The Path to Give California 12 Senators, and Vermont Just One - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/heres-how-fix-senate/579172/ <comment><USER2> In my opinion, thinking of each state as a small nation unto itself is the best way to see the value of the senate in its current form.

I find this thought pattern to be helpful because the state has all the government powers not given to the federal government, and not found to be contrary to the constitution. The tenth amendment guarantees this - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Each state, as a small nation, has its own interests that need preserving outside those of the United States at large, and it makes sense that the senate acts as a check on the interests of large, populous states over smaller ones when it comes to these.

Having lived in several states, I've found that differences in values and culture inform general opinion of the federal government. In my opinion, this article sounds like it was written by someone who views the United States federal government as one that should have a large role in the every day lives of citizens, and my feedback to them is that they should consider whether or not they would like it if a growing state with different values than their own suddenly had disproportionate representation federally.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, because this is more or less what the US is, and in some ways, was intended to be, and in other ways, not intended to be.

If you split the government along Foreign and Domestic policy, the Federal government represents more foreign policy matters with the Senate serving as the outlet for the States to have a modicum of say, and the States generally handle more local and domestic policy matters, except where Congress has reserved power.

The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing, and while what we have is a compromise, there was clearly vision behind the drafting of the constitution, more vision than 99% of armchair historians can muster. In order to scale democracy beyond the level of a city-State and have it survive, they instituted some Anti-Democratic institutions. The Senate is one of these institutions.

Most of those who would like to revise the Constituon lose sight of the fact that democracy does not scale well without some judicious compromises. The very nature of the Constitution and Federalism is counter to democracy. The Senate is counter to democracy. The Supreme Court is counter to democracy. The Presidency is counter to democracy.

If you asked me, I would say we could do better, but we're not going to do better by cutting down the pillars of society and seeing what we can build from the rubble. The States are as integral to the United States as the Federal Government is to the States.

<comment><USER4> I get the states are an integral part of the US but I'm unclear on why the Senate needs equal representation for all states except for the fact that the founders made it that way.

<comment><USER3> Because if one State could dominate Congress entirely the policies of the country would be disproportionately shaped around that one State.

The State is an entity that matters, according to the Constitution, because the Union could not have existed without the States, therefore the Senate is the chamber of Congress which represents the interests of the _States_ rather than the _people_ which is the function of the House of Representatives.

The mechanism for selecting Senators may have changed, but not the function of the Senate.

Or to put it this way, why is it that the United Nations is designed to give one country one vote in the General Assembly and not proportionate representation according to each nation's population? It is the same principle in play. From the lenses of the Founding Fathers, the Union was an agreement between States and People and so Congress represents States and People. The United Nations is an agreement between Nation-States and so it represents Nation-States, no single Nation's and no single State's interests should override the interests of all the other Nations or all the other States.

You can disagree with that principle, certainly, but I think it is necessary for the Union to have _both_ chambers of Congress. There is no function for a Senate that is proportionate to each State's population to serve, and you would be better served by abolishing the Senate altogether along with the representation of the States' interests in Congress and maintaining the House of Representatives as the sole remaining chamber of Congress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see that this article doesn't mention the House of Representatives at all.

The entire purpose of the Senate is to balance the power of the House, to mitigate states with large populations overpowering states with smaller populations.

<comment><USER6> The entire purpose of the Senate was not balance the power of the House, it was to provide _states_ with representation in the federal government. To such end, in the original constitution state governments chose senators -- because the senators represented the individual states -- not the people of those states.

Then the 17th Amendment changed all that and made senators elected by popular votes just like the house members. This, IMO, eliminated the primary reason for having a Senate at all (to represent states). It now simply (poorly) duplicates the same purpose of the House (to represent the people).

<comment><USER2> One could make the argument that the senators still represent the state, because they represent everyone in the state, whereas a representative only represents their district.

<comment><USER7> The difference shows up in things like unfunded mandates. An appointed senate would resist demanding that states pay money. Voting for such a thing would likely get the senator rejected by the state government, preventing another term. In general, appointed senators were a force to keep government smaller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It has always been this imbalanced. That is the point... the Senate balances out the House (which is apportioned by population already) to ensure that large population areas can't force policy and laws that are onerous on small (population) states. In other words, this is not a bug, it's a feature.

<comment><USER9> The population disparity is much, much greater now than when the compromise was designed and approved, is is accelerating.

When 15% of the population can control the most powerful house of Congress there is a problem.

<comment><USER2> With the senate, it's important to frame thoughts not as a percentage of the population, but as a percentage of the states that make up the United States.

I would say that if 15% of the population could control the house of representatives, then there would be something wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This argument seems very convoluted. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like Sovereign Citizen level of nuttiness.

The whole crux of the argument seems to boil down to the idea that using a statute to change apportionment in the senate avoids the Article V clause that prevents a constitutional amendment from changing senate apportionment without the consent of every state.

A statute would avoid Article V, it won't avoid Article 1 Section 3, which states that each state gets 2 senators. His "Senate Reform Act" would be unconstitutional without ever involving Article V. All his other arguments seem totally irrelevant; trying to interpret a mess of other amendments as somehow consenting to a loss of equal suffrage is ridiculous. Even if you tried to interpret the 14th amendment as changing the apportionment of senators (a novel interpretation to say the least), it would be clearly unconstitutional as per Article V which specifically forbids any amendment from changing equal suffrage in the senate without the consent of that state.

So either you try to change senate apportionment with a statute and violate Article 1 Section 3, or you try to change it with an amendment and run afoul of Article V.

The only argument in this entire article that makes sense is their idea of amending Article 2 Section 1 Paragraph 2. That can be changed, maybe that's where they should focus their efforts.

But if you really hate the senate that much, your best option is to amend away all their powers and turn them into a purely ceremonial body.

</comment><comment><USER11> The problem is, this bill would have to pass the Senate - the _current_ Senate. That seems... improbable. Even with a Democratic win in 2020, it seems improbable without invoking the nuclear option. I'm not that deep into politics, so I'm not sure whether the nuclear option _can_ be used on a bill like the proposed one. I'm also not clear whether small-state senators would vote for such a bill, even if they are Democrats.

<comment><USER12> No.

The Senate was created via legislation, you can't legislate it away.

You'd have to amend the constitution.

<comment><USER11> The article was talking about a bill that (theoretically) would restructure the Senate without having to amend the Constitution. Even were that possible (about which I have doubts), my comment still stands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While splitting up large states is one way, what's to stop already small states from splitting up out of spite?

What happens when North Wyoming, South Wyoming, West Wyoming, East Wyoming, Northwest Wyoming, Northeast Wyoming are created?

<comment><USER14> A lot of name collisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't the better solution just be to get rid of the senate. The senate is there to represent the states and if they are not being represented then why keep it?

<comment><USER16> How would Congress go about getting rid of the Senate? Also, the Senate is representing the states. What people are upset about is how the Senate doesn't represent the population of states relative to one another. That's the House of Representatives, but given recent politics by the party in control of the senate, people in states like California feel like their will is being override by small state senators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Serious question: How do you enforce the will of the majority at the same time as protecting the interests of the minority? It seems to me that this only really allows the minority to set the agenda in most scenarios and the majority can only enforce their will in a "complete control" situation.

EDIT:

Why do states need representations in Congress at all? Aren't states arbitrary divisions anyway, as it relates to policy? Given that, why should we protect smaller states? I would like to know a/the rational basis for that, given that much policy is still left up to the state government so that they may govern their populace effectively as needed in their specific geographical region. Would it be better to protect them in the way of ensuring their ability to make their own laws as-needed isn't overridden by a proportionally-represented Congress? The requirement of equal representation of states (arbitrary) is causing unequal representation of people (what states are made of), which is what government is truly here for.

Equal representation in Senate = whoever has the highest (or at least "most correct as it relates to our map") geographical distribution has the ability to control legislative outcomes. But geographical distribution does not mean majority, and that's where we're at today. This then causes unequal representation of the people in presidential elections via the electoral college and thus further entrenches the unequal representation of the people.

I'd have to say that I disagree with the author's solution and that I really only see one choice, which is to merge (i.e. get rid of) the Senate with the House. The author's solution is merely the same thing by a different name. We should also abolish the electoral college, as this has the same effect as a Senate-type body on a democracy.

<comment><USER18> I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that the current system is set up to enforce the will of the minority and ignore the majority.

<comment><USER17> I agree with you, although I don't know if that was the intention from the outset, it's the unintended outcome nonetheless. Their arbitrary nature + requirement for equal representation creates situations that run contrary to democratic ideals, or at least that of majority rule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sure, popular election of senators is at least a little problematic. But maybe what we really want is a return to the original model, where members of the House are elected by the people, while senators are chosen by state legislatures.

</comment><comment><USER20> The current system is a check that prevents individual states from dominating legislation in Congress. Why would anyone want that except for the very populous states?

The top 6 states (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois & Pennsylvania effectively tied) have almost half the population and thus could dominate Congress without input from the other 44 states.

The author comes from Pennsylvania, and so this article should be seen as nothing but self-serving.

But a poll of equal number of citizens from each state would never approve such a measure.

<comment><USER21> > The author comes from Pennsylvania, and so this article should be seen as > nothing but self-serving.

Of course it's self serving.

But it's undeniable that the current situation isn't fair. One where the vote of a rancher in Wyoming with whom I have absolutely nothing in common politically has orders of magnitude more weight than mine. And the difference isn't only in the senate either.

CA: population per senator: 19M

WY: population per senator: 280k

CA: population per electoral vote: 719k

WY: population per electoral vote: 192k

CA: population per house seat: 746k

WY: population per house seat: 577k

It's indeed true that the situation for senators is by design. One could weakly argue that the situation for the house isn't too bad. But how do you defend a 4x ratio for electoral votes?

It seems to me that the only solution to mitigate this imbalance is to start dialing back the responsibilities of the federal government. (Which I'm not in favor of at all, but what other option is there?)

<comment><USER22>
      CA: population per senator: 19M

For 24 years, California had _no change_ in Senators.

Now, how many major pieces of legislation authored by _either_ can your average Californian name?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This provision was put into place to preserve the power of the landowning class against what were then referred to as "the mob", meaning everyone else. It did its job quite well, but it is intentionally anti-democratic and does need to be fixed.</comment>


The effects of living in a poor neighborhood - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11852640/cartoon-poor-neighborhoods <comment><USER2> Hmm, wait a moment.

 _59% of white kids moved up._

 _43% of white kids moved down._

Even accounting for rounding, there's no way to get those numbers. It's even worse in other places:

 _25% of black kids had parents who grew up in the bottom two levels and moved up at least one._

 _78% of black kids had parents who grew up in the top three levels and moved down at least one._

Those two groups should sum to _less_ than 100%, certainly not 103%.

Also, except for the "Moving to Opportunity" experiment, most of this seems to ignore the distinction between correlation and causation.

This reminds me of the recent finding that 50% of papers in reputable psych journals reported mathematically impossible data. [https://medium.com/@jamesheathers/the-grim-test-a-method- for...](https://medium.com/@jamesheathers/the-grim-test-a-method-for- evaluating-published-research-9a4e5f05e870#.61n0pjt6s) The more people start to dig in, the more the "social sciences" look unscientific.

<comment><USER3> That infographic and the text that goes with it could be made _much_ clearer but your interpretation is not how it should be read. (as far as I can tell)

For one thing, as ASpring mentioned, the text about white kids were shortened, with the implication that the same sentence structure as for the black kids should be used. I'm assuming it was done to make the drawing easier to read (i.e. less text) but it certainly added confusion.

I.e. it reads "25% of black kids had parents who grew up in the bottom two levels and moved up at least one" and it should read "59% of white kids had parents who grew up in the bottom two levels and moved up at least one" instead of just "59% of white kids moved up".

As for "Those two groups should sum to less than 100%, certainly not 103%.", this is incorrect: the 25% refers to the kids who had parents in the bottom two levels, while the 78% refers to kids who had parents in the top three levels. Those are separate groups. (same for the number with white kids)

So, if you look at kids coming from the 40% poorest (unclear if it's overall or amongst white/black people), from 1955 to 1970, only 25% of the black kids moved up while 59% of the white kids moved up.

And if you look at kids coming from the 60% wealthiest, 78% of black kids moved down while 43% of white kids moved down.

In other words, poor black kids are more likely to grow up and stay poor than poor white kids. Rich black kids are more likely to grow up and become poorer than their parents than rich white kids.

To simplify a bit (not 100% accurate with the available data but close): regardless of poverty level when growing up, only 22 to 25% of black kids moved up (or stayed the same), while 57 to 59% of white kids did.

<comment><USER4> His interpretation _is_ how it should be read in English. It may be not how it should have been _written_.

> 78% of black kids had parents who grew up in the top three levels and moved > down at least one.

Let B = all black kids; BT = black kids who had parents who grew up in the top three levels; BD = black kids who(se parents) moved down at least one level

The _only_ way that sentence can be interpreted in English is:

|BT ∩ BD| / |B| = 78%

If what they wanted to say was:

|BT ∩ BD| / |BT| = 78%

Then the way to say that in English would have been:

> Of the black kids whose parents grew up in the top three levels, 78% moved > down at least one.

<comment><USER3> You're right. Somehow it made sense to me when reading the article, but reading your comment I see how it doesn't make sense as stated.

I probably implied the "who" since there was no way to have a group qualified by two conditions like these end up so high. (regardless of totals of the two percentages)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the comments I get people who visit India (I'm Indian) is that how is there a slum next to a swanky high rise or classy residential/commercial areas (at least in most big cities). I don't really have an explanation for this (lack of space, cheap labor etc.), but the more I read about economic segregation in the US the more I'm convinced that the inadvertent mixed income neighborhoods in India could be a solution.

If you don't live around people who are less fortunate than you, how can you understand their plight and their point of view? Handing out a few bucks to a homeless guy or cutting a check to a non-profit doesn't create any substantial understanding of the issue.

Obviously there will be opposition to this in the US since people want to live with other people in the same socio-economic strata as themselves. Other reasons: 1) I don't want my property price to depreciate 2) I don't want to live next to "da hood" etc. Until people have a drastic change in attitude this will be ongoing. The article touches on this a bit (section 8 vouchers) but why can't we have neighborhoods with multiple levels of housing options encouraging people with mixed incomes to be around each other.

<comment><USER6> Huge disclaimer. This is how it was explained to me by my Indian host while I was working in India.

I remarked to someone basically the same thing - not only was it incredible that slums - corrugated-cardboard-house slums - sat right next to the 5 star hotel my company put me up in, but they were relatively _safe_.

One night we were walking through a slum because an Indian gentleman wanted to expound on my remark, and we came to a square that was decorated with lights and candles and flowers and all sorts of beautiful things. He said the people there had pooled their money, despite having so little. He then told me a lot had to do with the Hindu religion. Most Hindu's believed the position they were born into in life was the place in their spiritual journey they were meant to be, and doing well in that life was fundamental. It's a completely different way of looking at one's poverty.

He remarked that I wouldn't find the same type of sense of community in slums in Muslim parts of India, because their beliefs about their poverty and their lot in life was different.

I don't know if that's true, I didn't travel to any Muslim-dominated areas of India. It may have been true, it may have been his perception, but for that night, he was at least right about this local community, and it was a huge culture shock for a young man in his early 20s who had only seen slums in the US and, potentially more dangerous, Mexico City (and was warned to never, ever go there by my private corporate-sponsored driver).

<comment><USER7> I find that Hindu bit fascinating because it is presumably what allows so many people to coexist on so little space. However, it is also a very convenient belief for the people who are better off. Kind of like the meritocracy on speed.

<comment><USER8> I don't see the difference to capatalism (disclaimer: hardly looked). The believe that anything can be achieved when doing well enough is rather fundamental, because it's tautological. The modesty to currently accept the situation as limited by factors out of control is just a factor that can be controled.

<comment><USER7> By meritocracy I meant the American beliefthat everybody is responsible for their own success - but in turn also for not being successful. That seems to lead to less charity (judging from outside of the US). So Meritocracy might make you believe that poor people deserve to be poor, just like Hinduism might make you believe that poor people deserve to be poor. (Just pondering, I don't have deep knowledge of either cultures).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While the data might show these correlations I disagree on the premise that is reached as a result.

It is not just economic stratification, but cultural differences.

Those who have great wealth, and are not celebrity, tend to respect education, or at least attending 'upper tier academic institutions' for their upper society connections. Among this group of people knowledge /is/ power and it is respected.

In economically down-trodden situations it is as if the population has been conditioned that they are beyond redemption, that there is no hope in enlightenment bringing them a better future. Maybe they are correct in that respect as greed is a major driving factor in politics.

I suggest that the culture must change to enshrine knowledge and intellect as well as society rewarding normal productive labor for a real solution to these issues.

<comment><USER10> > I suggest that the culture must change to enshrine knowledge and intellect

How do you suggest to do this?

<comment><USER9> I too am still only human; within my many flaws are gaps in my knowledge, experience, and ability that limit my capacity for solving this issue to a personal level.

That is, I try to set a good example and help those closest to me when I am able.

Maybe you or someone else has a solution that scales better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This just in - being surrounded by good influences is good for you. And vis- versa.

This isn't rocket science, of course. We've know about the important of cultural influence for a long time. There was a reason my parents cared about where I grew up, and who I hung out with.

If you grow up in a culture where people don't care about academics, where welfare and child support are acceptable forms of provision, where machismo and crime are glorified, where you are told that discrimination will prevent you from otherwise succeeding, and that your failures can be blamed on racism - no, I don't think that culture will have a good influence on you.

<comment><USER12> while the surrounding culture does matter a lot, it's more than that.

There are also more mundane things such as poor access to quality food, education and secure places to relax. Malnurishment, poor education and constant stress all have negative effects on people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can dig it.

Living in a bad neighborhood exposes you to an in-ideal living atmosphere. The people you are around influence you in many ways and one of those ways is the wrong way --not because people in the neighborhood want bad things for their brethren --but because their way of life and expectations impinge on the growth of the new young people in the neighborhood with respect to the wider society.

Also, it's worth noting that widening inequality is a global phenomenon but not only between people but amongst nations. The inequality between let's say Mexico and Finland was different back in 1910 and what it is now. The inequality between poor and rich in the US was also less in the US back in the early 1900s.

<comment><USER14> Actually, wealth inequality in the West was higher before World War One. They called it the 'gilded age' for a reason.

It only got a lot more equal because WW1, the Depression, and WW2 combined destroyed most of the stuff the rich people had.

Only recently has wealth inequality re-approached pre-WW1 levels.

Source: Piketty.

<comment><USER15> _It only got a lot more equal because WW1, the Depression, and WW2 combined destroyed most of the stuff the rich people had._

Don't forget 92% marginal tax rates on income over $1 million/year.

That was slashed to 72% under JFK. But regional inequality only took took off after it was slashed to 50% then to 28% by Reagan.

Today the rich have lower tax rates than average Americans.

<comment><USER14> Those rates were basically fiction. All they led to (and the only reason they could be levied) was a huge system of fake on-paper money-losing schemes. People would arrange all sorts of business ventures and other schemes to appear to be losing money, and thus reduce their taxes.

The actual tax receipts as a percentage of income were very close to what they are today.

<comment><USER16> Reagan's tax deal with Congress was eliminate the tax shelters in exchange for lowing the top rate. The former has been forgotten.

<comment><USER17> The main goal of the 1986 tax deal was simplification, eliminating tax shelters was inherent to the plan, not something traded for lower rates. If there was any exchange for lower top rates, it was raising corporate and capital gains taxes to keep the plan revenue neutral.

<comment><USER16> Wealthy people do not care about tax simplification, they care about how much in tax they have to pay. So the trade was lower tax rates overall in exchange for giving up the low tax rates that made tax shelters extremely attractive.

Your position underestimates how pervasive tax avoidance using shelters was at the time. The wealthy were never going to give that up for simplification, after all, they could have simplified their taxes anyway by not investing in shelters if that was their issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A highly one-sided presentation. Let me point out some issues: it makes major hay of Moving to Opportunity, but MTO is a notorious failure - it increased crime rates in targeted areas, and showed no improvements on anything until the cited Chetty paper managed to torture out of the data, just recently, improvements in only 1 subgroup on only a handful of metrics (which, aside from Vox misstating the Chetty results by implying it was _all_ MTO participants, rather than one post hoc subgroup, contradicts the later experiment: the claimed effects do not remotely overlap); non-randomized moves are heavily confounded by upward mobility and human capital; many other studies like Swedish lottery studies and the land lottery natural experiment show that exogenous shocks of wealth do not produce meaningful improvements in things like health anywhere remotely close to the observed correlations of wealth/health; genetically informed family designs which account for heritability by looking at siblings differentially exposed or by looking at relatives tend to find that most 'poor neighborhood' effects are driven by genetic confounds; specific versions of the 'poor neighborhood' hypothesis tend to go down in flames when rigorously tested (most recently, the claim that schizophrenia is caused by bad neighborhoods, which everyone was _sure_ about; polygenic scores for schizophrenia show that it is the other way around - schizophrenics and those vulnerable to schizophrenia drift to poor neighborhoods); in genetics studies, the correlation between wealthy parents and one's own SES turns out to be entirely genetically mediated; the parent/child IQ thing is differential regression to the mean; and so on. Many of the claims made in OP are naively causal and are guaranteed to be overestimated based simply on not including genetic relatedness. These are just the recent contrary studies I happen to remember offhand.

When you look at especially the recent genetic studies using polygenic scores from the GWASes to test environmental claims (eg Mendelian randomization), it's becoming increasingly clear: the slate is not blank and the sociology emperor has no clothes. I don't even know... what can be done about sociology? It is 2016 and every time I see a newspaper article or editorial invoking sociological results, it's totally wrong, and the sociologists quoted seem 100% committed to ignoring all the contrary evidence that not all differences are 100% due to environments. I mean... can you imagine seeing Vox cite a recent paper like "The Genetics of Success: How Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms Associated With Educational Attainment Relate to Life-Course Development" [http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/05/26/095679761664...](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/05/26/0956797616643070.abstract) or a newspaper article on it (which _didn 't_ quote some scientists arguing that genetics research should be defunded or that the research is irrelevant)? That would be nice - society needs to come to grips with the confirmation of behavioral genetics. But it doesn't seem like it will happen anytime soon. It's all terribly frustrating.

Anyway, I didn't mean to rant or try to write an in depth carefully cited rebuttal, but I just wanted to say: it is not as simple as 'poor people are poor and unhealthy because of racism and poverty', and there is lots of high- quality evidence of this which tends to go undiscussed in liberal media outlets, so pieces like this are closer to advocacy than research popularization.

<comment><USER19> > society needs to come to grips with the confirmation of behavioral genetics.

In your opinion, what would that look like in the ideal case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Empirically (aka having grown up in a poor neighbourhood) I would say that during infancy it doesn't matter much, it mostly depends on your parents background: they are the largest influence on you. It really starts to hurt is during teenage years when kids get independent. Then one of two situations use to happen: the environment pushes them down or they remove themselves from it and grow lonely. None of the options is optimal.

 _Law 10: Infection: avoid the unhappy and the unlucky._ \-- Robert Greene (48 laws of power)

 _Law 18: Do not build fortresses to protect yourself – isolation is dangerous_ \-- Robert Greene (48 laws of power)

</comment><comment><USER21> "Another popular left-wing idea is a universal basic income" UBI is _not_ only supported by left-wingers.

<comment><USER22> As someone who actually owns rentals in poor black neighborhoods, UBI is the most retarded ivory tower idea I've seen gain traction. All the black families on my street have section 8 vouchers, so they basically have no debt service. What do they do with all this free time? Deal drugs, look for marks to mug, break into vacant apartments, wake up at 2 pm, etc. Drive through my street around noon and count the number of able bodied men doing absolutely nothing productive and you'll lose count. They're hopeless.

<comment><USER23> Section 8 vouchers are a means-tested benefit program where the net benefit decreases with outside income, and, as such, create a disincentive (especially since people qualified for them also, nearly invariably, are on _other_ means- tested benefit programs whose benefits _also_ decline with additional income -- sometimes, in aggregate, leading to a _greater_ than 1:1 decline in benefits compared to increased income) to productive activity.

This is precisely one of the problems with means-tested benefit programs, especially with an uncoordinated collection of such programs, that UBI, with its unconditional nature, is designed to solve. I don't see how that description of the effect of Section 8 vouchers (even if it is assumed to be both accurate, and generalizable) illustrates that UBI is a "retarded ivory tower idea".

<comment><USER24> This is the thing I really don't get about UBI. It really, really doesn't remove means testing. Your tax burden is still means based, and that determines whether your ubi is net positive or net negative. So again, your net benefit decreases with increased outside income, because you're paying more in taxes.

<comment><USER25> It's not means testing that's the problem. The problem is that a linear combination of benefit programs with a below-unity benefit-to-income slope has an above-unity slope, which means that making an additional dollar disqualifies you from more money than the dollar gives you. The benefit programs as a whole aren't designed holistically to avoid this (and other) traps, so any welfare overhaul that consolidates multiple independent programs into a systematic whole should solve these problems.

<comment><USER26> And even before unity-in-dollars, it can be way below unity-in-utility for opportunities available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility) and [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=433866](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=433866)

</comment><comment><USER28> Expected to see something like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe) story.

</comment><comment><USER29> This looks like a pretty substantive article with an unfortunately infantilized presentation. Let's try to stick to the important content if we can.

<comment><USER30> Compared to the _quirky and random XD_ reaction GIFs and image macros that populate modern thought pieces for _no constructive purpose whatsoever_ , the images in the article are fine and provide a relevant visual aid.

<comment><USER31> > the quirky and random XD reaction GIFs and image macros that populate modern > thought pieces

I'm just glad that we don't read the same "thought pieces"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why blacks are not doing well?

Because they were from Africa, but new immigrants from Africa came to US earn a pretty decent life quickly than those have been here centuries ago.

Because they're minority, but other minorities such as the Jews and Asians are working hard and earning a decent life here.

Because of less chance to get education, but you have affirmative action that you can get into decent college at a huge discount as far as scores go. Also so many financial support for economically disadvantaged families.

Because of unfair tax system, election system... those seem not the key reason to me too.

I might be missing something else.

I think it's probably more of a culture thing, that favors education, hard working, loyal to family, etc. Without that, the civil rights law or various diversity initiatives can only help that much. The black community needs to address that gradually and it's the only way to fix the "poor neighborhood" for good.

In where I live, the elected democratic officers decided to bridge the poor community with "rich" community by building government-sponsored condos right next to or in the middle of up-middle-class communities,the result is that people move out and the house price drops, does not look like a right fix to me.

<comment><USER33> Yes: you are missing the history of the United States. This was most of the point of the article: Black people disproportionately live in poverty (not to mention the history of discrimination in this country), and the effects of living in poverty are extremely harmful. Your post seems to be missing the history of human slavery in the United States, the subsequent history of discrimination, and the conditions it created whose effects and legacy are still very strong today. You can't control for these factors by comparing to other minority immigrant groups!!

One can argue that there are negative cultural effects, but it's a chicken- and-egg issue because history has created conditions for cultures of e.g. gangs and violence to arise. Similarly, the solution must address both the chicken and the egg. Your comment about "the black community needs to address" black culture, while perhaps well-intentioned, is the sort of argument historically commonly used by powerful whites to justify a "not my problem" philosophy toward black poverty and living conditions that create a negative culture.

How does one create a culture that favors education when inner-city schools provide useless educations and are filled with gang violence, when there is little hope of using education for good? How does one create a "hard working" culture when the best "jobs" that seem realistically available are selling drugs, or when hard work fails to be rewarded due to discrimination? How does one create a culture of "loyal to family" when 73% of black children live in single-parent households (compared to 25% of white children)? (source: [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2013/jul/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2013/jul/29/don-lemon/cnns-don-lemon-says-more-72-percent- african-americ/) )

All I can do in closing is suggest that, if you really want to understand your question "why are blacks not doing well", you should read some history, studies/statistics, and accounts of what life is currently like for blacks in the US.

(Edited to change the source of the data.)

<comment><USER34> > Your comment about "the black community needs to address" black culture, > while perhaps well-intentioned, is the sort of argument historically > commonly used by powerful whites to justify a "not my problem" philosophy > toward black poverty and living conditions that create a negative culture.

This is a terrible argument. Statements are not automatically false because awful people agree with them. If Hitler thinks 2+2=4, decent people are not forced to choose 3 or 5.

It seems to me that only black people can change black culture. Who else would do it? How?

<comment><USER33> It was not an argument, just a comment. But to address your second comment, part of the point of my post is that people outside the black community can do many things to improve the conditions that lead to a negative culture (which is not necessarily about being black but more common to poverty broadly): provide better schools, better housing options, decrease discrimination of all forms, better/fairer policing, replace the war on drugs with a fight against addiction, ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Doesn't all this seem somewhat backward.

There's this victimization mentality that acts like poverty is this absolute thing that is meted out like a cursed rock, outside the control and agency of whom it's been placed upon.

Why don't we have more discussion about the _causes_ that lead to the _effect_ of poverty.

It's really more productive to see poverty as being an effect, or outcome of other causes or actions. Change the input and get a different outcome. And at a certain point it becomes a personal responsibility. If you want to help someone else, great, but the two of you have to be pushing in the same direction.

And likewise, external conditions do have effects, if it comes to light that someone appears to be needlessly and negatively imposed upon there's clearly a place in society for discussing how best we can optimize everyone's external conditions. Everyone faces obstacles, but placing blame wholly outside oneself is always going to be a losing battle.

> _On top of it all, if a murder occurred in a child 's neighborhood — in an > area of about six to 10 square blocks — their score fell by 7 to 8 points._

This is so ridiculous that people can make a pronouncement like that, thinking it's a reasonable analysis, or indeed the only analysis.

We know that intelligence is a highly stable trait. Meaning for intelligence to be significantly diminished[0] requires something pretty drastic, like a serious brain injury or some kind of long term deprivation. There is no reason to think someone being killed within a particular distance of someone would have any kind of effect. Do all soldiers come home as dunces?

Something seems to be missing from the kind of people that write these articles. Hard to say what it is exactly, a more holistic view, better analytical capabilities, less pre-conceived notions, _intelligence_? something...

If they had whatever missing ingredient, then they might understand that an analysis that stands up to rigor is something more like,

People tend to self-segregate along a whole host of traits[1], intelligence is a trait. The trait of intelligence is linked to a propensity for certain types of crimes. Murder among them, therefore it follows that the people that commit murder are statistically likely to have lower intelligence, as are the people around them.

> _Oh, another thing: Living in these poor neighborhoods makes you > significantly less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy_

Oh, another thing: Any analytical mind of any worth can clearly see that the inverse has just as much going for it, if not more.

It seems to clearly follow that people who are less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy would make their neighborhoods poorer. How a focus on improving happiness, hope, and health? Telling people their predicaments are caused by factors outside of their control is the last way to improve any of those things.

[0]7 to 8 points is half a standard deviation, i.e. significant.

[1]See Schelling's Macro Micro, for some of the mechanisms involved.

<comment><USER36> _Do all soldiers come home as dunces?_

Many come home with post-traumatic stress disorder. Having people murdered in your neighbourhood can also result in PTSD.

 _less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy would make their neighborhoods poorer_

Which way does the causation really run here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This article is the biggest bunch of rubbish that I have read in months. It takes bias to whole new levels. People are starting to realize that "studies" are almost always biased in the first place and should not be trusted. Secondly, look at some of the examples used:

A comparison is made between:

> 25% of black kids had parents who grew up in the bottom two levels* and > moved up at least one.

and

> 59% of white kids moved up

Notice any difference here? The whole article is like this. Comparing completely separate things. This is laughable. I feel embarrassed by the bias and sorry for those who read this article with a straight face.

<comment><USER29> We've banned this account. Single-purpose accounts are not allowed on HN, especially when their single purpose is to post political rants.

If you want to participate on HN in good faith, respecting the rules about civil, substantive discourse, you're welcome to email us at email@example.com.

<comment><USER38> Did he edit his comment? He's obviously failing at reading comprehension, but I don't see how his comment is a political rant in any way. He's (incorrectly) pointing out Vox's bias in the way they present data.

Personally, I also don't trust anything on Vox after they posted this debacle of statistics last year: [http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9444417/gun-violence- united-sta...](http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9444417/gun-violence-united- states-america) which attempted to make a point on why gun control was so needed while completely failing to control for suicide (the most common cause of gun related death) and trying to make points about how gun control lowered suicide rates (by gun) while failing to note that a link between overall suicide rates and gun control has not yet been established by any study.

While this particular poster is simply wrong about the data presented here, I would hate to think that anything that doesn't conform to a left-wing viewpoint on HN would be considered "political" just for that reason.

<comment><USER29> It isn't just a question of that one comment. Even so, the amount of name- calling and froth in there qualifies it for rant status in my book. YMMV of course.

I would hate to think that too, and we try our best to apply the rules evenly across political divides. Comments need to be civil and substantive; this one was neither, and our tolerance for someone breaking the guidelines goes down as the pattern of breaking them goes up. Users who feel that we misread their intention and genuinely want to post civil, substantive comments don't typically have a hard time persuading us to unban them.

<comment><USER39> Reading his previous comments, and considering the brief age of the account and the consistency of tone in the previous comments, I agree with your decision - I think people forget that the mods here are quite approachable and upfront when it comes to bans and ways to move forward from them.

Thanks dang, you've tangibly improved my opinion of both the comments here and their moderation since you've come on board.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


If Windows is a dead end, what's next? - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/04/45FE-windows-7-dead-end_1.html

<comment><USER2> OSX

</comment><comment><USER3> it's a message to software developers:

never release something that breaks more things than it fixes...

it's a cardinal rule, much like pilots should always keep their landings equal to their take-offs...</comment>


'Planet Earth' narrator David Attenborough calls humans a 'plague on the Earth' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906520/planet-earth-narrator-david-attenborough-calls-humans-a-plague-on-the

<comment><USER2> David Attenborough is correct. The big question is what to do about it. Human institutions do not seem to be able to cope with multiple global crises (global warming, resource depletion, water, food, population, and so forth) on a time scale where change will make a difference.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the point of encryption at rest? - <AUTHOR> Every time there is a data breach, one of the take aways is that the company didn't encrypt their data at rest. The implication is that if they had encrypted at rest, then the data would not have been stolen.
But at rest encryption only protects against someone stealing the actual storage device (and even then, only if they cannot also steal the key). This is a major issue for mobile devices like laptops, but in a data center this means the attacker has physical access to your storage and servers. And once they have physical access, there are lots of other ways that they could compromise data and systems.
So how often would at rest encryption actually have prevented a data breach? Why is it being treated like a major preventative measure? <comment><USER2> IIRC one data breach method back in the old days was "employee leaves backup tape someplace". Encryption-at-rest does a good job in that scenario.

Beyond that, seems like most of the physical-access compromises still involve at least some interaction with the software - so they would (in principle) leave traces and/or be detected by IDS. Walking up to a server and physically removing a hot-swap drive doesn't, so encryption at rest ensures that _that_ attack won't work.

</comment><comment><USER3> At rest encryption would not prevent a breach from happening per se. The data the breach reveals however, maybe less than accessible due to the encryption. The data could be accessed but not easily read. That is the hope anyhow.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is assuming the breach is stealing a disk though, right? If the encrypted storage is part of an application, and I infiltrate the application or can trick it into serving me data, then the encryption cannot help. Any runtime breach isn't really prevented by encryption at rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Database encryption would probably protect against an attacker scping files out.</comment>


If Not Britain, Where? The Case for a French Industrial Revolution - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@antonhowes/if-not-britain-where-the-case-for-a-french-industrial-revolution-608547f6e9cd <comment><USER2> There is a good argument for it not to be about the innovators, but rather about the long buildup of compound growth in land use, longevity, and wealth in the preceding century in England, distinctly from other areas of Europe. The thought leaders and innovators of that era and the preceding centuries tended to be cosmopolitan, mobile, and well connected between parts of Europe, so one can't really invoke them as though they were geographically fixed, a regional phenomenon.

[http://ideas.repec.org/p/cte/whrepe/wh016301.html](http://ideas.repec.org/p/cte/whrepe/wh016301.html)

During the 17th and 18th century the English economy underwent a dramatic transformation: its capacity to feed and increasing population increased impressively. ... Perhaps for the first time in the history of any country other than a land of recent settlement, rapid population growth took place concurrently with rising living standands.

...

The notion of life expectancy provides the most important tool to examine the phenomenon of mortality, taking into account the age structure of the population. Life expectancy at age x is the average number of years that a person of age x will still survive at a given date. The most commonly used indicator is e(0), life expectancy at birth (or at age 0), but sometimes other statistics like e(1), e(5), e(20), e(50), are also tabulated. Their main advantage is that they capture age-specific mortality profiles: for instance, an increase in mortality concentrated in the age-group between 20-25 (due, for instance, to a long war) would affect e(0) but not e(30) because the probability of survival, given that a person is already 30, does not change.

Decisions about future capital and consumption are not taken by the agent when he is born but, rather, when he is twenty or twenty five years old. Therefore, the relevant survivial profile for considering the influence of mortality over investment choices is given by adult life expectancy. In fact, making the distinction between e(0) and adult life expectancy is expecially important for our problem because adult mortality behaves in a completely different way from infant and child mortality in the first half of the 18th century: adult mortality rates decreased very sharply from the end of the 17th century, while infant and childhood mortality rates were unusually high between 1680 and 1750.

..

If life cycle inspiration was present in rural England in the 18th century, farmers who were becoming aware that old people were gradually living for longer periods must have been more concerned about their own means of subsistence in the future. This may have been an important stimulus to reduce consumption, increase savings and take into account longer horizons.

</comment><comment><USER3> These sorts of revolutions are built on previous discoveries. The industrial revolution was guaranteed to happen with advances in metallurgy and mathematics. It happened in Britain because the British empire was top dog, economically, but it could just as easily have happened anywhere in Europe or in all of it.

<comment><USER4> The extent to how it happened in Britain, I believe, even had other cities in Europe being called 'little Manchester'.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What scripts/cronjobs should every programmer have - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Not a script perse... But this runs behind the scenes to truncate excessively long paths in the terminal and present git branch and status at a glance.

For example

        (master):~/p/s/my-app$
        (mobile-css):~/p/s/m/css$

[https://gist.github.com/tbirrell/459a0c65a4dbfcfe3de4669498f...](https://gist.github.com/tbirrell/459a0c65a4dbfcfe3de4669498f11db5)</comment>


What Programming Languages Engineers and Employers Love and Hate - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/what-programming-languages-engineers-and-employers-loveand-hate <comment><USER2> Apparently I'm an unusual engineer, because I dislike Python.

<comment><USER3> You're not alone, brother

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's funny that Clojure is not even on this list. Is it completely off employers' radars? I have Clojure experience but I am finding that libraries and projects are getting abandoned by the dev community, so maybe nobody even cares about it any more?

<comment><USER5> What's a lib or feature are you missing in the language?

<comment><USER4> Sorry for the late response. I didn't mean that I missed a lib or feature. It's just that many of the libs I see on Github are sometimes several years old and have been abandoned. Clojure seems to be incredibly featured and rich, but I find very few devs who have even heard of it (I often have to reference Lisp for context).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems odd that the global rankings are so out of step with local rankings. Given the local demand, I would have expected to see something like Typescript at the top. Scala looks like it's in completely the wrong position.

But what does jump out is exactly what this is measuring - it's languages listed on the CVs of people who got interviews. I'd wager that Scala and Ruby are up there as they indicate a level of experience, Ruby because it's been around a while, and Scala because it has a slightly steeper learning curve and generally isn't a "first language". That's probably also true of Go.

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone successfully downloaded the report from [https://hired.com/page/state-of-software-engineers/key- takea...](https://hired.com/page/state-of-software-engineers/key-takeaways) ?

edit: Got it: [http://pages.hired.email/rs/289-SIY-439/images/2019-State- of...](http://pages.hired.email/rs/289-SIY-439/images/2019-State-of- SoftwareEngineers-Report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> Given the methodology used and the lack of supporting data, I do not believe that any weight should be given to the results, interesting though they may be.

</comment><comment><USER9> > programming languages

> HTML

I argued with people over this.

</comment><comment><USER10> No Rust either.</comment>


An open platform to connect people and things (ThingSpeak) - <AUTHOR> https://thingspeak.com/

<comment><USER2> I spent five minutes on the site and couldn't find a single link that lead to a section saying "ThingSpeak is...". So what is this? An API framework for user-facing devices? The "Documentation" page comes close...I now know it talks over HTTP, but...what? I don't even know.

It still surprises me that so many sites fail to clearly articulate a) what they do, and b) why I should be interesting in what they do. IMO it smacks of egocentrism and arrogance.</comment>


The Matrix Code Came from Sushi Recipes - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/the-matrix-code-sushi-recipe/ <comment><USER2> Incidentally, we watched The Matrix last night, for the first time in at least a decade, and were impressed by how well it has held up. I was expecting the technology references and special effects to make it feel old, but it really didn't. The way the plot requires a (special?) land line to escape the matrix felt oddly relevant in the context of today's addictive social media tech...

Tempted to buy a Nokia 8110 4G now, I wonder how hard it would be to port Signal to it?

<comment><USER3> I do love it, don't get me wrong. But I wish that they'd explained how humans were basically used in computing clusters. For running the Matrix. Not as "batteries", for producing power.

Because, after all, they'd need to be "fed", and wouldn't produce any net energy. That was in the original screenplay. But they decided that most people just wouldn't get it. So we got what we got.

Stuff like that ruins (for me) most films that ~rely on ~hard science. Explosions, for example. They are typically far too slow, with far too much dancing flame. In reality, they're virtually instantaneous at scales much less than kilometers. _Saving Private Ryan_ is a notable exception.

<comment><USER4> Zion and Neo are control mechanisms in the Matrix, they are used to control the one called Smith. They are in the Matrix when they think they have left. The human batteries story is just a b/s narrative. The best proof of this is Neo's ability to control the machines outside of the Matrix in the supposed real world.

<comment><USER5> Either that or Neo is not human but a machine with admin rights - no inception required :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void. . . . The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark... "_

Neuromancer. William Gibson 1984

<comment><USER7> I think of this bit every time I dream of Rez, which happens a few times a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone else remember back in two-thousand and something or other (back when CRTs were still supreme), that it was all the rage to have a Matrix-style code-rain[0] screen-saver or is that just a "me" thing?

[0] - [https://youtu.be/rpWrtXyEAN0](https://youtu.be/rpWrtXyEAN0)

<comment><USER9> I definitely remember that on more than a few screens in the college dorms around that time. Screensavers were a great little bit of self expression that's no longer in use.

<comment><USER10> I'm still an XScreenSaver fan, mostly because I like having something visually interesting on my monitors when I lock my workstation to go afk at work. Many of the engineers I work with do the same. Makes me glad they're not dead everywhere yet.

Particularly attached to the analog TV one: [https://youtu.be/VmM1KkFsry0?list=PLbe67PprBSpqM_- HU49fmIS8n...](https://youtu.be/VmM1KkFsry0?list=PLbe67PprBSpqM_- HU49fmIS8ncApw4i08)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That hero picture at the top isn't the Matrix code...it isn't even kanji...in fact it's full of "missing character" boxes. Not impressed, Wired. :)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that's from the Windows ripoff screensaver version. They could have at least used a screenshot from the real XScreenSaver version, or, duh, a still from the movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's still a rip of the _Ghost in the Shell_ opening credits, but an interesting one and iconic in its own way.

</comment><comment><USER13> Matrix release date: March 31, 1999. 20 years ago today

<comment><USER14> I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere except here. I wonder if the silent passing the film's 20th anniversary is due to the soon-to-come 20th anniversary of the Columbine massacre.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It was a great effect at the time, and holds up well now too. Not that it was technically sophisticated, but it added quite a bit of mysticism to an already mystery filled movie.

The moment I saw it, I knew it was Korean / Japanese / Chinese, while some characters looked overlapped.

Was obsessed with the graphic for quite a while. Screensavers, Wallpapers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wired web site displays annoying "pay us now" banner over half of the page on a phone browser, which cannot be removed, probably due to JavaScript bug. Can't help, but flag this.

<comment><USER17> Weird that a paying subscriber would see that banner. You are a paying subscriber, right?

<comment><USER16> I'm fine with paywalled content overall. I'm not fine with paywalled content on the front page of hn, because it reduces hn utility: I can't see the content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kind of similar to what SuperDry is doing with clothes, stylyzed Japanese characters that don't really mean anything. They choose the words to be nonsensical but inoffensive phrases.

<comment><USER19> Not really nonsensical, just badly translated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You get used to it. I don't even see the code. All I see is hamachi, unagi, toro…</comment>


Is OpenAI's GPT-3 API Beta Pricing Too Rich for Researchers? - <AUTHOR> https://syncedreview.com/2020/09/04/is-openais-gpt-3-api-beta-pricing-too-rich-for-researchers/ <comment><USER2> What's with all these tokens?</comment>


The Holloway Syllabus on Company Culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.holloway.com/s/syllabus-company-culture <comment><USER2> So how do i survive in a company as someone really insecure Who has never done the same thing for more than 6 months before?

</comment><comment><USER3> Bay area fullstack engineer here. Has anyone else gotten unsolicited emails from Holloway starting a few weeks ago? They emailed me every week with news about another startup-oriented syllabus until I marked the last one as spam in Gmail.

<comment><USER4> Hello! Andy from Holloway here. Super sorry. I swear this isn't malicious, we must be sloppy with our list management. If you email me at email@example.com I'll make sure we get you off the list for good.</comment></comment>


Paul Graham Keynote at OPT412 on Pittsburgh as a Tech Centre - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI <comment><AUTHOR> This was submitted nine hours ago by someone else, but it didn't take.

I'm submitting again because it was a very interesting speech.

Also, I meant to add [video] to the title, it should probably be amended. The mobile interface doesn't allow scrolling to the end of the title to do that.</comment>


I changed my work 6 months ago and I'm already burned out - <AUTHOR> I changed work about 6 months ago after I was getting burned out. I enjoyed the interviews and while I had my concerns, I've decided to give it a go.
The onboarding went smooth. Plenty of documentation, even though the company is not that large (<1000 employees).
I joined a team that was building a new feature. As mentioned, designs & implementation details ready. Great! I noticed very early on that you have to figure out which parts of these should actually be implemented as some of the decisions were later changed. Happens everywhere, whatever.
Another thing is code quality. New code here is basically legacy even before you start to write it. There is a promise that once we finish the feature, there will be time for maintenance. I believe that maintaining quality is not something that you can do with once-a-year rewrite. I don't like it, but what can you do?
There is a very strong push to deliver new features and the code got pretty old. Once something is added, it shouldn't be modified (unless you modify the behavior). This isn't coming from PMs.
We use React, no hooks thou. It's a step back for me, but whatever. Eslint for linting, but rules are often disabled. One of the reasons is that backend team uses pascal_case and we use camelCase.
I like when all devs write code in a similar way - using object destructuring, naming variables similarly, stuff like that. I know some of these are objective, but I'm not saying here that my way is right, let's agree on something. Nope. Reviewers should only comment on a "high level" stuff, which I think everybody understands differently.
About 2 months ago the project was delivered. Finally some time for changes... welp, no. I got transferred to another project.
So here I am, 6 months at work and I'm already tired, because after all this time trying, I just don't want to push for changes, it's draining, it's consuming and there are no results.
How do you handle this? Do I expected too much? <comment><USER2> The fact all you talked about was the work and not yourself, you are living to work. You're taking work home with you. You probably think about work while showering and brushing your teeth.

Stop.

What are your work hours? 9am to 5pm? You stop thinking about work at 5:01pm. You need to do things you enjoy, outside of work that are not work related. Ideally, not computer related. You are supposed to work so you can live a more fulfilled life doing other things. Not live so you can grind away for someone else to profit off of you. Dont get it twisted. You work for money. You're not going to make a world a better place with what you're doing. That's not a hit on you. It's just you need to not believe in some illusion about programming making the world a better place. Go join Doctors Without Borders, as an example, if you want to do that.

Burnout sucks and I lost 2 years of my life due to it. Dont let this get any worse.

</comment><comment><USER3> Take a look at the classic post by Joel Spolsky [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/12/25/getting-things- don...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/12/25/getting-things-done-when- youre-only-a-grunt/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I got to the 1. point on the list and I can already say that I tried :D I had a couple calls with my manager about that :/

But not all hope is lost, thanks for the link!

<comment><USER3> I think the trick for step 1 is to make some task that are small enough to be done in your spare time. Something like you finished all your assigned tasks on Friday at 3pm and we all know that you should not ship on Friday, so you have 2 free hours. Then you can configure a C.I. system to do some automated tests, or add more tests.

If you ask/take for a full "free" week to make a major refactor, you will not get it. Some small task when all your work has been done is easier to do.

Also, remember to have a sane amount of worktime, like <=40 hours per week.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, I agree with that and that was what I was doing and still. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go with the flow and find happiness in something else. This is what I'm doing while looking for the end of COVID-19 and start job hunting again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, definitely. Though I always thought that 6 months at a company is quite short and some future employers may have a problem with that. I was hoping to last a year. Will see, I already had a couple of interesting offers, but I guess every offer is interesting when you're annoyed.</comment></comment>


You're Not Getting Enough Sleep–and It's Killing You - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/youre-not-getting-enough-sleep-and-its-killing-you/ <comment><USER2> Work smarter, not harder, folks. The 996 culture will kill you. Burning your time with too many things, inefficiently, will kill you. If you don't draw a boundary around your rest, and defend it, you're gonna lose years of life.

Whatever you think needs you so much doesn't really need you that much. Turn off the lights and go the fuck to sleep.

</comment><comment><USER3> These types of articles are everywhere and I wish they'd spend more time explaining how to tell if you're getting enough sleep

I've tried everything I can to measure but I cannot see an improvement between 8 vs 6 hours of sleep. I opt for 8 because these article scare me but I actually feel worse than with 6.

I don't drink coffee or alcohol and I fall asleep within 10 min of going to bed. Is it at all possible that I'm getting what I need with 6 hours?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't feel a difference then that might be sufficient for you. I need 7-8 hours.

When I sleep only 6 hours for 2-3 days in a row, I'm tired and have a lot of trouble concentrating. I think most people are regularly sleep deprived and know it, yet don't prioritize sleep. I'm certainly guilty of that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you snore or have mild sleep apnea, you can greatly improve the quality of your sleep and life by doing something about it.

In my case I heard about Xylitol. Its a 5 carbon artificial sweetener that microbes will eat, but starve on. There are studies showing it can greatly help dental and sinus health. I tried the Xlear sinus spray to see what would happen and the quality of my sleep improved dramatically.

<comment><USER5> > _If you snore or have mild sleep apnea_

BIG WARNING HERE: equating snoring to sleep apnea is NOT the same thing. Sleep apnea _can_ happen when snoring, but it is only 1 kind of type of snoring.

If you have nightmares and wake up in fits suddenly, it may be sleep apnea and you need to see a doctor and get a sleep study.

If someone knows you snore but you don't, you might be a mouth _or_ nose snorer and a sleep study won't help. Each of those has a different set of solutions that don't overlap and something like Xylitol may not work for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Only two data points in there: less than 5/24 hours is bad, more than 7/24 is good... Well duh!

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd advise against planning s hectic TED schedule if your pregnant. Doesn't sound like an essential thing to be doing. As for sleep I agree we need to get more but it's hard these days. Too many distractions and pressures out there.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think higher education is seeing a permanent shift due to COIVD? - <AUTHOR> It's no secret that many of the uni's are in bad shape with bloated administrative costs. Do you think enough of them will fail to create a sustainable change in tuition costs/structure of higher education? <comment><USER2> I personally don't think so. I see roughly two categories:

1) Professional type degrees such as health related occupations (medicine, dentists, nurses, etc) and engineering (mechanical, chemical, etc). These are occupations where you more or less need a relevant degree, and the salary has more or less priced in the cost of that degree.

2) Jobs that require a degree as a screening mechanism. These are jobs that do not require highly specialized skills, but pay better than local average/better than minimum wage. There are usually a lot of interest in these jobs. A college degree acts as a filter to reduce the hiring pool to a manageable size. A lot of people in this group see the cost of college as a type of investment (large, upfront investment, long term higher annual salary).

Coding related jobs is somewhat an exception to these groups. While a lot of big companies are more likely to want a degree, there has historically been a lot of opportunity for a self-taught developer to find a job. I think the vast majority of jobs still fall into one of the two buckets, however.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unis have been in a bubble for decades - what they sell is no longer worth the price tag. COVID seems to be a catalyst for this. But even with MOOCs and bootcamps, there isn't anything that replaces a university as a certification body.

Going to MIT and following a MITx class, you can learn roughly as much, but the person who went to MIT is still far more certified. The difference is so big that MITx, which is free, might even act as a sales funnel to MIT.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think so. Any drop in supply will only be temporary so long as the demand stays the same. Other colleges will expand. Colleges don't have a lot of incentive to keep prices low due to the ease of getting student loans and the prestige factor (people want a degree with a good name to get a better job).

</comment><comment><USER5> If international students drop a lot, you will start seeing massive disruption in US higher education.

This has partly happened due to covid and will fully manifest once tensions with China escalate.</comment>


Show HN: Send Bitcoin and Ethereum by Email. To Anyone. From Any Wallet - <AUTHOR> https://chainsfr.com <comment><AUTHOR> To make it easier for you to try Chainsfr, we have also prepared you with testnet ETH in our demo.

Simply go to [https://chainsfr.com](https://chainsfr.com) and leave your email address, we will send you 0.1 ETH by email in our testnet demo.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>====

This is Lucas from the Ventureum team in Toronto. I am here to introduce our new product "Chainsfr".

Chainsfr is a non-custodial open-source payment service, integrated with Google, which lets you send cryptocurrency by email to anyone from your favorite crypto wallets -- like Ledger, Metamask, Coinbase and more. Our goal is to provide you a similar experience as Venmo or Interac e-Transfer if you live in Canada when sending cryptocurrencies.

Features

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

 _Send Bitcoin to Anyone with Ease_

Now with Chainsfr, you can send cryptocurrency to anyone by email. The payee can easily deposit your payment with a Google account.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

 _Prevent Human Errors_

No more worrying about sending bitcoin to the wrong address. With "Security Answer", Chainsfr can prevent you from loss by accidental mistakes.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

 _Stay in Control & Organized_

Take back control of your crypto experience. You will be able to cancel any payment before it is deposited. Chainsfr helps you keep track of all your payment history with print-ready receipts.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

 _Ready for Your Wallets_

Send and receive payment with your existing crypto wallets. Chainsfr supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, and ERC20 stable coins.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

 _Seamless Integration with Google_

Login without Password. Own Your Assets in Drive. Keep Synced with Chrome. Stay Secure with Google.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

We greatly appreciate your feedback.</comment>


What happens when no one needs to work? - <AUTHOR> http://marshalljonesjr.com/what-happens-when-no-one-needs-to-work/

<comment><USER2> Not sure whether to consider this a mental exercise or if this author is serious in his assumptions.

If he is serious, the author seems to have forgotten about all of the jobs that cannot be automated. Book writing, art, entertainment, inspirational speaking, posting funny cat pictures and original memes to the internet, innovation and clever software development, music and musicians, and more. Prostitution, legal services, etc.

Even if all of these were to somehow be automated people would still need each other. Service industries are also important.

Could you imagine living in a reality where every job is done by a machine but because there is only one person running the show there is no one around to support or improve on the code? None of society would move forward. We'd be running on legacy architecture and legacy ideas. And then what would the point of living be? Likely we'd see a whole lot of anomie and disassociation. What would be the point of learning if there were no purpose in applying it?

The "logic" fails when the author assumes that society in the future will be an "either/or" instead of the spectrum of human experience and automation that it always has been and always will be. We are nothing without machines, and they are nothing without us. They need us to reproduce them and improve them, and we need them to help us to maintain homeostasis with our environment. It is a symbiotic situation, not one of bleak and utopian/dsytopian absolutism.

<comment><USER3> Machines will eventually be able to do everything you mentioned including improving its own code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would like to fill in some gaps that's not addressed by the OP: 1\. The object of a humane society is friction-less living whereby everybody's basic needs (food, shelter, safety) are met without having to "work" because robots have automated everything. 2\. In this future, the energy required for automation is fully sustainable and automated meaning creation of energy is self-sustaining from origination (solar, nuclear) to distribution to maintenance without requiring human input. 3\. The final assumption is that mankind has lost interest in war and conflict - religions and ideologies co- exist without being "personal" to the degree that advocates turn to violence as a persuasive measure.

</comment><comment><USER5> We'll create a virtual reality to live in. Probably will simulate the 21st century. The machines will feed us intravenously and will be powered by the energy we put off. Now the question you have to ask yourself is, how do you know this hasn't already happened?

On a more serious note, we're already paying people to live who aren't working. Its called welfare. As time goes along, I suspect we'll have growing numbers of people on welfare while your average job becomes increasingly technical. If people on welfare were to become more motivated as a whole to learn these technical jobs, it would probably speed up the process to get to the point the author describes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your second paragraph mirrors my thoughts. As I've said before, Norway de facto has a system like this already. People who are for some reason unable to work (usually due to low skills or illness) get an allowance from the government which is just enough to live a comfortable life. We are able to pay out this kind of welfare since the petroleum industry is very lucrative at the moment.

People who are jobless due to low skills are paid to receive more training, and payment is only made if the person enrolls in some kind of education program. People who are jobless due to long-term illness get a more or less permanent monthly payment.

A system like this is probably what we'll end up with, where the richest are taxed hard enough to make it work. There are doubtless lots of challenges associated with this, but it is the only workable system I can see to make sure that people don't starve even as we have the richest society in human history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think we're already there to some extent. We need less people to keep everyone alive than there are people alive.

So far this has lead to oodles of unemployed and unemployable people rotting in social housing.

I think the whole thing needs looking at.

Automation of everything will enslave us as much as not automating it. We need a healthy balance, even if it does invoke smashing a few looms.

Insert comment about how Marx and Lenin got the right idea...

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra What happens when a minority of people still need to do unautomatable jobs in order everyone else to prosper?

Current situation seems to be this: hand a white collar to everyone but a few (and they don't get to do anything meaningful), pay them allowance. Force everyone else (a minority) to take a job where they are overworked for a considerably smaller pay.

I'm sceptical on whether we can make workless society work.

</comment><comment><USER7> See: "Jobless recoveries and the disappearance of routine occupations "[1] It's going to be tough getting there.

[1] [http://www.voxeu.org/article/jobless-recoveries-and- disappea...](http://www.voxeu.org/article/jobless-recoveries-and- disappearance-routine-occupations)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Credit to manaskarekar for tracking down this link. I've posted it since I would love to see HN's opinions and thoughts about the long-term implications of rapid technological progress.

</comment><comment><USER8> And how the market exists if nobody have the money to buy food and drink?</comment>


The Runner (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/09/03/the-runner <comment><USER2> 15 years later: "Police believe Hogue, a notorious con man who once posed as a high school student when he was 26 years old, built a cabin above the Shadow Mountain Condominiums atop Aspen Street near Lift 1A, and lived there for an undetermined amount of time, though it could have been a year and a half to two years, Detective Jeff Fain has said."

[http://www.aspentimes.com/news/con-man-arrested-at-pitkin- co...](http://www.aspentimes.com/news/con-man-arrested-at-pitkin-county- library/)</comment>


Google Earth + CRE Data = GAME CHANGER  - <AUTHOR> http://www.realcomm.com/advisoryprint.asp?aid=422

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. One of the stranger things I regularly did in the '80s and '90s was advise the leaders many small firms I worked for about the ... slow clock cycle, shall we say, of real estate people. I learned this growing up and watching my father play the game from all sides, most people don't realize just how slow the industry moves.

It might take longer than most of you would expect for this to become a reality, and a lot of potential players may resist since they will think it will reduce or eliminate their role in the game, but it does indeed look like a potential game changer.</comment>


The end of capitalism has begun - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun <comment><USER2> Honesty I cannot follow the argument in this article at all. Something about the sharing economy creating a post capitalist world? Then the author goes on to talk about Marx for some reason. The whole thing is totally incomprehensible. Can anyone explain to me what the central premise of the argument is? Truly a terrible article.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is from 2015.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you create a community that won't self-select its members? - <AUTHOR> I'm more in particular with online communities such as forums, but offline ones like clubs and meetups could apply as well. In this case what I mean by self-selection is when the effects of self-selection start to narrow down the band from the potentially larger group that the community is aimed for.
For example, take a forum that advertises itself as a community for fans on X type of fiction. Over time, it eventually starts to coalesce into more and more people that are fans of X fiction that are in particular big fans of Y in X fiction, or have a big hatred for Z in X fiction. And these sub-groups are over-represented, and not very accurate representation of X fiction fanbase as a whole. It usually creates a runaway effect that those going against the grain will be shunned and not feel welcome and leave the community, thus adding to the homogeneity of the community. Despite this, the community still neutrally presents its description as "for fans of X fiction" but its active member base has a more specific slant.
So how would you solve or prevent this problem? I've seen it happen many times in online communities I've been a part of in the past. I'm not planning to build an online forum/social site, but it's just a question I'd really like to ask. <comment><USER2> Interesting question. I have some thoughts, but expect there will be some disagreement on this front. Communities will always self-select in some sense. Choosing to include oneself within community X, as you've put it above, is a form of self-selection. IRL it's limited by the number of people you can meaningfully fit in one place (contingent on the activity), digitally it's limited by what you can meaningfully access that represents the things you're interested in. Both spaces are affected by the mood of the community itself, with more or less hostile participants shaping the type of people willing to attend the forum. Be lassez faire with your policies, and the louder or more belligerent attitudes reign. Use highly rigid community policies and your participants will be limited in the range of available discussions. Both shape the community in different ways.

What I suspect you're after is merely a social forum setting where particular subcultures don't become a hegemonic monoculture. You can't really 'fix' that per se, but you can provide greater opportunity for social forking within a forum. Provide users more autonomy within the forum to create their own aligned but separate spaces, and you are more likely to provide space for this holistic community that you're after.</comment>


If this is your recruiter, tell them they are doing it wrong... - <AUTHOR>

In the past few days, I have received similar emails.  I've sanitized this one a little bit, but I think I am going to start referring to them as Nigerian Recruiters.
An example of how not to reach out to people:
--- I wanted to reach out as I am working with the CEO of a killer new company, with great investors and team (ex <big companies here>).
They are working on building out a game changing communication platform utilizing cutting edge aspects of both cloud and mobile technologies. One
key role that I am on the hunt for is a <senior sounding "lead role"> engineer to drive the development of a core piece of their product strategy. They are developing a breakthrough cloud-enabled device that will change the way we communicate. The company are <small number> people and are going to ramp up quickly over the next 2 quarters. Please let me know if you may be interested in learning more and let's jump on a 15 minute call at your soonest convenience. --- <comment><AUTHOR> My problems with the email:

"killer company" "game changing <blah blah blah>" "cutting edge aspects" "breakthrough cloud-enabled" "change the way we..." "ramp up quickly"

Basically every sentence has a phrase that is cliche. More facts, less hype. I seriously expected to read something about social and local in this.

The same email can be written without the hyperbole.

</comment><comment><USER2> Recruiters know nothing about anything, but I wouldn't dismiss this just because the person was trying too hard to make it attractive.

At the end of the day, the client is the person that can properly tell you what it's about and I haven't come across a recruiter yet that could tell me the difference between javascript and php. It's not their job to know such trivial details...

Be nice it may just be worth it.

<comment><USER3> _...and I haven't come across a recruiter yet that could tell me the difference between javascript and php._

It appears we haven't met before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any recommendation on what they should be doing instead?

<comment><USER5> Not be utterly full of bullshit...

The way it's worded clearly sounds over-hyped. I would skip that job description every time I saw it.

Things that would make it better:

\- More specific about industry and platform/product

\- Specific role responsibilities

\- Description of work environment, including equipment, other people, etc.

\- Specific experience and skills required & desired

This is basically regular job description stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly.

You can have hype, but put some actual content in the email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No reference to "rock star" or "code ninja"? FAIL.

</comment><comment><USER7> "An example of how not to reach out to people"

Would be helpful, for the purposes of discussion, if you added your thoughts on how you would write the same email that in your opinion would have worked.

<comment><USER3> I'll bite.

 _They are working on building out a game changing communication platform utilizing cutting edge aspects of both cloud and mobile technologies._

Building it with what? Lego? Communication platform... forum, email, sms, IM, etc. etc. details please.

 _One key role that I am on the hunt for is a <senior sounding "lead role"> engineer to drive the development of a core piece of their product strategy._

Again, detail. What's the core piece that this killer company are currently missing and need to hire someone to build? Will I have people reporting to me?

 _They are developing a breakthrough cloud-enabled device that will change the way we communicate._

So they make hardware that relies on virtual storage? Whilst vague, it also sounds completely off the wall. This isn't peaking my interest, it's making me skeptical.

 _The company are  people and are going to ramp up quickly over the next 2 quarters._

So they are predicting growth over the next 6 months. How much growth and why?

 _Please let me know if you may be interested in learning more and let's jump on a 15 minute call at your soonest convenience._

If you can surmise the company and the opportunity available within 15 minutes then good luck.

It's impossible to rewrite the email without info on the actual company. It's standard, vague recruiter drivel written to sound like a super hot company instead of sounding like another dime-a-dozen start-up.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the detail I agree with your points.

I will add this though from my many years of experience in getting cliche emails in another area (not recruiting).

The skill of the person writing the email does not always equate to the opportunity.

As such, if we can assume that this email was written by the wrong person (for whatever reason) there could still be an opportunity there that is worth exploring.

And (and this is important) think as well of the lack of competition for the opportunity because of the amount of people that are _turned off_ because of the way it is written. See the paradox?

That said of course this could be a bogus or simply bad opportunity. And likewise a well written email could also be. My point being is that you don't necessarily have to waste 10 minutes on the phone you can also simply hit reply and ask a few questions because maybe this might be the needle in a haystack which just happened to task the wrong recruiter to do the job.

The OP's point is taken. This _isn't_ what recruiters should do to attract many candidates. Otoh it could be a good situation for someone who reads it on an individual level.</comment></comment></comment>


The Best Time To Raise Money Is When You Can - <AUTHOR> http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/2009/03/the-best-time-to-raise-money-is-when-you-can.html

<comment><USER2> What about the counter-wisdom to this, which is that too much money when you don't need it can kill your start-up by forcing you to increase your burnt rate and aim higher than your start-up can support?

</comment><comment><USER3> Taking money when you don't need it doesn't necessarily help you in any way. As I have gathered from my conversations with people who have taken VC money (and those who haven't), taking VC money comes with additional burden of a number of admin tasks (meetings with them, status updates, etc etc)

If you just want to focus on building the product first, I don't think there's anything wrong with not taking money.

</comment><comment><USER4> Clearly, for the VC, the best time for you to raise money is whenever you can.</comment>


Freebase: A graph database for collaboratively structuring human knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1376616.1376746 <comment><USER2> related [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8759291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8759291)</comment>


The First Hand-Painted Films - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/the-phantasmagoria-of-the-first-hand_painted-films-rd

<comment><USER2> I was amazed, when I found out about a Polish filmmaker, Julian Antonisz, who has been building his own equipment to create short films. He invented or re- invented a technique called _non-camera_.

> The idea of the technique was to paint or scratch the images directly onto > the movie tape instead of using a camcorder. Usually one second of movie > uses 24 frames. For example, his debut film Phobia 1967, lasts 11 minutes. > 660 seconds times 24 frames gives us 15,840 images that had to be painted.

<comment><USER3> My favourite of his shorts, "Jak Działa Jamniczek" ("How does a dachshund work"): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r16GL3N4PdM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r16GL3N4PdM)</comment></comment>


Check Your Google Play Editions, Android 5.1 Is Ready for the HTC One, Moto G - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/android-5-1-lollipop-news/ <comment><USER2> Anyone know if/when this would get propagated to cyanogenmod?</comment>