Slack 'bans users' who have visited US sanctioned countries - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46642760 <comment><USER2> Discussion from earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724107)

<comment><USER3> That's a slightly different situation, though. The "original" article is about an Iranian national who now lives in Canada, while this "dupe" article covers both that case and multiple others with the claim that Slack is banning anyone who has ever visited one of the sanctioned countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm one of the people who got banned: [https://twitter.com/aaomidi/status/1075621119028314112](https://twitter.com/aaomidi/status/1075621119028314112)

Just FYI for everyone here, the US government explicitly allows instant messaging applications to be exempt from sanctions: [https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/internet_freedom.pdf)

This is to foster more secure and wider internet access for Iranians.

<comment><USER5> Slack is generally B2B paid service for collaboration, is it not? You would imagine instant messaging and social networking to be something where Skype.com falls under the umbrella, but Lync/Skype for Business does not. The PDF also constantly uses the word personal.

> such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of > photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging. In order to qualify for that > authorization, such services and software had to be publicly available > (widely available to the public) at no cost to the user

<comment><USER6> I'm fairly certain that Slack is available for free usage; I think there's just a limit on the number of users you can have in your "organization" (where "organization" doesn't necessarily mean anything formal like a company) without needing to pay

<comment><USER5> Yes, sure, you can make a free workspace just like you can run a trial of Lync, but presumably this categorization brings them out of personal messaging and into a B2B-relationship for business purposes, and the majority of their business is funded by paid B2B contracts.

NB: I'm not saying this is fair to anyone and it's just my personal interpretation, but it reads to me that the OFAC PDF linked is overly intent on specifically personal messaging, for personal individuals, not for business collaboration, B2B contracts, anything related to work or commercialness

<comment><USER7> But Slack isn't strictly for businesses. It's "teams" in "workspaces" which could mean whatever. Especially in the case of free accounts there's a fair possibility that those could just be some people.

<comment><USER3> Indeed; I know of (and have joined) multiple Slack "organizations" that are just individuals chatting about things. Didn't cost me anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Use protocols that are public domain and not some proprietary shit. IRC, E-Mail and Websites: They will remain long after Slack, Facebook and others are gone.

<comment><USER9> I really don't understand why slack is so popular. It's just irc, if you have a devops person they can stand that up over lunch, and send out the email to "hey download this app"

<comment><USER10> Chat bots & integrations...

<comment><USER3> Both of which exist in droves for IRC (hell, even Slack at one point had an IRC integration).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To be fair, it's often unclear what you need to do to comply w/ sanctions, and being found non-compliant can bring down some really heavy penalties.

<comment><USER4> The emails they sent did not have any appeals process. They were also sent from no-reply addresses.

The worst thing about this isn't them blocking (even though they didn't need to). It was that they assumed their systems are 100% perfect and no one would need to appeal.

It was also the timing of this that was annoying. Right before long holidays (harder to get to your workplace and let people know what happened)

<comment><USER12> On Twitter, here is their standard language

> Our systems may have detected an account on our platform with an IP address > originating from a designated embargoed country. Please send a note to > firstname.lastname@example.com so we can investigate further.

In general, they're also saying that,

> If you travel to an embargoed country, your account will not be deactivated > if you attempt to use Slack. > [https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/1075924814530076675](https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/1075924814530076675)

<comment><USER13> I've seen the email sent to aaomidi, and it didn't say that. It's possible that they revised the notice after receiving complaints, but the initial batch was worded rather harshly without any indication that it was possible to appeal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a US citizen that used Slack briefly during a visit to Cuba and my accounts are still fine. Not sure how they are targeting people.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can't they just block those countries at a firewall level?

<comment><USER16> This does seem like it'd be a much better solution... +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is alternative, use Hipchat.

<comment><USER18> Hipchat is discontinued. Was announced a while ago. Their official migration path is to move to Slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> ...

</comment><comment><USER20> The State Department is a Slack user so there's that. [https://apps.gov/products/Slack/](https://apps.gov/products/Slack/)

</comment><comment><USER21> " _In a statement to website Mashable, Slack said they "prohibit unauthorized Slack use in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and the Crimea region of Ukraine" to comply with US regulations._"

Wait. What?

<comment><USER22> What are you confused by?

<comment><USER21> Use is prohibited _in_ those countries. The woman in the article reportedly created her account while in Cuba years ago (presumably before this policy?) and hasn't been back since.

She wasn't using Slack _in_ Cuba when her account was cancelled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems pretty straightforward. It is a violation of just about every competently written terms of service from a US company to transact business in these countries. For a complete list, see [https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/SDN-List/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/SDN-List/Pages/default.aspx) and [https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/sanctions/Programs/Pages/Programs.aspx)

<comment><USER23> Specifically, section 560.540 of the ITR authorizes the exportation from the United States or by U.S. persons, wherever located, to persons in Iran of services incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Intemet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging, provided that such services are publicly available at no cost to the user. (ITR, section 560.540(a)(1).)</comment></comment>


Linus Torvalds - C++ is a horrible language - <AUTHOR> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918 <comment><USER2> Seen 1 and 5 years ago but always good to reheat this one...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3192238](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3192238)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=51451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=51451)

<comment><AUTHOR> Subsurface, the diving software originally written by Torvalds, is moving to QT because they are sick of problems with GTK.

If you follow the mailing list, they're only using the minimal amount of C++ required for QT, otherwise everything is in C. So in 2013, Linus still doesn't like C++.

<comment><USER3> Seeing as I consider Qt to be a particularly badly designed C++ library, this speaks volumes about how cumbersome some C APIs are to use. Not that there is any real alternative for a cross-platform UI toolkit.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think of WxWidgets? Better designed than QT? Seems to have a broad range of users. [http://wxwidgets.org/about/users.htm](http://wxwidgets.org/about/users.htm)

Python & QT could be an option, but the whitespace is annoying (I shudder to think what Linus thinks of it) and in general, I prefer using Go over Python, but the creators have said they will not put any resources into developing official UI bindings, so any efforts are purely third-party.

<comment><USER4> WxWidgets is some regards similar Win32 MFC. (And anything is better than MFC)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > infinite amounts of pain when they don't work (and anybody who tells me that > STL and especially Boost are stable and portable is just so full of BS that > it's not even funny)

People are so good at rationalizing their preferences that they sometimes say really stupid stuff withour realizing it. This nightmare scenario of relying on boost, std::vector, or whatever - it's really basic stuff that's both open source and easy to understand/debug - e.g. [https://github.com/graehl/boost/tree/object_pool-constant- ti...](https://github.com/graehl/boost/tree/object_pool-constant-time-free) (reminds me - I should really get around to submitting this)

That said, avoiding libraries (especially avoiding templates and just using void*-like stuff) does keep binaries/libs smaller, but I'll gladly make the computer work slightly harder considering that the result is the same speed (C++ is often faster than C, in practice).

The downside I care about is compilation speed. Simple C projects compile/link faster than modern C++ ones, even though the code for the same functionality is far more brittle, unsafe, and opaque

<comment><USER3> > That said, avoiding libraries (especially avoiding templates and just using > void*-like stuff) does keep binaries/libs smaller, but I'll gladly make the > computer work slightly harder considering that the result is the same speed > (C++ is often faster than C, in practice).

This should not be an issue with modern C++ compilers. If two template instantiations generate the same or similar code, they will be merged and useless code is removed by dead code elimination.

> The downside I care about is compilation speed. Simple C projects > compile/link faster than modern C++ ones, even though the code for the same > functionality is far more brittle, unsafe, and opaque

At the same time, a lot of potential for optimization is lost by barricading everything between translation units and/or behind opaque pointers. While yes, LTO is supposed to help there, all those memory accesses make it infinitely harder for the compiler to prove trivial properties about the data flow. See also this recent presentation by someone who has a lot more experience than me with writing compiler backends: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR34r7HOU14](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR34r7HOU14)

<comment><USER6> > This should not be an issue with modern C++ compilers. If two template > instantiations generate the same or similar code, they will be merged and > useless code is removed by dead code elimination.

FWIW, MSVC does this, maybe Intel's as well, but other toolchains do not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Relevant interview - whether real or fake - with Bjarne Stroustrup.

[http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Beowulf/c++_interview/c++_inter...](http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Beowulf/c++_interview/c++_interview.html)

"Stroustrup: Hmm. I've always wondered about that. Originally, I thought I had. Then, one day I was discussing this with a guy who'd written C++ from the beginning. He said he could never remember whether his variables were referenced or dereferenced, so he always used pointers. He said the little asterisk always reminded him."

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite amusing, the original author should do an update for C++11.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well I agree with everything he has to say here, I am constantly amazed with Linus' delivery. There were plenty of way to make the point he wanted to make without attacking anyone and with a much less angry tone.

<comment><USER9> maybe he has some personal issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've seen this mentality time and time again at the company i work, the old C programmers who tried C++ once and found a thing or two that didn't appeal to them and from that time on C++ was marked as BS.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've only had it for a semester but already I hate it.

Maybe that puts me in esteemed company.

(probably not though.)</comment>


Under Victorian Microscopes, an Enchanted World - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/victorian-microscope-enchanted-world <comment><USER2> The museum of Jurassic technology, in LA, has a collection of these objects, amongst many other wonderful things. If you're in LA and are a science/history/sociology/museum nerd in any proportions, you have to check out that place. By far my favorite venue I have ever visited in LA.

<comment><USER3> Damn! Used to live there and never heard about this! Perhaps one day I will return. My preferred hangouts were Getty (great exhibitions and famous for its archival experts) and LACMA (huge and IMHO extremely under-acknowledged globally).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a tidbit, Joeseph Jackson Lister, father of Joeseph Lister (who invented and promulgated antiseptic surgery) was admitted to the Royal Society for his invention of the achromatic microscope lens. In turn, that accurate view of the microscopic world was instrumental (no pun) in Lister's breakthroughs in antiseptic surgery.</comment>


Google's penetration of Android - <AUTHOR> http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2013/3/18/googles-penetration-of-android

<comment><USER2> Benedict Evans is usually very sensible. But this time he's way off. Samsung isn't anywhere near being able to replace Google's ecosystem, which has been getting much stronger over time.

Google Now, for example, is going to be as important as Maps and navigation in acquiring and retaining users.

Outside of China, where there are at least two Android derivatives growing their own ecosystems, only Amazon and, on a much smaller scale, Barnes & Noble have Android derived products that are sold without Google's services.

I have often criticized Google for being hard to work with for second-tier OEMs. Many of those devices that go without Google's ecosystem built in do so for no reason except that Android licensing is so opaque.

Perhaps Google will now stop leaving money on the table. All they have to do to expand their "share" of Android is answer the phone.</comment>


Ear Speakers – Research, Design, and Evolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/index/deep-dive/ear-speakers <comment><USER2> If you are interested in software-driven headphones, the Smyth Realiser series has always fascinated me.

[https://smyth-research.com/](https://smyth-research.com/)

[https://www.cnet.com/news/smyth-realiser-a8-perfect- surround...](https://www.cnet.com/news/smyth-realiser-a8-perfect-surround- sound-over-headphones/)

[https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/smyth-research- realiser...](https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/smyth-research-realiser-a8)

<comment><USER3> These things are awesome! They used to ship the A8 with STAX Ear Speakers... which when I discovered it almost 10 years ago was the first time I had ever heard the term "ear speakers" or had ever heard of electrostatic headphones, or the brand STAX (from Japan). All in all, The Realiser and the STAX were unbelievable! I got bored of the A8 after awhile but I never got bored of the STAX... I wish electrostatic headphones were more widely available in general, they're a true gem. Everyone that hears them is in awe.

<comment><USER4> And they are "easy" to build yourself. I wrote a guide about doing so here [0] which is based on this enormous head-fi thread [1].

0: [https://github.com/Azrael3000/headphone- guide](https://github.com/Azrael3000/headphone-guide) 1: [https://www.head- fi.org/threads/my-diy-electrostatic-headpho...](https://www.head- fi.org/threads/my-diy-electrostatic-headphones.498292/)

<comment><USER2> Wow, very impressive to DIY! It is one thing to do speakers DIY, quite another to make headphones, let alone e-stats.

For those who are interested in entry-level, non-DIY route

Drop (formerly Massdrop) has their variant of the classic Koss ESP/950 electrostatic headphones for around $500. They sold out earlier this year.

[https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-x-koss- esp-95x-electrostatic-s...](https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-x-koss- esp-95x-electrostatic-system?mode=guest_open)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Humans in general are very sensitive to sounds within 2kHZ-5kHz range. If > the frequency of a virtual sound doesn't match up to what we expect it to be > in reality, then we are more likely to identify the sound as "not real". > This is particularly true if you compare how easy it is to tell if someone's > voice is broadcast through a speaker vs. someone is talking beside you.

I never thought about that in regards to gaming or even conference room voice chat, it is extremely easy to tell the difference. Must be a challenging problem set to solve, sounds fun!

</comment><comment><USER6> These look really interesting! I own an original AKG K1000 from 1989 and they definitely have a better sense of "solidity" and "presence" than ordinary headphones with drivers that seal against your head, due to the natural crossfeed.

Other than the K1000 successor that got released a year or two ago (mysphere 3) there has been very little development since then in the field of open-air driver headphones. Hopefully these can sound good without breaking the bank! Also this is the first headphone that uses a driver based on the BMR principle that I am aware of

<comment><USER7> HiFiMan has a series of open air planar magnetic drivers, and they're absolutely awesome to listen to. I've yet to find other headphones that can stack up. Their only downside is the weight.

<comment><USER6> Which Hifimans are you referring to? Just to clarify, I'm talking not about open-back headphones, but headphones that don't have pads and consequently don't form a seal between the ear and the driver.

<comment><USER7> There is no seal. A seal implies a lack of air movement and sound isolation associated with closed back headphones. Open back headphones have no sound isolation in or out. The parts that contact around your ears with HiFiMan's simply set the distance from the driver to your ear, in a comfortable way.

<comment><USER6> That is incorrect. When I say "seal", I am referring to the sealed cavity _between ear and driver_ , not to anything behind the driver. This is actually quite important for planars in particular, as a broken seal between the ear and driver leads to rapid bass rolloff, due to the lack of excursion found in most planar drivers (ime this is most noticeable with audezes since their excursion is especially low but I notice it with my HE-6 when I don't have the pads on my head quite right and there's a tiny gap between my head and the pads somewhere)

<comment><USER8> What would be the sound difference between such open-air headphones (no seal between ear and driver), and placing my head in between regular speakers (few inches distance, ignoring comfort concerns)?

<comment><USER6> Well for one, most speaker drivers aren't designed to cover the full range of 20hz-20khz, something headphone drivers are explicitly designed to do (historically there have been a couple of multi-driver headphones, but they were horrible without exception). Even a high quality midrange driver for a speaker will probably only have a good response between 300hz-5000hz and past the upper frequency limit you will get major treble spikes and rolloff due to the cone entering its breakup mode resonances, so it will sound predictably awful. Now there are fullrange speaker drivers, but these do not generally have flat response characteristics as they tend to roll off early on both ends of the spectrum, and fullrange drivers with multiple cones (aka "whizzer" cones) tend to have a breakup spike in the upper mids at around 3-5khz. I am a little less sure about the physics of this part, but I believe that even if you had a theoretically optimum speaker driver, you would run into Q-factor related issues because speaker drivers are meant to be listened to in the far field rather than being placed right up against your head, so if you had the driver right next to your head, your eardrums would see a huge FR spike in the midrange, due to a resonance/standing wave forming in the cavity between your ear and the surface of the driver. Headphone drivers, since they are designed to be placed up against the ear, are usually damped, mechanically or electrically, specifically to avoid this. The K1000 in particular is damped electrically (there's a small notch filter (?) on a tiny pcb that feeds the driver) since its sensitivity is already very low with the little amount of mechanical damping it has. One common issue between something like a K1000 and a headphone made with open air speaker drivers (no baffle or box behind the driver) is that they both experience rear wave phase cancellation at very low frequencies, which causes a 12db/octave rolloff below the primary resonance of the driver. This is due to the negative wave from behind the driver wrapping around to the front of the driver and decreasing the amplitude of the positive wave.

TLDR speaker drivers, compared to purpose-built headphone drivers, are highly sub-optimal due to limited FR range, breakup modes, and Q factor / improper damping for the application. Directivity and near-field effects (both of which would further distort FR) would probably also be an issue with speaker drivers but I don't know of anyone really trying to build a high quality headphone from speaker drivers so I can't comment on that.

<comment><USER8> Thank you, that was very informative! How did you learn so much about audio?

I use Sennheiser HD600 at home (mostly for classical music), and Bose QC-15 at work (mostly for pop/rock/electronic). I also have Grado SR125, but I rarely listen with them, because they are not very comfortable, even though the sound is pretty good - they feel more dynamic and lively than HD600, but that could be due to the difference in impedance (the source is Macbook Pro, which might technically be to weak to drive HD600, I'm not sure).

Based on this information, would you recommend any other headphones for me to try?

<comment><USER6> I've just been an audiophile for a long enough time I guess. The HD600 is great, it is endgame for many people and routinely beats headphones costing several times as much. Grados I quite dislike, they have really high distortion in the bass and have audible ringing at around 2-4khz. But if you like them, you do you I guess. The HD600 is in a unique spot where there are really no headphones out there that are a direct upgrade across all areas. Its main weaknesses are bass extention and dynamics, something like an hd800 or focal utopia (both of which are pretty different from one another) will beat it squarely in both of those areas, but those two headphones don't have the highly flat diffuse-field tuning of the hd600. If you like the hd600 and grados, you probably prefer a drier tuning, so a non-exhaustive list of some headphones you should try might be:

Focal utopia - These are somewhat v-shaped, extremely resolving, possibly the most "dynamic" sounding headphone, very narrow like the hd600, makes hd600 sound veiled and compressed in comparison.

Sennheiser HD800 - Definitely a polarizing headphone, bright in the lower treble but lacks some presence due to a scooped upper midrange @ around 2khz, so the opposite of grado in that regard, super enormous stage (second only to K1000) but imaging is not quite as precise as utopia or K1000. Great bass with minor rolloff, makes any hd6x0 sound wooly and imprecise. Extremely resolving.

AKG K1000 - Their presentation is a lot more like speakers than headphones. Very unique and incredibly "live" sounding. They are forward at 2khz but not as much as grados. They can sound alive and dynamic, or washed out, dead and veiled, all depending on the angle of the drivers, so you really have to adjust them perfectly to see what these can do. More resolving than hd600 but not as much as modern flagships like the two above. They have the widest stage of any headphone, it really has to be experienced. It's as if there are actually palpable instruments floating in the space around your head. Amazing realism, but highly uncomfortable and not ergonomic in the slightest. Ones with serial #s below 5000 are the most desirable as these are the "bass heavy" versions which were made before a factory revision that increased the primary resonance of the driver from around 40hz to around 60hz if i recall correctly)

Mysphere 3 - Modern K1000 successor, designed by the same guy who designed the K1000 in the late 80's. I have not heard them but they are said to improve on comfort, resolution, bass extention, and driver sensitivity.

I would be cautious with planars. When they aren't tuned to sound like listening to music through a sock (audeze) they often have a weird habit of sounding simultaneously bright and veiled, which isn't exactly pleasant. Not sure why that is from a physics standpoint. the diaphragms are usually held to high tension, so it might have to do with standing waves forming on their surface at high frequencies? Idk. What planars excel at is mostly their unmatched low frequency capability, with bass extention flat to well below 10hz with a perfect seal. Good planars tend to have a sense of huge weight and solidity but without the bloatedness and blurriness of bassy dynamic headphones. My favorite planar is the hifiman HE-6, but the driver has a lot of ringing in its stock form and needs to be modded to reach its full potential. Also the drivers have a nasty tendency of dying, and I don't think the manufacturer can replace them anymore. Like the K1000, they are also extremely insensitive. I unironically use a speaker amp to drive these. If what you want is an upgrade in terms of resolution, planars probably aren't where you want to look, as they usually have some degree of haziness to them that you don't find with dynamic drivers.

Any stax - These are electrostats and require their own high-voltage amps. There are warm stax (sr-007, sr-L700) and bright stax (sr-009) but generally speaking they tend to be highly resolving but dead sounding and lacking dynamics. This might be due to the limited excursion and low driver mass, again not 100% sure why. Also they tend to have an upper mid shelf (wider than the narrow 2khz-ish boost present in AKGs and grados) from around 1000hz onward that lends everything a kind of plasticy timbre. They are really cool from an engineering standpoint but in my opinion overpriced and not that musically engaging.

For your preferences I would stay away from: Audeze (veiled compressed dead sock), non-flagship hifimans such as he-500 and he-560 (veiled and hazy to the max), anything mrspeakers (grainy compressed dead sock, also veiled), ZMF (legitimately nice sounding boutique dynamic driver headphones, but definitely colored and significantly warm of neutral), the senn hd700 (truly an abortion of a headphone), the hifiman HE1000 (veiled, warm, wide, sounds like listening through two cellphone speakers placed 6ft away from your head), and any fostex dynamic drivers (highly dynamic and v-shaped, opposite of hd600)

Most of these are really expensive and/or unobtanium, but as I said you have to do quite a bit to beat the venerable HD600. It would be crazy to buy any of this stuff blind, I would recommend finding a local high-end audio shop where they will let you sit down for a few hours and listen without interruption. Head-fi meets are also a great opportunity to listen to a bunch of gear and meet new people, I'm not sure how often those occur anymore though. Cheers!

<comment><USER8> I appreciate the detailed response!

What kind of music would you recommend listening to to evaluate headphones in a shop? I plan to grab my HD600 and Grado and compare them to HD800. Aside from Sennheiser and Grado, my local shop lists the following: [https://www.missionaudiovideo.com/catalog/headphones-and- wir...](https://www.missionaudiovideo.com/catalog/headphones-and-wireless- systems?category_id=935&manufacturer=35,19891,31230,27186,8809)

I was told the high impedance can be an issue when listening from a desktop/laptop/phone (as I normally do), so I was actually considering HD660S or even HD598/599\. What do you think?

What about in-ear models? I hate the fit of the stock iPhone earbuds (they just don't fit me at all), but provided I find those that fit well I would like to own high quality earbuds. What's the difference in terms of sound between in-ear and around the ear designs?

<comment><USER6> Listen to anything you like that's well mastered and in a lossless format. Acoustic music recorded in natural spaces tends to reveal the capabilities of a transducer better than synthetic or overly close-miced recordings do, in my opinion. Classical and jazz tend to be most useful here because they tend to escape the dynamic range compression that pervades all of pop and electronic music these days, but there is well-mastered music in any genre. Any music you are super familliar with will basically tell you all you need to know really. A few albums I like to listen to when evaluating gear are Pat Metheny Group - The Way Up, Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92, and Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (not the remaster).

I don't think any of those other cans listed online will challenge the HD600 at all, I know the nightowl and se-master1 are both notoriously bad. But if they have an HD800, definitely go have a listen. It is a polarizing headphone and whether you like it or not will tell you a lot about your own preferences.

High headphone impedance is only an issue if the source you're listening out of has a high output impedance, if the output impedance of the source is high enough, the frequency response will be altered and there will be a FR bump around the primary resonance of the driver (usually around 100hz in most dynamic drivers) due to a lack of electrical damping. A dedicated headphone amp is always best, there are a lot of good ones out there these days that don't break the bank.

I'm not an IEM expert, I've never really felt the need for them and have never found a comfortable pair either. Over-ear designs should have more spatial realism as the sound field interacts with your whole ear (research HRTF and pinna transforms if you want to learn more) compared to IEMs which fire directly into the ear canal and so skip the HRTF entirely.

<comment><USER8> What do you think about Apple Homepods?

<comment><USER6> Haven't heard it. I know a lot of people were hyped up when it first came out but I don't really know if it delivered or not. It's supposed to be well DSP'd so I wouldnt be surprised if it beat most of the speakers in its price range though.

<comment><USER8> I'm thinking about getting them as desktop speakers, as an alternative to using headphones at work, because my ears get hot after a couple of hours, even in HD600.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I live articles that show the process of designing completely new hardware.

I do wonder if this article is missing any dead ends; only showing the iterative improvements?

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks like it will be impossible to play with someone else in the same room, right?

<comment><USER11> Sure but you're already flailing around with a vision-blocking helmet, waving your hands. Noise pollution seems like less of a hazard for a bystander than getting whacked by the player.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does sound affect us between receiving via headphones vs a speaker?

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh, wow, this really is cool.

</comment><comment><USER14> Elephant in the room is that it still has a wire sticking out.

<comment> GuB-42 That's not the subject. But do you really think they didn't even consider wireless?

Turns out it is really hard. You need a low latency, reliable ~10Gbps link. You also need the battery to be power all the that stuff. Putting everything inside the headset would be ideal but you also have to consider that weight affects comfort and immersion significantly.

The first semi successful attempt is TPCast but it is far from perfect. I don't know much about the Vive wireless but it seems to work better but still have its own set of issues. Both are also rather expensive (~$300).

So for now, we seem to be stuck with fully integrated low end or wired high end. I think we still need to wait a bit more for wireless high end.

<comment><USER14> I've been using a Vive with the official wireless adapter and it works flawlessly.

The subject is immersion.

My point is that with all that goes into making the audio immersive, the wire out back instantly defeats any gains there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if the F/R graph has been pre-corrected against human perception?

It looks really flat -- and you'd ordinarily think that was good, but it turns out that humans don't have equally sensitive hearing at all frequencies. There are a range of curves from different studies, and most musical transducers pick one of those curves and try to emulate it in hardware, so that a smooth frequency sweep from low to high continues to sound equally loud.

Perhaps Valve is planning on adding that through digital equalization.

<comment><USER16> It is _worse_ than that, the curve of human hearing is not only everything else than flat, it also _changes with volume_.

<comment><USER17> One thing to note is that it's not all doom and gloom. Unless aiming for a full VR positional audio experience like Valve is doing here, an audio playback system (headphones, speakers, etc) doesn't have to compensate for all of the various nuances of human hearing. After all, sounds "in real life" don't do that.

All an audio playback system needs to do is reproduce the original sound accurately, perhaps with some Fletcher-Munson compensation to enhance bass at low listening volumes.

(Interestingly, this sort of feature was present on home stereos for several decades. The poorly-named "loudness" knob increased bass so you could enjoy satisfying bass without increasing the overall system volume...)

<comment><USER18> The loudness button's functionality lives on, in an improved form. Any reasonably modern AV receiver with Audyssey or equivalent room correction/DSP will apply dynamic EQ based on the volume setting, to compensate for volume- dependent frequency sensitivity.

It's a great way to get speakers to sound "bigger" than they are, at volume settings.

<comment><USER17> Audyssey is absolutely wonderful. It makes a dramatic difference and is light years ahead of a simple loudness knob.

However, I have to wonder - for those with Audyssey-equipped receivers, what % of owners bother to complete the setup process with the calibration microphone? I suspect that number is unfortunately low. :-/

Also, I don't think too many people listen to music on AV receivers these days. The product category itself seems to be fading.

Home theaters have swung toward soundbars, and music is listened to on computers, mobile devices, and/or Bluetooth speakers.

I'm saying this as a pretty old-school stalwart myself, with a fairly capable AV receiver in the living room for video and a bunch of audiophile-ish two channel gear for music.

<comment><USER18> I don't think the AV receiver is going away anytime soon.

Just like what has happened to stereo amplifiers, what is happening is that the opportunistisk low end of the market is moving on. Cheap radios, turntables and amplifiers were replaced with cheap plastic mini/micro stereos, which were in turn replaced by all-in-ones, which were replaced by bluetooth speakers, and so on.

Cheap AV receivers and especially cheap home-theater-in-a-box type products have been replaced by sound bars, which I would say is actually an improvement in a lot of cases. Some of the low-end AV receivers that were on the market in the 90s and 2000s were unmitigated garbage and a waste of money.

Quality fifi separates live on, and you can still buy mini/micro stereos and all-in-one radio/media player devices. You can still buy AV receivers, but the worst cheap ones have disappeared. I'm not sure you can actually buy HTIB junk anymore, but good riddance to that rubbish.

The appreciation for good sound lives on, but the more complicated devices move to more of a niche role, sticking around for those of us who desire really good sound, and don't mind a bit of a complicated setup process. For everyone else, a sound bar with a wireless subwoofer gets them most of the way, with significantly less effort.

Listening on a computer is simply the next replacement for turntables, tape decks, CD players, DVD/Bluray players, standalone streaming devices and so on. My primary media source is an ultra small form factor PC streaming FLAC and DVD/BR rips from my NAS, hooked up to my receiver over HDMI. It's almost too easy to get amazing sound quality today.

Similarly a smartphone will produce great sound quality with decent source material. The playback device has become a footnote, they're all capable of great sound quality today, as long as you pipe it to something higher quality than a cheap soundbar/bluetooth speaker.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should email addresses also give everyone a personal webpage? - <AUTHOR> What do you think of the idea of email providers also giving each address a web page directly connected to that address?
Optional of course.
Optional of course, but <comment><USER2> ISPs used to do this. No one seemed to use it. What's the point when hosting is free and most people have no desire to publish a general page that's disconnected from social media or a blog service?

</comment><comment><USER3> I registered my own domain in the 90s and I always had a POP3 mailbox on the server of the registar. I download email on my laptop and read it with Thunderbird (and also read it on my phone before downloading it, not the usual arrangement) I configure the DNS to point www to a web server on a VPS on OVH.

The registrar also offers static web hosting, which could be what you are proposing.

</comment><comment><USER4> That is a fantastic idea... wonder about security though.</comment>


How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer <comment><USER2> If curious, see this big discussion from the time of publication in Apr 2019:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19694207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19694207)

(528 points/299 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of the best paragraphs of this great article:

> I believe the relative ease—not to mention the lack of tangible cost—of > software updates has created a cultural laziness within the software > engineering community. Moreover, because more and more of the hardware that > we create is monitored and controlled by software, that cultural laziness is > now creeping into hardware engineering—like building airliners. Less thought > is now given to getting a design correct and simple up front because it's so > easy to fix what you didn't get right later.

Personally, I have noticed this laziness creeping into areas that are not controlled by software at all after they are finished, like building or road construction.

<comment><USER4> This "laziness" is not really a function of the people doing software work, or as you point out any work in any area, it is imho, an expression of our broken leadership and management culture that puts short term concern for profits before quality.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, but with software, you can actually have both (short-time profits with low-quality software, and long term quality by fixing the hacks afterwards), so "move fast and break things" might actually be good leadership in software. It doesn't work so well with building planes or houses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finally a comprehensive article about the 737 Max issues that I can understand.

</comment><comment><USER6> The following corrections to fundamental factual errors should not distract one from the meat of the article:

1\. Jet engines, like car engines, are not described by the "Carnot cycle", and their efficiency is not governed by it. The Carnot cycle describes closed- system equipment like refrigerators and Nuke plants. Jet engines, like (our now obsolete) cars, start with new working fluid -- air -- at the intake, and discard it at the end -- exhaust. Their theoretical limit of efficiency is technically 100%, not the 30-40% typical of Carnot equipment. In practice, they don't get close, but those huge ship engines do achieve up to 55%: they all take in air much, much cooler than their exhaust.

2\. The change to the thrust vector is _not_ a consequence of moving the engines forward. It is a simple result of the bigger engine diameter making the center farther below the wing. Moving the engines forward and up _reduced_ the size of the change to the thrust vector -- just not enough so to match the old one. But the move had other effects, besides...

3\. The added aerodynamic lift of the engine nacelles has _nothing_ to do with more power being produced by the bigger engines. It is purely a product of the angle relative to the direction of air moving past. Bigger barrels have more area, and more lift, and moving them forward gave them more lever arm to apply their lift to rotate the plane instead of just holding it up, as wing lift does.

4\. The change to the thrust vector is what makes punching the throttle _also_ apply a force to rotate the airframe to a higher pitch angle. So there are two independent forces -- off-center lift, and off-center thrust -- both causing the same effect: pitching the plane up more than the pilot asked for. How much you get of each is a very complicated product of all the details of how the plane is flying.

5\. On all 737s of any vintage, the controls really are still directly, physically connected, by steel cables, to the control surfaces -- the hinged bits at the back edges of wings and wing-shaped things. But there are hydraulics that also yank on the cables, and other stuff yanks on the control column, to doctor the pilot's experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great article. I just wonder if this bit is really true:

>Most of those market and technical forces are on the side of economics, not safety.

People seem to think about airline safety a lot, like, an irrational amount given the risk. I would guess that over the decades consumer pressure was a huge driver of safety improvements, and the increasing automation seems to have been a big safety benefit on balance.

<comment><USER8> >like, an irrational amount given the risk.

The risk that 300 Peoples at once can die? I think that's very rational.

<comment><USER9> No. It's rational to focus on things like sugary drinks that lead to diabetes or to work on improving road conditions for motorists and cyclists. So few people die per unit distance traveled by plane that we're probably over investing in airline safety. It's that when an accident happens it's front page news, so the feedback to the overall system is more pronounced than when a person in their 50s has a heart attack.

<comment><USER8> >sugary drinks

Whats there to think about it? Don't drink it (or not too much), that's where YOU are responsible for YOUR life and not the life of others. The Airline and Pilots are responsible for your safe travel.

>road conditions for motorists and cyclists

In Germany 445 people died in bicycle accidents in 2018, that's 1.5 Aircraft's. And please just use a helmet, but you are right sure. But neglect Air-safety to make Roads safer sounds stupid...why not do both.

43% don't wear helmets and 37% are against mandatory helmets on bicycles, again that's YOUR responsibility:

[https://www.thelocal.de/20161207/should-germans-be-made- to-w...](https://www.thelocal.de/20161207/should-germans-be-made-to-wear-bike- helmets-cycling-germany-australia)

>we're probably over investing in airline safety.

No we hold Airline's responsible for it, if you don't do that this will happen over time:

[https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/business/pakistan-fake- pi...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/business/pakistan-fake-pilot-intl- hnk/index.html)

>50s has a heart attack

True because it's not something you or i can change, maybe he/she had bad habits (drinking, drinking sugar etc) maybe genetic, maybe could not afford a insurance (and this is something we should and could change)

<comment><USER9> > Whats there to think about it? Don't drink it

There are social costs to obesity and diabetes. They should be taxed like alcohol and tobacco and selling sugary drinks to children should be curtailed. We should have warning labels and government funded commercial campaigns highlighting the issue. We should subsidize healthier foods like vegetables and promote a healthy and active lifestyle. We should make nutritional education a core part of education.

> But neglect Air-safety to make Roads safer sounds stupid...why not do both.

We presently do both, but we underfund road safety and overfund airline safety. It's a matter of economics. If we're spending $10m per life saved in airlines and $300k per life saved on the road then we could save more lives by adjusting the expenditures.

> No we hold Airline's responsible for it

And I'm happy that we do, but we can still overfund health and safety in one part of the economy at the expense of the other.

<comment><USER8> >They should be taxed like alcohol and tobacco and selling sugary drinks to children should be curtailed.

Absolute no problem with that, but has nothing to-do with airline security.

>but we underfund road safety and overfund airline safety

I dont know where you life, but here 'WHE' pay nothing for Airline safety, but every passenger does, and flying is still too cheap.

>but we can still overfund health and safety in one part of the economy at the expense of the other.

I really don't know what a country that is, but here (Switzerland) every passenger pays a tax for the Airport which is responsible for the Air-control and the Security, and the Airport just lets Airlines land when they meet international Security standards, its not a public spend but a private one (from the passenger). And i think it's the exact same in your country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, if I read this right, Boeing's unique feature compared to Airbus was a more direct and manual mode of control, which they advertised as an advantage, and they removed this feature without telling clients and pilots?

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this the company that still distributes updates via floppy disks?

<comment><USER12> The context for that would be useful if you want to use it as a way to judge a company. I was involved, in just the last few years, in distributing updates via tape. Why? Because the target system that needed updating used tape drives to receive the updates, because they were built in the 1980s or 1990s (but designed in the 1970s or 1980s). You may think it's crazy to keep using that mechanism, but replacing old hardware is a non-trivial challenge in the aviation world.

<comment><USER13> Right! It costs millions to certify something for flight even if it's been in commercial use for years. Even for something as simple as swapping a spinning disk for an SSD. And it has to be verified in-situ with the other components of the system. And separate testing and documentation is required for each airframe variant ("Type certificate"), so a swap for a 747 and 737 even though they're both Boeing products requires separate testing and documentation. There could be THOUSANDS of pages of documentation for a non-trivial product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author should stick to software and stay out of airframes.

>I'll say it again: In the 737 Max, the engine nacelles themselves can, at high angles of attack, work as a wing and produce lift. And the lift they produce is well ahead of the wing's center of lift, meaning the nacelles will cause the 737 Max at a high angle of attack to go to a higher angle of attack. This is aerodynamic malpractice of the worst kind.

>Apparently the 737 Max pitched up a bit too much for comfort on power application as well as at already-high angles of attack. It violated that most ancient of aviation canons and probably violated the certification criteria of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

Pure bullshit. Many low wing passenger aircraft have this tendency somewhere in their flight envelope. You can tone it down with some aerodynamic trickery but it's just a fundamental trade-off you get when the engines are below and forward of the wing, the load is above the wing and you pin the throttle. The reason we got ht MAX debacle was because the new 737 had this tendency to a degree and in a portion of the flight envelope different than the old 737 which meant it couldn't ride on the old 737's cert without a bandage over that. The 737 MAX8 handles perfectly reasonably for an airborne bus. What it does not do is handle perfectly reasonably for a 737-800 hence the reason they overlaid half baked software taking inputs from less than adequate hardware systems (well they were adequate for the less critical systems they were designed to feed into).

>Let's review what the MCAS does: It pushes the nose of the plane down when the system thinks the plane might exceed its angle-of-attack limits; it does so to avoid an aerodynamic stall.

No. It (when it's no malfunctioning and trying to put you in a dive) pushes the nose down when you're getting into the portions of the flight envelope where the MAX flies differently than the old 737 in order to fudge the same handling as the old 737 thereby skating by on the old cert.

Big disasters require many small things to go just right. If the software was more robust this wouldn't have happened. If the hardware was more robust this wouldn't have happened. If the UX had been compatible with the pilots existing knowledge this wouldn't have happened. If the airlines were willing to pony up for type certs this wouldn't have happened. If the FAA had been hard asses this wouldn't have happened. To play it off as "Boeing tried to fix a bad plane with software and failed, whoopies" is exactly the kind of naive surface level postmortem that results in nothing being learned and these kinds of failures happening again. I know that opinions that deviate from "software engineers are angels that never do anything wrong and corporate is the devil also those hardware guys gave the software guys a crap situation to deal with" is not going to be appreciated on HN but the fact of the matter is that any one of the five-ish parties here (FAA, customers, and engineering, software and management within Boeing) could have broken this chain resulting in a different outcome and to prevent future events like this we need to understand the decisions that happened at the margin that prevented the chain of events from being broken.

<comment><USER15> This and other sources disagrees with you: [http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm](http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm)

>This abnormal nose-up pitching is not allowable under 14CFR §25.203(a) "Stall characteristics". Several aerodynamic solutions were introduced such as revising the leading edge stall strip and modifying the leading edge vortilons but they were insufficient to pass regulation. MCAS was therefore introduced to give an automatic nose down stabilizer input during elevated AoA when flaps are up.

The 737 Max was not certifiable without MCAS at all.

<comment><USER14> The law states:

>it must be possible to produce and to correct roll and yaw by unreversed use of the aileron and rudder controls, up to the time the airplane is stalled. _No abnormal nose-up pitching may occur._ The longitudinal control force must be positive up to and throughout the stall. In addition, it must be possible to promptly prevent stalling and to recover from a stall by normal use of the controls.

Pretty much all commercial airliners are gonna pitch up if you're nose high and have the throttle pinned. Arguably the degree to which the MAX does this is novel. I think it likely handles like shit in that part of the flight envelope but does it really handle like such shit that it's not safe? I don't think so. Remember, this is basically a company truck. You just have to know it's an issue and be trained to operate it properly. Most people would be appalled at the braking characteristics of unladen semi-trucks but it's a non- issue because everyone who has to drive one knows that in those specific circumstances it will handle like crap. At the end of the day it is a matter of degree and opinion. Yes, you can win some quick virtue points by taking a stand in the name of safety and saying that nothing more than the most minor pitch up is acceptable but I think that had this aircraft gone for a FAA certification as a new type it would have passed just fine.

<comment><USER16> Not the one you responded to but:

I don't know enough about airplanes to say if the MAX could have certified as it's own type. I'd like to hope it could because if not then that would show a very sorry state of affairs indeed.

But the big issue with the MAX is not that it handles differently, it is that Boeing lied to everyone about that fact. Then they made another semi- unforgivable error by masking the handling with software, ok, but didn't even take the most basic steps available to ensure some redundancy in that software.

It is just so very very bad engineering and mindset that it's hard to describe.

Would I fly on a MAX if and when they get clearance again? Maybe after it's been flying for a year or so, and depending on what some trusted people and institutions say about it.

<comment><USER14> >But the big issue with the MAX is not that it handles differently, it is that Boeing lied to everyone about that fact. Then they made another semi- unforgivable error by masking the handling with software, ok, but didn't even take the most basic steps available to ensure some redundancy in that software.

Which is exactly what I'm saying and the opposite of what the author and DTAL are saying.

>It is just so very very bad engineering and mindset that it's hard to describe.

I don't think it's even a mindset. It's that sort of "nobody is responsible for a large enough part of the system to be able to stop things and force things to be done right" situation that a lot of big-cos get into that results in them crapping out half baked products.

>Would I fly on a MAX if and when they get clearance again? Maybe after it's been flying for a year or so, and depending on what some trusted people and institutions say about it.

For me the decision would hinge on what training the pilots get.

<comment><USER16> >I don't think it's even a mindset. It's that sort of "nobody is responsible for a large enough part of the system to be able to stop things and force things to be done right" situation that a lot of big-cos get into that results in them crapping out half baked products.

I agree that plays a part.

But the people in charge of the flight computer software should know better than to have no redundancy.

And the executives definately are able to stop things and force them to be done right, and instill in their employees a mentality of safety-first. But their bonuses might have suffered, so...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So they wanted to make a "backwards compatible airplane" with new engines so that pilots could use the existing certificates...

<comment><USER18> let me finish your summary:

... but the aerodynamics were changed in the process and they fixed it with software, which was bad.

<comment><USER14> Would have been fine if they hadn't fixed it with crap software that was incompatible with the pilots existing runaway trim checklist.

<comment><USER19> I bet if we look at the requirements analysis of MCAS, the developers just met the specification. I think the article makes to much assumptions about the state of the industry and developer hubris, but the decision of system design of the plane was probably decided before it reached developers. They might also just have a perspective of this one system, so the result is as expected.

<comment><USER14> Yup. The UX guys didn't apreciate how critical the software was and how half- baked it was going to be (and therefore require pilots to need to interact with it requiring good UX). The software guys didn't know that the pilots weren't gonna know how to turn off the software so they didn't know they couldn't half bake it. The engine guys didn't know the software guys were gonna half bake it. The AOA guys retired in the 1990s and had no idea the system was gonna be used for anything more than warning lights.

Everyone did their job as it exists on paper but... [https://youtu.be/452XjnaHr1A?t=20](https://youtu.be/452XjnaHr1A?t=20)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very interesting article. Seems like Boeing used the Apple approach to computing here in the quest to make more money.

</comment><comment><USER20> (2019)

</comment><comment><USER7> This article makes a really good case overall, but it must be deliberate that it chooses not to mention the stabiliser trim cut-out switch. In the part about the Cessna he says:

>There are instructions on how to detect when the system malfunctions and how to disable the system, immediately. Disabling the system means pulling the autopilot circuit breaker; instructions on how to do that are strewn throughout the documentation, repeatedly. Every pilot who flies my plane becomes intimately aware that it is not the same as any other 172. This is a big difference between what pilots who want to fly my plane are told and what pilots stepping into a 737 Max are (or were) told.

Which really implies that no such procedure existed for the Max, and that's just not true. There may have been problems with the procedure, as far as I know it's not fully known yet why that procedure didn't prevent the accidents, possibly inadequate pilot training.

[https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/trim-cut-out-puzzle- emer...](https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/trim-cut-out-puzzle-emerges-from- ethiopian-crash-probe/132175.article)

<comment><USER21> > it's not fully known yet why that procedure didn't prevent the accidents

The only way in the 737 Max to disable MCAS, is to disable electric trim altogether. That means only manual trim is available. When MCAS has trimmed all the way to one of the extremes (as happened in the Ethiopean flight), it requires many revolutions of the trim wheel and superhuman strength to return it to a more appropriate setting (see e.g. [https://youtu.be/aoNOVlxJmow?t=750](https://youtu.be/aoNOVlxJmow?t=750)).

Previous generations of the 737 had two buttons related to the electric trim: one disabled the automatic trim system, the other one disabled electric trim altogether. The 737 Max still has two buttons, but they both have the same effect: disable the electric trim altogether. The old system could easily have prevented the crash by disabling MCAS but leaving the electrically assisted trim enabled.

Boeing's procedure to make manual trim adjustments possible is to put the airplane in a dive, because that lowers the aerodynamic forces on the trim surface. When you're only a few hundred feet above the ground, that's not really an option. The pilots re-enabled the electric trim in the hope they could use it in their fight against MCAS. It's the only thing they could think of in the stress of the moment, faced with near-certain death and an airplane actively trying to crash.

In hindsight, after reading accident reports and thinking about it in the comfort of chair that's not crashing, there were things they could have done. Lowering the throttle would have lessened the forces on the trim surface, activating the flaps once the speed was low enough would have disabled MCAS. I can't blame the pilots for not coming up with that in the heat of the moment.

<comment><USER7> All I said was that as far as I know it isn't fully known. The final report isn't out yet. I'm just an aviation enthusiast, but it's notable that in many discussions anything that could possibly be perceived as even possibly implying any pilot fault is kind of taboo. I'm not saying the pilots did anything wrong, I'm just saying that leaving the stab cut-out switch out of the story seems strange to me.

<comment><USER21> I don't really understand what you mean by "leaving the stab cut-out switch out of the story". Can you point me to a report that ignores the stab cut-out switch?

<comment><USER7> I meant the OP IEEE article that these comments are on.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Predicting the Success of a Reddit Submission with Deep Learning and Keras - <AUTHOR> http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/reddit-deep-learning/ <comment><USER2> <humour>

There is something powerful and inhuman to predict things accurately, when humans fail miserably at that.

However I think that articles that have titles such as "Predicting * with Deep Learning and * " reveal also their authors feelings.

Because they contain an underlying statement such as "See how powerful is that beast, and fear me, for I am its master!" </humour></comment>


How Empassioned Amateurs Built a New Planetary Nervous System - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/how-empassioned-amateurs-built-a-new-planetary-nervous-system-8c7636d1215e#.4oeaz9avf <comment><USER2> this is the coolest gif ever [https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*P41qd9rjbKD7Lqr0a...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*P41qd9rjbKD7Lqr0aTKgXQ.gif) that's data supplied by humans just for the sake of getting the data. It's Migratory patterns of Western Meadowlarks (via eBird) but it reprents a new way to get data. Passionaite human volunteers who have nothing else to do! Universal income will make many more of these volunteers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sooner than you think, self-replicating probes will expand this nervous system into the infinite expanse, and in our simulations, many iterations of ourselves will know much about the universe, but why.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the planetary nervous system stores its data in the interplanetary file system.</comment>


Executable Models in Software Engineering - <AUTHOR> Dear colleague,
We are Brazilian academic researchers investigating how software engineering professionals understand and use executable models in their practice.
We invite researchers, professors, industry professionals, undergraduate and graduate students to answer our form <https://forms.gle/fH1gMqGPu9EYZvZL7>. The estimated time to answer it is around 15 minutes.
We also ask you to forward this request to your colleagues.
Thank you in advance for your participation.
Bruno Lebtag (UFG)
Valdemar Neto (UFG)
Rodrigo Santos (UNIRIO). <comment><AUTHOR> [https://forms.gle/fH1gMqGPu9EYZvZL7](https://forms.gle/fH1gMqGPu9EYZvZL7)

</comment><comment><USER2> I presume you will be sharing the results of the survey with HN readers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would you please explain what you mean by executable models?</comment>


Latest DevOp Blogs, Boards and Books to Check Out Today - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ophasnoname_44358/latest-devop-blogs-boards-and-books-to-check-out-today-8bfd1c343007#.q6zyxbm4y <comment><AUTHOR> just added your suggestions, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER2> Another great blog: [http://highscalability.com](http://highscalability.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not a blog, board or book but I find [http://www.devopsweekly.com/](http://www.devopsweekly.com/) to be worth following.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also, the devops and hangops slack teams. I'd probably say those two and hacker news by themselves helped me get a promotion.

<comment><USER5> I'm on hangops, where does one get an invite to the devops slack team?

<comment><USER6> I found this[0] one and this[1] one. Not sure which one the GP is referring to.

0\. [https://devopsengineers.com](https://devopsengineers.com)

1\. [https://devopschat.co](https://devopschat.co)</comment></comment></comment>


Rails and Merb Merge - <AUTHOR> http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I almost wish it were April Fools Day...

For someone who loves Merb and had decided to leave Rails behind (as much as possible), I have very mixed feelings about this. If this means Rails will start to feel more like Merb, fantastic! Otherwise?

I have a feeling it'll be a long while before I _really_ know how to feel about this...

It'll be interesting to see how well this merger actually works in practice. It seems like when large companies merge the results are often underwhelming. Can a merger of large open source projects work? Will the different cultures clash?

<comment><USER3> It's open source... fork it. I'm sure someone will.

<comment><USER4> Well, there _are_ already over 400 Rails forks on github. ;-)

<comment><USER3> Yes, but someone needs to step up and build a community for it to be a viable fork.

There's a difference between someone forking Rails on GitHub so they can say "look at me, I maintain my own fork of Rails" (like 99% of those Rails "forks") and a legitimate open source project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More links:

[http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2008/12/23/merb-gets-merged- in...](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2008/12/23/merb-gets-merged-into-rails-3)

<http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/>

<http://rubyonrails.org/merb>

<http://merbist.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/>

<http://brainspl.at/articles/2008/12/23/merb-is-rails>

[http://loriholden.com/archives/2008/12/23/16-merb-is- rails-3...](http://loriholden.com/archives/2008/12/23/16-merb-is-rails-30)

[http://mornini.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/rails-2x-merb-1x-rai...](http://mornini.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/rails-2x-merb-1x-rails-30/)

[http://splendificent.com/2008/12/the-merb-rails-merger- annou...](http://splendificent.com/2008/12/the-merb-rails-merger-announcement- an-inside-opinion/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, big news.

I'm mixed on this. One of the strengths of Rails was that it was _the_ dominant Ruby web programming framework. This meant that virtually the entire community was behind Rails when it came to web app development - unlike some other languages, which have several frameworks competing for the crown. But Merb has recently started to give Rails a run for its money. Fortunately, the learning curve between Merb and Rails is relatively small.

So on the one hand, it's great that the Ruby community won't splinter between two competing frameworks.

But on the other hand, Merb was really creative and innovative, and I'd hate to see that innovation slow down as it becomes the Establishment.

<comment><USER6> How can the Ruby community splinter between two competing web frameworks? The entire Ruby-using population does not need to agree on a web framework. There can be smaller communities around various projects and frameworks within the Ruby community. In fact, I would think that it would be vital to Ruby's advancement and evolution.

You mention that Rails being the dominant web framework is a strength and in the same sentence remark about how with other languages there are multiple competing frameworks. How, exactly, does this negatively impact developers? On the flip side, how does a merger between Rails and Merb positively impact developers? Developers who don't like Rails had an alternative in Merb and vice versa. How is the elimination of a choice a good thing?

The way I see it, competition here is only a good thing. Why would anyone want Rails to be the only option-- or even the de facto standard-- when it's been shown to be exactly the wrong tool for the job in several high profile scenarios? Don't get me wrong-- I'm not bashing Rails. I'm just saying it's a good thing to have a few more tools in the toolbox. When your only tool is a hammer everything starts looking like nails.

<comment><USER4> Well, Rack is really changing a lot already with Ruby frameworks. Sinatra is becoming more popular for highly specialized apps, and now you can embed Sinatra and Camping apps into other Rack apps, which includes Rails edge apps.

Basically what's happening is that everything in Ruby is already becoming more modular, shifting toward organized APIs, so this helps move in a direction where you can basically build a customized framework like legos out of a bunch of gems and specialized apps without spending an inordinate amount of time trying to patch things to work together.

<comment><USER6> This is informative. I had never heard of Rack before. It seems very similar to Python Paste. Neat.

However, I don't see what this has to do with my original comment. It doesn't address any of the concerns I raised about the john_dahl's comment. Specifically, I'm wondering how several competing web frameworks results in splintering of the Ruby community. Isn't competition good? Don't we want a variety of tools that meet different needs?

I frequently see Merb mentioned as an alternative to Rails in response to some gripe about Rails. Developers obviously have needs that aren't met by Rails. So my question is how is this merger a positive thing for developers? What's wrong with having several tools that are used for different scenarios? Of course, 100 competing web frameworks that are essentially all the same doesn't do anyone any good, but surely there's nothing wrong with several if they specialize in different areas.

john_dahl's comment essentially applauds the merger as a unification of the Ruby community and implies that it's a disadvantage to have competition. Is that really a good thing? Developers don't benefit one iota from having a "winner".

<comment><USER7> I agree that competition is good. There is (was) concern that loud, shallow, infantile arguments of Merb versus Rails were damaging, to an extent. If nothing else, they were really, really annoying, and too frequent. This may be the "splintering" of which john_dahl was speaking.

There are other frameworks, although they get little "press", as they lack an Engine Yard or 37signals hype-machine. In fact, if you visit ramaze.net (one of the more mature frameworks) and scroll down, you can find a listing of all the frameworks of which the ramaze people are aware. Twenty-one, including Merb AND Rails, at last count. (It is likely that not all of them are wholly distinguishable from one another. I can't say, as I haven't tried them.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Impressive! How often do you hear about two open-source projects merging? Forking is much more common. I can't even recollect other instances of merging.

Best of luck to the two teams with making it work!

<comment><USER9> Can people stop coming up with examples? You're ruining mdemare's argument.

<comment><USER10> Well, in the case of GCC/egcs and KHTML/WebKit, it's not quite a precise merge; egcs and WebKit _won_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Rails: Merb, _I_ am your father.

Merb: Nooooooooooo!

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like they smelled some code duplication and committed to a cross- project refactoring.

Exciting to see some smart people uniting over respect for a common problem.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hop in #merb and #rubyonrails for commentary from wycats and dhh. Lots of good discussion.

</comment><comment><USER14> So, I posted this on one of the threads for other blog posts about this, but that tread doesn't have much going on, and I want to see what people have to say about it:

I'm a merbist and think this will be good for both the Merb and Rails communities.

That said, I'm a little afraid it will shaft the other Ruby frameworks (Sinatra, Camping) and possibly straight ruby too. People might make interesting things only compatible with Rails.

When Merb was a pretty big, active minority, it was more compelling to go out of one's way to make interesting libraries (ORMs, gems, etc.) easily compatible with anything ruby.

Now, people might at the least write things specifically setup for use w/ rails in such a way that it's inconvenient to nonrails ruby, and at worst make Rails plugins for things that could be useful libraries for all of Ruby.

Rails is gaining modularity, but I fear Ruby overall might lose it. Even after Rails and Merb merge, rails!=ruby.

<comment><USER7> There are plenty of people in the Ruby community who avoid Rails (whether their reasons are valid or not). I think you'll find plenty of Rubyists who wish to create things outside of Rails. Whether that means they will be throwing weight behind another framework such as Ramaze, or creating a new one, I can't say. I do believe that there are enough anti-mainstream hackers in the mix now that you don't have to worry about that "scene" dying.

You're one of them, to an extent, and there's nothing wrong with that. Have at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do I detect the hand of Benchmark Capital here?

Edit: I wrote the orginal comment in a hurry - but what I was getting at was that Engine Yard took quite a bit of cash from Benchmark. I somehow doubt that a move like this could have happened without their approval, and I have to wonder if they instigated it (and why...)

<comment><USER16> Hmmm.

<http://www.benchmark.com/news/sv/2008/10_21_2008.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love this. I was just torn about learning Merb and worried about how the Rails community was slowing down. This should inject some much needed energy as well as introduce some of Merb's awesome features into Rails. Great move.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope the result ends up being mostly merb. It is just so much cleaner...

</comment><comment><USER19> Can't wait for Zed to weigh in!

<comment><USER20> Wait no longer. Zed has spoken: <http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is awesome.

Merb has become the 'go to' framework for Rails developers like myself who are unsatisfied with several Rails design choices.

However, the technical differences between the two are actually not that big. A merge of Merb and Rails concepts sounds like a good thing, all 'round.

Three cheers for open-source development and civil relationships between developers.

</comment><comment><USER3> My brain _knows_ it's the middle of December, but I had to check to make sure it wasn't April 1st. This is _exactly_ the type of headline we see every year on April 1st. Crazy that it's real.

</comment><comment><USER3> I once heard someone suggest that the "Rails" architecture should just be a standard that could be implemented for any language. This seems to be a step in that direction. Sounds pretty good to me.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you can't beat 'em...

</comment><comment><USER23> DHH confirmed to going with current logo. Are that guy delirious? <http://url.davegrey.com?06609>

</comment><comment><USER24> Well, this move has cemented Rails' future as the best web framework there is. What an awesome move! Congrats to Merb & Rails teams!

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm modding this up because one of these submissions needs to win, so that we know where the conversation should go.

</comment><comment><USER26> this is huge. and it turns out that yesterday i was considering learning merb instead of rails. but for the moment i will learn rails. what is the best one to learn at the moment in order to be ready for rails 3?

<comment><USER7> Both. They're both Ruby. The learning curve for one over the other changes very little ultimately.

In practice, however, Merb docs, tutorials, articles, howtos, et cetera, are lacking. That is reality. If you're starting from scratch w/ Ruby and her frameworks, you'll probably find Rails more newbie-friendly from a learning- materials standpoint.

<comment><USER26> Interesting, Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow, completely unexpected! Very exciting!

</comment><comment><USER23> It's really great! <http://www.railsgeek.com>

</comment><comment><USER28> so much for "no code is faster than no code"</comment>


How Pair Programming Really Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/0110/whatsnew/software

<comment><USER2> Actual article: [http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepa...](http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepage/2010/0110/W_SW_PairProgramming.pdf)

I'm curious: has anyone had experience pairing using EtherPad, either distantly or in the same room?</comment>


There really are people planning to reduce their income to get below Obama's $250k bracket - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/03/03/wealthy-idiots-meet-idiot-reporter.aspx <comment><USER2> This behavior is not classically rational, but as experiments like 'The Ultimatum Game' [1] show, people aren't rational in such matters. They will accept less for themselves if they feel they're being treated unfairly.

Some people feel progressive taxation is unfair. Even if you think it's fair, you might have objections to tinkering with the level of progressivity to buy votes, or in times of crisis, or in times when the politically-favored (be they defaulting homeowners, too-big-to-fail banks, or those running agencies and projects fortified by stimulus spending) are drawing extra billions (trillions?) from public funds.

So while these >$250K earners are not being hyperrational after-tax income maximizers -- and hardly anyone is -- they are behaving in a very typical human way.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> That's plausible and interesting, but it's not what the story says. The story says these people believe that if they gross less than $250k, they will somehow net more money than if they grossed more than $250k.

<comment><USER2> I could not find any quotes in the ABC story that unambiguously indicate the taxpayers think they would net more after-tax money with a lower income. The closest is the initial Louisiana attorney, but even there it's clear the main motivation is resentment -- and the "give it all away" comment is hyperbole.

Meanwhile, the tax accountant quoted on page 2 allows that it's _possible_ a discontinuity with regard to deductions could create a situation where you would net more by reducing your income. The tax code is gigantic and buggy; it's not out of the question that a few taxpayers, in certain narrow situations, sometimes face marginal rates over 100%.

In any case, my point is not with an overly-literal interpretation of the ABC story. It's that this parade of commentators throwing around words like 'idiot' -- starting with Chait at the TNR piece and continuing here -- are the real know-nothings.

This taxpayer behavior is not idiotic; it's evolved human behavior, in the presence of perceived unfairness, that may serve long-term survival strategies.

<comment><USER3> I just did my taxes Saturday night, so here is real experience, not theory. My household income is near the point of this discontinuity.

Last year, my wife and I made $X more than the previous year. The end result on our taxes was that we paid about (0.75)X more in taxes. This was due primarily (as the account explained to us) to a combination of increasing hit due to AMT as well as declining mortgage interest deduction as we approach the end of our mortgage.

With an apparent marginal tax rate of 75%, what's the point of working harder? And, in fact, if I can stand to lose, say $1,000 in income in order to buy myself $4,000 worth of "life", that seems like a good investment.

<comment><USER4> Please don't find it insulting when I say I find your numbers hard to believe. A claim of a marginal tax rate of 75% without any solid numbers is hardly doing justice your thesis. If you'd give a more detailed breakdown, your case would not seem so dubious.

<comment><USER5> > A claim of a marginal tax rate of 75% without any solid numbers is hardly > doing justice your thesis.

The top marginal rate is around 40%. SSI is around 15%. CA's top is around 10%. Add in some deduction phaseouts and it's easy to see 70%.

<comment><USER4> Top marginal rate is 35% now.

The SSI stops after 105k (or so), so it is immaterial, because the marginal fed tax rate is 28% at that point.

True that state income tax is a big one, for some states. So I completely didn't bundle that in my estimate.

Phaseout deductions never _increase_ marginal tax rates, so also immaterial.

Nevertheless, exceeding 50% marginal tax rate with today's tax rates is unlikely.

<comment><USER5> > Top marginal rate is 35% now.

There's a surtax that puts it at 39+.

> The SSI stops after 105k (or so),

Today.

> Phaseout deductions never _increase_ marginal tax rates, so also immaterial.

Phaseouts affect the amount of income taxed and thus affect the amount of taxes due for a given increase in income. Suppose that earning $1k more costs me $300 in deductions due to phaseouts. The result is that my AGI has gone up by $1.3k. Assuming no bracket change, the taxes owed because of that $1k increase is 1.3x the bracket rate.

Let's put some numbers on it. Suppose that the tax rate for that bracket is 10%. That's $100 for the $1k and $30 for the $300 for a total of $130 owed. Do you really want to argue that the marginal rate for that $1k is not 13%?

I also left out sales taxes. Their effect depends on what the mix of goods purchased (at least some food is tax free in most jurisdictions while gas, tobacco, and booze isn't) and the average tax rate up to that point.

For a state like CA, with sales taxes typically over 8% and soon to be 9%, that can add another 3-5% to the marginal tax burden.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget the AMT. It's the granddaddy of all phaseouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised no one has picked up on this yet: families who make $249,999 may actually pay far fewer taxes than families making $250,000. Why? Capital gains taxes, which Bush set to 15%. Obama will increase this tax to 20% for families making >= $250,000 ([http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jd7Vs2tjPA...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jd7Vs2tjPAplFaABT9kaFRR9a56wD96JIAI03)). Also, all sorts of other possible deductions would be removed.

Wealthy families often make much of their money from investing, so a 5% capital gains tax increase can be pretty significant.

<comment><USER7> > families who make $249,999 may actually pay far fewer taxes than families > making $250,000.

That's not how tax brackets work. Jumping into the higher bracket doesn't mean you make less money, it means you pay more taxes for the amount above the bracket, but you'll pay the same tax rate on the 249k as the guy only making 249k. So he'd only pay the 20% rate on the extra dollar, hardly far more than the other guys.

<comment><USER6> Notice that I'm talking about capital gains, not income. They are taxed differently.

A family making 190,000 dollars a year in normal income and 50,000 dollars a year in long-term capital gains will pay the normal taxes on 190,000 dollars (as you describe it, with brackets and what-not), and 15% on the 50,000 dollars. A family making 200,000 dollars plus 50,000 in LTCG, however, will break the 250,000 dollar barrier and will have to pay 20% on that 50,000. That means the cost of that extra 10,000 dollars in income cost them 2,500 dollars in additional taxes.

<comment><USER7> Hmm.. you're right, I didn't realize cap gains weren't bracketed like income. Still, I have no sympathy, getting nailed for extra taxes because you make more than a quarter million a year is a nice problem to have, I wish I had it.

<comment><USER8> it's stupid to have this huge jump in taxes when you make one more dollar. 5% of the gains on your investments is a big difference.

<comment><USER7> Donate that dollar to charity and deduct it, you're below the cap, easy enough; you're right though, it is stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I had a nickel every time I had a conversation clearing up the US tax code just a little bit, explaining that each bracket gets taxed individually, I'd be making money in a very weird way.

<comment><USER10> So what is my tax rate if I go from $249,999 to $250,000?

How much money in real dollars do I lose when I earn a buck more to make it to a quarter million?

<comment><USER11> The point is that the work incentives are diminished at your high income. The value you are creating that is being compensated for at ~$250k hits a glass ceiling. You aren't exactly losing money, there's just no point in working more at your highly specialized profession.

The author of the original article doesn't quite understand this point.

A blog post by (right-wing) Harvard professor Greg Mankiw clearly explains this: <http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-post.html>

<comment><USER12> The higher your income, the lower your work incentive should be anyway (regardless of tax situation). You can afford to slow down and enjoy life.

I don't believe that people change their work habit, or choose to work less, just because of a relative tax increase. However, they may be more inclined to find more tax efficient schemes.

<comment><USER5> > You can afford to slow down and enjoy life.

You're thinking of it from the wrong side.

You want these people to work hard and long because they're good at what they do.

You benefit from their work. You don't benefit as much from their vacation.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I'm sure glad these people were buying subprime mortgages instead of taking a vacation.

<comment><USER5> Huh? Folks earning around $250k and thinking about cutting back are not the folks who got subprime mortgages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OK, all you smart guys, we know what a marginal rate is. It is still the case that any entrepreneur will have less incentive to earn that 250,000th dollar than she did to earn the 249,999th dollar. Maybe this isn't "rational", but it is empirical: there do exist entrepreneurs who will decide not to earn that 250,000th dollar. Maybe that means they'll each sell one less widget, but it also implies that some of them will lay somebody off. Business decisions are not continuous, and they are extremely path-dependent. A small change in circumstances (not 4 cents, but the analysis holds if someone decides to make $270K rather than $310K) can lead to very divergent results.

Of course, our income tax system (not payroll or sales tax!) is already quite progressive, so this was already the case. Also, if you believe in utility functions, you can imagine that the 250,000th dollar is intrinsically less alluring anyway. But Obama wants to make the system yet more progressive, so no one will be surprised when these effects increase, with negative knock-ons for jobs and growth. It isn't as though business owners have nothing better to do with their time than provide jobs. Few of them will close up shop, but all of them will reevaluate their workload. When they're not getting paid enough for their work, they'll do less of it. Actually, I think most of us plebes are basically the same.

<comment><USER15> >Maybe this isn't "rational", but it is empirical

Actually it is perfectly rational; it just doesn't have as much to do with with a progressive tax as you might think: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is 100% politics.

I'm not saying it's a bad or good article, I'm just saying it's politics, this is HN, and I've flagged it.

</comment><comment><USER17> 1\. What if there are tax credits for those earning less than $250k, while those credits are non-existent if you earn over $250k?

2\. What if these people are trying to defer income to a later date when the income tax isn't as high?

3\. Or the people can invest capital in their businesses now, get below the income tax increase by taking deductions, wait for the rate to decrease and then cash in on higher profits due to lower taxes and gains from investment in the business.

The dentist doesn't seem like an idiot to me. Maybe she never took much of a vacation before. Now she will. Then when tax rates decrease the incentive to work increases and she will increase her hours.

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember once a manager telling a fellow employee that a raise isn't necessarily a good thing as the employee would end up paying more in taxes.

<comment><USER19> This is a common thing to hear at entry-level hourly jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the original article:

>Schatsky said that the incentive to get under $250,000 may be more so if the tax plan outlines that an individual who goes over a prescribed limit would face a reduced value of their itemized deductions.

>"If the value of all your itemized deductions goes from a 33 percent level to a 28 percent level than there would be a reason for people to do dramatic things to reduce their incomes," said Schatsky.

This is coming from "Gary Schatsky, a financial adviser and the president of N.Y.-based Objectiveadvice.com". As such, he presumably has a clue about taxation matters, so I hesitate to call him out on this, but... surely no government would ever enact such a scheme; they would bracket the deductions in a similar way to the income, rather than having a magic barrier of $250k, in order to avoid a situation where people have an incentive to earn less. To me this seems common sense, but at the same time, I'm not a financial adviser -- does anyone have any input on this?

<comment><USER21> > surely no government would ever enact such a scheme

Heh. I would not put ANYTHING into the "surely they wouldn't" category when it comes to government....

<comment><USER22> Government? Try humans in general. Get a large enough sample, and there will be a portion of idiots. Sometimes they're even in charge, be it in a company or a government. Or they might not be in charge, but their actions will negatively affect other people in any case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The subjects of this article never said anything that implies that they don't know what a marginal tax rate is. It profiles a lawyer and a dentist, two professionals whose pay is in proportion to the hours they put in, who have to decide when the marginal value of more money is less than the marginal value of more free time. Naturally, there will be a cluster of people who decide that the tax bracket change point is the right place to do this - more so the larger the difference between the two brackets.

Or, to use the tone that the author used, this idiot author is so stupid that he doesn't understand the concept of marginal utility...

</comment><comment><USER24> I live in Boulder, and I'm looking for a new dentist. I know which one I won't be checking out.

<comment><USER25> How is understanding of the tax code is a transferrable skill to dentistry?

<comment><USER26> I'd reckon it has to do with the person's ability to analyze the facts of a situation and apply it to decision making. I wouldn't want a dentist to look at my teeth and incorrectly decide that a root canal should be performed when a more accurate analysis of the facts would suggest a simple filling.

In the Tax Code case the person should be intelligent enough to know that they don't understand the tax code rather than pretend they do and continue to make poor decisions because of it. This personality trait may lead them to fail to acknowledge a lack of understanding when it comes to a certain dental procedure, but rather than educate themselves, they go ahead and make an incorrect decision.

I think the skill of general intelligence does indeed transfer from tax code to dentistry.

<comment><USER25> If you can create a model of "general intelligence" that is a consistent predictor of cross-domain success (and not simply an aggregate or derivative measure, like "g" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor> ), then you could really make a name for yourself, not only in psychology but also in artificial intelligence.

It seems that the crux of your argument is "the dentist should have known that she did not know the tax code well, and was unqualified to make the decision." One of the most common failings of the human mind is to over estimate the skill level of the self ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon_effect> )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The tax code is an outrage. The sad thing is that we waste 22 cents in compliance and complexity for every dollar raised for the treasury from the income tax. Obama's plan makes the complex code even worse, increasing the deadweight loss to our society.

<http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1281.html>

</comment><comment><USER28> _The ABC article is based on the premise that an individual's entire income is taxed at the same rate. If that were the case, it would be possible for a family earning $249,999 to have a higher after-tax income than a family earning $255,000, because the family earning $249,999 would pay a lower tax rate.

But that isn't actually how income tax works.

In reality, a family earning $255,000 will pay the higher tax rate only on its last $5,001 in income; the first $249,999 will continue to be taxed at the old rate. So intentionally lowering your income from $255,000 to $249,999 is counter-productive; it will result in a lower after-tax income._

From here: <http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200903030013>

</comment><comment><USER29> This is not an argument for 'simplifying' the tax code, if anything, it should be complicated. Using a discrete cutoff point, while easier to explain to voters, is far more gameable than using say, a logarithmic scale.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill If you make more than $250K and donate a lot to charity, you could be hit pretty hard - you can only take a deduction equal to a tax bracket of 28% rather than the higher tax bracket you fall into.

</comment><comment><USER30> Fiscal Darwinism?

</comment><comment><USER31> Noone that stupid would have the brains to make $250K a year to begin with.

All of these people are bullshitters. Pretty much on any site you visit you have someone claim that they are going to work less/close their business/shut down just to avoid hitting that 250K mark. Ever notice how its always a brand new member making such a post? The few times a long time member posted such drivel, it took a few minutes to find out that the person was full of shit.

<comment><USER32> There are a lot of stupid people breaking $250k/year.

When you get out of school, you'll discover that the correlation between intelligence and income is low. There are dumbasses who succeed in investment banking on account of sheer stamina and frat-boy charisma. Also, real estate is a "profession" in which idiots thrive, because they are closer to the animalistic/territorial emotions involved in that game than smart people.

Finally, there are some people in prestigious careers (doctors, lawyers, and, yes, even professors) who are not low-IQ people, but are still idiots... and you'd be amazed how uninformed many of them are. Idiocy has a lot more to do with provincial attitudes and willful ignorance than an IQ score.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't have high hopes for this getting upmodded, but it sure is a funny story.

<comment><USER33> The past couple of weeks have really been a lesson in FUD. I have politically active family members on both sides of the line, and its amazing to hear how different every policy sounds from each of them.

<comment><USER5> > The past couple of weeks have really been a lesson in FUD. I have > politically active family members on both sides of the line, and its amazing > to hear how different every policy sounds from each of them.

The fact that different people see the same thing differently does not imply FUD.

An elephant from its rider's perspective is very different from an elephant as seen by an ant.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you see it from the perspective of, "for every dollar I make over $250k, I have to give $2 to the liberals", the issue isn't one of perspective.

<comment><USER34> I thought it was a 4% increase on the marginal rate, which is currently 35%. I was also under the impression that the top rate only applied to salary over 349k, not 250k. So if you're on less than that there will be no change, and over that you will be paying 4 cents more per dollar, which desn't sound that bad to me, but then again I won't be paying it!

<comment><USER5> 4% on 35% is 10% more taxes.

Yes, that's marginal, but you're forgetting the phase-outs for various deductions and credits. They can push the marginal rates up quite a bit.

Most of the ones that I know about are at less than $250k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wow, both a journalist and lawyer were too stupid to figure out how the tax code works? This really isn't rocket science.

Every time journalists and newspapers whine and carry on about going out of business... they need this quoted to them. The problem with taking advice from stupid people is you can't use it -- you have to check everything yourself instead of trusting the information. Which essentially renders any newspaper written by reporters like this utterly useless.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the "new media" angle here --- a professional ABC newsroom ran this batshit crazy story, and the blogomosphere caught and corrected it. Death of the republic predicted, film at 11.</comment></comment>