UBI without quality public services is a neoliberal's paradise - <AUTHOR> https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/ubi-without-quality-public-services-is-a-neoliberals-paradise/ <comment><USER2> The subhead asks: "Why should governments give cash-handouts before providing free, quality public services to all?"

That's pretty clearly because "free, quality public services to all" are really hard & expensive to deliver. Without prices & competition, they're prone to massive inefficiencies, over-provision or under-provision due to various political distortions, and resource- or agenda- capture by insider managers/public-employees/organized-lobbies.

Smaller, tightly-knit polities can often manage more-efficient public services. The two examples given in this article – "quality public housing" and "free public transport" – work well in some places!

But giant geographically, economically, ethnically diverse polities like the US have a much harder time. Public housing in the US sucks. Mass public transport here faces costs 5x as large in as other developed countries – due to the sclerotic interplay of dysfunctional bureaucracies, mercenary contractors, and powerful public employee unions. That is, those exact unions in the "Public Services International" federation which employs this op-ed writer. So of course she's arguing, "pay us first, and more, before spending more directly on the poor".

But the point of UBI, if it were to work as hoped, is to route around such non-poor middlemen – those who claim to be serving the poor, but rarely seem to reduce overall poverty. Cutting checks is comparatively easy to do, and most non-addicted adults can spend $X for their own welfare better than any supposedly altruistic outsider could spend the same $X.

<comment><USER3> Look at how well competition works in our broken healthcare system. Our costs are the highest in the world yet our life expectancy and infant mortality isn't all that great.

Or look at education at all levels, where costs have also skyrocketed and public options keep getting cut because bureaucrats from "competing" private industries try to push their agenda (you could argue this is even worse in healthcare and pharma).

Competition and profit motive hasn't been proven to work so well for public goods, in my opinion, but would love to hear of examples where it worked. This is why for some things we still agree we should pay for at a government level (local or national), such as firefighters, defense, mail, etc, etc.

Not even going to get into how inflationary ubi would be, instantly driving up costs due to "rational" economic behavior.

<comment><USER4> Healthcare is NOT a free market, there is no pricing mechanism like there is in literally every other industry. It is the only good/service in America in which the prices are known/paid only AFTER the services are rendered.

[https://fee.org/articles/imagine-if-we-paid-for-food-like- we...](https://fee.org/articles/imagine-if-we-paid-for-food-like-we-do- healthcare/)

<comment><USER5> > It is the only good/service in America in which the prices are known/paid > only AFTER the services are rendered.

this is not really true. if you are having nontrivial repairs done on your house or car, they will give you an estimate upfront, but there can easily be unforseen problems that cause the work to cost a lot more. you might decide to have your car fixed later, but it's hard to pull the plug on a kitchen remodel halfway through. there's all kind of work that gets done without knowing how much it will cost beforehand.

<comment><USER4> You're right, I was being hyperbolic.

I'd qualify my statement with preventive* healthcare, the near entirety of which can function on upfront prices.

<comment><USER5> to your credit, I can't think of another field where there is so much uncertainty over how much something will cost when they already know exactly what they are going to do, what materials they will need to do it, and how long it will take.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> UBI often gets held up as a panacea for an "inefficient" welfare system by allowing recipients to have "consumer choice" regarding e.g. healthcare or housing.

In my and the author of the article's mind, UBI only makes sense as a form of supplementary, discretionary income. If a UBI recipient is made to trade off housing payment against health insurance payment, they're required to make a choice between two essentials; if they're both essentials, they're not really fungible in the first place.

The argument often goes hand-in-hand with greater privatization of public services, which inevitably commodifies what should be for the benefit of the public.

<comment><USER7> Trade-offs are not that binary in real life. There is a reason you do not live in the biggest house possible, you choose to forgo a bigger house to pay for other necessities.

And these marginal trade-offs are exactly what drive the normal economy - small improvements for price-conscious consumers. As much as I may agree something is essential, that doesn't mean I think it should be one size fits all or centrally allocated.

<comment><USER8> Trade-offs are that binary in real life -- for everyone who would need UBI.

If you are wealthy, you can choose to "forgo a bigger house". If you are middle-class or lower-class, the options are pretty much binary already, today, in the real world. You eat, or you don't. You have a roof over your head, or you don't. You get medical treatment, or you don't.

There's no way to "penny-pinch" , when you are already at the bottom, because all possible savings an individual could make are already priced in. Comparison-shopping isn't a choice, when you are already priced out of all but one of the options.

\----

Unless UBI ends up being some huge amount of money (like say, $60k USD/yr/person), there won't be any meaningful non-binary trade-offs for any of those folks to make, regardless of whether UBI happens or not.

<comment><USER9> > If you are middle-class or lower-class, the options are pretty much binary > already, today, in the real world. You eat, or you don't. You have a roof > over your head, or you don't. You get medical treatment, or you don't.

This is a lie. Most 'poor' Americans have lots and lots of expensive things; they could choose to do with less. This is not to say all could, but the poverty level metric is so excessive, that many have lots of discretionary spending that many 'rich' households do not.

This has to do with how we define 'poverty.' The poverty level as set means that many americans with lots of discretionary spending (for example, television) are classified as poor, despite having easily fixed overspending. For example, according to data from the department of energy (accessible here: [https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2005/hc/pdf...](https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2005/hc/pdf/tablehc7.11.pdf)), 26million / 39million households eligible for federal assistance (~64%) had cable television, meaning almost $70/month in unnecessary expenditure. For those below the poverty line, 10.6mil/16.6 mil had cable or satellite (again ~64%). This is data from 2005, but other years are similar.That is a bit ridiculous.

<comment><USER6> Are you choosing watching TV for $70/month as an example of an "expensive thing"? Living in poverty doesn't mean that you get should judged so harshly for mild discretionary spending to make your life less of a hellhole.

<comment><USER9> > mild discretionary spending

If the claim is that those living below the poverty line are going hungry (i.e., "there's no way to penny pinch when you're at the bottom", then claiming $70 (which can buy _a lot_ of groceries) is 'mild discretionary spending' is incredibly disingenuous.

<comment><USER6> Most members of the middle class would classify it as mild spending, so I don't see anything disingenuous about my claim.

Groceries are not fungible for entertainment, and if you choose to spend a reasonable by middle-class standards amount on it you shouldn't be punished with misery and people tut-tutting at you for it.

Furthermore, I don't know what your point of revising the poverty line downwards is, apart from to tell people that they should be satisfied that their life isn't worse.

<comment><USER9> > Furthermore, I don't know what your point of revising the poverty line > downwards is, apart from to tell people that they should be satisfied that > their life isn't worse.

My point is that there should be various levels of poverty so comparisons can be made apples-to-apples. There is an income range where people cannot afford food, and there is an income range where people can afford food but cannot achieve a certain standard of living, etc. These need to be distinguished to make intelligent policy points.

> Most members of the middle class would classify it as mild spending, so I > don't see anything disingenuous about my claim.

And many members of the upper class would say having a personal nanny is mild spending, but that seems ludicrous to literally everyone else. Luckily, my statement that 'If you cannot afford <insert basic need>, then <X> is a luxury' is a statement that could apply independent of the economic class of the speaker.

> Groceries are not fungible for entertainment,

Yes they are. I do not have cable so that I can purchase more food which I find more entertaining than vapid television shows. Also, consumeristic entertainment is not a human need. I will grant that humans need some level of entertainment. Luckily, libraries have free videos which are woefully underused. The radio is free, as is broadcast television. Also, humans have entertained themselves for literally as long as anyone can remember.

Look, the guy I replied to made a point about 'middle-' and 'lower-class' people, by claiming there's no way to penny pinch when you're at the bottom. I pointed out that, by the federal standards, those at the bottom (i.e, in poverty) are spending about $800 a year on cable (based on cable rates in my area, which may not be representative, but whatever). Thus, it seems clear that there are ways to penny pinch at the bottom. I'm not sure what is controversial about this statement. There are clearly ways to entertain oneself reasonably without cable, as I and countless others demonstrate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> UBI shouldn't be implemented until regulatory supply constraints on the basics of life (healthcare, education, housing, etc) are removed. Otherwise the rent will go up by about the same amount that UBI provides and we will be back at square one again.

<comment><USER11> I shopped around for a good price when looking for an apartment (in a college town). Would competition not be sufficient for keeping prices down for renters? I understand it would raise rent prices some, since people having more money would increase demand, but increasing nearly the same amount as the UBI seems surprising. I'm not very knowledgable in economics so I apologize if this is a stupid question.

<comment><USER10> Many places in the USA and elsewhere have NIMBY zoning policies that prevent new housing and / or dense housing from being developed, slow it down, make it significantly more expensive than it needs to be with 2:1 parking requirements, reduce property taxes for long term holders and so on.

This reduces new housing being developed in response to demand and thus increases the price when there is an increase in demand by an inordinate amount.

UBI will increase demand universally across the board in the form of cash for everyone, and inelastic supply constrained essential goods like housing will go up as a result.

This RE investment article explains it a bit more: [https://www.nreionline.com/finance-amp-investment/why- supply...](https://www.nreionline.com/finance-amp-investment/why-supply- constrained-markets-hold-so-many-advantages)

<comment><USER12> That doesn't mean rent will increase to 100% of UBI, which is exactly what you said earlier.

<comment><USER13> If something else (what? utilities?) picks up the rest, doesn't it still nullify benefits of UBI?

People say it's a stock argument, but I haven't seen any good refutation of it yet. And I say this as a fan/supporter of UBI.

<comment><USER12> It will take some, but not all. That's the refutation.

The problem isn't the idea that some cost-of-living things will increase in response to UBI. It's a defeatist "What's the point, the landlords will get it all" attitude that doesn't take into account the complexity of what people spend on and the supply/demand relationships of those things.

<comment><USER10> What I am saying is before or when a national UBI program is created, a national law making things like zoning restrictions illegal would also need to be implemented. Kind of like japanese zoning:

[http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese- zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

A couple of other (bad) examples is how national health plans are implemented in other countries, making things like being exempt from the national healthcare system illegal. Or the insurance mandate from obamacare.

I'm not saying UBI shouldn't be implemented in a why bother manor, I'm saying you need both if it's going to be an effective system. If you don't, you will significantly reduce it's effectiveness.

<comment><USER12> It's probably unconstitutional to eliminate zoning restrictions from the federal level. And even if it's possible, it would be political suicide, and even if it happened, it would have a lot of unintended consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Providing a single mother with a cash payment to fend for herself in an > inflated housing market is not as effective as providing quality public > housing. Giving people more money to fill up their cars is not as > progressive as offering free public transport.

To me, this is actually an argument _for_ UBI. A poor single mother deserves access to the same market of housing as everyone else! And public transit is great, but your living and employment options are super limited if that is your only choice.

Absolutely, we need to study how much social services would actually need to be offset. Perhaps free housing and buses are still valuable even with UBI. But having dual-class public and private options is not true progress.

It seems that in this author's view, a UBI is only a means to an end for tackling inequality, and doesn't believe the actual poverty alleviation aspects are of value. While I respect the point being made, I would argue that this in itself is a pretty privileged position.

<comment><USER14> > Public transit is great, but your living and employment options are super > limited if that is your only choice.

In most countries where UBI is even remotely a realistic possibility politically, public transit is just fine and how most people get to work. Indeed, for a single mother a personal car may well cost far more than the actual utility it provides. The USA is an odd one out in this respect.

<comment><USER7> True, this is a US example (although I was surprised by how many European cities have competing private transit systems). But I stand by my point that prescribing people's needs robs them of important choices.

<comment><USER14> A car likely wouldn't be even a choice for a single mother without the state subsidizing car ownership indirectly

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know of a single supporter of UBI who doesn't first support health care and education for all.

</comment><comment><USER16> I agree they are orthogonal. Part of the purpose of a UBI (and it needs to be U -- Universal -- not as a welfare replacement) is to correct for inefficiencies or inequities in structure -- you don't live close to a transit stop so you may spend some money getting to/from.

The other purpose is for signalling within the commercial system (tortilla chips are more / less popular that potato chips) which is crucial for the functioning of an economy.

As a welfare replacement it's terrible because it suffers from diseconomies of scale.

<comment><USER17> If it is Universal as you say, it cannot be zero-sum. If it is not zero-sum, what is it? Fueled by debt? Highest income pay more taxes (on income or assets)? In that case it is tecnically not Universal. You can't have money ex- nihilo.

<comment><USER18> Debt-based bond-backed money is already ex-nihilio. UBI-backed money might exist and the monetary system would have been much simpler.

<comment><USER16> > Debt-based bond-backed money is already ex-nihilio

Every time you use a credit card you increase the money supply, though it is sterilized when you pay your bill at the end of the month (or when you default).

Arguably it's not really ex-"nihilo" as there is economically valuable activity (extension of credit) which is paid for via interest. Increasing the money supply to match economic activity (as best it can be measured) prevents deflation, among other things, and debt is the tool used, surely better than simply running the presses.

<comment><USER18> You would replace the interest ratio by resupply ratio (feeding expenditure taxes and income taxes for income exceeding UBI back into supply) in an UBI- backed monetary system. You could easily target zero inflation _per capita_ in such a system.

<comment><USER16> Yes, this is a good idea. The current approach uses banks as the interface, hence the use of debt. Purely a mechanical artifact, not a moral issue as it is often taken by people fixated on microeconomics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> the issues shouldn't be related.

the point of UBI is to maintain liquidity of goods and a baseline level of demand for goods amidst a financial environment of increasingly extreme economic inequality which would otherwise cause sharp contractions in demand as a result of the public's lack of money.

if public services expand, each UBI dollar goes that much further. expanding public services alongside UBI creates a virtuous cycle in which a larger portion of each UBI dollar can be spent on non-essential goods, stimulating demand and subsequently funneling more money into the tax fund.

if public services contract, each UBI dollar has less purchasing power because a larger portion of its value is earmarked to purchase substitutes for essential public services. for instance, if your municipality slashes its water purification services, you'd need to purchase more bottled water than before, so you'd have less spending money because you'd still be paying the same amount of taxes yet you'd be forced to take on an additional expense as a result of the cuts. this situation completely undermines the economy as a whole because the cost of private sector substitutes will rise with every additional service cut until they are unaffordable, at which point demand will finish crashing and be incapable of recovery.

</comment><comment><USER20> UBI fails because most people who we want to help won't make good decisions. As my childhood barber noted, in the great depression the "men" who couldn't afford to feed their family where the ones hanging out playing pinball with any cash they had. UBI wouldn't help them, any money they get wouldn't go for food, shelter (or a long list of other things), but to expensive entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER21> _"... not as effective as providing quality public housing."_

That is so far fetched. We can't even build more than 10% of the _housing_ we need, much less add enough public housing.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a brilliantly concise explanation of this. I think it slightly glosses over one thing, which is that in any case where it might actually be implemented, UBI is basically a trojan horse to undercut and defund actually existing and useful welfare programs. That is what happened in Finland: [https://www.socialistalternative.org/2017/03/07/finlands- bas...](https://www.socialistalternative.org/2017/03/07/finlands-basic-income- experiment-step-disguised-progress/)

<comment><USER14> The rhetoric in that linked article sounds like a fetishization of work, the old-school Communist praise of the labourer as the ideal human being. That is, the authors call for creating more jobs and building factories. That is a turnoff to those socialist-minded people who feel that work sucks, it is something our modern society ought to be avoiding by increasing automation.

<comment><USER22> SA is completely in favor of automation and actually calls for reducing the workweek. But under capitalism, automation is used to drive down wages and increase the ranks of the unemployed, which is the primary concern of the (growing amount of) people who are living paycheck to paycheck or unemployed.</comment></comment></comment>


To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created an Inedible Sandwich - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/raines-sandwich <comment><USER2> In Oregon bars that serve liquor have to serve food as well. Some of the regulations:

"Substantial food item" means food items prepared or cooked on the licensed premises and that are typically served as a main course or entrée. Some examples are: fish; steak; chicken; pasta; pizza; sandwiches; dinner salads; hot dogs; soup; and sausages. Side dishes, appetizer items, dessert items, and snack items such as popcorn, peanuts, chips, and crackers do not qualify as substantial food items.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of how weed is currently sold in DC. You pay $60 or so for a sticker or a dozen cookies, and a courier meets you somewhere and also happens to offer you a "gift". IANAL but my guess is that since possession of weed is decriminalized up to a certain amount (but dealing is not), this is a safer way of going about it.

<comment><USER4> This scheme comes up quite often, and the answer is always the same: autorities are not dumb, and this scheme offers you no extra legal protection whatsoever.

<comment><USER5> This is true. But it does offer a "brown bag" level of protection. I.E. the story from The Wire about how public drinking is illegal, but if you at least conceal what you're drinking in a brown bag, the cops won't hassle you because they don't really want to enforce the law.

I live in DC and the only weed dealers I hear of getting arrested are the ones who are extremely flagrant, like the one guy who operated out of a van with a giant pot leaf painted on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quote: "For Raines and the law's other architects, this was the most alarming unintended consequence: their efforts to make New Yorkers virtuous had caused a spike in casual sex and prostitution."

Wanna guess today where prostitution is most prolific as well? Where it involves drugs. Current drugs laws have the same effect as to Raines ones mentioned in article. If only legalizing drugs, just like tobacco and alcohol is, and tax it to make more money for state and federal budget, would be such a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> Also sort of the reason why the Spanish have tapas (Wikipedia lists it as one of the possible founding myths) - the King ordered drinks could not be served without food

<comment><USER8> I used to drink at a cigar lounge in the Deep South (USA) that offered a $40 ham and cheese sandwich as the sole menu item for the exact same reason: local laws required food to be served at your establishment if you wanted an alcohol license.

I saw one person order the sandwich in many years drinking there. Sure enough the bartender reached into the mini fridge under the bar, and would proceed to make a ham and cheese sandwich right there in the spot.

Sure enough, he charged the guy

Mayo was extra.

<comment><USER9> There was some music event recently that prevented vendors from selling water.

Instead they sold you a peanut for $2 and the water was for free.

Mind you the venue was selling water for like $8 a bottle.

<comment><USER10> > There was some music event recently that prevented vendors from selling > water.

> Instead they sold you a peanut for $2 and the water was for free.

> Mind you the venue was selling water for like $8 a bottle.

All it takes is one person to pass out from heat exhaustion to end this practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Indiana at least until very recently had much more onerous regulations around food in bars(namely there must be a sandwich, a soup, coffee, and milk available). Here's an example compliance menu [1]

EDIT: Included details of the regulations.

[1]: [https://www.kegworks.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/Scree...](https://www.kegworks.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-23-at-5.03.51-PM.png)

<comment><USER12> A local brewery complied with this by having a sign that said they would serve pizza, but it was something like from Dominoes and would cost 150$ if you ordered it.

<comment><USER13> In Louisiana, I believe breweries have the opposite problem: the majority of their revenue must be from beer, so if they sell too much food they're in trouble. I think some get around this with pop-up restaurants, maybe paying a fixed fee to be there.

Another weird rule is that Louisiana bars cannot allow children, even with parents, but breweries can. So breweries are often full of children. One in New Orleans has a bounce house on weekends.

<comment><USER14> Breweries in Montana are full of children. Play areas with toys are common and some places even go so far as to make a beer-free beverage like root beer or kombucha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In dutch there is the expression "glazen boterham" ("glass sandwich") which today at least refers to a glass of beer, I wonder if the dutch expression is somehow connected to this story... I always assumed this merely referenced the caloric content of the alcoholic beverage...

<comment><USER16> In Estonia there is "vedel leib" (liquid bread), meaning beer. "Leib" means rye bread (dark bread), not white bread for additional nuance. White bread ("sai" in Estonian) was fancy and somewhat expansive food, if we talk about 19th or early 20th century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rules-lawyering at its finest.

This kind of reminds me of the "is a jaffa cake a biscuit" legal fight, which mattered a great deal for VAT purposes.

<comment><USER18> See also -- Marvel's legal team: "The X-Men aren't _really_ people."

[https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal- court-r...](https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-court-ruled- marvels-x-men-arent-humans)

<comment><USER19> Or a classic alt.sex.stories signature:

"All creatures in this story live in a solar system where one year is equal to 1,000 Earth years."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Odd story. My grandmother worked for a while a fry cook. She worked at a diner. Next door was a bar.

The state passed a law that said bars couldn't have windows.

The bar next door to her work had a fine set of windows. The owners of the diner and bar next door installed a door and a window in the wall between the bar and the diners kitchen. And the bar got a restaurant license. Which was cheaper.

Neener neener.

<comment><USER13> That's the opposite of the Raines Law, which I believe said bars could _only_ allow drinking in areas visible through the window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's still laws like this in Utah. I was at a brewery that required you to buy food before they could fill your growler up. IIRC they had toast for 25¢

</comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me exactly of the sugar taxes going on (except it you're Starbucks in Seattle, that sugar is exempt from law)

</comment><comment><USER23> Somewhat an aside, but Raines Law Room in the Flatiron in NYC is a great little speakeasy/cocktail bar and brings back this vibe a bit.</comment>


Startup Quote: Sarah Lacy, author, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/1702259295

<comment><AUTHOR> You can keep your privacy in the world by keeping your product, not your personality, the star.

\- Sarah Lacy (@sarahcuda)

<http://startupquote.com/post/1702259295></comment>


What have you tried? - jor-el http://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/

<comment><AUTHOR> A very smart heuristic for getting an answer is to ask a question first, and upon receipt of a shoddy answer, only then I proceed to answer it myself, and go out on a limb. I half agree with the point Matt makes, but the argument falls apart when it is presumed that all forms of enquiry are lazy and unwarranted.</comment>


Scaling the BBC iPlayer to handle demand - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/07/scaling_the_bbc_iplayer_to_han.html <comment><USER2> It's tremendous that (as far as I can tell) this has all been architected and developed internally at the BBC. So refreshing in the current climate of public entities outsourcing everything. Much better value for money - and more to the point demonstrates that complex projects can be successfully completed internally.

<comment><USER3> I think some of the infrastructure maintenance (and maybe general development too) _is_ outsourced. About a year ago I was on a service management training course in London along with some Siemens staff who were working on the iPlayer project.

<comment><USER4> Siemens took over the BBC's R+D depts as part of the outsourcing deal which means they now run pretty much all the technical services.

BBC outsources to Siemens,

This includes handing over all it's unique skills

Siemens, then bills the BBC for stuff it already knew how to do.

Management demonstrates with many Powerpoints how this is saving everybody money.

<comment><USER5> When I worked a summer in a management consultancy we produced powerpoints for the BBC showing that it was a waste of money.

but don't let that trouble you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be interested to hear why they chose PHP. (It's not exactly the framework- du-jour, so they must have positively chosen it).

Also, it seems to me that the web page serving would be the most trivial part of iPlayer. Scaling the video and recommendation database is probably a more interesting topic.

<comment><USER7> Shocking to hear that someone has chosen a tool based on its merits rather than how fashionable it is...

<comment><USER6> Indeed. That's why I was asking for what reasons they chose PHP, i.e. what do they perceive it's merits to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ironic that this returned the following error when I tried to read it: "Error 500 - Internal Error. This might be because: We are experiencing abnormal traffic to our network." :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> Eww. Excel graphs.

<comment><USER10> I'm thankful that they shared their analysis. Does it really detract from their work that they used Excel to graph it?</comment></comment>


Square jobs page (scroll down for animations) - <AUTHOR> https://squareup.com/careers/creative

<comment><USER2> Anyone else wonders just when is Apple going to acquire them?</comment>


Dinner: Ruby Gem for local HTML includes (seeking pull requests) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/daturkel/dinner.rb

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of this. I'm an undergrad who just built something I wanted to use, especially to mimic some of the functionality in a tool I really like: Hammer for Mac [0]. I'm totally self-taught with Ruby so don't expect any ground-breaking code here, but thought it was something that might interest HN-ers and I'd love to see community contributions to the codebase.

Right now the functionality is pretty basic. It works very well for compiling includes in a flat file structure, but doesn't copy your stylesheets or JS into the build folder (and flattens your structure if you have nested files). These are things I plan to implement soon (or you can now!). I also plan to implement support for the Listen gem so that it'll automatically compile on detecting file changes, rather than requiring manually running it.

[0]: [http://hammerformac.com/](http://hammerformac.com/)</comment>


Vivify: A color scheme editor for vim - <AUTHOR> http://bytefluent.com/vivify/

<comment><USER2> Nice! Would it be possible to add Ruby as a language example? I could likely figure out more-or-less how the code would appear using one of the other languages with which I am familiar, but it would be quite useful to see the changes to code similar to what I am most often writing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was hoping to see Solarized Day and Night in the theme list.

<http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized>

<comment><USER4> Me too, I used zenburn before, but I slightly prefer solarized.

I love solarized so much I even use it to read the web:

<http://goo.gl/jISPf>

ps: I minified the URL because the real one is extremely long.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Too bad there arent options to show different colors for names defined in various scopes for python.

Example

def lol(self): name = [1,2,3] for n in name: print n

Let name be one color and let n be a differnet lighter color. Let self be another (class-level) color. Would be nice to make method calls their own color, different from function calls.

Is that possible to make in any other way?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note, I'm not the creator. I found it here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/otdx3/vivify_now_with_4...](http://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/otdx3/vivify_now_with_400_schemes_to_get_you_going_or/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Easily one of the best websites i've ever come across -- been looking for something like this for a while! Would be nice to have html highlighting, but certainly not complaining as is...

Many thx!

</comment><comment><USER8> That's pretty awesome. If you have more general hex-value editing needs in vim, I recently hooked up a color picking app that I wrote to vim. While over a hex value, you can hit a keystroke and launch the color selector. Any changes made to the color there are automatically update in vim:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h5VB9hUg-E>

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome! Just wish the pre-created schemes on the right would remain highlighted after clicking one - easy to lose track of where you were.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does not seem to be entirely working on Chrome 17 (Win7 64bit), the actual code (which one would put into colorscheme.vim) does not reflect the chosen colors. The code sample however does. To clarify, clicking a "highlight" item and changing its color does not change the hex or terminal color codes. I started by modifying an existing scheme.

<comment><USER11> Same with chrome 18 on linux. I just tested chrome 14 on linux as well and it doesn't work there either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks useful. As another option for generating Vim color schemes, I like Palette — a Ruby gem that provides a nice dsl:

<https://github.com/joshuaclayton/palette>

</comment><comment><USER13> Very cool! I recommend the "wombat" theme for dark terminals.

Btw, the "start with your own theme" feature is broken in Chrome17 and FF8; it injects the CSS directly into the <body>, without the <style> tag.

</comment><comment><USER14> Dragging the colour selector in chromium is a little weird, sometimes it starts to highlight things or drag other elements.. Otherwise quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER15> That is fantastic. Just what I needed!

</comment><comment><USER16> Would also be cool if we could download it for different editors.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is fucking awesome. Wish I had that years ago.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm sticking with Solarized.

</comment><comment><USER18> Easy win!

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow It's awesome. One small thing I would point out is to please set cursor to pointer on the color scheme selector.

<http://instamovi.com></comment>


Subscription or no subscription? That is not the question - <AUTHOR> https://ia.net/topics/subscription-or-no-subscription <comment><USER2> This seems like a long winded mess of anecdotal opinions and assumptions, that still somehow ignores the real reason for subscriptions. The list of acceptable uses for subscriptions is silly, subscriptions are always acceptable if your customers accept them. And the authors refusal to try subscriptions out of a fear that short term revenues will decline is an abandonment of long term thinking.

And I am not a subscription apologist either. I just wrote a long post on the need for Apple to build tools for selling upgrades as good as the ones for selling subscriptions.

The real driving force for subscriptions is the need for recurring revenue to support a software business, especially bug fixes and enhancements. The one time sales model never worked in software, it was a path to oblivion that was quickly abandoned or never used by the vast majority of PC developers.

That's why the PC software market became dominated by maintenance plans and paid upgrades. If you had a good product, and offered valuable new features in an upgrade, your users would be more than happy to buy the upgrade. That matched revenues better to costs, allowing software companies to keep more employees on staff to actually improve the product.

When Apple came out with the iOS App Store, they broke the upgrade model. Existing users get every update for free. Releasing a large update as a separate product means it can't access the existing user data because of sandboxing, and it can't be priced at a discount for existing users.

There are workarounds to all these problems using in-app purchase and data export/import schemes but they are costly in developer time and offer a poorer user experience than traditional upgrades did.

I'm convinced if Apple had an upgrade purchasing system as easy to implement as subscriptions, developers would abandon most of their subscriptions and replace them with upgrades.

<comment><USER3> The part about separate upgrades not being able to access existing data is not accurate.

You can use a container that is shared between more than one app - this is not an import/export scheme.

<comment><USER2> This is true, but it's not simple and requires quite a bit of work for both versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Microsoft offers Office as both a 1-time purchase and on a subscription basis. The price of the 1-time purchase is generally about what a subscription would cost over 3 years.

Since Office is the kind of tool you would keep for 3+ years and has an established reputation, this doesn't seem like a bad deal. Especially since Office has always been expensive.

People get angry about subscriptions when the subscription price far exceeds the previous 1-time purchase cost within a reasonable amount of time. In the case of the Android tool in this article, that's either $30 up front or $5 per year. So it seems that the subscription is either underpriced or the up-front price is too high: it's not surprising that they didn't have a lot of anger directed at them. Flip that around and say $15 per year or $30 up front, and I'd bet you have a lot of anger directed at them.

<comment><USER5> Note that MS Office has a cycle length of 3 years, while their cycle length is somewhere between 7 and 10 years.

<comment><USER6> How long do you get updates for the 'single year' edition of MS Office now? Does Office 2017 still get security/bugfix updates?

<comment><USER7> I forget what they promise to support, but MS are still pushing secuirty updates for Office 2010 - [https://support.microsoft.com/en- gb/help/4563408/august-2020...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- gb/help/4563408/august-2020-updates-for-microsoft-office)

EDIT: Dug out the end dates for Office.

Ver - Mainstream Support - Extended Support

Office 2010 - no longer supported - October 13, 2020

Office 2013 - no longer supported - April 11, 2023

Office 2016 - October 13 2020 - October 14, 2025

Office 2019 - October 10 2023 October 14, 2025

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a small developer who lives entirely from software sales, a large part of which are in the form of monthly subscriptions, I think this author misses an important reason for using subscriptions:

        N. You want to smooth out the monthly income associated with sales, avoiding big peaks when you do major releases and avoiding large troughs when there are no releases for some time.

Put differently, if you want me to keep wprking full time on the software, help offer me some assurance that I'll still be able to afford to do so in a month, or 3 months, or 6 months time.

<comment><USER9> I just wonder what kind of software needs a full time dev once version 2.0 has been released?

What I mean by v 2.0 is major bugs have been found and major missing features have been added.

It seems to me that after that it's just the feature treadmill to justify asking money recurrently.

As a dev myself I understand you want to live of your craft, but as a customer I'm not going to pay all my life for an app, I will find an alternative.

<comment><USER8> DAWs (digital audio workstations) have no closed lifetime or defined feature list. The workflows and desired features expand every year. Every once in a while, someone comes up with a game changing idea that rewrites everyone's expectations of what is supposed to be possible (e.g. Ableton Live and their automated fitting of audio to the music grid).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you can't convince your users to fund the development of your software with a subscription then perhaps it's not delivering real value to them. After all, if your users are indifferent to your software disappearing into thin air because you can no longer afford to pay the bills, perhaps they never cared that much about it in the first place.

<comment><USER11> I don't think this is true in the slightest.

I happily plunk down for a one-time purchase of software, because it's a simple question: is this worth $n bucks?

A lot of it just sits there for months on end, and then I have the task which I bought it for again, and I use it.

But a subscription? Now I have to ask if it's worth $n bucks a month on an ongoing basis. It's a whole different question, and I feel like if I'm not going to use it for a few months, I'm just bleeding money I'd rather keep in my wallet.

I'm especially wary of products which want $n a month to lock my creative output up in a proprietary format, such that I can only retain access to it if I keep shelling out. That... sucks, and it baffles me why it's so popular.

When I see a subscription I always ask: what's five years of this going to cost me? Why five? I dunno, that's just the multiple that makes sense to me.

 _Very_ few subscriptions on offer make sense on that basis. I'd have dropped Netflix a year or two ago, but my Mom likes it. I keep almost dropping Apple Arcade, a piddly five bucks a month, but there's this one game I want to finish and never get around to it... and there it is: a lot of subscriptions are sticky, in a bad way. As far as I know, there's no way for me to pay full price for that one game, and keep my save point, and ditch the rest of the subscription.

Now if I'm making money with it, that's a whole different ballgame. Sure, sign me up. But if I'm not? Likely as not, it's gonna be a pass.

<comment><USER6> > and it baffles me why it's so popular.

The Adobe situation is simply because it's such a good product suite. You can transition away but the pain points of using other software can be high enough to warrant paying for the software[0]. As for why the majority of users and businesses still pay for creative cloud, it's probably because they do see the value of receiving updates and bugfixes effectively forever.

0: [https://youtu.be/L9VysWRHPdI](https://youtu.be/L9VysWRHPdI)

<comment><USER11> Adobe wasn't what I had in mind.

That's a moneymaker, for one thing. For another, they're the industry standard, and yeah the formats are proprietary but if you take a couple years break and start paying again, your files are going to open.

I was thinking more of products like Roam Research. Not to pick on them in particular, I know a lot of people like it, but it's just a non-starter for me.

The Moleskin iPad app is the one I'd most like to use, if they came up with a different business plan for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like Jetbrains' subscription model. Haven't ever not been on the subscription. It just gives me peace of mind knowing I won't be left out to dry if I need to be off it.

<comment><USER13> For those who are not familiar with JetBrains' subscription model:

> A perpetual fallback license is a license that allows you to use a specific > version of software without an active subscription for it. [0]

There are some details about which version you are eligible for. The spirit is that if you subscribe for ≥ 1 year, you have some version available when you stop paying.

[0]: [https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en- gb/articles/207240845-What...](https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en- gb/articles/207240845-What-is-perpetual-fallback-license-)

<comment><USER14> JetBrains was initially going with a more traditional subscription model, and introduced the perpetual license fallback in response to negative feedback.

HN comments and the original announcement: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10165334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10165334)

The followup introducing the perpetual fallback license: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10278285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10278285)

<comment><USER12> Yeah I was a bit unhappy but accepted it for what it was when it was announced. I'm glad other people complained. I really like the current form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We use iA Writer daily at satchel.com. We pay a one-time cost of $30 per seat, but I think we get much more than $30 worth of value from iA Writer. So when I read the article, I thought that the $5 per month price is much too low for the value we get out of the product. And then I realized it's actually $5 per year.

Which brings up an interesting observation: the folks at iA seem to be tech purists at heart, and seem disinclined to ask for more money for their products. But I suspect that people would surely be willing to pay more money, and that if they were to price-segment their customers (e.g. by building out some collaboration features for teams, which we would love to have, and then charging a premium for that), they might be able to effect a step function in their business.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you representative of a lot of customers.

Where I work I must do without critical software because it's deemed too expensive by the management (weekly restaurant outings for the managers aren't deem expensive though ;)

<comment><USER15> I think that's okay though. If we're only representative of only 5% of the iA userbase, but we're willing to pay more than 20x of the subscription price ($5/yr → $8.33+/mo), then the 5% of users like us can double iA's revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is an interesting statement "Basically, Android was always a struggle, but for the first time since the very beginning, Android is moving towards sustainability."

And I didn't see any mention of the economics of iOS. From everything I've heard, iOS users are willing to spend more money. In that sense, it does seem like Apple is bringing something to the table with its 30%.

<comment><USER2> iOS devs make 50% more than Android devs, and the average iOS user spends about 10x more than the average Android user does on Apps.

<comment><USER17> It's strange how that works out.

I use both Android and iOS and I've easily spent 10x as much on iOS apps as Android apps.

<comment><USER18> Why didn't you spend that much on android apps? Lack of good apps that you would pay for or enough free apps?

<comment><USER19> I have done the same, here are some the reasons.

1\. Better targeting by app companies when I am on iOS device.

2\. Trust in the Apple app eco system

3\. Most top apps are paid, so it makes it more acceptable to pay

<comment><USER20> That's why Apple is so afraid of sideloading. Because it threatens their business model.

<comment><USER2> And their developers business model, and their high customer satisfaction levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not being familiar with these things, why not just emulate "upgrades" through in app purchases? You would offer a limited version of the app for free, and then prompt users to pay for the full version. Every now and then, you would declare a new version of the app, and only give access to new features you add to relatively recent users. Older users would be prompted to pay (again via iap) a reduced price to get the "upgrade".

Issues with this are:

\- still has the 30% fee instead of 15%

\- adds complexity, due to needing to track what each feature is, and which users are allowed to access each feature

\- to obviate above, you would probably end up giving all bugfixes/optimizations/etc to old features to all users.

Could maybe clear up the first point by accepting payment via subscription instead, with the following caveat: "if you stay subscribed for more than 3 years [say], you will gain permanent access to the app, minus any features added after you terminate your subscription". As a user, I would feel pretty good about that (i think), since I'm not locked into either a subscription or a full payment. Of course, this is likely a downside for whoever makes the app, since it probably entails less revenue for them.

</comment><comment> john-shaffer I like the pricing model of language apps like LingoDeer and Rosetta Stone. They offer a lifetime subscription for a one-time fee that costs less than two annual subscriptions. I have no problem taking that offer, but I have no recurring subscriptions for apps.

<comment><USER22> I love that model, I can subscribe for a month to see if I like something and then either go lifetime or dump it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Our app ([https://about.domestica.app](https://about.domestica.app)) uses a yearly subscription model for both SaaS and self hosted users. For self hosted users, the licenses are permanent/perpetual, but tied to a minor version (i.e. the last release before your subscription runs out is 1.1.0, you can get 1.1.1, but not 1.2.0, etc).

We've played around with different pricing (monthly, tiers) and none of them changed conversions much. What did help was replacing the free trial (no CC required) with a free tier, as it provided more of an onboarding journey and the subscription purchase becomes the next logical step.

</comment><comment><USER24> Prior to monthly or annual subscriptions, business software was purchased for a larger lump sum up front and perpetually owned. If you wanted to get updates and support you often paid a yearly maintenance fee ranging from 10% to 30% of the initial license/software cost. Saas, Software as a service was originally paying a monthly or annual fee for the software maker to also pay and run the servers. Now it seems Saas stands for software as a subscription where that still applies but everyone expects continuous never ending features to be added.

<comment><USER2> For corporate software maintenance as mandatory, making it little different from subscriptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been thinking about this quite a bit, and though the DropBox is mentioned briefly, I'd really like to understand more about why we're comfortable with paying a subscription to them, but not other similar apps.

We're building a wearable, so we're in the hardware space, but there is processing of data and personalized improvements to each users experience happening every day. I think we're similar to Whoop in this way. Any Whoop users want to chime in about how they feel about the subscription model?

</comment><comment><USER26> If anyone else is finding the style hard to read here's a link to the outline version (you can do it to most articles by just prefixing the URL with outline.com/)

[https://outline.com/JMZJJH](https://outline.com/JMZJJH)

</comment><comment><USER27> Hard to see how apps like this exist. The author seems to enjoy writing about his app as much as creating technology that exists already, and has for decades.

For $7/mo, you can have MS Office. You get a real Word Processor for all possible writing that happens in the real world where proper want to collaborate on business documents, or use Focus Mode for distraction-free creative writing. IA makes a big deal about their grammar checking but so what? Other word processors have had it for years and MS's is genuinely impressive when you learn how to set it for your needs. Plus for the same price, you get the workhorse beast Excel, a business email and calendaring client (Outlook), the #1 presentation tool (PowerPoint), and a highly functional note-taking tool (OneNote).

I'm not trying to push Microsoft's product line. There are others like Corel, or Apple's iWork suite.

I just don't understand the plethora of "distraction-free" editors, or all the fuss about code editors. Just use VS Code, JetBrain, Atom, or what have you. But as we speak, people are sweating to create yet more code editors which will have twice the bugs and half the functionality of the existing ones.

The world of writing tools is even worse. Markdown is a bit of a joke in the real world. If I see one more article about how someone wrote a book or dissertation using markdown, python, pandoc, makefile, and git... sigh! The reason they write those blog posts is because no one would believe anyone would go through the hassle of avoiding Microsoft Word to that extreme. It's one thing to be a bit "retro" and keep using WordStar or WordPerfect, but those are at least real word processors.

<comment><USER28> A whole lot of people don't _like_ writing in Microsoft Word, for a variety of reasons, and there are editors of varying types aimed at that audience. A lot of professional authors write in Scrivener. I know of more than you (apparently) think who write in Ulysses or iA Writer, which are both pretty capable editors. I own all three of those apps, am actively using Ulysses for a big fiction project currently, and don't own Microsoft Word. I know of more than a few fiction authors who like writing their prose in text editors -- Charlie Stross, Cory Doctorow, and Steven Brust come to mind off the top of my head. (Brust has used Emacs for a very long time and I presume still does; Stross and Doctorow both used BBEdit at some point in the past, and I believe both used Markdown, although that was years ago.)

As for whether Markdown is "a bit of a joke in the real world," I suppose it depends on what your definition of the real world is. Having attended a major technical writing conference a few weeks ago, I can assure you that while there are arguments in my field over Markdown, they are not over whether we should just give up on it and use Microsoft Word instead.</comment></comment>


Show HN: TS LiveView - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/beenotung/ts-liveview <comment><AUTHOR> LiveView enables rich, real-time user experiences with server-rendered HTML.

So you can write complex realtime webapp without bloating the client side. It responses pre-rendered HTML upon first GET request, then use websocket to patch the DOM for later interactions.

Just like Phoenix LiveView but in Typescript!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The core library only consist of 441 LOC (excluded types and imports). Plus most logics are shifted on the server side, hence only minimal works is required on the client side.

I made this tool because I was frustrated by the initial load time for an Ionic 4 app, and the deep 'DOM expansion' after the web components got mounted.

<comment><AUTHOR> LiveView is very lightweight, the client-side js (liveview + morphdom) is only 8K minified. For reference, a blank Ionic Angular build is 4.2M

Below are more size comparison:

| Tools | Runtime Code Size (minified) |

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

| TS LiveView + morphdom | 8K |

| (Phoenix) LiveView.js + morphdom | 29K |

| Vue 2.5.20 | 88K |

| React 16.6.3 + React DOM | 112K |

| Ember 3.0.0.beta.2 | 468K |

| React + Ionic * | 2.1M |

| Stencil + Ionic * | 3.0M |

| Angular + Ionic * | 4.2M |

* : all Ionic build excluded the svg, assets, *.map and PWA json files</comment>


Jaron Lanier on social media - <AUTHOR> https://www.gq.com/story/jaron-lanier-tech-oracle-profile <comment><USER2> I am a big fan of Lanier. I think he provides a very interesting perspective on social media and the future that I haven't found elsewhere. I really recommend watching this recent talk he gave, long, but worth it:

Jaron Lanier: How the Internet Failed and How to Recreate It

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNOlqzMd2Zw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNOlqzMd2Zw)

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, Lanier's big idea is that tech companies should compensate us for our data and we could all live happily on that money while helping build our robot future. Well, Facebook's revenue per user per year is thirty bucks. Is this simple innumeracy or is there more to it?

</comment><comment><USER4> In addition to "10 Arguments", I strongly recommend Lanier's "Who Owns The Future?" [0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Owns_the_Future%3F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Owns_the_Future%3F)

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember first reading a profile on Lanier in the Beyond Cyberpunk! hypercard, touted as a visionary for VR. I'm glad his takes on the dangers of social media have held up, but also relieved he's optimistic on the recent wave of social justice knowledge sharing.

<comment><USER6> I've heard of hypercards but had never actually seen one or interacted with one. Here's the web version the beyond cyberpunk HyperCard for any others who are curious: [http://www.streettech.com/bcp/](http://www.streettech.com/bcp/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too much focus on the guy and too little focus on what he is saying in the comments. Thats a bad sign.

</comment><comment><USER8> > That anytime you are provided with a service, like Facebook, for free, you > are in fact the product being sold. That social media companies are > basically giant behavior-modification systems that use algorithms to > relentlessly increase "engagement," largely by evoking bad feelings in the > people who use them.

Fascinating. Twitter is a public health hazard

</comment><comment><USER9> I heard Jaron speak at a conference in 2011 and his predictions on Social Media were spot on.

Highly recommend his books!

</comment><comment><USER10> Is is just me or is Jaron Lanier the Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton of VR? Journalists seem to dig him up every few years for some puff piece, but I have never really seen what he's done other than managing to be available when someone needs a quote about VR. This is from someone who worshipped Wired magazine and moved to SF to be around all the visionaries and "techno-pagans" and what not in 1994.

<comment><USER11> Maybe less the Kim Kardashian of VR and more the Ray Kurzweil of VR? I've had similar experiences, he's been talking about this stuff for 25 years but he's more like a philosopher or creative thinker/talker type of person. AFAIK his main achievements are getting speaking engagements and writing the occasional article, but he's often presented as some sort of VR pioneer or some sort of big deal in the world of VR, which I'm pretty sure he is not.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure he is.

You may have him confused with Palmer Luckey, if you think he was just in the right place at the right time with a big mouth.

<comment><USER11> I'm no fan of Palmer Luckey but didn't he do some actual engineering for Oculus though? I know Jaron Lanier had some success in academia in the '80s but I thought the past 30 years for him has almost exclusively been speaking engagements and interviews and writing think pieces. He was all over the mainstream media during the first wave of VR hype back in the early '90s and he always just seemed to be talking about how neat it would all be someday and how we all have to think about what it means and how it's going to change everything and maybe we should buy his book or go to one of his talks to learn more about his amazing predictions about the amazing future.

To be clear, I'm not down on anyone for being a thinker or a philosopher, we need those people as much or more than we need engineers when it comes to understanding how technology can (and should, and should not) change society. But sometimes people talk about Jaron Lanier as if he's been doing way more tangible, impactful stuff than speaking engagements, interviews, and think pieces over the last 30 years, and so far I haven't found much evidence of anything.

<comment><USER12> > we need those people as much or more than we need engineers

I don't know about "more than". Eloquent yappers who can't code are a dime a dozen, and largely fungible. Jaron IS an engineer. And also an artist, and a musician.

Scientific American invited him to illustrate the cover of their 1984 issue on Computer Software, showing a visual music program.

>Jaron designed the musical visual program (which Scott Kim cited in his thesis) on the cover of the September 1984 Scientific American on Computer Software (a wonderful issue, with many articles about programming languages and software by some amazing people).

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/1984/09-01/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/1984/09-01/)

For more concrete examples of the kind of software development and visual programming and hardware research and development that Jaron has done, see my post below with all the links:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24266722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24266722)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Best Business Books (Recommendations included) - <AUTHOR>

I've just finished reading "Hard Drive" a book written by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Jun 1, 1993) about the early days of Microsoft and it's founder Bill Gates. I have to say that it was a fantastic read and certainly one of my favourite business books of all time.
As a self-proclaimed omnivorous reader that says a lot and I've got to admit the bar is set high after this one so finding a great follow-up read is difficult.
So, with that said - what is a business book that you thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend as a "must-read!"
Cheers! <comment><USER2> _The Discipline of Market Leaders_ [http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Market- Leaders-Customers-Do...](http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Market-Leaders- Customers-Do..). I think very highly of this book and the author's approach to strategy. It's not radically different from the Porterian approach in some ways, but I'd say it's narrower in focus and simpler. The big takeway is the idea (which should be obvious, but often isn't) that "you can't be everything to everyone". The authors push a model of choosing a market discipline to appeal to a certain type of customer, and making that discipline the core of your business.</comment>


With our brains plugged into virtual worlds all day, what is real? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/nature-pixelated

<comment><USER2> This article hits close to home.

I spent a day at Oculus when they were evaluating my product (pre Facebook acquisition) and we were able to play with some of their prototype headsets. They had games, space sims, etc to check out. But the most shocking simulation was just a bedroom, that was detailed out to the 9's. The developer was articulate around textures and shades and it felt like I was in a real bedroom. Taking off the headset, I felt shocked that that I wasn't removed from my virtual world, it felt like an extension of the real world. It really made me question what reality was and how sensory organs can be manipulated to the point to think something is real when it isn't.

Another example is I am starting to feel a connection to digital bits that probably shouldn't exist. I have built systems that have drawn a connection to my identity through media that I collect. This system has been up for 8 years (over a quarter of my life) and it has recently had a catastrophic failure. I genuinely feel sad, and feel that I am missing a piece of myself, my identity.

I agree with the article that virtual worlds, social media, and digital identity are skewing perceptions of reality. It will be interesting to see what is on the other side of tunnel of these advancements. Hopefully it will improve humanity and reality, not cloud or hurt it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Boy, while I think the author and I share a lot of ideas about the way people are changing (perhaps not for the better) in response to the age of information, this article is full of misconstruals and accusatory speculation. The complaint is not new or original, and to me, the author's sentimentality undermines her argument.

</comment><comment><USER4> Physical adaptations of humans have Increased, not decreased, with the invention of civilization. The last 50,000 years have seen more changes than the previous million.

Why? Perhaps because the pressures of living in villages, towns, cities requires a more sedentary, low-calorie low-aggression citizen. So we grow up but stay more infantile (hairless, small chins, eager to please, social) so we can cohabitate by the millions without killing one another.

</comment><comment><USER5> 'Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.' \- Philip K. Dick

</comment><comment><USER6> One way to find out what is real very quickly is to apply for a loan to buy a home.

<comment><USER7> Really depends on how much effort you put into it.</comment></comment>


Threadable (YC W14) launches Threadable Pro with private groups, access controls - <AUTHOR> http://blog.threadable.com/threadable-pro-private-groups-and-access-controls

<comment><USER2> Nice. I run or belong to about four Threadable lists at this point, and it's great, but on a couple of them I've really missed not having access controls.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let us know how they work out for you! We tried to anticipate a lot of the main access control points, but there's probably things we've missed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm really happy to see Threadable adding access control options!

</comment><comment><USER4> WOW. This is brilliant! This is going to kill Google Groups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're hopeful ;)</comment></comment>


Google rewards reputable reporting, not left-wing politics - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/08/google-rewards-reputable-reporting-not-left-wing-politics <comment><USER2> My own eyes disagree. I read a lot of news. I read left wing news like the guardian, I read news that claims to be neutral but isn't like the NYT or BBC, I read right wing news like the Telegraph and Breitbart. I can't honestly say any are more reputable than the others - all of them tend to publish things that I fact check personally and find to be false.

But oddly enough, Google's mobile recommendations for me are utterly dominated by the Guardian. They push Guardian stories on me multiple times per day. Know which site never appears? Breitbart. It's clearly blacklisted.

I don't find them to vary in quality or "hateyness", at least for the British editions. The Guardian hates white men, Breitbart pushes a lot of stories about illegal immigration and variants (e.g. asylum seekers lying about their age and origin). They both have their pet hates and slanted views.

But Google only thinks I should be reading the article that pushes globalism, the EU, unlimited migration, Clinton and social justice politics.

Unbiased, hah. To believe that you'd have to be blind.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

For my uses, I read 'RealClearPolitics' daily. It contains outrageous headlines from left and right-- the reader is left to sort out which to read, and what to believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did we get to the point we are flagging articles from the Economist?

<comment><USER5> Yes, we got to the point that we question the orthodoxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't this also be the result you'd expect if the fact checking orgs in question are also biased towards the left? All this really shows is that IF fact checking orgs are unbiased, Google is unbiased.

And I'm sure there are a lot of people on the right who would claim that fact checkers are very much not unbiased. (Not in the "blatant falsehood" sense of things, but in the "this is iffy but we'll give benefit of the doubt to people on the left but not the right" sense) An example of this would be the recent "did Trump call Meghan Markle nasty" series - if you give Trump the benefit of the doubt then it's easy to argue that he called Markle's _comments_ nasty, but you're not going to see that on politifact [0].

Everything is relative, nothing is absolute. (And I really wish that fact checking sites were more charitable towards _everyone_ )

0: [https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/article/2019/jun/02...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/article/2019/jun/02/context-donald-trumps-nasty-comment-about-meghan-m/)

<comment><USER7> I think that's being overly charitable given what he's said in the past and that he has a penchant for sledgehammer as hominem attacks and ridicule against people who criticize him as opposed to being precise in his counterpunches.

Taken in context, the sheer volume of his falsehoods weighs against his credibility in terms of giving him the benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps, but I'd still like politifact or snopes or whomever to fact check everyone without regard to their past, even if that includes people like David Duke or Richard Spencer. The mere appearance of bias makes it easier for them to point at the rest of the fact-checking org and say "now that you know that the fact checkers lie, let me tell you what really happened in the 'Holocaust'", and that's not something most people want to enable.

And since when are 'facts' dependent on the person who said them? Perhaps if they do depend on such, those 'facts' shouldn't be included in the purview of a fact-checking org.

<comment><USER7> But your own article talks about facts. Speculating about what he actually meant as opposed to what he actually said is outside the realm of facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The potential, unintended bias of algorithms need constant oversight such as this. We are obviously going to use them more and more, and for more important decisions.

</comment><comment><USER9> Google loves to reward bullshit platforms like Express and The Daily Mail. It is an absolute disgrace that those two tabloids exist as promoted search results.

<comment><USER10> Though a recent change has almost halved the Daily Mail's search traffic, which is good news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Economist itself has a left wing bias.

<comment><USER7> Funny, a lot of left wingers would say Economist has a neo-liberal (right wing) bias. It seems the Overton window has shifted the right so far to the extreme that someone like Milton Friedman would probably be considered left wing.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps they have different bias, depending on the subject? (I don't know, I haven't opened one since leaving school)

<comment><USER13> I think they'd argue that they have a consistently liberal "bias" in all subjects, it's just they don't map cleanly onto modern left-right politics. For example they favor deregulation and privatization which are traditional "right wing" stances, while also favoring gay marriage and drug legalization which is an issues that has recently been more championed by the left. The Economist would argue that their stance in both issues is "liberal" thus there being no contradiction.

<comment><USER12> Thank you.

From the two comments above, I guessed it was something like this

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Those two categories aren't mutually exclusive. "Reputable reporting" outlets are usually made up of a large majority of reporters with left-wing biases because the majority of journalists have left-wing biases.

The NYTimes obviously has a left-wing bias but they are still considered reputable.

<comment><USER15> As Stephen Colbert observed, reality has a well-known liberal bias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ehhh... Google Finance's news section has become a total crap fest, lately featuring user generated sales pitches from SeekingAlpha and some shady looking crypto currency sites. Seems less political them desperate (not that most of the big financial sites have paywalls), but it sure doesn't seem to prioritize reputable reporting.

</comment><comment><USER17> To decide for yourself just watch the Google leadership meeting which happened after the election, where some of them even started sulking about the results. "Google after the election" renders no results on Youtube unsurprisingly, even though it was a fairly popular video.

<comment><USER18> The question is whether personal feelings were translated into algorithmic bias. The simple fact that that some employees were upset by a result doesn't necessarily mean they took some underhand action.

<comment><USER19> Don't we talk here all the time about how algorithms can be biased (even racist) due to programmers being biased in ways they may not even be aware of?

Then we must consider the possibility of bias in this case too.

<comment><USER20> People talk about how your data's perspective is biased, and how algorithms can lead to cyclic effects. Or in what manner does someone exercise racial bias in their data model?

<comment><USER19> Surely the same can happen for politics? Especially when sources of data are preemptively blacklisted?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm pretty sure there's a wide range of reporting that different people call 'reputable,' so who is the authority on reputable? Is it the centrist?

Google rewards whichever ad purchaser pays them.

</comment><comment><USER22> How is doing no research besides what you can find on a tweet, and heavily biasing an article towards one way considered 'reputable reporting'?

I just can't believe that all right-leaning articles are false and all left- leaning articles are reputable.

<comment><USER23> Just as well no one is saying that all right-leaning articles are false or that all left-leaning articles are reputable, then.

Your first paragraph sounds as if it's intended as a callout of some specific bit of sloppy reporting, but you haven't said what. Would you care to?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I take down old links related to me? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,<p>I've made some silly websites and twitter accounts before, and unfortunately I used emails I have lost access to to create these blogs/twitter accounts. I used my full name in some of these tweets/blogs, and I want to start making my name search more professional by removing these old stuff. How do I go about requesting take downs for these unaccessible stuff? <comment><USER2> If you created it you send in DMCA requests.

</comment><comment><USER3> you can exercise the right to be forgotten</comment>