetooth being turned on) and include other freely available foss that encrypts files and pics should somebody want to transfer them off the device securely.

It's much cheaper than any ipad or iphone too. What's the point of free software to 'change humanity' when you're making some guy in Nigeria get an iphone which probably costs 6x what it does here. Cheap Samsung older phones and Nexus tablets are everywhere in the world, you could buy them off wholesale from carriers who discontinued them, flash the android build with the software and ship it around the world or just provide the image for free and let doctor's flash their own devices. Tip: the new nexus tablets coming out will be $99-150

[http://hothardware.com/News/Rumor-Next-Nexus-7-Price- Could-B...](http://hothardware.com/News/Rumor-Next-Nexus-7-Price-Could-Be- Under-150-With-99-Price-Tag-Possible/)

<comment><USER4> 1) You realize the Elcomsoft attacks were largely mitigated for iPad 2, iPhone 4S and later, right? If I were drchrono, I'd either require those devices (or later), or at least require informed consent by the administrator of an office to allow earlier devices.

I'd bet on iOS vs. stock Android for security-critical bugs at this point, but it's kind of a wash. You could maybe audit Android better, but that would be a serious engineering effort.

2) drchrono makes EHR. They don't make a secure tablet OS, and they don't (as far as I know) distribute tablets/phones to the doctors. Being a software/services business vs. a full consultancy is a big difference. Being a HW/OS developer is a big jump beyond even consultancy.

I'd love it if someone decided to build a SE Android + HW security Android distribution (maybe with device virtualization like from Bromium built in, too). And centralized management per-organization (i.e. not by Google or Apple or a carrier, but yourself). Essentially a Blackberry that didn't suck. Unfortunately, no one is doing that, and it would essentially require being Samsung or HTC to build the hardware, and someone like Google to build the software. Google's Android team has repeatedly shown themselves to be at best indifferent and more likely hostile to any real enterprise security features; they barely have a sandbox (in contrast to Chrome and the SSL teams at Google, and corp security, who are pretty much world-class for security).

I'm pretty sure if someone were building that, it wouldn't be drchrono, though.

3) No one cares about $500 vs. $300 for a tablet once they've made the decision to buy for a doctor's office, at least from my experience with doctors. Pretty much anything <$1k is the same. This is admittedly mainly in the US, but that's where most healthcare spending happens, and where the "meaningful use" incentive happens ($50k to adopt an EHR/EMR).

iPad 2 would be a legitimate deployment platform, and those are cheap (you'd really want a 10" in a medical environment), if you really care about cheap. I'd also want an IPS display for wide viewing angle.</comment></comment>


Location Isn't A War Between Two Sides, It's A Gold Rush For Everyone - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/19/location-gold-rush/

<comment><AUTHOR> I love this piece "You need to move past the mindset that location is the feature. Build products under the assumption that you have a user's location and that you can use the social plumbing we've been building for the last nine years."</comment>


What Are Python Wheels and Why Should You Care? - <AUTHOR> https://realpython.com/python-wheels/ <comment><USER2> TLDR?</comment>


Ask News.YC: What would you do if you were a billionaire? - <AUTHOR>

Let's say someone gave you $1 billion tomorrow. After 2 - 3 years of being rich, what do you see yourself doing on a day-to-day basis? <comment><USER2> I'll tell you what I'd do, man, two chicks at the same time, man. Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had a million dollars I could hook that up, cause chicks dig a dude with money.

All office space quoting aside, if my startup IPOs I'm buying a winery in Napa, preferably Stags Leap district, and a house in the hills of St. Helena with enough land to let my dogs run free and terrorize the neighbors.

And I'll probably jump into the restaurant industry.

<comment><USER3> On the 'two chicks' thing, there's no need to be a billionaire for that. There are plenty of countries where prostitution is legal and you could do two chicks.

John.

<comment><USER4> What an appropriate name..

<comment><USER3> And that coming from a guy whose name is 'merkin' :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Step One: Construct a giant concrete sarcophagus similar to the contraption they used to seal off Chernobyl.

Step Two: Hire a reliable private investigator to ascertain the location of the target: Creed's rehearsal space.

Step Three: Fill the sarcophagus with alligators, poop, and diseased ferrets.

Step Four: Rent several hundred industrial-grade helicopters and lower the sarcophagus onto the target.

Step Five: Construct a monument honoring the heroism of the alligators and diseased ferrets.

<comment><USER6> Brilliant.

I'd throw in another 2bil if you can knock off Maroon 5 and Nickelback at the same time?

Get your people to fax my people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fund scientific research at a laboratory I direct with my business partner Josh. I think we could knock off a few major diseases like AIDS, or maybe get bacteria effectively generating energy.

To cure HIV (idea is Josh's): Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells. Introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.

To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory, will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5 receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation, transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which we can also easily test on the mice.

<comment><USER8> If that actually works it's a shame that it depends on you becoming a billionaire first. Can it not work the other way around?

<comment><USER7> It could, but we still need the money to hire teams of PhDs. It's unfortunately not the kind of thing we can do in someone's basement.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure? You could walk into a public college library and start reading papers. The world needs mad scientists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Pay off all my family members debt._ Setup a trust to provide my family members with _reasonable_ salaries. Just enough to let them do what they want, but not enough that they don't have to work. _Buy a giant piece of land and move my parent's and their families on to the same property, if they want too..._ Go to university. _Setup a decent course in South Africa to teach kids about programming._ Get that silver Porsche 911 that I've always wanted. _Go to my old work, in my new Porsche, and show it to my ex-boss._ Fund something to fight crime in South Africa.

</comment><comment><USER11> Day to day? Much the same thing, actually.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd head straight to the Wendy's value menu.

</comment><comment><USER13> Doing things that test and develop my positive personal traits, and then sharing that journey and those discoveries with others.

</comment><comment><USER14> Starting another company. It's about the thrill of the chase.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well I'm posting on YC right now, so I guess that's one.

I'd give it away creatively, always wanted to throw money to the wind in a crowded city street.

That and fund domestic programs to help encourage the success of our next generation of kids.

</comment><comment><USER16> Invest it to grow to sixty billion and use it to build a space elevator, duh.

</comment><comment><USER17> Two possibilities:

a.) Physics. Always found it interesting, but not into academia as a way to pay the bills.

b.) Feeling poor compared to those bastards with 11 figure net worths.

</comment><comment><USER18> Do social entrepreneurships stuff. My two main ideas are creating an mturk for non-profits (allow micro-contributions of time/work to charity) and create a careers guidance website that doesn't suck.

I realize I could do these now, but trying to juggle full-time job + part-time startups + current non-profit work + real-life is hard enough already without adding more stuff to it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Never work again (unless I absolutely wanted to, for pure fun and challenge). Invest half (maybe some in startups?). Buy a sizable, but comfortable, house on top of a remote mountain in Montana or Colorado, and use it as my headquarters as I trek across the world.

But, some amount of time into my aimless wandering, I would no doubt get the itch again, and have to start creating something.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For me: Travel a lot and get good at photography, buy a Ferrari and get into amateur racing, start a venture capital firm to fund social entrepreneurs (don't know if this is possible yet), own and run a cool new restaurant, be a director/writer for some independent films, do something to make in-class education more fun for high school students (possibly using software).

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd finally create the fgPhone. You may now speculate about how it will purge the world of all phone carriers and generally redefine telecommunication as we know it. How it works? Well, I'd make the ISO, the W3C and the JCP join forces to create the mother of all committees...

</comment><comment><USER20> You might consider giving it away to charities and keeping just enough for your financial independence (5 million say). You might be able to preserve your privacy that way.

<comment><USER13> Charities often give less than 5% to the end recipients and then bank or invest the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Such speculation is counterproductive.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=74030>

</comment><comment><USER22> At least for a while: Not have anything to do with computers. No looking at a monitor.

What I would do? Snowboard & learn to surf. Paint.</comment>


Why is Berkshire Hathaway sitting on $137B in cash? - <AUTHOR> https://eachlist.com/why-is-berkshire-hathaway-sitting-on-137-billion-in-cash/ <comment><USER2> Because they are waiting for and most likely predicting a bloodbath in terms of crashing stocks..and then they will buy what's left at a fraction of what it's worth.

<comment><AUTHOR> They finally bought Dominion Energy Inc's assets for a whooping 9.7 Billion announced over the weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article only has a few sentences, and it doesn't answer the question. The headline is the information

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, though the fact conveyed by the title itself was a surprise to me.

Why would a company keep such a large amount of cash in hand? Especially when we saw a big enough dip in many scrips. Tech has more than recovered.

I am an author for the technology blog on this website.

<comment><USER4> HN profile points to a blog, which points to a linkedin page for Sunny R Gupta. Twitter user Sunny R Gupta is the only follower of the website's account. Also an author on the website [https://eachlist.com/members/sunny_r_gupta/](https://eachlist.com/members/sunny_r_gupta/) Meanwhile the author of the article Stella Dankworth uses a profile image that I can find as stock photo on hundreds of websites. What I'm trying to say is the title is likely not a surprise to the user.</comment></comment></comment>